Queer Pedagogy As Spiritual Practice
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AMMONS, BRIAN DWIGHT, Ph.D. Queer Pedagogy as Spiritual Practice. (2010) Directed by Dr. Leila Villaverde. 231 pp. The purpose of this research is to explore unlikely intersections between the seemingly divergent streams of spirituality and queer theory in the discourses around education. When brought into conversation, the two produce creative tensions particularly in regards to constructions of knowledge and subjectivity. In an interrogation of “spirituality” as a construct in education, I map a genealogy through Enlightenment and Transcendental thought arguing that “spirituality” in its popular usage cannot be understood apart from a larger explication of Western religious liberalism, and in particular liberal Christianity. I then turn towards a consideration of the utility of such a construct in light of the erosion of the foundational thought on which it depends. Having both levied my critiques of “spirituality” and argued a case for its usefulness, I consider what sort of theological framework is functional as an underpinning for a spirituality concerned with critical pedagogy. My discussion takes shape in relation to three practices more commonly spoken of in Christian discourse: hospitality, embodiment, and testimony. I explore these three concepts as they support an understanding of queer pedagogy as spiritual practice, particularly in regards to my own teaching experience. Highlighting the investment of both queer pedagogy and spiritual practices in drawing attention to the limits of knowability, I demonstrate how framing queer pedagogy as spiritual practice might enrich both discourses. QUEER PEDAGOGY AS SPIRITUAL PRACTICE by Brian Dwight Ammons A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at University of North Carolina Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2010 Approved by ______________________________ Committee Chair To Ron – my partner, teacher, and friend. ii APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Committee Chair ______________________________ Committee Members ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ _____________________________ Date of Acceptance by Committee _____________________________ Date of Final Oral Examination iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PART ONE ..........................................................................................................................1 Prologue ...................................................................................................................1 Introduction: A Nomadic Documentary ......................................................5 Incident: An Emerging Conversation ........................................................10 Incident: A Southern Story ........................................................................15 Incident: A Call to Teach...........................................................................19 Incident: The Dissertation..........................................................................21 Plateaus ......................................................................................................24 Epilogue .................................................................................................................31 PART TWO .......................................................................................................................34 Spirituality in Education ........................................................................................34 Understanding “Spirituality” in Education ................................................41 Spirituality and American Liberal Protestantism.......................................49 The Case of Alcoholics Anonymous .........................................................53 Spirituality and Education..........................................................................56 Critiques of Liberalism and Foundational Experience ..............................62 Spirituality within Christian Theological Studies......................................72 Towards a Spirituality for Pedagogy .....................................................................77 Epistemological Metaphors .......................................................................81 Methodological Metaphors ........................................................................85 Theology and Critical Pedagogy in a Melting Modernity .........................89 Spirituality, Pedagogy, and Liberation ......................................................90 The Subject and The Authentic Self ..........................................................97 God’s and God’s Action in the World…………………………...…... ...103 God as Story.............................................................................................110 iv Christ as Embodied/Incarnate Story ........................................................114 An Eschatology for Story and Storied People .........................................116 Imagining the Impossible.........................................................................121 Sacred Ambiguity …………………………...…... .................................127 PART THREE .................................................................................................................128 Interjection ...........................................................................................................128 Queer, Pedagogy, and Practice ............................................................................134 Queer Pedagogies.....................................................................................134 Spiritual Practice......................................................................................139 Queer Pedagogy and Spiritual Practices..................................................145 Embodiment.............................................................................................148 Hospitality................................................................................................158 Testimony ................................................................................................165 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................176 CODA ..............................................................................................................................177 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................184 APPENDIX A. A LOOSE GARMENT OF IDENTIFICATIONS.................................194 APPENDIX B. AN OPEN LETTER TO THE BISHOP.................................................210 APPENDIX C. SEXUALITIES AND THE CHURCH ..................................................225 v 1 PART ONE Prologue This may be my Nineveh. Nineveh was the town to which God told Jonah to go and “cry out against” (Jonah 1:2, New Revised Standard Version). He ran the other way to “flee from the presence of the Lord” (1:3), eventually was thrown overboard (at his own request), and then spent a few days in the belly of a big fish before being spit up on Nineveh’s shore. It is not a perfect metaphor. I am not standing in judgment of the wicked ways of some depraved city, but nonetheless, I feel as if I am giving in to an assignment I have been avoiding. That is probably a common sentiment as one begins a dissertation, but there has been a back and forth around my willingness to engage this particular work – the intersection of sexuality, Christianity, and teaching – for most of my adult life. It feels so much like the expected dissertation for someone who has lived my life that I have worked fairly hard at resisting it as my work to do. And yet, I know that I have a unique perspective on the intersections of these topics, and I continue to find myself drawn into conversations about those intersections – so much so that when I have made earnest efforts towards writing in other directions I find myself constantly distracted by the questions I ask here. Please do not hear in my referencing Jonah a bold assertion of any particular theological claim or serious analysis of agency. I do not mean to suggest that God 2 told me to write this dissertation. However, what I claim is that as I engaged in an active practice of paying attention to what discussions and readings excited me – to those moments when I come to the edge of my seat in dialogue with colleagues, students and friends – I recognized that the stuff of this project matters deeply to me. Despite my varied academic interests and sustained efforts in prioritizing other avenues of research, I continue to come back home to these conversations. Thus, in large part, I approached the writing of this dissertation as a process of vocational discernment. My understanding of vocation as a concept owes much to Buechner’s definition: It comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a person is called to by God. There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Superego, or Self- Interest. By and large a good rule for finding out is this: The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs