Studying Paul's Letters

My favorite chapter and the one I chose to summarize and lead class discussion on was “Queer Approaches: Improper Relations with Pauline Letters” by: Joseph A. Marchal

Marchal presents queer theory as a “challenge to regimes of the normal” (210), breaking down approaches to the “clobber passages” (biblical passages that are always trotted out to clobber queer folks”) into three categories:
1) A historical-contextual approach (older)
2) Historical reconstruction? - An apologist-affirmative approach
3) A queerly resistant approach more explicitly drawing upon queer theories.

A historical-contextual demonstrates that ancient notions of sexuality were different from today. An apologist-affirmative approach offers potential examples of same-gendered relationships in the Bible. And Marchal's preferred approach is a queerly resistant one that challenges normative reading strategies. Marchal gives an overview of some basics of queer theory and then draws on queer theory to approach biblical and Pauline interpretations. He summarizes Foucault's description of normalization as where the people in power 1) compare activities 2) differentiate between them, 3) create a hierarchy of value around those activities, 4) impose a homogenized category everyone should conform to within this hierarchy, and 5) exclude those who deviate from this and are therefore deemed “abnormal.” (Kindle Location 4882)

Marchal emphasizes that queer theories teach us to “interrogate basic assumptions and critique received narratives” (Location 4909). For example, why start with Foucault and Butler instead of Audre Lorde or other BIPOC women in the field? Queer theories encourage us to question the foundations of our arguments and where they claim their authority, power, and identity comes from, even our own. In other words, queer interpretation (and all Biblical interpretation) should always be intersectional.

Key Passages:
“queer studies aims not to divide its labors between the study of various categories and dynamics of normalization. To do so would inhibit any attempt to interrogate how certain norms are created and enforced, particularly given how people socially construct the meaning of something like “sexuality” differently with and through gender, race, ethnicity, class, religion, age, ability, and national or colonial factors. Intersectional forms of analysis are needed, then—modes that grapple with how multiple factors of power and identification intersect and reinforce each other.” (Kindle Location 4897)

“One of the longest critical engagements of the operations of sexuality as it intersects with a wide range of social dynamics can be found in the work of “women of color feminists” like Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, and Gloria Anzaldúa.3 Queer theories meet their critical potential when they recognize how the subjects of gender and sexuality are not fixed but are enmeshed and moving in trajectories within and between intersecting differences and multiple dynamics of power.” (Kindle Location 4909)

“What does seem vital, though, is to deal with how biblical arguments are used (past and present), to challenge the ethically and politically troubling uses, and to suggest more subversive and possibly even enjoyable uses of biblical argument and interpretation.” (Kindle Location 5088)


Key terms to know:
Kyriarchy - “In feminist theory, kyriarchy (/ˈkaɪriɑːrki/) is a social system or set of connecting social systems built around domination, oppression, and submission. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza coined the word in 1992 to describe her theory of interconnected, interacting, and self-extending systems of domination and submission, in which a single individual might be oppressed in some relationships and privileged in others. It is an intersectional extension of the idea of patriarchy beyond gender.”

Heteronormativity - of, relating to, or based on the attitude that heterosexuality is the only “normal” and natural expression of sexuality.

Intersectionality - “the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.”