A Thousand Tiny Sexes, a Trillion Tiny Jesuses, and the Queer Gospel of Mark

Abstract

Queer theory’s standard origin story centers on Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Teresa de Lauretis. This article proceeds down a less-traveled road, one yet to be explored in biblical studies. Like standard queer theory, this trajectory’s roots are also in French thought—not that of Foucault or Jacques Lacan, however, but of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The difference this makes is considerable, yielding, among other things, a concept of the gendered body that is neither discursive (à la Foucault) nor performative (à la Butler) but virtual; a concept of sexuality that exceeds the human/nonhuman binary no less than the heterosexual/homosexual binary; and an alternative version of the antisocial thesis in queer theory that precedes Lee Edelman’s influential Lacanian version by more than thirty years, namely, Guy Hocquenghem’s Deleuzoguattarian version. How might all or any of this translate into queer biblical reading? Addressing this question through an extended analysis of the Gospel of Mark is the principal project of this article.

Keywords

• queer theory
• queer hermeneutics
• gospel of mark
• gilles deleuze
• félix guattari