Certain readings of ‘queerness’ problematize the idea of narrating queer identities as such. For example, Jack Halberstam, in his book The Queer Art of Failure, understands queer identities to ultimately be characterised by negativity. The queer subject is the one that doesn’t fit into a pre-established narrative. Rather, it constitutes a point of unrepresentability, a movement of unknowing, which destabilises whichever narrative it arises within and opens up a space for excluded knowledge and narrative possibilities - but without actually positing them.[1]
The idea of the negative queer subject is powerful inasmuch as it articulates a commonly felt link between queerness and alienation. This should make it of interest to the queer theologian, and Christianity is well equipped to articulate it. For example, the philosopher Alain Badiou reads St. Paul to present Christ’s kenosis in the crucifixion as breaking with all pre-existing theological discourses.[2] In this way, He serves as a point of negativity within these discourses. The Church, as the Body of Christ, is thus under this conception already a kind of negative subjectivity.
On the other hand, however, it is ultimately pessimistic. The queer subject, as negativity, does not bring about any kind of liberation. Rather, they merely ‘drop out’ of the ascendant narrative. Their freedom is of a strictly negative sort – the freedom of not being determined, of non-participation. Although they open up a space for positive liberatory projects, they present nothing positive in themselves. This invites a kind of passivity, which is problematic for the Christian. This notion of queerness has no place for the resurrection, the Church, and the coming of the Kingdom. In short, there is no place for hope. We can restate this from a non-Christian standpoint: this passivity precludes the power to begin to articulate new truths in the space of unknowing opened up by dropping out. That is, it has no revolutionary potential.
In order for Halberstam’s queer subject to be purely negative, it must not provide any positive material in and of itself. In this way, for Halberstam’s thesis to be coherent, he must reject any materialist understanding of the subject: a material body remains as an object to be articulated even after narrative aspects of the subject have been negated. We can see this in how he avoids any proper discussion of such a body: he looks at masochism (specifically cutting)[3] as a kind of performed destruction of the body. However, in doing so, he focuses entirely on the performance aspect, thereby ignoring the fact that these bodies ultimately remain intact beyond this performance. And to put it simply, having made her point, the masochist could drop the razor blade and pick up a rifle. Indeed, even after death the body cannot escape representation inasmuch as it continues to be present, and make its presence felt, in the world.
On the one hand, this materialist dimension is helpful inasmuch as it grounds the hope lost in pure negativity. But on the other, it is problematic inasmuch as it involves abandoning the idea of negative queer subjectivity. The question arises: can we find a way to hold them in tension? Can we find a way to narrate a subject that is both negative and material?
The nativity allows the queer theologian to do this. In the Nativity, Christ is born. His body is given to us, positively. However, this is done in a way that renders it a site of negativity. Christ’s birth, as illustrated by the gift of myrrh (Matt. 2: 11) is narratively orientated towards his death. Moreover, throughout the nativity story, the infant Christ is already marked with negativity: his conception is originally seen as scandalous, and Mary risks being put to death for it by the disciplinary apparatus of her culture (Matt. 1: 19). Shortly after His birth, Herod attempts to kill the baby Jesus, while His family flee to Egypt, becoming refugees and outsiders (Matt. 2: 14-16).
In this way, Christ’s body is presented as both a site of negativity, but also existing in and as positive material of that negativity. His body is not merely a site of subtraction from a pre-existing narrative, as Halberstam’s masochist renders her body, but is also positively given as such. In this way, it remains as a substance which persists across the negativity of his Passion, continuing after the negative movement in resurrected form, and later in the Church. This allows Christ to at once function as Halberstam’s negative ‘queer’ subject, and also as the basis for a positive project after the initial negative movement. Easter liberates us, but it is because of the Nativity that it transcends liberation into salvation.
[1] Judith Halberstam. 2011. The Queer Art of Failure (London: Duke University Press)
[2] Alain Badiou. 2003. St. Paul: the Foundation of Universalism ‘(trans.)’ Ray Brassier (Stanford, Carolina: Stanford University Press)
[3] Halberstam (2011: 131-140)