Categories: uncategorized
Date: 23 February 2008 07:58:58
Yesterday I went to an Interdisciplinary Colloquium in celebration of LGBT History Month , at CCCU, entitled Que(e)rying Culture . I'm not sure if this was formally part of their Spring Public Lectures series or not. It was a double header between the Media department and the Theology and Religious Studies department (and so no prizes for guessing which half I went to hear).
Now I wasn't quite sure what to expect with the Media department half which was focusing on Queerness and Popular Culture, but I wasn't expecting to enjoy it. Basically whilst I find cultural studies interesting, I do think that an awful lot of it is pretentious b*****s, particularly the identity stuff which, if we're still using the term, reflects and feeds the worst excesses of post-modern theory.
I was pleasantly suprised with Dr Joanne Woodman's paper on Queer Magical Realism in the Work of Paul Magrs though. It was really interesting and although I've never heard of the guy before I came away wanting to read his work. What I liked about the whole thing was the way concepts of queerness were being taken beyond those with LGBT and she was talking about the portrayal of communities particularly communities inhabited by those who could be referred to as "the other" in some situations.
Dr Andrew M Butler did a talk on Strange Boys, Queer Boys: Fantasies of Young Adults. This was a talk which mixed discussion about young adult lit, sci-fi genre, and gay fiction. The bit talking about the history of young adult fiction was really interesting and I found out that this category of literature has existed since 1802! Beyond that I don't really do sci-fi and am a tad conservative when it comes to explicit content in books for young people and so.....well, it wasn't really my cup of tea.
Then it was time for the main event (as far as I was concerned). Dr Paddy Daniel did her bit on Queering God which was about queer theology. Now I have to admit I don't know that much about academic queer theology(ies) (beyond the work of the wonderful James Alison ), but it is an area which I need to find out more about. It was a short but enlightening talk which made me realise what a huge world there is out there for me to discover and use to expand my mind and my understandings of God. Again she started by referring to the fact there are multiple understandings and interpretations of the term queer and explaining that queer theroy is a multiple discourse and a theology of experience. She also explained how this branch of theology is rooted in feminist and liberation theology. Beyond this it got a bit arty because in referring to Christologies she went into images, icons and poetry, (particularly from Hadewijch ). Not that is a bad thing, it's just I tend to be firmly rooted in words and the 20th / 21st centuries.
It was a facinating talk though, which yet again started to open my eyes to the way that whilst there are clear problematics in some of the radical and liberal theories for evangelicals there is also a richness involved in them, which we are sometimes missing.
For me what I find difficult with the view of queer theory which was being presented is the paradox that it gives rise to. These theories focus on individual liberation and through their multiple meanings and interpretations help individuals to develop a more individual and personal relationship with God yet in doing this they are also potentially weakening the community by removing the concept of dominant interpretations. That is not to say that queer theory ignores the community, as I was told in answer to a question I raised at the end there is a body of work relating to the incorporation of queer theology into the corporate.
Yet I suppose as an evangelical, from a free church tradition, this is a problem that equally applies, (and perhaps lies at the root of much of the division which you sometimes find in church meetings). We are a group of believers meeting God in different ways and free to interpret the bible through the Holy Spirit in our own lives yet we are trusting God to bring us to a common mind. Therefore, we should have already that freedom which queer theory and feminism gives. However, in reality evangelicalism relies on dominant interpretations perhaps more than many other strands of belief in the (post) modern world.
However, I guess this is where as always we need to return to the bible to give us the answer. The gospel shows us how in it's purest form the liberation that we find in God which is referred to within queer theology, feminist theology, liberation theology and evangelicalism leads not only to the development of the individual but then on to the individual using their freedom to build community with others on a more equal basis. If domination (religious, intellectual or whatever form) comes from sin then surely when we start to become free from this domination we start to become more fully the people God intended with the imago dei more visible within us and in turn we should be more likely to serve in love and be more in tune with God and so more likely to find the mind of God in our decision making.
Dr Burkhard Scherer finally gave a talk on Transgendering Asian Religious, but I have to admit by that time my head has started to explode and so I quietly slipped out after an excellent afternoon.