A BLOG – Page 85

Troubling (and queering) religion: a few sources

My academic background is in religion. Before getting a PhD in Women’s Studies at Emory University, I got a MA in Theology, Ethics and Culture at the School of Theology at Claremont and a BA in Religion from Gustavus Adolphus College. While my work has shifted away from religion/religious ethics in recent years, my early training and interest in religion has persisted and managed to remain a big influence on my thinking.

In the past few years I have felt increasingly compelled to bring that early training back to the forefront in order to give some serious attention to the connections between ethics, religion, queer theory, feminism and troublemaking. And yes, contrary to popular opinion, there are connections (and not just negative ones!). You can be feminist and ethical! You can believe in a queer God! You can even make trouble and proudly label it religious activity! What, don’t believe me? Here are just a few sources that support my claims:

THE TROUBLEMAKER
I came across this song when I was randomly googling troublemaking. I’m Learning to Share focuses on Della Reese’s version of it from 1971, but Willie Nelson also sang it on his gospel album of the same name.

Warning Spoiler Alert: The song is all about a troublemaker who had long hair, no job and refused to join the army. He and his friend were rebels who went from town to town stirring up trouble. He was eventually arrested, tried and given the death penalty. At the end of the song, he is hung from a cross. Whoah…What a twist. Jesus as a troublemaker? Okay, the song is a little cheesy, but the connection between troublemaking and Jesus-as-prophet is pretty cool.

This connection is not limited to popular music and the likes of hippy-loving Willie Nelson, however. Cornel West writes about deep democracy, the Socratic tradition and the prophets (prophetic pragmatism) in Democracy Matters. Incidentally, when I presented on Judith Butler and the virtue of troublemaking at the National Women’s Studies Association conference in 2007, my dad (a religion and ethics scholar) suggested that I explore the prophet-troublemaker connection. Thanks AEP!

QUEER CHRIST: TRANSFORMING ANGER INTO HOPE
Reverend Dr. Carter Heyward gave a sermon (I originally linked to it, but the link doesn’t work anymore–as of April 29, 2012) in 2004 at the Episcopal Divinity School. Very cool. Here is her definition of queer. A queer is someone who has an “irrepressible interest in making connections between justice struggles and making these connections public. Not hiding [their] convictions under a barrel. Not remaining silent when everyone around [them] would be more comfortable if they were…” and who does so with compassion and love. For Heyward, being queer is being confrontational and compassionate. It is to embody apparent (but only apparent) contradictions, to be angry (about injustice) and yet to love all of humanity at the same time. For Heyward, to be queer in this way is to embody Christ–who holds together qualities that only appear to be contradictions (but aren’t–and that simultaneous embracing of seemingly contradictory qualities is what makes Christ queer).

note: Since this sermon doesn’t seem to be available online anymore, here’s a passage that I particularly liked:

What makes her, my mother so queer is not simply that she is supportive of her lesbian daughter and my friends and communities; and not simply that she is at strong odds with the prevailing political culture in both the world and church in which she has grown old. What makes my mother queer is her irrepressible interest in making connections among justice struggles and making these connections public! Not hiding her convictions under a barrel. Not remaining silent when everyone around her would be more comfortable if she were sometimes a little less in their face about Bush, the war, and gay marriage. At the same time, you will never meet a gentler, kinder, more compassionate soul than my mother Mary Ann Carter Heyward.

Is she in your face about injustice? Yes.

Is she open to you and eager to know what really makes you tick? Yes.

Is she angry about the injustices we join in and perpetuate? Yes.

Is she compassionate and forgiving toward everyone she has met who has hurt her or done her wrong? Yes.

The queerest thing of all about my mother is that she is such a bundle of apparent contradictions. She is confrontational and compassionate, angry and gentle, representing for me One through whom we meet God face to face. There are many people, including many right here in this chapel, who embody Christ for me in stunning ways. But there is no one through whom I catch stronger intimations and glimpses of the Wisdom of God, Christ herself, than my own queer mother.

This is because the most dynamic dimension of Queerness – and Christ – is the holding together of qualities that only appear to be contradictions, qualities that are not in fact contradictory or oppositional, qualities that taken together are, well, simply “queer.” Each brings out something in the other, revealing it more fully for what it is: humanity and divinity, anger and compassion, the struggle for life and the letting go of it, a capacity to wrestle fiercely against the enemies of justice and to love them concretely, which means trying to do them no harm, trying not to humiliate them, respecting them as brothers and sisters, whether or not they recognize us. Like the humanity and divinity we meet in Jesus and — through him as our spiritual lens — in one another, we also can experience anger and compassion, anger and gentleness, anger and forgiveness, anger and hope not as contradictory feelings but rather as mutually interactive dynamics of human being and divine being that work together in us and make us whole.

THE QUEER GOD
Marcella Althaus-Reid wrote this book in 2003. I wanted to use it, or at least parts of it, in my Feminist and Queer Explorations in Troublemaking class this past spring, but I couldn’t find any room for it. I am still trying to figure how to squeeze in a chapter or two in Queering Theory this fall. Is this book accessible for non-theology, non-religion students? I am not sure. I need to read it more closely to make sure. Here is part of the blurb on the back of the book:

The Queer God introduces a new theology from the margins of sexual deviance and economic exclusion. …Inspired by the transgressive spaces of Latin American spirituality, where the experiences of slum children merge with Queer interpretations of grace and holiness, The Queer God seeks to liberate god from the closet of traditional Christian thought, and to embrace God’s part in the lives of gays, lesbians and the poor.

The first chapter of this book that I want to read is “Chapter 8. Demonology: Embodying Rebellious Spirits.” Seems like I might find some interesting connections with troublemaking here.

BODILY CITATIONS: RELIGION AND JUDITH BUTLER
This collection edited by Ellen T. Armour and Susan M. St.Ville was published in 2006 and offers a wide range of essays by scholars in biblical studies, ethics, theology and ritual studies on the religious significance of Judith Butler’s work. I am particularly interested in Claudia Schippert’s essay, “Turning on/To Ethics.” Schippert wrote another essay (in 1998) that I have just started entitled, “Too Much Trouble? Negotiating Feminist and Queer Approaches to Religion.” I hope to write more on this essay later. [In the process of looking up links for this edited collection, I found this queer theology bibliography. Must check some of these sources out later.]

Blog Writing: For Students, part 1

I love writing in this blog (even if no one else loves reading it)! Finally, I can write about and give some more critical attention to so many ideas/media examples/troublesome incidents that have been filling my brain for (maybe) too long. Now when I have a thought (or two or three or twenty) I can do more than ponder its significance. I can actually, through the labor of writing, give some serious attention to why it troubles me. I can begin to work with and through its significance and its value for my understandings of the world. Somehow I feel more accountable for my thoughts when I go to the effort of trying to shape them into some sort of coherent, accessible (and hopefully sometimes witty) entry.

Before I started writing in this blog, I had written very few blog entries for my course blogs. Sure, I had come up with weekly question postings or announcements, but that was about it. Now that I am 2 months into this blog, I have a few tentative thoughts about blog writing and why it is (and sometimes isn’t) useful for thinking through/critically reflecting on/demonstrating a knowledge of ideas, concepts, or theories.

*Now, blogs can serve all sorts of purposes. The following comments are specifically about using the blog as a tool for thinking critically and seriously engaging with texts/theories/ideas/media images, etc.. And, they are aimed primarily (but not exclusively) at students who are writing blogs for (mine or other) courses.

Blog entries should not be just brain dumps. I want blog posts (both mine and ones I might assign to students) to demonstrate a *serious* engagement with a text or an idea or a theory. By serious, I mean that the blog post should be thoughtful and deep and indicate that the writer has actually read and thought through the idea/reading that they are writing about. Serious doesn’t necessarily mean writing lots of (big and fancy) words. It just means taking seriously the idea or text that you are reading and writing about and actually trying to understand and converse with it.

A blog post is more than a free-writing exercise in which you string together every possible idea that you have about your chosen topic. I could see free-writing on the blog as possibly productive (maybe if you structured it using these tips), but, as a brain dump, it makes me nervous. The blog is a public site that anyone with a computer can read. I would feel a little too exposed revealing every thought I had (and unfiltered, no less) to anyone. Just think of how many spambots that could attract!

Writing a blog entry requires more time than you think. In connection with #1, because blog entries are not just brain dumps, you need to spend some time thinking through your thoughts as you write. If you are someone that can just spout brilliant, well thought out prose in a manner of minutes, then, don’t worry and just keep doing what your doing. For the rest of us (and I definitely include myself in this us), processing and thinking through an idea or a text takes some time. By thinking through I mean, asking yourself some questions, like: What do I think about this idea/article? Why is it important and/or problematic? How can I organize and articulate my thinking about it?

Now, something that I find especially great about blog writing is this: The process of writing your post can help you to answer some of these questions. I find writing a blog entry to be more freeing that writing an essay or a journal article. The structure is very informal (but not too informal–proper grammar, spelling and citing of your sources still apply!) and there is not much pressure. After all, entries aren’t that long and our expectations for what insight they can produce aren’t that great. So, I am not nearly as intimidated when I sit down to write about an idea or example of theory or reading. That means that I don’t feel like I have to have all of the answers or a comprehensive understanding of how to structure my post.

As I write an entry, thoughts on how and why something is really important start to come to me. Oftentimes, I start writing about an idea/reading/theory and then realize it works in ways that I couldn’t have anticipated (and maybe should have). For example, when I wrote this entry about Mike and Carol Brady as bad parents who promoted a set of disturbing (and very non-troublemaking) family values, I wasn’t sure how to link their bad parenting with bad family values and moral education. But, through the process of writing about examples, I found some key connections. For me, that is what makes writing in a blog so effective as a tool for critical thinking.

Queer hope: Is it possible when we have no future?

I have started the laborious (yet fun–I am a nerd, remember?) process of figuring out what readings I want to include in my syllabi for the fall. Today I am thinking about my Queering Theory course. Ever since I found out about in the spring of 2008, I have wanted to give some attention to Lee Edelman’s No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. In this polemic, Edelman argues for a queer ethics that is counter to “reproductive futurism” with its emphasis on building better futures for our children. He writes:

Indeed, at the heart of my polemical engagement with the cultural texts lies a simple provocation: that queerness names the side of those not ‘fighting for the children,’ the side outside the consensus by which all politics confirms the absolute value of reproductive futurism.

So, what does this mean and what are the implications for our ethical and political projects? Some unpacking of terms is needed here. Simply put, reproductive futurism is the belief that our participation in politics–indeed, the political itself–is motivated by a belief in and a desire for creating better futures for our children. We are, in Edelman’s words, always “fighting for our children.” Reproductive futurism suggests two things: a. there is a future that we can make better–that has “unquestioned value and purpose” (4) and b. that future is emblemized by the Child. For Edelman, this reproductive futurism is linked to heteronormativity (heterosexual as the only normal, natural, right way to be) and renders any alternatives (queerings) of communal relations/kinship/visions of resistance as unthinkable–how could you possibly be against fighting for the children?–and outside of politics. Wow, I hope that makes sense. Now, why does Edelman make this radical claim? Because queerness/queering is not possible in a politics of reproductive futurism, he wants to encourage the stepping outside its logic and into the space of refusal and negativity–the space of the death drive (warning: psychoanalysis alert!)–where there is no future.

I have only just (barely) skimmed the introduction and table of contents of this book, so I am having a difficult time explaining all of this in coherent, compelling and intelligible (non-jargony) ways. Clearly, I need to engage in a much closer reading of this text. The more I think about his ideas, the more I think I want to use this in my class. It raises some great questions for my own work and for one way I am thinking of organizing the course: What would it mean to think about political and ethical projects outside of this logic of better futures on behalf of our children (especially for those of us who are parents and/or are heavily invested in children/youth)? What could a radically negative politics looks like? Are negativity and a refusal to engage in political projects aimed at transformation or ethical projects aimed at striving for the good what queer is essentially about? Is the only way in which to imagine a queer ethics negatively and in opposition to any claims, normative or otherwise?

In what I have skimmed so far, Edelman seems to be theorizing queer theory in relation to time (queer time = no future, no linear progression) and space (queer space = outside of politics/social) which makes me think of Judith Halberstam’s In a Queer Time and Place. In this collection of essays, Halberstam explores queer time and queer space in order to shift the perspective on queerness from an identity or set of activities to “a way of life” (1). I am fairly sure that I want to use several chapters out of this book as well. Now I just need to think about how to put them in conversation with Judith Butler, who remains a big focus of the class.

Final thought: It seems appropriate to follow my last post on Michael Jackson and hope (both the loss of it and how we might rethink it) with this one on no future and the death drive. There are some significant connections between my comments about Jackson (and my reference to k-punks posting on him) and any thinking through of Edelman’s idea of no future (which k-punk also writes about here four years earlier!). One connection between No Future/critique of reproductive futurism and Michael Jackson is found in k-punk’s post. K-punk writes:

Certainly, Edelman explicitly identifies the logic of reproductive futurism as ‘poptimism’, whose ‘locus classicus is Whitney Houston’s rendition of the secular hymn, “I believe that children are our future”, a hymn we might as well make our national anthem and be done with it.’ (143) In fact, though, ‘We are the World’ might be the better choice for reproductive futurist anthem: we are the world, we are the children (therefore it is OK for us to bomb other people’s children – because they aren’t the Future.)

Wasn’t “We are the World” a central part of the recent tribute to MJ? Interesting… In case you don’t yet have the song in your head, here it is:

There is another connection with which I want to end this post. The idea of no future, at least at first glance, indicates that we need to function without hope. If there is no future (no better world on the horizon), there is no hope that things will be different. Because isn’t hope a futural term? Edelman seems to be rejecting the possibility for queer hope. But is hope fundamentally counter to queer? Can we imagine these things together? In my last post, I pointed to Cornel West and his tragic hope as one that is counter to the vision of hope as innocent (the Child?) and naive. But is his notion of tragic hope entrenched in a heteronormative (non-queer/anti-queer) vision? After all, he is very invested in defending and revaluing parents. Hmmm…Queer hope. A future article, perhaps?

Michael Jackson, the 1970s version (pre-MTV, pre-surgery, pre-loss of hope, pre-spectacle)

So I am a little late (as usual) in commenting on the very sad death of Michael Jackson a couple of weeks ago. I never expected to write anything about it. What could I say about this that hasn’t already been said? What could his death/his tragic decline have to do with making and staying in trouble? Not much when you think about trouble as a positive, virtuous and potentially transformative attitude or set of practices. But, I do see a connection between Michael Jackson’s increasingly disturbing behavior and one common (and primarily negative) way of understanding trouble. For lack of a more clever way of putting it, Michael Jackson was troubled (in a worried, disturbed state) and his behavior/lifestyle/body/what he seemed to represent was troubling (worrisome, problematic, not quite right) to us.

There are all sorts of ways in which Jackson remains troubling to many of us–his family life, his behavior, his body–all raise questions for us: Just how many plastic surgeries can one body have? What kind of father could he possibly be? Why won’t he ever grow up? But, these questions don’t get at why I am (and have been for a while) troubled by Michael Jackson. For me, the most troubling set of questions revolve around this: What happened? What happened to him, and, more importantly, what has happened to us? What was lost when Michael went from a talented dancer and musician to a MTV spectacle and tabloid freak? And, what does this loss signify?

In their reflection on Jackson, k-punk laments the disturbing shift in Jackson (as musician, as person, as body, as image) from Off the Wall to Thriller. Jackson the wide-eyed, youthful, hopeful, happy, exuberant body in motion in the throes of disco-era Off the Wall becomes transformed (or distorted?) into the living dead, hyper-commodity, MTV staple, tabloid spectacle brought on by the enormous success of Thriller. While k-punk is disturbed by the juxtaposition of the images of Off-the-Wall Michael with Thriller Michael, there is an earlier image of Michael that has haunted me for several years now.

When I grow up, I’m gonna be happy and do what I like to do,
Like making noise and making faces and making friends like you.
And when we grow up, do you think we’ll see
That I’m still like you and you’re still like me?
I might be pretty; you might grow tall.
But we don’t have to change at all.
spoken: I don’t want to change, see, ’cause I still want to be your friend, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.

In 1974 Jackson appeared on the ABC television special, Free to be…you and me. Singing with Roberta Flack on “When We Grow Up,” Jackson is sweet and funny and, most importantly, full of life and hope. For me, this song captures the (perhaps naive) hope and promise that some (but definitely not all) 1970s social justice movements against racism and sexism often exuded. When I watch Free to be…you and me I am always amazed at its hopeful and anti-cynical belief that anything was possible, that the freedom to be and love and do what you want was waiting for all of us if we just worked together as “Brothers and Sisters.”

Many may argue that this belief in the possibilities of a better (read: more just, more “free”) world is too naive and uncritical. Indeed, the hope represented in this special and in Jackson’s song with Flack do seem a bit too pollyannaish and ignore-ant (yes, I just made up my own word: to ignore + to be unaware = ignore-ant) of the real things that get in the way of a better present and future. But, is this the only way to think of hope and possibility? Can we be hopeful and troubled/troubling/willing to trouble at the same time? For me, one of the real tragedies that Jackson’s shift from 1974 Michael (the year I was born) to 2009 Michael is the replacement of all hope and possibility with ironic distance and cynicism. Is it really an either/or situation here? Must we either have uncritical and naive hope or realistic and thoughtful cynicism? Can’t we be both hopeful and critical, aware of injustice but still willing to believe that better futures are possible? And, is the progression of our lives (much like Jackson’s) a gradual move from hopefulness to hopelessness, from innocence to bitterness or freakishness?

What other visions of hope can we imagine/express/believe in? The prophetic pragmatism and tragic-comic hope of Cornel West or the visionary pragmatism of Patricia Hill Collins are good places to start…

I guess it’s time to start working on my syllabi…

It is July 13. Classes start on September 9. I still have some time, but if I don’t want to be freaking out all next month, I better start thinking seriously about my syllabi for Queering Theory and Feminist Pedagogies. Maybe this blog can help me. I have taught both classes before (see here and here) and am keeping a huge portion of the syllabus the same for each class. But, because I always like to mix it up (and to trouble my own teaching practices), I want to add in some new texts. What to choose?

I also need to think about how to set up my blogs for these classes. As I mentioned early on in this blog, I am working on using blogs more in the classroom. One major purpose for writing in this blog this summer was to practice my own blogging and experiment with how I might be able to use blogs in my fall classes. Perhaps the first thing I need to do is figure out movable type 4.0. The University of Minnesota just upgraded the blog system and the interface is much different. I also need to review some of the research on teaching, blogging and feminism that is out there. A good place to start is S&F Online/Blogging Feminism: (Web)sites of Resistance. This is a great resource that I used last spring in my Contemporary Feminist Debates course as a way to get students thinking about the political and critical possibilities for feminist blogging.

But before I get to my blog research, I want to think about possible texts for Feminist Pedagogies. One text that I am considering adding is: Troubling Speech, Disturbing Silence, edited by Megan Boler. In the introduction, Boler describes a tension concerning hate speech that motivates much of her work: “How can freedom of speech be claimed as a functioning law of society when people are in fact individually and systematically silenced as a result of their identity and/or views” (vii)?

She also discusses her theory of “affirmative action pedagogy” which grounds the book:

I conceptualized and argued for an “affirmative action pedagogy” to illustrate how social hierarchies confer unequal weight and legitimacy to different voices, making dialogue a difficult ideal to acheive in our classrooms. Just as affirmative action seeks to redress historically embedded inequities, so do I suggest that there are times when countering dominant cultural beliefs (especially within the abbreviated time space of a classrom( may require privileging traditionally silenced voices (vii).

The tension between protecting free speech and ensuring democracy, empowering students to speak and regulating students who speak too much are important issues within the feminist classroom. Also important are the ideas of silence (when should we encourage students to speak, when do we respect their silence, what can we learn from silence) and voice (whose voice is heard, what language is used, when is speaking empowering and when is it too dangerous). I like the wide range of topics addressed in this collection and the format: each writer directly responds to the others. I also like the emphasis on racism, democracy and critical pedagogy here. So, I think that I will use this book. The question becomes: should I use the entire collection or just pick a few important essays? One of my strengths as a teacher is how I bring to together a wide range of readings (some of which wouldn’t, upon first glance, seem to connect) under a theme. I have had less success in using whole books. Discussions about entire books seem to take a lot more effort to get going and aren’t always as productive. Hmmm….perhaps I should skim the whole collection again and figure out what to do. Has anyone else out there used this book? Can anyone else relate to my dilemma (a whole text or merely fragments)?

Another edited collection that I was thinking of using is Feminist Pedagogy: Looking Back to Move Forward. I was initially very excited for it to come out this summer–especially since there seem to be so few new books on feminist pedagogy these days (so much is from the past). But now that I actually have it (as opposed to just glancing at the table of contents online), I am not sure if I want to use it. First, it seems dated. Most of the sources that the two extensive bibliographies at the end of the book cite are from the late ’90s and earlier. I also don’t like the organization, particularly the separating out of race (towards the end of the book and including only 2 essays) from the other topics. Shouldn’t race matters–which is what the race section is called–be infused within much of feminist theories on pedagogy and practice? The question of how we address race and its relationship to class, gender, sexuality, ablebodiedness, global positioning is an important one that feminist teachers have developed many different strategies for dealing with–reading selections, course organiation, class assignments. Maybe including this entire collection could allow us (students and teacher) to critically explore this question of inclusivity, complexity and diversity in terms of categories and experiences of difference?