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| author |
Minenhle Nomalungelo Khumalo
| | title |
The Serpent's Syllabus: Reading Genesis 2:4-4:2 Towards a Queer, African(a) Gnosis
| | abstract |
The Serpent's Syllabus: Reading Genesis 2:4-4:2 Towards a Queer, African(a) Gnosis, works towards re/constructing queer affirming Bantu ontologies from a Southern African, isiZulu socio-linguistic background in resistance to the internalizations of missionary-colonial negations of trans-queer-femme subjectivity in postcolonial African epistemologies. Specifically, this dissertation challenges the ontologized construction of an exclusively cis-heterosexual, phallocentric African subject (umuntu) through indigenized African Christian theological appropriations of the story of the Garden of Eden. Using an Afro-Marxist Trans-Feminist hermeneutic, I argue that the Genesis story presents Eden as a Garden State that resembles a colonizing structure. My reading demonstrates that the second account of creation in Genesis (in and out of ancient context) has been used as an etiological reification of oppressive re/productive cycles in non/human being, that depend on the negation of animalized (dark queer) otherness, which forms the basis of melancholic constitutions of identity across race, gender, sexuality, ability, etc. Subsequently, I take on the figure of the serpent to pursue the epistemological alterity (gnosis) and ecstatic mourning that re/connects dark queer being to joyful and just aliveness. Following Mel Y. Chen's Animacies, I trace the narration of oral animation in Genesis 2:4-4:2 to argue for the importance of transgressive pedagogies (via bell hooks) and odd kinships (via Donna J. Haraway) in the resistance to neo-colonial states of siege.
| | school |
The Theological School, Drew University
| | degree |
Ph.D. (2023)
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| advisor |
Kenneth N Ngwa
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| committee |
Gerald O West
Kate Ott
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| full text | MKhumalo.pdf - requires Drew uLogin |
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