Turned queerly inwards: sin, queerness and Leo Bersani’s homo-narcissism

Abstract

ABSTRACT The doctrine of sin has been the origin of significant anti-queer sentiment emerging from Christian theology and, as such, many queer Christians have wanted to insist on a distance between queerness and sin. However, some queer theologians have found value in claiming certain imaginings of sin as a queer resource. This article examines how Leo Bersani’s account of homo-narcissism as a queer relational discipline can be used to claim accounts of sin as primarily a form of individualism and separation as encapsulated in the sinful figure of homo incurvatus in se (a person turned in upon themselves). In doing so, it argues that the claiming of sin as a queer resource not only reconfigures how we understand the relationship of queerness and sin but also how we imagine sin itself.