Showing posts with label theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theology. Show all posts
October 4, 2012
Talking About the Bible and Sex!
This month I'll be giving a talk about what the Bible says and, most importantly, doesn't say about homosexuality. When I've given this talk in the past I've been interested in deconstructing how the Biblical tradition talks about sex and sin in order to challenge and inform our own theological understandings of spirituality and sexuality.
September 7, 2012
A Jot@'s Credo
This week I attended a talk by Jack Halberstam as part of the "What Matters to Me and Why" speakers series through the Office of Religious Life at USC, which was particularly exciting since Halberstam identifies as pretty areligious. Halberstam opened the talk with how he was asked by a colleague to write a credo, which we were blessed with reading of it. Many of the things Jack Halberstam believes are close to my own beliefs and resonated deep with my heart as I heard him speak them aloud. Inspired, he challenged us to write our own credo, which I found to be the perfect exercise for exploring what I believe as I move forward with understanding the category I call jot(e)ología. I draw on some of my shared beliefs with Halberstam, but also voice the things important to me that give meaning to the ways I understand and interpret the world around me:
A Jot@'s Credo
I believe in the queers, jot@s, and freaks, who are marred and painfully living through lives of incompatibility; I believe in sex education. I believe that the Southwest was stolen from México; I believe in open borders. I believe in justice, love, and good and that Jesus isn't the only excellent teacher of that. I believe that Yolanda Saldívar killed Selena. I believe that the push for gay marriage and gay service in the armed forces is a slap in the face to those who walked the streets for liberation before us. I believe in family dinners, hot showers, cheap wine and fideo; I believe that single parents are saints. I believe that Juan Rulfo is the greatest writer of all time. I believe in livable wages and that access to education is a human right. I believe in disruption and anarchy; I believe both are necessary and possible. I believe that if more people did drag then the world would be a happier place. I believe in speaking multiple languages, reading novels, and writing our own histories. I believe that pasivos fuck back; I believe in the queers, jot@s and freaks.
I challenge everyone to try out this exercise of writing your own credo and not trying to use broad generalities. What makes you make sense of the world around you? If we are to make our own space and language for how we talk about same-sex desire it starts with writing out own legacies, beliefs, and credos for the temporal spaces we want.
August 18, 2012
Jotería and the Postcolonial
How do we categorize same-sex desire in the postcolony? Where do we locate it? What vocabulary are we to use when talking about same-sex desire in contexts where 'homosexuality' is an invisible institution? It is through these questions that I approach this blog, that is, a blog interested in examining how we complicate and wrestle over these questions through queer, feminist, Chicana/o, Latina/o, postcolonial, and theological perspectives.
As a Chicano activist-theologian, I am frustrated by the lack of attention to theological conversations around racialized queerness. I find the same neglect in ethnic studies in engaging theology as a way of understanding the embodied experiences of queer people of color. Accordingly, I am interested in producing a conversation at the intersections of all of these areas. In doing so, I employ and claim the ideologies of jotería as an identity and way of thought. Looking into my own contexts where the term 'homosexuality' simply cannot exist in language, I push back against the derogative nature of the term and instead embrace the identity already given to me and think about how to further extend and complicate the idea within the frameworks of cultural studies, literature, theology, etc.
Gloria Anzaldúa writes, "Chicanos need to acknowledge the political and artistic contributions of their queer. People listen to what your jotería is saying." It is in this spirit that I approach this project, to draw attention to what we do say, experience, and embody as la jotería and to bring in my own background in theology and question how this all operates on a spiritual and theological level.
Why theology? Because I believe that these discourses deal with ultimate questions about how we understand and interpret the world around us, which I believe to be fundamentally religious. I am interested in what a jotería theology does for queer and liberation theologies, and what it does for cultural studies. I use all these categories aware of their histories, tensions with one another, and power dynamics. But it is through these areas that I am interested in countering hegemonic pedagogies and instead construct pedagogies that deal with oppositional circumstances.
Why postcolonial? I recognize the ways in which queer studies and ethnic studies remain to be under the stricture of power dynamics informed by normative identities. The reality is, we have all been touched by the colonial project at one point or another in our lives and experiences, and it is thus the goal of my discussion to go at the class that's interested in keeping the colonized exactly where they are.
It is my intent to engage the intersectionality, intertextuality, intersexuality, and multiplicities that this new category of identity and thought introduces. I look forward to discussion that emerges on my part and through those willing to contribute.
As a Chicano activist-theologian, I am frustrated by the lack of attention to theological conversations around racialized queerness. I find the same neglect in ethnic studies in engaging theology as a way of understanding the embodied experiences of queer people of color. Accordingly, I am interested in producing a conversation at the intersections of all of these areas. In doing so, I employ and claim the ideologies of jotería as an identity and way of thought. Looking into my own contexts where the term 'homosexuality' simply cannot exist in language, I push back against the derogative nature of the term and instead embrace the identity already given to me and think about how to further extend and complicate the idea within the frameworks of cultural studies, literature, theology, etc.
Gloria Anzaldúa writes, "Chicanos need to acknowledge the political and artistic contributions of their queer. People listen to what your jotería is saying." It is in this spirit that I approach this project, to draw attention to what we do say, experience, and embody as la jotería and to bring in my own background in theology and question how this all operates on a spiritual and theological level.
Why theology? Because I believe that these discourses deal with ultimate questions about how we understand and interpret the world around us, which I believe to be fundamentally religious. I am interested in what a jotería theology does for queer and liberation theologies, and what it does for cultural studies. I use all these categories aware of their histories, tensions with one another, and power dynamics. But it is through these areas that I am interested in countering hegemonic pedagogies and instead construct pedagogies that deal with oppositional circumstances.
Why postcolonial? I recognize the ways in which queer studies and ethnic studies remain to be under the stricture of power dynamics informed by normative identities. The reality is, we have all been touched by the colonial project at one point or another in our lives and experiences, and it is thus the goal of my discussion to go at the class that's interested in keeping the colonized exactly where they are.
It is my intent to engage the intersectionality, intertextuality, intersexuality, and multiplicities that this new category of identity and thought introduces. I look forward to discussion that emerges on my part and through those willing to contribute.
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