Theology and Sexuality current issue

List of Contributors

2008-04-11

Editorial: Sacred and Profane--Gender, Spirituality and Identity in Contemporary Culture

Hinds, H. — 2008-04-11

Performing Jesus: A Queer Counternarrative of Embodied Transgression

Sheffield, T. — 2008-04-11

This essay argues for performative gender identities that are simultaneously multiple by analyzing the Augustinian interpretation of Genesis 1—3 and how this reading has been used to support normative gender and sexuality. I contend that certain ancient gender narratives which have been read through religious discourse as condemning 'heretical' or 'monstrous' bodies, can actually be reread as alternative engagements with the Chalcedonian body, that most holy of bodies (for Christianity). As a result, these alternative narratives offer us a place from which to construct a permeable and transgressive position and through which to rethink not only ancient battles over Jesus' body, but also, more importantly, the continuing impact of those ancient struggles in terms of gender and religious identification today. By using critical theological studies, I assert that a queer reading of the Chalcedic body, analyzed alongside transgender narratives, is a site from which to construct identities of hybridity and transgression that disrupt ancient and contemporary fictive narratives of normative gender and sexuality.

Transformations of the Sacred in Contemporary Chicana Culture

Messmer, M. — 2008-04-11

Focusing on the transformation of the sacred icon La Virgen de Guadalupe into a secularized and sexualized modern woman in illustrations by Yolanda M. López and Ester Hernández, the rearticulation of ex-votos in Sandra Cisneros's short story 'Little Miracles, Kept Promises', and the development of a lesbian form of spirituality in Ana Castillo's Massacre of the Dreamers, this essay argues that it is the tradition of syncretism and cultural hybridization within the folk version of Mexican Catholicism and its concomitant propensity toward the deconstruction of binary oppositions (such as colonizer versus colonized; male versus female; body versus soul; sexuality versus spirituality) that forms the basis for many of the feminist revisions, reinterpretations, and transformations of Catholic figures, motifs and texts in contemporary Chicana art.

'Mystic Atheism': Julia Kristeva's Negative Theology

Bradley, A. — 2008-04-11

This article examines Julia Kristeva's paradoxical concept of a 'mystic atheism'. It falls into three parts. First, it briefly surveys Kristeva's psychoanalytic account of Christian theology in Au commencement était l'amour (1985). Secondly, it assesses Kristeva's analysis of the Christian mystical tradition from Teresa of Avila to Angela of Foligno in such works as Le féminin et le sacré (1999) and the three volumes on Le génie féminin (1999— 2002). For Kristeva, Christian mysticism represents a key moment in the transition from theology to psychoanalysis: what she locates within the work of the female mystics is a so-called 'mystic atheism', that is to say, an affirmation of an other within the subject as opposed to the divine other that supposedly lies outside it. Finally, the article offers some critical comments upon Kristeva's own 'mystic atheism': I argue that—like much negative theology—Kristeva's psychoanalysis remains ontotheological in form and that this dimension expresses itself in a problematic tendency to anthropomorphize the other within. In conclusion, I will suggest that Kristeva's 'mystic atheism' ultimately remains within the theological tradition it seeks to call into question.

Violence and the Sacred in the Fiction of Julia Kristeva

Greaney, M. — 2008-04-11

This article examines the relatively neglected fiction of Julia Kristeva, especially her 'gothic roman noir' The Old Man and the Wolves, in relation to her theories of violence and abjection. It focuses on the various kinds of excitement and anxiety provoked by notions of border-crossing and metamorphosis in her fiction, and explores her critique of the banality of secular modernity and her nostalgic evocations of sacred space. I also discuss the paradox of her problematic use of detective fiction—a direct product of secular modernity—as a vehicle for this critique.

Hidden Subjects: Rereading Eve and Mary

Sawyer, D. F. — 2008-04-11

Eve and Mary are two archetypes that persist within our culture at its most profound level despite world views imposed by Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought. Since these figures are impossible to expel from our imaginations, revisiting them in the light of contemporary ideas of identity and gender might prove to be a useful means of understanding their cultural impact. In this article extracts from the work of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva are discussed which feature our two archetypes, framing them through the lens of gender critique. Their work clearly illuminates the status of these figures within our realities, and drawing on their observations, suggestions are made as to how we might re-figure both Eve and Mary as the true subjects of the foundation narratives they inhabit.

Chocolate and Bread: Gendering Sacred and Profane Foods in Contemporary Cultural Representations

Steel, J. — 2008-04-11

According to Maud Ellmann, food is `the thesaurus of all moods and all sensations' (Ellmann 1993: 112). It is, she suggests, not only an important signifier within culture and the symbolic order, but it also plays a vital role in our sense of self. This claim provides the starting point for this article's analysis of two symbolically charged foodstuffs: bread and chocolate. In what ways, and to what ends, are these foods gendered? How do these foods shape the construction of identities? And how do their associations with notions of the sacred and the profane inform those constructions? These questions will be addressed by focusing on two contemporary female-authored novels: Chocolat by Joanne Harris (1999) and Give Them Stones by Mary Beckett (1987).