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ABSTRACT
Is queer theology an impossible project? Queer theology which engages Edelman’s queer negativity oscillates around the negation of theology’s participation in upholding the anti-queerness which is fundamental to our social order. Drawing upon Marcella Althaus-Reid, Lee Edelman, Linn Tonstad, and Kent Brintnall, this essay upholds this as a necessary, but impossible, task for queer theology. Assessing this paradox constructively, I propose that it is impossible for queer theology to be sufficiently negative, due to theologians’ inability to maintain a vantage point outside the social and theological order we critique. This inability is a gift of queer grace. Queer grace orients us to the edge of theology’s capability to where God takes on the imperatives of our negative task, and to where we seek God’s eschatological transformation of ourselves, especially gendered and sexual selfhood.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 22.
2 Edelman, No Future.
3 Althaus-Reid, The Queer God.
4 Tonstad, God and Difference.
5 Butler, Gender Trouble.
6 Brintnall, “Desire’s Revelatory Conflagration”.
7 Mohney, “Leelah Alcorn”.
8 Butler, Gender Trouble, 31.
9 Ibid., 190.
10 Ibid., 201.
11 Ibid., 203.
12 See Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”. In a treatment of racism and homophobia within feminist academia and activism, Lorde proposes an activism that rejects the terms of the oppressor (in her words, refusing to be “occupied with the master’s concerns”, 113), instead leaning into mutual and nondominant modes of difference as a means to substantial change.
13 CNN reports that about 117 anti-trans bills have been introduced in state legislatures in 2021 alone, aiming to reduce trans people’s access to healthcare and participation in public life. The bulk of these bills target trans people’s use of public bathrooms and locker rooms, trans youth participation in sports, and trans minors’ access to transition-related healthcare (including reversible medication to halt the onset of puberty). “This record-breaking year for anti-transgender legislation would affect minors the most” by Krishnakumar, April 15, 2021. Accessed September 12, 2021. https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/15/politics/anti-transgender-legislation-2021/index.html.
14 Tonstad, “The Limits of Inclusion”.
15 Edelman, 3.
16 To be clear, this Child ought not to be confused with actual children. The machine of reproductive futurism leverages itself against many actual children – the discussion of anti-trans legislation in n13 is but one example of how children who break the bounds of heteronormativity are punished.
17 Edelman, 2–3.
18 Ibid., 21.
19 Ibid., 9.
20 Ibid., 26.
21 Ibid., 27.
22 Ibid., 29.
23 Ibid., 27.
24 Ibid., 30–31.
25 Ibid., 27.
26 Ibid., 107.
27 Ibid., 114.
28 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 1. Italics mine.
29 Ibid., 2.
30 Ibid., 16.
31 Ibid., 95.
32 Ibid., 96.
33 Edelman, No Future, 86.
34 For discussion on the relationship between desire and futurity in Edelman and Muñoz, see Ruti, The Ethics of Opting Out, 87–129.
35 Ibid., 103.
36 Tonstad, “The Limits of Inclusion,” 16.
37 Ibid., 16.
38 Brintnall, “Desire’s Revelatory Conflagration,” 59.
39 Ibid., 56.
40 Ibid., 55.
41 Ibid., 57.
42 Ibid., 57.
43 Ibid., 57.
44 Ibid., 57.
45 Ibid., 59.
46 Ibid., 57.
47 Ibid., 57.
48 Althaus-Reid, The Queer God, 169.
49 Ibid., 153.
50 Ibid., 152.
51 Ibid., 169.
52 Ibid., 154.
53 Ibid., 169.
54 Tonstad, God and Difference, 13.
55 Ibid., 17.
56 Ibid., 17.
57 Ibid., 266.
58 Ibid., 263.
59 Ibid., 275.
60 Ibid., 263.
61 Ibid., 273.
62 Ibid., 273.
63 Ibid., 273.
64 Ibid., 273.
65 Ibid., 275.
66 Ibid., 277.
67 Keller, Political Theology of the Earth, p ?
68 Bray, Grave Attending, p. 4.
69 Edelman, “Antagonism, Negativity, and the Subject of Queer Theory,” 822.
70 Tonstad, “Everything Queer, Nothing Radical?” 128.
71 Brintnall, “The Politics of Revelation”.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Micah Cronin
The Rev. Micah Cronin an Episcopal priest serving in the Diocese of New Jersey. He writes at the intersections of queer, reformed, and Anglican theology, bringing these intersections to bear on a wide range of issues such as the task and function of theology, pastoral care and mental illness, LGBTQ issues in the Anglican Communion, and theological responses to sexual abuse.