Autobiographical Storytelling and African Narrative Queer Theology

This article addresses a methodological question: How to develop African queer theology? That is, a theology that interrogates and counter-balances popular representations of queer sexuality as being “un-African” and “un-Christian”. Answering this question, the article specifically engages with Afri...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: van Klinken, Adriaan (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2018
In: Exchange
Year: 2018, Volume: 47, Issue: 3, Pages: 211-229
IxTheo Classification:FD Contextual theology
KBN Sub-Saharan Africa
NBE Anthropology
NCF Sexual ethics
Further subjects:B African Theology narrative theology queer theology autobiography LGBTI
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Summary:This article addresses a methodological question: How to develop African queer theology? That is, a theology that interrogates and counter-balances popular representations of queer sexuality as being “un-African” and “un-Christian”. Answering this question, the article specifically engages with African feminist theological work on storytelling as politically empowering and theologically significant. Where African feminist theologians have used her-stories to develop her-theologies, this article suggests that similarly, queer autobiographical storytelling can be a basis for developing queer theologies. It applies this methodology to the Kenyan queer anthology Stories of Our Lives (2015), which is a collection of autobiographical stories narrated by people identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex (LGBTI) or otherwise queer in Kenya. The article concludes with an intertextual reading of Stories of Our Lives and Mercy Oduyoye’s autobiographical essay about childlessness, pointing towards an African narrative queer theology of fruitfulness.
ISSN:1572-543X
Contains:In: Exchange
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/1572543X-12341487