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Performing Jesus: A Queer Counternarrative of Embodied Transgression

tsheffield{at}austincollege.edu

This essay argues for performative gender identities that are simultaneously multiple by analyzing the Augustinian interpretation of Genesis 1—3 and how this reading has been used to support normative gender and sexuality. I contend that certain ancient gender narratives which have been read through religious discourse as condemning 'heretical' or 'monstrous' bodies, can actually be reread as alternative engagements with the Chalcedonian body, that most holy of bodies (for Christianity). As a result, these alternative narratives offer us a place from which to construct a permeable and transgressive position and through which to rethink not only ancient battles over Jesus' body, but also, more importantly, the continuing impact of those ancient struggles in terms of gender and religious identification today. By using critical theological studies, I assert that a queer reading of the Chalcedic body, analyzed alongside transgender narratives, is a site from which to construct identities of hybridity and transgression that disrupt ancient and contemporary fictive narratives of normative gender and sexuality.

Key Words: Chalcedon • gender • performative • queer • transgender • transgression

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