Supernatural, Unnatural, Queer: Gratitude and Nature in Islamic Political Theology

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the problem of gratitude for the gift of nature from the perspective of Islamic political theology, which it reads alongside queer ecology to arrive at an anti-colonial critique of anthropic sovereignty. In classical Islamic theology, (as in the philosophy of Derrida, Nietzsche and Kant), a gift entails a necessary curtailment of the beneficiary’s sovereign freedom and autonomy. Islamic eco-theology, however, frequently valorizes the exercise of anthropic “vice-regal” power over a “subservient” nature, a power that has historically secured the exile of various non/human ontologies from nature and thence from politics. In their shared exile from nature and normativity, Islam, queerness and indigeneity come to form attachments and alliances that interrogate universalizing accounts of nature and humanity. Islamic theology and queer theory also furnish resources that allow irony and jest to emerge as modes by which the Qurʾān stages its playful political critique of anthropic sovereignty.