Transgressive Corporeality: The Body, Poststructuralism and the Theological Imagination

Examines embodiment and poststructuralism as they pertain to theological method.

This study begins with Nietzsche's attempt to subvert the projects of classical and modern metaphysics through an unmasking of their abusive underpinnings. Because Nietzsche ultimately retreated into his own violent metaphysics of a "will-to-power" his critique has been radicalized by other philosophers who explore the "body" as a site of resistance to foundationalist metaphysics and for clues pointing toward nonfoundational modes of thinking and becoming.

The philosophies of "body" explored in this book are those of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, and Julia Kristeva. In their respective analyses, oppressive modes of the "will-to-truth" include the "objectifying thought" of Enlightenment empiricism and idealism; classical and modern modes of rationality, discipline, and sexuality; as well as a "mono-logical" thinking operative in literature and religion. Each theorist attempts to retrieve "remainders" of these cultural truths as sites of resistance and of alternative modes of relatedness.

The book concludes by suggesting how these philosophies of "body" might reshape the "imagination" of contemporary constructive theology.