A Theology of Disgust

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A Theology of Disgust A Theology Of Disgust Submitted by Doreen Patricia Freeman to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theology in February 2010. This thesis/dissertation is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and no quotation from the thesis/dissertation may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis/dissertation which is not my own work has been identified and that no material is included for which a degree has previously been conferred upon me. 1 ABSTRACT A Theology Of Disgust. ‘A Theology of Disgust’ is a personal journey through the bodily experience of physical impairment and the social oppressions of sexism and disabilism. This journey has highlighted the extraordinary power of the emotion of disgust to distort relations throughout the natural order. Utilising the phenomenological approach of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the theological critique and insights of feminist theologies as well as the resources of contextual theological reflection, a new appreciation of the human body and body of the earth is sought by engaging more viscerally with the fears (and hopes) of flesh which have troubled the Christian tradition. It is claimed that the effects of human disgust have compromised Christianity’s life giving message of divine love and God given power of relationality throughout creation. It argues for a deeper consciousness of the need for pyschic and social change in our human relationships, with each other and with the whole earth, believing this can be achieved through renewed ecomystical liturgy in the church, labelling and uncovering paralyzing fears so that the church could be seen as a beacon of hope and knowledge for all sentient life. A variety of methods to revitalise and empower liturgy are considered as pointers to enable the church to become an ‘ecclesial spa’ which would lead to deeper engagement with the often neglected physical realities within creation. The aim is also to help all those who suffer, to become theological agents of their embodied lives. The overall goal is 2 to love at a deeper level those constitutive elements of the earth which sustain the world, before the disabled earth founders due to human indifference to both the joys and suffering of creation which, it is believed, are captured and held in tandem at the heart of the gospel of the incarnation and resurrection of Christ. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT 2 PREFACE 7 WHY DISGUST? 11 SITE MAP 33 INTRODUCTION 38 Philosophical Method 38 Theological focal points 49 Faith 49 The power of love 54 Creation 57 The wounded body 60 Part I 80 Chapter One Women Disability and Disgust 81 Disability and the earth 84 Sharpening Christian awareness 93 More carnal fears 99 Depths of oppression 103 The force of disgust 107 The ambiguities of resistance 112 Early signs 116 The abject 123 Chapter Two Uncovering Identities 130 4 Introduction 130 Body norms 132 Understanding disgust 139 Evasions 147 Death 148 The effects of fear 150 The power of dirt 153 The civilising process 159 Part II 166 Chapter Three Returning To Creation 167 Introduction 167 The turning away of theology from the disabled body 173 Religion as a source of ideas of purity and stigmatisation 178 Aesthetics as a source of theological knowing 195 The grotesque 212 Asceticism 223 Tragedy 229 Part 111 240 Chapter Four Feminist theologies And Embodiment 241 Chaos 241 The diverse voices of feminist theologies 246 The growth of feminist theologies 249 The institutional church 253 Ecofeminism 255 5 Liberation 256 Divinity 259 God in our midst 262 Incarnational theology 266 A Feminist Theodicy 269 A Reconsiderations of evil 273 B Critique of traditional attitudes to suffering 279 C Theological reflections on women’s enacted rituals 294 D Wrestling with God 303 E Theological inquiries into suffering that incorporate stories 309 and experiences in Womanist theologies F Women’s writings on chaos 312 Thealogy and its stronger stomach 316 Concluding remarks 320 Chapter Five The Affective Challenge of Theology 329 Back to earth 329 Cataphatic mysticism and disability 350 How can this challenge disgust and disabilism? 358 Weightiness 369 The eucharist 374 The crucifixion of Christ 379 Conclusion 383 Bibliography 408 6 Preface ‘There are seemingly, infinite permutations of the experience of being physically different in a highly normalizing society.’1 THE CONTEXT I have suffered from ME for eighteen years. ME, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, as it is sometimes known, is a debilitating disease of the central nervous system which affects the muscles and joints, causes extreme fatigue and lassitude, emotional lability, mental confusion and, at times, extreme pain. It affects every part of the person, yet I have found very few spaces in which I can describe the difference that this disability makes to one’s life and attitudes. Friends, church, family and the workplace alike are closed to an indepth sharing of the experience. Indeed illness and disability are often treated with disgust and such a response to one’s suffering is the hardest part to bear. The devastation of rejection seemed utterly incongruous with Christian love and relationality as illuminated in the Trinity. It inspired an indepth study to try to interpret it and transform it for the sake of others who might also be appalled when subjected to the visceral fear of disgust, emanating from those they trusted. It also inspired a concern to theologically reflect on any aspect of my own Anglican faith that would project the emotion of disgust and so cause pain to others. The messages we receive are very loud and very clear and we have little access to different values which may place 1 Gareth Williams, ‘The Sociology Of Disability:Towards A Materialist Phenomenology’ in Tom Shakespeare, (ed) The Disability Reader (New York, London:Cassell, 1998), p.240 7 a more positive value on our bodies, ourselves and our lives.2 This work aims to redress this deficit, a lack that soon became apparent on a wider scale for the issues of women’s bodies, those of other creatures and the whole natural order. When one becomes physically impaired and disabled in a highly normalizing society the body becomes the central focus of one’s life. Not only one’s own body, but the body of others and the body of the cosmos: one moves from the boundaries of the norms and biases of the able bodied world to a recognition of the wider physical world, from the abstract and the controlling social certainties about the body, to the constitutive elements of all suffering bodies. One sees clearly the silencing and distorting effects of those norms and fears of the imagined potential of the body to cause suffering, and one seeks ways to defuse these fears in oneself and in others for the sake of loving relationality with all beings and with the earth. The strength that lies in disability is the life afffirming potential of the human spirit even in the midst of the most feared occurrence, the failure of the body to be perfect. As the earth and its wonderful diverse species suffer in front of our eyes, these defusing and affirming skills become increasingly vital. My impairment, the disgust with which it has been treated, and my Christian faith, I believe, have magnified my empathy and imagination at a planetary level, and a plethora of empowering routes are sought to gain access to a renewing adoration of all creation, to revitalise energy to protect it. 2 Jenny Morris, Pride Against Prejudice:Transforming Attitudes To Disability (London,Women’s Press,1991), p.28 8 One particularly empowering route was discovered in the work of the French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the co-founder of existential philosophy with Sartre. He became established as the pre-eminent philosopher of the body and stressed that any attempt to interpret the world as an object of knowledge can only be derived from the primary source of access to that world which is through the body. It was a fortuitous discovery to find a philosophical method that matched my own concern to explore the body’s primordial contact with the world and uncover some of the ambiguities of that contact in their multiplicity and their opacity. Impatient with philosophical ideas such as Idealism that reconstituted the world in terms of their imagined possibilities with no solid foundation for so doing and giving these priority over knowledge gained from actual bodily encounters, he offers a sound method for this engaged study of perception of visceral reality. ‘It is the search for a philosophy which shall be a ‘vigorous science’ but it also offers an account of space, time and the world as we live them.’3 Christian feminist theologies have provided the pluriform means to reclaim the body from some of the cultural conditioning of traditional religious belief, but do not discard the empowering elements of that belief; the emphasis on relationality has encouraged a vibrant theological reflection which despite its diversity of thought, carries the sifted tradition forward, probed, amidst all the vagaries of physical existence, for its fluid embodied relevance, rather than its fixed somatic discriminations. Trinitarian theology inspires creativity to explore the width of creation for means to acquire a new energy of appreciation and understanding, it has 3 Maurice Merleau- Ponty, The Phenomenology Of Perception (London:Routledge and Kegan Paul,1962), p.vii 9 communicated that the kernel of God is revitalising relationality, powerful love and freedom in relation to others and to the whole of creation.4 The relational unity of the Trinity overflows into all life forms and perhaps it may be possible to grow to understand that ‘we all live our lives in bodies of a certain sort, whose possiblities and vulnerabilities do not as such belong to one human society rather than another.’5 The possibilities and vulnerabilities of bodies remind us of our commonalities, for all lives emerge, live their lives in, and return to the Godhead.
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