Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 12:00-1:15pm (TBA)
Hank Owings, “Rethinking Oikouménē: Protestantism, Intimacy, and the Transatlantic Black Novel”

Abstract: Most critical theories of race present “race” as an arbitrary signifer and “racism” against peoples as a historical accident arising out of concerns for social community. In this paper, I challenge the assumption of “race” as historically accidental, and instead suggest that “race” arises out of affective concerns for bodily and physical uniqueness. Drawing on Homi Bhabha’s interpretations of Lacan and Fanon, I argue that “whiteness” generates “blackness” as an affective negation, and that “racism” is concerned with race largely in order to maintain physical separations and limit sexual possibilities. I illustrate this thesis by reading two African novelists working through the circumstances of “Blackness” in the United States, paying particular attention to the emphasis on space, sexuality, and Christianity in fictional “Black” communities. I ultimately hope to start thinking through racism as the result of anxieties about bodily intimacy within sexuality, kinship, and family, rather than perpetuating “racism” as an ideology that regulates sexuality, kinship, and family by consequence.

The paper should be read in advance. Please email contact-global-christianities@lists.uchicago.edu for a copy of the paper. Lunch will be provided.