Research Catalog

Title

Queer faith : reading promiscuity and race in the secular love tradition / Melissa E. Sanchez.

Author

Sanchez, Melissa E.

Publication

New York : New York University Press, [2019]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 337 pages; 23 cm.

Summary

"Putting premodern theology and poetry in dialogue with contemporary theory and politics, 'Queer Faith' reassess the commonplace view that a modern veneration of sexual monogamy and fidelity finds its roots in Protestant thought. What if this narrative of "history and tradition" suppresses the queerness of its own foundational texts? 'Queer Faith' examines key works of the prehistory of monogamy-from Paul to Luther, Petrarch to Shakespeare-to show that writing assumed to promote fidelity in fact articulates the affordances of promiscuity, both in its sexual sense and in its larger designation of all that is impure and disorderly. At the same time, Melissa E. Sanchez resists casting promiscuity as the ethical, queer alternative to monogamy, tracing instead how ideals of sexual liberation are themselves attached to nascent racial and economic hierarchies. Because discourses of fidelity and freedom are also discourses on racial and sexual positionality, excavating the complex historical entanglement of faith, race, and eroticism is urgent to contemporary queer debates about normativity, agency, and relationality. Deliberately unfaithful to disciplinary norms and national boundaries, Queer Faith assembles new conceptual frameworks at the juncture of secular and religious thought, political and aesthetic form. It thereby enlarges the contexts, objects, and authorized genealogies of queer scholarship. Retracing a history that did not have to be, Sanchez recovers writing that inscribes radical queer insights at the premodern foundations of conservative and heteronormative culture." --

Series Statement

Sexual cultures

Uniform Title

Sexual cultures.

Subjects

• Religion > Philosophy
• Promiscuity
• Queer theory
• Sexual minorities

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-323) and index.

Contents

Introduction: no past? Theology, race, and queer theory's authorized genealogies -- The queerness of Christian faith -- The color of monogamy -- The shame of conjugal sex -- The optimism of infidelity: divorce and adultery -- On erotic accountability -- Coda: The pressure to commit: professionalism, periodization, affect.

Call Number

JFE 20-1396

ISBN

• 9781479871872
• 1479871877
• 9781479840861
• 1479840866

LCCN

2018043757

OCLC

1057629259

Author

Sanchez, Melissa E., author.

Title

Queer faith : reading promiscuity and race in the secular love tradition / Melissa E. Sanchez.

Publisher

New York : New York University Press, [2019]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Sexual cultures

Sexual cultures.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-323) and index.

Research Call Number

JFE 20-1396