Blinding me with (queer) science: religion, sexuality, and (post?) modernity

Abstract

This essay brings to bear insights from continental philosophers Michel Foucault and Judith Butler on the science of (homo)sexuality and, more importantly, the desire to use such science to resolve contemporary conflicts over homosexuality's acceptability. So-called "queer science" remains deeply beholden to modern notions of sex, gender, and sexuality, the author argues, a schematic that its premodern (Christian) roots further denaturalize. The philosophical insights drawn from this analysis are then applied to the controversy over homosexuality within global Christianity that often pits the "backward" former colonies against the "modern" west.Keywords Homosexuality · Christianity · Post modernity Those of us who trade in contemporary continental philosophy are supposed to be able, at the drop of a hat, to tick off the various symptoms of modernity's demise: the death of the subject, of credible metanarratives, of reason and truth. If we happen to be philosophers of religion, we are then pressed to state whether we think religion (as a set of metanarratives that assert claims to ultimate truth) is a collateral casualty or whether religion (understood as "faith," reason's opposite) might be poised to make a comeback. If we happen to be feminist and/or queer philosophers of religion, we are further pressed to articulate whether (and, if so, how) our particular field of inquiry is aided or hindered by modernity's passing.These expectations arise because many of those philosophers whom we study and deploy are supposedly caught up in the wide net cast by the postmodern. Yet in many instances, they themselves are explicitly wary of association with such epochal claims-both on behalf of their own work and in general. This is true, for example, E. T. Armour (B)

Transgression: Human Desire and the Revelation of Homosexuality in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love

“…Heterosexuality undermines the significance of homosexuality, but "[h]omosexuality, then, would seem to be a matter of nature, not nurture; fate, not free will." [22] One man has no right to deprive the existence of another. Thus, Chamberlain claims the importance of being honest to oneself as well as to his loved one.…”

Questioning the Conversion Paradox

“…104 It is only more recently that a small number of academics have begun to look into hegemonic sexualities and sexual majorities in the study of the secular (e.g., Fernando 2014; Wiering 2017). Other religious studies scholars have focused on sexual minority subjectivities within religious contexts (e.g., Armour 2010;Peumans and Stallaert 2012;Schippert 2011;Wilcox 2009). However, also in this body of work, studies of cisgender heterosexual men and, especially, women are rare (e.g., Hoel 2015).…”