Crossing Tables and Queering Deification

Abstract

To respond to the dominating force of religio-cultural salvation in the U.S., this article analyzes two disparate tables and the bodies associated with them: the Unsung Founders memorial at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Eucharistic table in the work of seventh century Christian monk Maximus the Confessor. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's methodological exploration of how tables orient bodies, I constructively "cross" the racial, gendered, and economically marginalized bodies represented by the monument and the body of Christ on the Eucharistic table. The product of this crossing queers Maximus's doctrine of deification, or union with God, which opens a site of resistance to contemporary notions of this specific privatized and personally responsible salvation. Further, this combination betrays Maximus's theological assumptions that only normative bodies have access to God.