Toward A Feminist Postmodern and Postcolonial Interpretation of Sin

Toward a Feminist Postmodern and
Postcolonial Interpretation of Sin*

Margaret D. Kamitsuka / Oberlin College
Over the past forty years, feminist theological writing about sin has
been an ongoing locus for doctrinal innovation in Christian theology.1
Feminist theologians persist in viewing sin talk as a crucial way to ad-
dress human failings and structural evils and to envision how to live
hopefully and productively in light of them. Valerie Saiving made a
ground-breaking proposal in 1960 to reformulate sin in light of
womens experience of diffuseness or lack of self.2 In this same vein,
the 1980s saw a number of feminist attempts to break free of the male-
oriented Niebuhrian paradigm of sin and highlight womens experi-
ence, most principally in Judith Plaskows Sex, Sin and Grace.3 In her
* I would like to thank my former student Laura Jones, whose exemplary work in gender
and religion helped me further sharpen my writing on feminist theory and womens expe-
rience of sin.
1
A note about the term feminist is necessary at the outset, since it has long functioned
as an unmarked code for (among other things) white feminist theology. In order to break
the code, some white feminist theologians, myself included, are calling for the intentional
naming of ourselves as such. See Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Sex, Race, and God: Christian
Feminism in Black and White (New York: Crossroad, 1989); Ellen T. Armour, Deconstruction,
Feminist Theology and the Problem of Difference: Subverting the Race/Gender Divide (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1999). In other words, white feminist theology joins a list of other
types of self-named, women-oriented theological scholarship (womanist, third-world, lesbian,
mujerista, Jewish, etc.), each of which must eventually be further qualified in order to be
attentive to difference (e.g., lesbian womanist, Sephardic Jewish, white disabled). In light of
this reality, it would be valuable to be able to recuperate feminist theology as an overtly
neutral, noncoded term that can, at certain times, be used to refer to the diversity of these
and other yet-to-be-named womens theological writings (with care always taken by hegemonic
positionalities to self-name). This article is a white feminist proposal intended to contribute
toward a (newly defined) feminist interpretation of sin.
2
Valerie Saiving Goldstein, The Human Situation: A Feminine View, Journal of Religion
40 (1960): 100112.
3
Judith Plaskow, Sex, Sin and Grace: Womens Experience and the Theologies of Reinhold Niebuhr
and Paul Tillich (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1980). See also Susan Nelson
Dunfee, The Sin of Hiding: A Feminist Critique of Reinhold Niebuhrs Account of the Sin
of Pride, Soundings 65 (1982): 31627; Judith Vaughan, Sociality, Ethics and Social Change: A
Critical Appraisal of Reinhold Niebuhrs Ethics in Light of Rosemary Radford Ruethers Works (Lanham,
2004 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0022-4189/2004/8402-0001$10.00
179
The Journal of Religion
1983 Sexism and God-Talk, Rosemary Ruether addressed the social sin of
sexism in light of an analysis of the consciousness and practice of evil.4
These early discussions of sin were influential but were also challenged
from a number of sectors. Delores Williams criticized the inattentive-
ness to race in those predominantly white feminist writings and con-
tributed to a new area for feminist discussion of sin that would speak
to the racist-gender oppression experienced by African American
women.5 Sallie McFagues writings have challenged anthropocentrism
in many feminist theologies by situating sin in terms of ecotheology.6
In just this short representative list, we find a breadth of theological
and philosophical perspectives and contextual orientations. From my
reading of feminist doctrinal reflections on sin, I see great strides in
exposing various systemic evils and in attending to womens suffering.
I support the important agendas, values, and principles that these and
other feminist writings on sin have expressed, such as the scriptural
appeal to women created in the image of God, healing what separates
men and women, valorizing womens ways of being, and rejecting sub-
jectivized views of sin that ignore systematic oppressions suffered by
women in minority communities. Nonetheless, I also detect a number
of insufficiencies in feminist theologys formulations on sin. As I will
argue below, in an effort to name and protest systemic sins against
women, some feminist theologians inscribe potentially restrictive essen-
tialisms about women as victims. Or, the ways in which other feminist
theologians speak of sin and androgynous selfhood or creation in the
image of God entail a male/female sex binarism that workshowever
unintentionallyto reinforce privileged heterosexuality (the notion
that heterosexuality is normative, natural, or God given). I would like
to suggest an approach to womens sin that (1) avoids essentializing
women as victims by reformulating how we speak of oppressed selves
in relation to discourses and structures of power and (2) avoids the
assumption of binary male/female differentiation that (as I will explain
below) lies at the root of heterosexism. The payoff of this approach is
Md.: University Press of America, 1983); Daphne Hampson, Reinhold Niebuhr on Sin: A
Critique, in Reinhold Niebuhr and the Issues of Our Time, ed. Richard Harries (Oxford: Mowbray,
1986), pp. 4660.
4
Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon
1993), pp. 159 ff. See also Rosemary R. Ruether, Introducing Redemption in Christian Feminism
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998).
5
Delores S. Williams, The Color of Feminism, or, Speaking the Black Womans Tongue,
in Feminist Theological Ethics: A Reader, ed. Lois K. Daly (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox,
1994), p. 52; originally published in Journal of Religious Thought 43 (SpringSummer 1986):
4258.
6
Sallie McFague, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), pp.
115 ff.
180
Feminist Interpretation of Sin
hopefully an understanding of selfhood that enables us to name evil,

appreciate differences in womens experiences of sin, and assess
womens moral agency.
Methodologically this proposal engages certain key concepts from
postcolonial and poststructuralist theoriesespecially as they are cur-
rently appropriated by feminist thinkerswhich allows me to nuance
the concept of selfhood that a doctrine of sin either implicitly or ex-
plicitly presupposes. Postcolonial and postmodern feminist theorists
have carved out a framework for understanding the various ways women
say I in their personal and sociopolitical interactions. Using technical
terms that will be explained in the following two sections, I will discuss
the strategically essentialized subaltern I that invokes a provisional iden-
tity politics for a conspicuous political purpose (Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivaks postcolonial theory) and the performative I that is constituted
within a nexus of disciplinary cultural conventions (Judith Butlers
poststructuralist theory). I will bring Spivaks notion of strategic essen-
tialization to bear on discussions of social sin in an effort to retain the
ethical and political force of appeals to oppressed identity, but without
essentialisms. Butlers poststructuralism, which deconstructs notions of
natural binary sex differentiation, will be used to reformulate sin situ-
ated within theological anthropological discussions of (gendered) hu-
man failings and sin situated within a doctrine of creation.7 Central to
the entire project is Michel Foucaults theory of the disciplinary and
productive effects of power. I test my thesis that approaching sin from
these postcolonial and postmodern perspectives is politically and the-
ologically illuminating by applying this approach in a situation of in-
justice and moral ambiguity, as found in the biblical story of Sarah and
Hagar. Hopefully, my proposal will serve womens needs and contribute
to a general theological discussion of sin that is sensitive to differences
within and among womens and mens experience, theologically bal-
anced (in terms of accountability to tradition and context), politically
attuned, and intelligible in light of current modes of critical reflection.
i. deconstructing static essentialisms in discussions of social

sin
Many feminist construals of sin have insightfully focused on social hi-
erarchies, power imbalances, discriminatory attitudes and practices
and how all of these are factors in womens exploitation. A problem
7
For more on how sin can be situated in the context of various doctrinal loci (i.e., creation,
theological anthropology, and soteriology), see David H. Kelsey, Whatever Happened to the
Doctrine of Sin? Theology Today 50 (1993): 16978.
181
affecting some of these discussions is a tendency to imply more or less

static oppressor/oppressed categories that essentialize women as vic-
tims in relation to some totalizing domination. One finds this tendency
in Ruethers classic first-wave white feminist construal of sin as the pro-
jection of group egoism, in particular, the dominant male group
ego that manifests itself in the social sin of sexism.8 Ruether empha-
sizes that women are not just oppressed but can passively cooperate
with forces of domination and oppress others by being racist, classist,
. . . manipulative . . . , dominating toward children, and so on. How-
ever, she adds, when women become oppressors, the real culprit is the
overall system of distorted humanity in which ruling class males are
the apex.9 Under this patriarchal system, women are not really op-
pressors but rather are misguidedly cooperating in their own subju-
gation.10 In other words, women are cast in an essentialized role of
victim in relation to hegemonic structural evils such as sexism, even
when they sin by degrees of participation in this androcentric group
egoism. Ruether toys with some notions that could lessen the essen-
tialism of women as exploited victims when she comments that op-
pressed women can also engage in covert resistance; however, she
suggests that covert resistance is an undeveloped feminist consciousness
and falls short of real feminist thought and practice.11
A more subtle essentialism is suggested in Delores Williamss appeal
to demonarchy, a term she coined in order to highlight that black
womens oppression in white-controlled American institutions is different
from patriarchally-derived-privileged oppression, where white women
are subjugated but also receive certain privileges (albeit male con-
trolled) because of their race.12 Demonarchy is a complicated term.
It is extremely effective rhetorically for emphasizing the overt and in-
sidious workings of white supremacy as well as for breaking through
white feminist scripts of evasion of racism (my ancestors never had
slaves, some of my friends are womanists, my parents were discrim-
inated against because of their ethnicity, etc.). However, as a term of
analysis, demonarchy runs the risk of essentializing African American
women in the role of oppressed in relation to a hegemonic structure
viewed too univocally. Analogous to what Williams says of the term pa-
8
Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, pp. 16364.
9
Ibid., pp. 18081. Ruether apparently groups racism and classism as subsets of a more
basic patriarchal oppression.
10
Ibid., p. 180.
11
Ibid., pp. 18384. To overcome the staticness of this victim status, she relies on the notion
of a feminist breakthrough experience, especially anger (p. 186).
12
Williams, The Color of Feminism, pp. 4950.
182
triarchy, it leaves too much out.13 For example, demonarchy does

not have the nuance to address class differences and hierarchies among
women of color.14 Or it may bring attention to the structural sin (in
the tradition of black liberation theology) of the defilement of Black
womens bodies but is less effective for understanding the dynamics
of what Williams calls individual sinthat is, the agential ways in
which Black women also participate in sin when they do not challenge
the patriarchal and demonarchal systems in society.15 When she in-
vokes demonarchy, Williams runs up against the problem (as we saw
with Ruether) of how to theorize morally accountable personal agency
in relation to what are presented as inescapable, hegemonic social
structures.
There are vital insights in both Ruethers white feminist account of
the social sin of sexism and Williamss womanist account of the social
sin of black womens oppression. My critique is not directed toward
their claims that evil as a social reality transcends us as individuals
and that liberation from such evil must entail a communal struggle
against structural oppression.16 However, those claims will, in many
cases, be better served by decentering oppressor and oppressed posi-
tionalities and by relying on a nontotalizing view of power. In arguing
below that Foucault gives us poststructuralist theories pertinent to both
tasks, I am not suggesting that poststructuralism should be the only
tool the theorist uses for analyzing the nature of power and oppressed
identities. For example, some womanist theologians make use of Patri-
cia Hill Collinss sociological theories of black womens modes of sur-
vival and resistance in order to analyze the nuances of racism in Amer-
ica, which does complicate the category of oppressed in relation to
African American womens experience.17 Other theoretical tools can
and often should also be used in tandem with poststructuralist ones
a methodological approach illustrated in Kelly Brown Douglass mul-
tidimensional analysis of the disciplinary effects of white racist sexual
13
Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll,
N.Y.: Orbis, 1993), p. 185.
14
See ibid., pp. 18687.
15
Delores S. Williams, A Womanist Perspective on Sin, in A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist
Perspectives on Evil and Suffering, ed. Emilie M. Townes (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1993), pp.
144, 146.
16
Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, p. 182.
17
See Stephanie Mitchem, Womanists and (Unfinished) Constructions of Salvation, Jour-
nal of Feminist Studies in Religion 17, no. 1 (2001): 87, 9596, 98; Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, The
Loves and Troubles of African American Womens Bodies: The Womanist Challenge to
Cultural Humiliation and Community Ambivalence, in A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist
Perspectives on Evil and Suffering, ed. Emilie M. Townes (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1993), pp.
23637.
183
stereotypes, in which she combines a Foucauldian analysis of power

with other nonpoststructuralist historical, sociological, and hermeneu-
tical investigations of the roots of heterosexism in the black church.18
Much of Foucaults work investigates how individuals and whole com-
munities have been regulated in a myriad of ways by the discursive
mechanisms of power. Discourses of medicine, jurisprudence, sexuality,
religion, and so forth, constitute powerful forces determining the true,
the right, the normal. These discourses and their mechanisms of im-
plementation do not merely impinge on the individual as a pre-given
entity which is seized by the exercise of power. [Rather, the] individual
. . . is the product of a relation of power exercised over bodies . . .
movements, desires.19 The individual is constituted as a subject by be-
ing subjected to the apparatuses of truth-conveying power discourses,
referred to in a kind of Foucauldian shorthand as power/knowl-
edge.20 Foucaults point about power is that even in the midst of a
subjugating process, an agential subject is being produced. Individuals
are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising
. . . power. They are not only its inert or consenting target; they are
always the elements of its articulation and, hence, there follows the
possibility if not the actuality of what he calls an insurrection of sub-
jugated knowledges.21 These knowledges are marginalized discourses
that emerge to resist societys dominant discourses. Thus, related to
the notion of the discursive constitution of subjects is the notion that
power is not only coercive but also productive: Power must be analysed
as something that circulates. . . . [Moreover] there are no relations of
power without resistances.22
This theory of power has positive applications for decentering the
essentialism of a dominator/dominated opposition. The theory enables
us to go beyond the truism that everyone is to some extent both op-
pressor and oppresseda truism that, taken alone, could suggest the
dangerously relativistic notion that all oppressions are equal. My use of
18
Kelly Brown Douglas, Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (Maryknoll,
N.Y.: Orbis, 1999).
19
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 19721977, ed. and
trans. Colin Gordon et al. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), p. 74.
20
Ibid., p. 93; see also pp. 236 ff.
21
Ibid., pp. 81, 98. Sharon Welch sees liberation theologies as examples of this phenomenon
(see Sharon D. Welch, Communities of Resistance and Solidarity: A Feminist Theology of Liberation
[Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1985], pp. 35 ff.).
22
Foucault, Power/Knowledge, pp. 98, 142. Foucault is cognizant of extreme and violent forms
of oppression: penal torture, the Gulag, etc. (see Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The
Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan [New York: Random House, 1977], esp. chap. 2, and
Power/Knowledge, pp. 134 ff.). He calls these dominations to distinguish them from subject-
forming power relations.
184
poststructuralism to decenter the label oppressed is not focused on

exposing banally that a subjugated person in some set of power rela-
tions may be a dominating subject in another; rather, I want to focus
attention on Foucaults claim that power/knowledge presupposes a re-
lationship with an other who is an acting subject and who, therefore,
as we will see below, is a subject with potentially insurrectional knowl-
edge.23 One never speaks simply of power but rather of power relations.
Hence, according to this theory, the oppressed person is also always an
agent to some extent, and the oppressor is not the sole possessor of a
commodity called power.
A critique that white feminist liberation theologians, womanist the-
ologians, and others might raise is that the notion of an oppressed
subject who acts is vacuous in light of the extent of the unjust structures
that oppress women, people of color, the poor, and so on. Ruether
speaks of the universal cultural structure of sexism that posits female
nature as inferior to male nature, and Williams speaks of how the
American national conscience is thoroughly saturated with the idea of
. . . white racial narcissism.24 They are correct to indicate the repressive
intensity and insidious pervasiveness of the mechanisms of sexism and
racism. Neither theologian, however, would want to imply that these
oppressions constitute a totalizing monopoly, crushing all forms of re-
sistance, since both Ruether and Williams point to a history of resis-
tance to racism, sexism, classism, and so forth. Here Foucaults genea-
logical approach to history is helpful in accounting for how structural
oppression can be seen as pervasive yet nonmonolithic and nontotal-
izing.
Genealogy is Foucaults term for the type of analysis of history that
traces power from its localized and infinitessimal mechanisms.25 No
trajectory of the movement of power or its centralization is presup-
posed; indeed, what is uncovered is a complex and unstable assem-
blage of faults, fissures and heterogenous layers of historical events.26
Genealogical investigation is oriented to uncovering not only an end-
23
Michel Foucault, The Subject and Power, afterword in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structur-
alism and Hermeneutics, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1982), p. 220. Again, power relations must be distinguished from domination:
slavery is not a power relation when man [sic] is in chains (p. 221).
24
Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, p. 75; Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, p. 88.
25
Foucault, Power/Knowledge, p. 99. Foucault explains that genealogys purpose is to en-
tertain the claims to attention of local, discontinuous, disqualified, illegitimate knowledges
against the claims of a unitary body of theory which would filter, hierarchise and order them
in the name of some true knowledge (p. 83).
26
Michel Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice:
Selected Essays and Interviews, trans. Donald Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1977), p. 146.
185
lessly repeated play of dominations but also the breakthrough of re-

sistant power/knowledge.27 Genealogy unmasks (1) how putatively
monolithic power structures are disseminated in local social and insti-
tutional networks (some feminists call this a microlevel analysis of
power, helpful for analyzing complex and context-dependent social
and legal problems such as flirting, as opposed to sexual harassment)
and (2) how broad-ranging cultural meanings are inscribed on psyches
and bodies to create macrolevel power/knowledge regimes, which are
then used to label whole groups of subjects as, for example, delin-
quents, insane, or sexual deviants.28 From this genealogical perspective,
what liberation theology calls social or structural sin could be analyzed
for how those structures of domination subjugate on micro- and macro-
levels. Furthermore, because this theory also exposes how power cir-
culates (nearly) everywhere, it would not thereby essentialize women
as victims of these various subjugating isms. Quite the contrary. Ge-
nealogys interest in subjugated knowledges can open up possibilities
for perceiving the disruptive emergence of womens liminal identities
and transgressive practices.29
This poststructuralist appeal to the circulation of power, however,
must be held accountable to the realities of unremitting structural op-
pression. Although some, or even many, oppressed individuals can be
seen as positively accessing subject-forming power, nevertheless, the
overall disciplinary effects of certain power/knowledge mechanisms on
whole communities of people require the theologian to affirm that an
identity-politics invocation of the labels of oppressor and oppressed
is often rhetorically appropriate because they are politically necessary.
Hence, I would argue that something like Spivaks notion of strategic
essentialization is needed in addition to poststructuralism for the task
of theorizing selfhood and agency. Originally directed to a subaltern
studies group of postcolonial historians in India who were analyzing
insurgency against Western colonial encroachment, Spivaks term is
meant to resist the erasure of the politically engaged, oppressed sub-
altern subject, while also acknowledging that agents of resistance must
27
Ibid., p. 150.
28
For a discussion of microlevel and macrolevel power, see Amy Allen, Foucault on Power:
A Theory for Feminists, in Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault, ed. Susan J. Hekman
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996).
29
An excellent example of the type of genealogical study I have in mind of womens
transgressive practices can be found in Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Changing the Subject:
Womens Discourses and Feminist Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994). Fulkerson analyzes the
disciplinary and productive effects of various discursive regimes in relation to poor white
Appalachian Pentecostal women, middle-class white Presbyterian women, and two white fem-
inist academic theologians.
186
also be presented in their discursive complexity. Spivak suggests that

the revolutionary consciousness of the subaltern be seen as a kind of
theoretical fiction invoked for strategic use . . . in a scrupulously
visible political interest, such as liberation from tyranny.30 Hence, in
specific situations, appealing to an oppressed identity is necessary when
oppression creates subaltern subjects for whom the circulation of
power has been effectively cut off.
Spivak provides a category that affirms what is strategically essential
for womanists, for example, to claim about the ongoing and debilitat-
ing oppressions suffered by whole communities of African American
women, men and children.31 Williamss term demonarchy can be in-
terpreted (as Spivak does using subaltern studies analysis) as an in-
terventionist strategy on the part of the theorist that reads back into
history the presence of a generalized hegemonic force (demonarchy)
that provokes a collective consciousness of resistance among a partic-
ular oppressed group (African American women). This is not a luxury
according to Spivak: the unified consciousness of the subaltern must
inhabit the strategy of . . . historians.32 To say it is a political strategy
is not to eclipse the reality of the oppression; it is to acknowledge, as
Williams and other womanists in fact do in their historical and socio-
logical analyses, that demonarchy is not one thing but a widely dis-
persed and historically changing network of white racist mechanisms,
ranging from enslavement to exploitation of wage-labor to racist eu-
genics, and so on.
Social sin is a dominant category for feminist discussions of sin; how-
ever, as suggested by Williams above, the category of so-called individ-
ual sin continues to be important for understanding womens moral
agency. In the section that follows, I will attempt to demonstrate how
Butlers Foucauldian notion of performativity provides a fruitful ap-
30
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography, in The
Spivak Reader, ed. Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp.
21314. Postcolonial theory is much wider than Spivaks concept of the strategic essentiali-
zation of the subaltern. For other facets of postcolonialism and other applications of Spivaks
views in feminist religious scholarship, see Kwok Pui-lan, Unbinding Our Feet: Saving Brown
Women and Feminist Religious Discourse; Meyda Yegenoglu, Sartorial Fabric-ations: En-
lightenment and Western Feminism; and Musa W. Dube, Postcoloniality, Feminist Spaces,
and Religion, in Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse, ed. Laura E. Donaldson and
Kwok Pui-lan (New York: Routledge, 2002).
31
Spivak has warned against a too general invocation of this term by Western white feminists
in relation to womens oppression spoken of universally, since this evacuates the term of
its crucial political strategics. See Gayatri Spivak with Ellen Rooney, In a Word: Interview,
in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, ed. Linda Nicholson (New York: Routledge,
1997), p. 358.
32
Spivak, Subaltern Studies, pp. 217, 220.
187
proach to theorizing the self who sinswithout, however, falling into

a privatized view of individual sin or inscribing a male/female binarism.
ii. deconstructing the sex binarism in feminist theological

anthropology
It has been noted that theological anthropology as a distinct doctrinal
locus is relatively new to the theologians agenda, having received
much of its impetus as Christian theologians endeavored to respond
to the secularism in the Enlightenments turn to the subject.33 An im-
portant figure in this stream of modern theology is Sren Kierkegaard,
whose existentialist starting point typifies an anthropological approach
to sin found in thinkers as diverse as Reinhold Niebuhr and Judith
Plaskow.34 Kierkegaards writings are explicitly being retrieved by a
number of current (mostly white) feminist scholars who find in his
discussions of sin an anthropology they believe has great potential for
gender equality and for addressing more fully female and male expe-
riences of sin. I flag the Kierkegaardian feminists interpretations of
sin because they constitute an example of how scholars who focus a
critical eye on issues of sexism and androcentrism in the tradition can,
nevertheless, overlook the problematic entailments of sex binarism.
Kierkegaard identifies two types of sinful ways of responding to the
inability to synthesize infinitude and finitude: the despair of weakness
and the despair of defiance.35 Though the despair of weakness (one
form of which Kierkegaard describes as not to will to be oneself) is
culturally identified as a feminine trait, in contrast to the defiantly
masculine despair to will to be oneself, both sins are intermeshed
and found in women and men.36 Neither weakness nor defiance
(theo)logically predominates. Kierkegaardian feminists approve of the
way Kierkegaard maintains a fruitful dialectical tension between the
two kinds of gendered sin.37 They conclude that there is a comple-
mentary wholeness in the way he specifies that the path to overcoming
sin requires implementing the opposite mode of being (in an attitude
33
David H. Kelsey, Human Being, in Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and
Tasks, ed. Peter C. Hodgson and Robert H. King (Philadephia: Fortress, 1982), p. 141; see
also pp. 152 ff.
34
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol. 1, Human Nature (New York: Scrib-
ners, 1941), esp. pp. 182 ff.; Plaskow (see n. 3 above).
35
Sren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death: A Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and
Awakening, trans. and ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1980), p. 29.
36
Ibid., pp. 52, 70; see also pp. 49, 67.
37
Wanda Warren Berry, Images of Sin and Salvation in Feminist Theology, Anglican Theo-
logical Review 60 (1978): 47.
188
of faith): the person caught in the despair of weakness needs masculine

self-assertion, and the person caught in the despair of defiance needs
feminine self-giving.38 They find a positive kind of androgyny in his
view of selfhood that includes both masculine and feminine modes of
relating, because this common structure of selfhood could poten-
tially foster a fuller development of individuality and relatedness in
both sexes that avoids damaging hierarchies.39 Some feminist inter-
preters of Kierkegaard conclude that sexist statements of his such as
the woman actually relates to God only through the man should be
interpreted in light of Kierkegaard reflecting societal gender conven-
tions that he personally wished to avoid. His deeply held belief, they
claim, was that the distinction man-woman vanishes in relation to
God.40
I am not at all opposed to feminist critical retrievals of the views of
male theologians in the tradition (even ones whose sexist comments
cannot be mitigated in some way).41 Nevertheless I have a number of
reservations about the Kierkegaardian anthropological model, not the
least of which is a male/female binarism. Let me first demonstrate that
a sex binarism is at play here and then give arguments for why such a
binarism entails heterosexism. The Kierkegaardian feminist appeal to
binary sex differentiation is part of an effort to promote an androgyny
model of selfhood where masculine and feminine gender attributes
can be combined. This approach is based on the assumption that gen-
der is culturally constructed, as compared with sex, which supposedly
is not. One writer comments that, without negating sexual differences,
one can ultimately look beyond them to a common model of selfhood
not defined by gender.42 That is, gender stereotypes are seen as open
to cultural redefinition, but sex is seen as a self-evident bodily given.
Sex differentiation is, in other words, natural: One of the things that
38
Sylvia I. Walsh, On Feminine and Masculine Forms of Despair, in The International
Kierkegaard Commentary: Sickness unto Death, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, Ga.: Mercer Uni-
versity Press, 1987), p. 129. Leslie Howe questions how much balancing Kierkegaard actually
supports (see Leslie A. Howe, Kierkegaard and the Feminine Self, in Feminist Interpretations
of Sren Kierkegaard, ed. Celine Leon and Sylvia Walsh [University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1997], pp. 239 ff.). I will return to this issue below.
39
Walsh, pp. 128, 133.
40
Birgit Bertung, Yes, a Woman Can Exist, in Feminist Interpretations of Sren Kierkegaard,
ed. Celine Leon and Sylvia Walsh (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997),
pp. 5758 (quoting Kierkegaard). Howe suggests that some of Kierkegaards sexist comments
should be taken as ironically feminist (p. 238).
41
I agree heartily with Wanda Warren Berrys call for feminists to continue to engage
Kierkegaards thought (Kierkegaard and Feminism: Apologetic, Repetition, and Dialogue,
in Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity, ed. Martin J. Matustk and Merold Westphal [Bloomington:
Indiana Univeristy Press, 1995], pp. 11024).
42
Walsh, p. 133.
189
we inevitably are . . . is male or female.43 I would argue that however

much one tries to complicate male and female selfhood (e.g., saying
that men can despair in womanly weakness or women can despair in
manly defiance), one still has not adequately addressed the assumed
natural male/female sex differentiation structure. Why is the assump-
tion about a natural sex binarism so problematic? Isnt it enough to
show that gender is culturally constructed and hence open to resigni-
fication? An increasing number of feminist theorists are contesting the
viewpoint that gender fluidity is enough. Many of these theorists draw
from the groundbreaking poststructuralist analysis of Judith Butler that
any claim about natural male/female sex differentiation inscribes a
discursive regime of normative naturalized heterosexuality, which
functions prejudicially toward sexualities that deviate from that norm.44
Butler critically retrieves Foucaults analysis of gender, sex, and sex-
uality in order to deconstruct the idea, so dear to Western (biblically
shaped) culture, that sex is a natural attribute. Early feminists, such as
Simone de Beauvoir, began a hard-fought battle to gain acceptance for
the idea that one is not born a woman, but, rather, becomes one.45
The notion is now broadly accepted that gender (masculine and fem-
inine) is culturally constructed. Butler pushes feminist thinking to its
next (poststructuralist) level, arguing that sex is as culturally con-
structed as gender.46 That is, there is no natural sexed subject prior
to the discursive regimes that subject bodies to certain gender-specific
regulations and that promote certain sexual practices and affectivities.
These discursive regimes do not just influence persons who stand in
some way outside of discourse; they regulate self-knowledge and con-
tour the materiality of bodies.47 In our culture, the dominant dis-
course of heterosexuality constructs male and female sex as opposites
that attract. That is, man is constructed as the male sex who desires
the female; woman is constructed as the female sex who desires the
male. Sexed bodies, in other words, are seen as a cause of sexual
. . . desire. According to this view, any other form of desire is a non-
43
Howe, p. 237.
44
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge,
1990), p. 23. For current debates on Butlers views, see Sara Salih, Judith Butler (London and
New York: Routledge, 2001), esp. pp. 137 ff.; Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction
(New York: New York University Press, 1996), pp. 83 ff. For an insightful application of Butlers
thought to ethics, see Marilyn Gottschall, The Ethical Implications of the Deconstruction of
Gender, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 70, no. 2 (June 2002): 27999.
45
De Beauvoir quoted in Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 8.
46
Ibid., p. 7. Butler argues that de Beauvoirs views were too linked to a modernist view of
a subject as a cogito (p. 8).
47
Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge,
1993), p. 17.
190
coherent sexuality, an unnatural inversion of a putatively natural het-

erosexuality. Butler argues the exact reverse: that the so-called cause
(sex) is actually an effect, the production of a given regime of sex-
uality.48 Heterosexuality is a pervasive cultural regime whose hegemo-
ny is a factor of its multiple, localized disciplinary mechanisms. The
discourse of heterosexuality is dispersed in a myriad of societal insti-
tutions (advertising, education, religion, medicine, etc.) and shapes
our understanding of natural/unnatural in order to produce normal-
ized subjects who conceive of themselves as having a coherent hetero-
sexual identity secure in the intermeshing of biology and libido. Fou-
cauldian theory discursively decenters the assumed coherence of sex
and sexuality as cause and effect; Butler further analyzes their per-
ceived naturalness in terms of performativity.
Performativity is a notion Butler derives by combining Foucaults
view of discursively constructed identity with the theories of speech-
acts by philosopher J. L. Austin and deconstructive philosopher
Jacques Derrida. Butler states that a performative act is one which
brings into being or enacts what it names (Austins classic example of
a performative utterance is the vow I do, which constitutively inau-
gurates a marriage). Derrida takes this idea of words constituting a
reality in an intertextual direction. Inherent in any discursive perfor-
mance is the citation and repetition of (con)textual convention; when
one acts, one is citing previous texts (with texts meaning not just
writings but any signifying activity).49 Hence, to be discursively con-
structed is to be performatively constituted.50 Performativity is not
analogous to theatrical or dance performanceif one is presupposing
an actor or dancer apart from the stage of discursive relations. Per-
formativity means the way things are constituted in the saying/doing.
It is not performance as playacting.51 A poststructuralist focus on the
performative is meant to deconstruct philosophical assumptions about
a pre-given doer [or playactor] behind the deed. Agency is not de-
fined in terms of a core self prior to cultural and linguistic structures
to which one might attach certain attributes (e.g., will, intention, free-
dom); rather, agency is constituted in a process of negotiating multiple
cultural discourses about such attributes. The poststructuralist theorist
48
Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 23.
49
Judith Butler, For a Careful Reading, in Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange, by
Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, and Nancy Fraser (New York: Routledge,
1995), p. 134.
50
Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 25. Butler further discusses performativity in her chapter Crit-
ically Queer, in Bodies That Matter, pp. 22342.
51
This distinction between performativity and playacting was made by Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak in a public lecture at Oberlin College, March 15, 1999.
191
engages in the difficult labor of deriving agency from the very power
regimes which constitute us and form our understanding of ourselves
as centers of will, intention, freedom, and so forth.52 The agential
power of the postmodern subject is analyzed in terms of performatives
(i.e., bodily performative acts) situated in terms of societal conventions
that one both cites and resignifies in ones utterances or actions.
(There can be both complicity and sometimes parodic resistance to
those conventions.)53 Men and women can be spoken of poststructur-
ally as embodying particular societal conventions of maleness and fe-
maleness when performing their sex, gender, and sexuality. Perfor-
mativity theory emphasizes that the sexed body has no substantial
ontological status but rather is constituted in performative acts.54
Thus, the notion of discursive performance reinforces Foucaults cri-
tique of the idea that sexuality is naturally caused by a pre-given sexed
body.
In light of this theory of discursive performativity, I want to propose
a poststructuralist reformulation of sin from a theological anthropo-
logical starting point in order to show how one could avoid the sex
binarism problem I have noted in Kierkegaardian feminist writings.
(There are other theological benefits from such a reformulation as
well.) If selfhood is constituted and reconstituted performatively, and
if sin (very formally) is some kind of action or attitude impeding ones
relationship with God, then sin poststructurally speaking would be the
self engaging in discursive relations in distorted ways that impede godly
performativity. It is difficult to find the appropriate overarching met-
aphor for this spiritually distorted discursive relationality. For the sake
of argument, let me call it a narrowing of relationality. This sinful
discursive narrowing can be thought of as happening in two modes: as
undue cooperation with disciplinary power and as underdeveloped co-
operation with disciplinary power.55 Let me explain what I mean by
undue and underdeveloped cooperation and how they can be char-
acterized as a sinful narrowing of relationality.
Both undue and underdeveloped cooperation with power/knowl-
edge must be understood against the backdrop of Foucaults theory of
52
Butler, For a Careful Reading, pp. 134, 136.
53
Butler, Gender Trouble, pp. 31, 137. Akin to Foucaults notion of insurrectional knowledge,
parody is Butlers term that refers to how some performativity can decenter the convention
it repeats. The repetition can be subversive when it implicitly reveals the imitative structure of
the so-called original fact (p. 137).
54
Ibid., p. 136.
55
At this stage in my theorizing, I am also exploring metaphors other than narrow rela-
tionality, such as fixed or rigid relationality. Terms other than cooperation also are possible:
engagement, interaction, negotiation.
192
how selves are constituted through relations with normalizing discur-

sive regimes. As discussed above, Foucault analyzes some classic nor-
malizing disciplines with a focus on particularly oppressive power/
knowledges in prisons, insane asylums, and hospitals of past centuries.
However, one should also think of discourses that shape us with what
we hope would be less frightening institutional manifestations: aca-
deme, religion, child rearing, sports and exercise, patriotism, and so
forth. A normalizing disciplinary power can and does entail levels of
pleasure for the subject who is being performatively normalized. Fou-
cault explains: If power were never anything but repressive, if it never
did anything but to say no, do you really think one would be brought
to obey it? What makes power . . . accepted, is simply the fact that it
. . . induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse.56 My use
of the term cooperation attempts to get at this often misunderstood
aspect of Foucauldian power theory. That is, power is not simply im-
posed. It produces something: a subject whose agency is constituted in
the process of interacting performatively with power/knowledge.
Given this analysis of power relations, there would seem to be a
temptation (as the theologian might say) to maximize ones pleasure
in cooperating with a particular discursive regime with the result that
ones identity performativity mimics to an extreme the disciplinary
power with which one has unduly cooperated. We can describe this
performativity in terms of what has classically been called sin against
God. For example, undue cooperation with any of the power/knowl-
edge regimes mentioned above (e.g., academe, religion, patriotism)
makes what (religiously speaking) should be a relative good (the plea-
sure of scholarship, a practice of piety, or love of country) into the
supreme good. Not only is the relation among relative goods disor-
dered, but what should be the supreme good (allegiance to God) is
supplanted by another allegiance. Undue cooperation with a discursive
regime can also be seen as a sin against ones neighbor. An undue
pursuit of any of the three disciplinary discourses listed above might
yield something like this: an ivory tower academic, a religious fanatic,
or a xenophobe. The performativity in these examples entails the risk
of an abuse of power with repressive (sinful) effects on others, such
as, respectively, the less educated person whom one treats condescend-
ingly, the nonbeliever whom one condemns, the foreigner whom one
viscerally mistrusts.
This construal of sin as undue cooperation with a disciplinary power
presupposes the notion mentioned previously that power circulates, so
56
Foucault, Power/Knowledge (see n. 25 above), p. 119.
193
that the cooperation cannot be simply explained away as unavoidable

coercion or cultural brainwashing. Some feminists have referred to
Foucaults notion of the disciplined docile body as descriptive of the
way women are dominated and victimized by the mechanisms of patri-
archal culture with which they are forced to cooperate.57 If one ana-
lyzes power only in this way, one could not call undue cooperation
with disciplinary power a sin; it would be an instance of being struc-
turally sinned against. However, if one accepts Foucaults claim that
the normalizing process necessarily entails (except in cases of extreme
domination) some circulation of power, then agency (not just victimi-
zation) is constituted.58 Moreover, one can speak of a morally account-
able agent. After all, North American society may pressure a woman
toward, for example, obsession with dieting, but (with the exception
of very dominated docile bodies where the obsession degenerates into
anorexia or other eating disorders) no one is really forced to go to
Weight Watchers. One can choose to submit unduly to a normalizing
regime such as this. One has the choice to broaden ones discursive
relationality in order to avoid letting the pleasure of cooperating with
dieting become a narrow, rigid obsession that is destructive to self and
others. A broader, more fluid relationality could counteract a tendency
toward undue cooperation with a particular discursive regime, because
ones performativity in one discursive context would be counterbal-
anced by negotiations with other power/knowledges, both dominant
and insurrectional. The obsessive dieter would benefit from widening
her discursive relations to include medical discourses of healthy body
weight. These might help, but feminists would argue that medical dis-
courses do not go to the root of the problem. One needs to contest
the patriarchal male gaze that insists on sculpting the female body as
thinly and docilely as possible, thus inscribing her body with conven-
tions of femininity (gender) and female allure (sexuality). To address
the oppressive effects of that male gaze, one would need to include
insurrectional power/knowledges, such as critiques of the dieting in-
dustry from thealogical, womanist, and other circles.59
The other mode of sin is the flip side of the first: underdeveloped
cooperation with disciplinary power. In light of what has just been said
about the first mode, the question arises: why should discursive un-
57
See Monique Devaux, Feminism and Empowerment: A Critical Reading of Foucault,
in Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault, ed. Susan J. Hekman (University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1996), pp. 213 ff.
58
See nn. 2223 above.
59
Melissa Raphael, Thealogy and Embodiment: The Post-patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sa-
crality (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), pp. 83 ff.; Gilkes (see n. 17 above).
194
derdevelopment be labeled sin? Wouldnt resistance to the dominant

discourses of our sexist, racist, consumerist, violent society be laudable?
Yes, of course. However, from a Foucauldian perspective, underdevel-
oped performative cooperation with power/knowledge is not resis-
tance; it is in fact the avoidance of the conditions for resistance
namely, negotiation with power relations. Resistance arises only in and
through normalizing discursive processes. Insurrectional discourses do
not happen outside of discursive relations with dominant discourses;
they happen as a result of relational interactions where control, disci-
pline, and normalizing are in effect. Hence, to leave relations with a
disciplinary discourse underdeveloped would be to miss the opportu-
nity to enter that power/knowledge loop. It would be to evade power/
knowledge in that context and thus avoid the conditions necessary for
resistance practices to emerge.
This construal of sin as underdeveloped cooperation with disciplin-
ary power makes no sense if one is operating with the notion that
power is bad, that it only corrupts, that it is what my oppressor has
taken from me. If Foucaults analysis is correct, power is not something
one group or institution possesses but is something that is dispersed
in a network of mechanisms, institutions, and technologies (many of
which may well be dominating). Leaving relations with a normalizing
regime underdeveloped would be to stall the circulation of power. This
could have several effects. Underdeveloped cooperation with certain
kinds of disciplinary power risks becoming an evasion of what Foucault
calls technologies of care for the selfthat is, knowing oneself in
relation to others, in particular, knowing what ones ethical power role
should be toward others.60 Parenting provides one example.
Think of a mother in a very patriarchal household who is erratic in
enforcing rules and setting limits for her children and whose most
prevalent response to her childrens misbehaving is wait until your
father gets home. One could say that she has left underdeveloped her
cooperation with the disciplinary discourses of parental authority that
specify the importance of maternal as well as paternal authority. (Cor-
relatively, she can be seen as unduly cooperating with patriarchal
power/knowledge.) One can imagine that somewhere in her societal
interactions, this mother will have been exposed to the normalizing
60
This phrase is the title of the third volume in Foucaults History of Sexuality (trans. Robert
Hurley [New York: Random House, 1986]), but Foucault referred in his later work to care
of the self in relation to his research into technologies and practices of the Greco-Roman
period that contribute to how a human being turns him- or herself into a subjectnamely,
a communally situated ethical subject (Foucault quoted in the Introduction, in Technologies
of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin et al. [Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1988], p. 3).
195
effects of maternal authority discourses as they are disseminated by

school officials, social service agencies, church pastors, and so on. Her
underdeveloped cooperation with those discourses is an agential
choice, resulting in a sin against othersnamely, her children, who
are instilled with patriarchal notions of parental authority. The voices
of victims of abuse within patriarchal family models would function as
an insurrectional discourse relevant to this mothers parenting flaws.61
This example also illustrates sin against God, if one sees inadequate
development of her own power and authority as stunting her ethical
and spiritual development. With the exception of, for example, a bat-
tered wife or a woman whose own childhood might have been one of
abuse that thoroughly scarred her, one can speak of a morally account-
able agent who has the ability to widen and more fully develop her
parental performativity in relation to other dominant and insurrec-
tional discourses, thus enabling her to care for both herself and her
children with the proper exercise of power.
My categories of sin may sound as though they echo Kierkegaards.
Underdeveloped cooperation with disciplinary power may sound like
the womanly despair of weakness, and undue cooperation with power/
knowledge may sound like the manly despair of defiance. However,
there are several important differences. First, Kierkegaards two modes
of sin are (according to some scholars) hierarchically related grada-
tions of selfhood, whereas mine are not. For Kierkegaard, womanly
despair is a factor of less self-consciousness and reflects the fact that
women have a less egotistical concept of the self and less intellec-
tuality than men. Womans natural devotedness, Kierkegaard contin-
ues, is a good thing; but take this devotion away, then her self is also
gone.62 Hence the feminine despair of weakness (in men or women)
reflects a less formed self, compared with the more highly developed
self-consciousness reflected in the manly despair of defiance. In my
approach, on the other hand, underdeveloped cooperation is as agen-
tial as undue cooperation. Both are equal modes of a narrowly per-
forming subject.
61
For arguments about the psychologically detrimental aspect of patriarchal family authority
structures, see Rita Nakashima Brock, Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power (New York:
Crossroad, 1994), esp. chaps. 12. Delores Williams analyzes some effects of the incursion of
white patriarchal family models on the African American family (see Sisters in the Wilderness
[n. 24 above], esp. chap. 2).
62
Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death (see n. 36 above), pp. 49n., 50n. Howe (see n. 43
above) finds an inherent sexism in Kierkegaards assumptions about gendered gradations of
selfhood which threatens to undermine the androgyny model. At the religious and the secular
level, Howe argues, Kierkegaard gives no indication that a man is supposed to display de-
votedness (or any other supposedly feminine quality) . . . much less that woman is to show
masculine qualities (p. 241).
196
A second way my approach differs from a Kierkegaardian model is

that mine does not trade on gender or sex binarisms. For Kierkegaard-
ian feminists, the path to overcoming sin is to rectify an imbalance
between two types of sin with the aim of transcending gender and
promoting androgynous selfhood. As I argued above, this androgyny
mode complicates gender roles at the price of reinscribing a sex bina-
rism. There is no sex binarism in a poststructuralist approach to sin
because maleness and femaleness are one of many identity markers
that are negotiated performatively. Sex is not differentiated binarily as
something we naturally inevitably are.63 Furthermore, overcoming sin
is not about balancing opposites at alla third way my proposal differs
from a Kierkegaardian one. The most religiously faithful response to
both undue and underdeveloped cooperation with disciplinary power
is the same: wider discursive performativity. Breadth of discursive per-
formativity of the needed kind puts the subject in a position potentially
to avert any undue pursuit of, or underdeveloped relations with,
power/knowledge that I am calling sin, understood poststructurally.64
Discursive breadth in and of itself cannot be said always to prevent
sin; nothing theologically speaking can make that claim. This brings
us to a final important aspect of sin: sins inevitability. A modern ex-
istentialist construal of finitude and sin (such as Kierkegaards) ac-
counts for sins inevitability in terms of the tensions experienced by
the self caught between two poles of being.65 The drag of finitude can-
not coexist harmoniously with the loft of infinitudehence anxiety
and its inevitable resolution in sin for all humanity.66 Poststructuralism
views human subjects culturally and is suspicious of the essentialisms
in ontology. In human culture every relation is a power relation with
its own history of effects. Although, as Foucault would insist, power is
not evil in and of itself, the dynamic of ubiquitous power relations can
be said to be a condition (though not necessarily a cause) for sin. For
63
Howe, p. 237.
64
A criterion is clearly needed for determining what would constitute a morally and spir-
itually proper Christian performativity. Let me anticipate the point I will make below by saying
that the way one construes the imago dei would be central to this determination.
65
There are a number of feminist proposals about sins inevitability. Marjorie Suchocki sees
sin as inevitable because we are born into the human race that has evolved into a society of
violence. She construes original sin as the inevitability of evil as a result of anxiety due to
pervasive violence (The Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology [New York: Continuum,
1995]). Serene Jones brings together Calvinist and postmodern feminist insights and attributes
sins inevitability to the false performative scripts into which women are born causing us
to suffer harm and do harm (Feminist Theory and Christian Theology: Cartographies of Grace
[Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000], p. 119).
66
See Sren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, in The Kierkegaard Reader, ed. Jane
Chamberlain and Jonathan Ree (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), esp. pp. 201 ff.
197
some reason (and here I would invoke the theological category of in-
scrutability), human discursive relations, which have the potential for
a free exercise of power under communal rules of law [and] . . .
ethics, inevitably devolve to some degree into oppressive uses of
power.67 Foucault would admit that the best rules of law humanity can
construct cannot protect against all misuses of power. In a more theo-
logical mode, we can say that sins inevitability is a result of the recur-
rence of subjects continually entering into power/knowledge relations
in a distorted way. Historically, to some degree, every discursive per-
formance has fallen short and will inevitably fall short of Gods good-
ness and glory. However, unlike Christian existentialism, which
grounds sins inevitability ontologically, mine is a theological claim
based on a (poststructuralist) reading of the consistent pattern of hu-
man practices.
I have proposed a notion of sin in critical conversation with Kier-
kegaardian feminists who make theological anthropology their starting
point for discussions of sin. However, many feminist theologians have
a different starting point; they situate their discussions of sin in terms
of a Bible-based doctrine of creation, making the notion of the imago
dei the organizing principle for their sin talk. As we will see below, a
poststructuralist reconfiguring of this notion is crucial for avoiding a
male/female binarism and for providing a criterion for what consti-
tutes a religiously appropriate widening of discursive performativity.
iii. deconstructing the binarism of sexed creation in gods

image
Christianity provides a religious discourse whereby an individuals con-
ception of herself as created in Gods image is one of the most im-
portant constituting aspects of who she is. A crucial question for fem-
inists situating sin within a doctrine of creation is, how should we
construe the notion of womens creation in Gods image so as to un-
derstand sin as the pervasive distortion of that imago dei? There is a
fairly unified feminist opposition to the largely sexist and dualistic ten-
dencies of the Western theological tradition that has associated fe-
maleness with fallen humanity and a distortion of the perfect (male)
67
Michel Foucault, The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom, trans. J. D.
Gauthier, in The Final Foucault, ed. James Bernauer and David Rasmussen (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1988), p. 18.
198
soul.68 On the whole, feminist views of creation promote a nonhier-

archical, non-gender-biased view of the creator God, a holistic ap-
proach to spiritual embodiment, the created equality of the sexes, and
a nonanthropocentric, eco-friendly attitude toward nonhuman species
and the cosmos. Patricia Hunter sums up the implications for women
of a creation-oriented theology: If all God created was very good, in-
cluding humankind, then all women, regardless of ethnicity, class, vary-
ing abilities, or sexual orientation, are part of Gods very good crea-
tion.69 I affirm the attempt to combat the traditions patriarchy,
racism, androcentric hierarchy, and mind/body dualisms that oppress
women (and men); however, it is also important to reflect critically on
feminist appeals to sex-differentiated creation, which I contend entail
heterosexist privilegeeven if unintended. Mary Fulkerson has noted
the deployment of the heterosexual binary in the writings of
Ruether.70 I would like to probe this issue further in relation to the
biblical creation accounts that form the explicit or implicit subtext for
feminist appeals to womens creation in Gods image.
Some feminists conclude that the two creation stories read together
yield the insight that the image of God is reflected in a community
of persons, in a humankind that is created male and female for whom
being like God can be achieved only by the gift of self to others and
the reception of the gift of self from others.71 Other feminist theolo-
gians wish to affirm sexual embodiment, correcting a long-standing
tendency in Christian thought to associate sexuality with the sin of
concupiscence. In an effort to endorse the created goodness of sexual
68
See Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, Image of God and Sexual Differentiation in the Tradition
of Enkrateia, and Kari Elisabeth Brrensen, Gods Image: Is Woman Excluded? in The Image
of God: Gender Models in Judaeo-Christian Tradition, ed. Kari Elisabeth Brrensen (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1991).
69
Patricia L. Hunter, Womens PowerWomens Passion: And God Said, Thats Good,
in A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering, ed. Emilie M. Townes
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1993), pp. 18990. Traditionally, the image of God in relation to
humanity has been spoken of in various ways, two prominent ones being: the image of God
as a divine substantial endowment (e.g., within the faculties of the soul or mind) or as the
capacity conferred by God for relationality with God. Many theologians today seem oriented
to speaking of the image of God relationally, emphasizing how humanity as being-in-relation
reflects a trinitarian, perichoretic God (Mary Catherine Hilkert, Cry Beloved Image: Re-
thinking the Image of God, in In the Embrace of God: Feminist Approaches to Theological Anthro-
pology, ed. Ann OHara Graff [Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1995], p. 200).
70
Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Contesting the Gendered Subject: A Feminist Account of
the Imago Dei, in Horizons in Feminist Theology: Identity, Tradition and Norms, ed. Rebecca S.
Chopp and Sheila Greeve Davaney (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), p. 109.
71
Mary Aquin ONeill, The Mystery of Being Human TogetherAnthropology, in Freeing
Theology: The Essentials of Theology in Feminist Perspective, ed. Catherine Mowry LaCugna (San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), pp. 141, 151.
199
bodies, feminist theologians argue that sexuality lies at the heart of

all creation and is an icon of who God is, the God in whose image we
were created male and female (Gen. 1). Sexual desire and sexual need
are a continued contradiction to the illusion that we can exist by our-
selves.72 Feminist theologians resist interpreting the story of creation
as a binary pattern of sexual complementarity because of its hidden
theme of domination and argue instead that in both creation stories
mutuality is the key.73 This critique is directed toward the comple-
mentarity aspect, not the binary sex notion itself. Thus, many feminist
theologians stress that being created in the image of God entails the
embodied fact of sex-differentiation, which they interpret to mean that
humans achieve their fullest capacity for reflecting Gods goodness in
unitive, mutual relationality (sexual or social).
Positive as these statements are for affirming nonhierarchical, mu-
tually dependent human community and sexuality, they entail a dis-
turbing male/female sex binarism that can be traced to the Genesis
creation narratives. Rebecca Alpert, a lesbian feminist rabbi, argues
that the Genesis account of creation introduces a rigid binary iden-
tity that inculcates painful and prejudicial societal attitudes toward
intersexuals, lesbians, gays, transgendered individualsin short, any-
one who deviates from the compulsory heterosexuality entailed in
the biblical call to become one flesh (Gen. 2:24).74 Are such prob-
lems entailed even when (1) the Genesis text is not cited specifically;
(2) an appeal is made only to male/female creation in the image of
God in Gen. 1:27, and texts like the aforementioned Gen. 2:24 or 1:
28 (and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply) are downplayed
or avoided; and (3) the feminist writer in no way endorses and even
explicitly rejects such prejudicial views? I would answer yes on all three
counts. Regarding condition 1, the Genesis creation narrative func-
tions as an unavoidable subtext to any (Christian or Jewish) appeal to
creation in the image of God, even when the Bible is not specifically
quoted. Regarding condition 2, appealing to the notion of natural,
God-created maleness and femaleness forms the basis for a discursive
72
Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), p. 407. There have been numerous texts in recent years analyzing
how sexuality has been viewed in the Christian tradition including: Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., ed.,
Theology and Sexuality: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); Douglas
(see n. 18 above); Lisa Isherwood and Elizabeth Stuart, Introducing Body Theology (Cleveland:
Pilgrim, 1998); Kathy Rudy, Sex and the Church: Gender, Homosexuality and the Transformation of
Christian Ethics (Boston: Beacon, 1997).
73
Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New
York: Crossroad, 1995), pp. 7071.
74
Rebecca Alpert, Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 2122.
200
regime of normative reproductive heterosexuality from which follows

heterosexism (as I have argued above via Butler). Regarding condition
3, without an understanding of the connection between the discourse
of binary sex and its disciplinary (heterosexual) effects, the best of
intentions to combat prejudicial heterosexism will be hampered.
One way to recuperate the notion of creation in the image of God
for feminist theology is to reformulate the notion of the imago dei in
terms of performativity theory. If the self is discursively constituted in
the context of multiple performative acts in relation to cultural con-
ventions, then the image of God would be the graced possibility for
godly performativity in every discursive relation. To say that our hu-
manity is created in Gods image means that our performativity has
the possibility of being an icon of who God is.75 If all aspects of
human performativity (including gender, sex, and sexuality) can be
iconic of who God is, then excluding any discursive relation from what
is seen as reflecting Gods image would render an incomplete imago.
Since our discursivity is fluid and multiple, we have a lifelong project
of progressing in our performance of the image of God. This post-
structuralist concept of performance need not conflict with the deeply
held Christian beliefs that the imago dei is a gift of the Creator and
that growth in godliness is only possible by grace, understood theolog-
ically in various ways (e.g., cooperative grace or sola gratia). To recon-
ceptualize the imago dei in terms of identity performance is not to say
that it is solely the individuals accomplishment. My poststructuralist
reformulation simply re-situates this theological notion of a divine gift
to the human person in a way that does not invoke notions of a pre-
given human subject.76
What would it mean concretely to perform the image of God? An-
swers to that question will necessarily differ widely. Each individual
would negotiate her particular way of performing Gods image as it is
construed by the religious community with which she associates (and
there may be widely divergent interpretations of it). That is, each com-
munitys construal of the imago dei becomes a discursive regime that
functions as a convention for religious conformity to Gods will. To the
extent that the believer cooperates with these community-specific dis-
cursive conventions, they become constitutive of her religious selfhood,
so that she is performatively constituted in part by relations of power
75
LaCugna, p. 407.
76
My discussion here focuses on the image of God and humankind, but the concept can
(and I believe should) be extended to the natural world as well. See Sallie McFague, Life
Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001),
p. 199.
201
(and grace, the theologian will want to add) with the discourse of cre-
ation in the image of God. The believer performs her faithful religious
identity while also discursively negotiating her various subject positions
as, for example, a woman, a Caucasian, a mother, a factory worker, an
immigrant, an artist, and so on. The discourse of religious faithfulness
to the imago dei would need to intersect with discourses of sex, race,
family, labor, national origin, and vocational calling so that the believer
could endeavor to embody godliness in all aspects of her life. Referring
back to my claim in the previous section that overcoming sin requires
the proper breadth of discursive relationality, we can say that the dis-
course of the imago dei functions as an important criterion to inform
what is godly performativity in every discursive relation. It enables the
believer to choose well (religiously) as she widens her discursive
performativity.77
How can this reformulation of the imago dei assist feminist theolo-
gians wishing to avoid heterosexist entailments in their appeals to
womens creation in Gods image? Viewing selfhood performatively de-
constructs the notion that to be created in the image of God means
having been given some putatively natural femaleness (or maleness);
rather, femaleness is seen as a performed effect of discourse and not
the cause of natural desire for its opposite (maleness). If one can break
the assumed causal connection between sex and desire (sexuality),
then one can affirm sexuality as divinely blessed without any entail-
ments of normative, privileged heterosexuality. In the poststructuralist
reformulation of the imago dei that I have just outlined, human sexu-
ality can be affirmed as part of what it means to be created in the
image of Godthat is, we as sexual beings have the possibility of godly
performativity in the way we negotiate our gender, sex, and sexuality.
Some individuals religious performative identity will include the plea-
sures and constraints of heterosexual maleness and femaleness (among
other conventions), but a performative theory of the imago dei does
not entail notions of naturalized, normative heterosexuality. Recon-
structing the imago dei performatively thus decenters heterosexuality
and allows the theologian to theorize that many sexualities have the
possibility for performatively reflecting the image of God.
Objections to my proposal may come from a number of Christian
theological circles. Some might argue that binarily sexed bodies are an
order of creation and that my reformulation of the imago dei and sex-
77
For Christians, the image of God will necessarily be linked to some discourse of the imago
christi and the imago trinitatiseven if ones Christology and doctrine of the trinity are very
open and revisionary (see Douglas, pp. 112 ff.; Hilkert, pp. 199 ff.).
202
uality in terms of a theory of discursive performativity, therefore,

threatens this belief.78 In other words, the theory might be seen as
freighting an agenda that is not compatible with certain Christian faith
claims. Here I would draw a distinction between the theory of perfor-
mativity, which can be used to analyze the discursive formations of any
religious belief or practice, and my own use of performativity theory
to reformulate the notion of the imago dei in order to deconstruct a
heterosexist binarism in feminist theology. The theory of performativ-
ity is a neutral tool of analysis and, in principle, could be used by any
theologian to analyze Christian practices discursively. However, I want
to make the additional argument to feminists that if combating het-
erosexist entailments is a goal, then one would be well served by view-
ing the imago dei and sexuality performatively. Doing so avoids implying
that the imago dei is connected to natural sex differentiation with its
entailments of compulsory heterosexuality. My use of the theory is
therefore paired with a stance opposing any interpretation of the bib-
lical account of creation in Gods image as God-ordained binary sex.
iv. rereading the hagar-sarah story

In this section I bring together my poststructuralist discussions of self-
hood, sin, and creation in the image of God in order to apply them
to the story of Sarah and Hagar in the Book of Genesis. There has
been a burgeoning interest in new hermeneutical approaches to pas-
sages about women in the biblical text. The Hagar-Sarah accounts in
particular have been the focus of sometimes conflicting interpretations
by women scholars from a wide spectrum of nationalities, religious
backgrounds, races, theological orientations, and religious studies ap-
proaches.79 In my reading of the story, I intend to show how my ap-
78
This position is quite pervasive in certain theological circles. A recent versions of it is
given by Miroslav Volf, who argues that the fixed dimorphism of sexed bodies is the lesson
taught by the Genesis creation stories and contributes toward a nonsexist notion of gender
fluidity. While he may make some persuasive points to address sexism in the traditions
interpretations of gender roles, he is notably silent on the issue of heterosexism. I contend
that his sex binarism model in fact undergirds a discourse of compulsory heterosexuality and
hence heterosexismwhich is at odds with his overall theme of promoting justice and embrace
of the other (see Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity,
Otherness, and Reconciliation [Nashville: Abingdon, 1996], esp. chap. 4).
79
Amy-Jill Levine, Settling at Beer-lahai-roi, in Daughters of Abraham: Feminist Thought in
Judaism, Christianity and Islam, ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and John L. Esposito (Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 2001), pp. 1234; Dora R. Mbuwayesando, Childlessness and
Woman-to-Woman Relationships in Genesis and African Patriarchal Society: Sarah and Hagar
from a Zimbabwean Womans Perspective (Gen. 16:116; 21:821), Semeia 78 (1997): 2736;
Cheryl J. Sanders, Black Women in Biblical Perspective: Resistance, Affirmation, and Em-
203
proach to selfhood has a payoff for understanding sin in a situation of

oppression and moral complexity, how it requires the intervention of
postcolonial theory, and how both poststructuralist and postcolonial
theories have their limitations as well.
If we take the story as a literary whole (rather than from a historical
critical perspective), the identities of the two women may be inter-
preted poststructurally to show their discursive construction.80 Sarahs
and Hagars religious identities are variously constituted in relation to
the Abrahamic covenant that appoints Sarah as the mother of nations
(17:16), views on womens and mens reproductive capacities (18:11),
the politics of sexual encroachment from men other than ones hus-
band (13:1020; 20:118), female competition within a polygamous
family structure (16:46), slavery, motherhood within a patriarchal so-
ciety where womens principal social role is reproduction, national
identity (16:1, 3), forced surrogacy (16:14), and exile (21:14). I des-
ignate these as discursive practices (and not just factors or events in-
fluencing these womens lives) because doing so allows the reader to
see how Sarahs and Hagars identities are constituted and reconsti-
tuted in the process of negotiating various power/knowledge regimes
that today we would designate as religion, patriarchy, reproductive ex-
ploitation, and so forth. Within each discursive relation there is the
graced possibility of godly performativity; there is also the reality of
sinboth structural and individual. I will analyze the latter in terms
of the two modes of undue and underdeveloped cooperation discussed
above.
As Sarah and Hagar negotiate and renegotiate these various discur-
sive regimes, their performativity changes in relation to God and to
each other. The story portrays these changes narratively. At two differ-
ent points in Sarahs story, religious faithfulness means remaining sex-
powerment, in Living the Intersection: Womanism and Afrocentrism in Theology, ed. Cheryl J.
Sanders (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), esp. pp. 13138; Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness (see
n. 61 above); Danna Nolan Fewell and David M. Gunn, Keeping the Promise, in Gender,
Power, and Promise: The Subject of the Bibles First Story (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), pp. 3955;
Savina J. Teubal, Ancient Sisterhood: The Lost Traditions of Hagar and Sarah (Athens: Ohio Uni-
versity Press/Swallow Press, 1990); Jo Ann Hackett, Rehabilitating Hagar: Fragments of an
Epic Pattern, in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. Peggy L. Day (Minneapolis: Fortress,
1989), pp. 1227; Renita T. Weems, A Mistress, a Maid, and No Mercy, in Just a Sister Away:
A Womanist Vision of Womens Relationships in the Bible (San Diego, Calif.: Lura Media, 1988),
pp. 119; Phyllis Trible, Hagar: The Desolation of Rejection, in Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist
Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), pp. 935.
80
I am not attempting a poststructuralist reading of the text in the sense of Derridean
deconstructive criticism (see William A. Beardslee, Poststructuralist Criticism, in To Each Its
Own Meaning: An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Their Application, ed. Steven L. McKenzie
and Stephen R. Haynes [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1999], pp. 25367). Mine
is a more informal close literary reading of the text, using poststructuralism to analyze specific
aspects (agency and sin) related to two characters in the story.
204
ually pure, so that she will carry only Abrahams seed (13:1020; 20:
118). At another point, religious faithfulness means she must strive
to provide her husband with children in accordance with Gods plan
that Abrahams offspring will outnumber the stars (15:5). The way in
which Sarah tries to perform this religious identity via Hagars surro-
gacy has been seriously questioned by womanist and other feminist
readers of the story.81 There are shifts in Hagars identity performance
as well. Hagar is a voiceless victim in relation to Sarahs burden of
childlessness and is called upon by God to submit to her mistress (16:
9). In another context, she is the namer and beholder of deity in the
wilderness (16:13). When fleeing with her son into the wilderness, Ha-
gar must adopt attitudes and behaviors of independence and survival
which constitute a different performativity. The changes Sarah and Ha-
gar experience are not indicative of playacting. The bodies of both
women are materially inscribed with the disciplinary mechanisms that
produce each ones identity.
It goes without saying that Sarah and Hagar are sinned against
structurally in ways that cry out for an insurrection of subjugated
knowledges. Some apparatuses of power make overt resistances diffi-
cult if not impossible; however, to the extent that Sarah and Hagar can
be seen as having agency, their behaviors and attitudes can be analyzed
in terms of undue and underdeveloped cooperation with various dis-
cursive regimes. Sarah sins against her neighbor, so to speak, in unduly
pursuing the pleasure of her performativity as mistress in Abrahams
household, which functions as a disciplinary power over Hagar, with
whom she dealt harshly (16:6). Sarah, in her narrow discursive re-
lationality, does not engage any insurrectional knowledges (e.g., sister-
hood within patriarchy or the injustice of indentured servitude), which
might have fostered in her some empathy for or solidarity with Hagar.
In relation to God, Sarah leaves underdeveloped her cooperation with
the discourse of divine promise that she will bear a son (18:12). She
does not widen her discursivity to embrace this promise in faith but,
instead, remains docilely focused on a discourse of barrenness. Her
undue cooperation with that discourse contributes to her lack of open-
ness to the mysterious ways God plans to activate the Abrahamic cov-
enant through her offspring.
After she bears Ishmael to Abraham (16:4), Hagar apparently sins
by undue cooperation with the patriarchal discourse of mothers of
firstborn sons as it relates to the Abrahamic covenant. By giving birth
81
See the texts by Sanders, Weems, Williams, and Trible in n. 79. Abrahams and Gods
roles are also variously examined by most of the scholars listed above; however, I will focus
on Sarah and Hagar.
205
to a son first, she, not Sarah, is the one manifesting the inauguration
of Gods covenantal promise to Abraham regarding his (patrilineal)
unlimited progeny (15:4, 5). She unduly cooperates with this discourse
and, and a result, she looks with contempt on her mistress (16:4).
Hagar is later given a divine promise that her own (presumably matri-
lineal) progeny will be numerous and that Ishmaels nation will be
greatindependent of the Abrahamic covenant (16:10; 21:18; cf. 21:
13). That divine discourse is the basis for a potentially powerful subject
position as God-namer and receiver of Gods promise. This is an iden-
tity that even Sarah and Abraham did not have the power to annul and
could have functioned as an insurrectional knowledge that might have
enabled Hagar to feel more secure about Gods providential care for
her despite the mistreatment she suffered. It seems, however, that Ha-
gar leaves underdeveloped her cooperation with this power/knowledge
because, in her brief time of relatively elevated status as mother to
Abrahams firstborn son, she seems to have succumbed to the temp-
tation to lord it over Sarah. It is not until she is cruelly cast out into
the desert with Ishmael that she launches into a courageous perfor-
mativity of this subject position.
A possible complication of my poststructuralist account of sin in this
story is a debilitating relativism. If identity performances are fluid and
multiple, sin as the distortion of our performativity of godliness would
be multiply defined as well. This would seem to undercut what a fem-
inist doctrine of sin has traditionally wanted to dothat is, specifically
name and protest the sinful acts and structures that distort the image
of God in women, men and throughout creation. One would seem to
need a more stable notion of evil and good than is possible from a
postmodern perspective in order to be able to assess degrees of cul-
pability in sinful acts. Surely it would be ethically inadequate to suggest
that Sarah and Hagar are equally responsible or culpableespecially
in the effects of their sin toward their neighbor. Some womanist schol-
ars in particular have strongly argued against such an interpretation
of the story (and rightly so). At this point, we are impelled to look
further than the notion of discursive identity performance, in order to
be able to highlight differences in the material effects of sinful distor-
tions of the imago dei.
Spivaks notion of strategic essentialization (introduced earlier in re-
lation to social sin) can be particularly helpful for this task. Borrowing
Spivaks idea, we can say that when oppressed women concretize images
of God and godliness for their particular religio-political purposes, these
can at times be seen as strategic essentializations of religious agency in
206
light of some overwhelming experience of oppression.82 Womanist read-

ings of Hagar as an oppressed slave can be seen as strategically essen-
tialized interpretations of Hagars identity, meant to bolster African
American womens struggle to survive in todays racist society. Similarly,
we can see strategic essentialization at work when womanists name
Sarahs behavior as sinful oppression, using the story allegorically to
draw connections to white slave mistresses who abused their female
slaves in American history and holding up Hagar today as an inspira-
tion to black mothers living in a society that would deny them access to
power and material provisions for their children.83 By essentializing the
status of Hagar rhetorically as more victimized than victimizer, one can
make ethical judgments about Sarahs actions so that the gravity of
Sarahs participation in the interpersonal and structural sinful oppres-
sion of Hagar comes clearly to the fore. One can also highlight the
extent to which Hagars identity performances carry less hegemonic
power than Sarahs. Yet, by seeing Hagars essentialized victim status as
provisional and strategic, one can still acknowledge Hagars agency and
hence her performative sin in relation to God and Sarah.84 If Hagars
allegorical positionality as oppressed black slave woman were to be
seized upon as a definitive identity politics, that would surely result in
an unproductive, statically essentialized view in the long run.
Combining the poststructuralist notion of discursive identity perfor-
mance and the postcolonial notion of strategic essentialization helps
to conceptualize the shifting positionalities of Sarah and Hagar, the
nature of their sin, and the degree of moral culpability of each ones
actions. One can affirm, poststructurally speaking, that identity is pro-
duced and performed in shifting discursive relations. However, in or-
der to draw ethical distinctions between the actions of individuals with
differing positions of power, the feminist theologian may be obliged
to freeze-frame the identity performance, so to speak, in a strategically
and provisionally essentializing way and name the specific sin for a
specific ethico-political purpose. In a situation of both injustice and
moral ambiguity such as that depicted in the Sarah and Hagar story,
this approach to conceptualizing sin seems a particularly apt way of
naming evil and making ethical assessments of human behavior.
I have argued via a reading of the Hagar-Sarah story that this ap-
82
See Serene Joness (see n. 65 above) use of strategic essentialization in her discussion of
how diverse women cope with the sense of fragmentation that results from various societal
and interpersonal oppressions (pp. 42 ff.).
83
Sanders, pp. 132, 137.
84
Renita Weems, though largely sympathetic to Hagar, directs a critical eye to Hagars
passivity and slave mentality (pp. 12 ff.).
207
proach shows promise for conceptualizing womens sin in ways that

move beyond restrictive oppressor/oppressed essentialisms; however,
essentialization is only one of the insufficiencies in feminist theology
mentioned at the outset of this essaythe other being the problem of
privileged heterosexuality. The biblical Sarah-Hagar story, not surpris-
ingly, plays out in a context of normative heterosexual reproductivity.
My feminist poststructuralist approach to construing sin in that story
did not destabilize that regime, nor was I able to essentialize strategi-
cally any sexual identity outside of compulsory heterosexuality. Here
we see a limitation of poststructuralist and postcolonial theories, which
suggests that one would need a hermeneutical strategy specifically ori-
ented to reading past the storys heteronormativitya strategy often
referred to as queering a text.85 This hermeneutic destabilizes het-
erosexuality not by finding historical evidence of nonheterosexual
identities (often impossible to do, especially in ancient texts) but by
reading homo- and/or gyno-eroticism into a text like the Bible, thereby
unsettling contemporary assumptions of what is sexually normative and
what is deviant (a dictionary definition of queer). Queering the
Bible has been classified as a type of reader-response criticism86 and is
related to a feminist hermeneutic of suspicion and retrieval.87 The Bi-
ble, from a queer perspective is read sometimes as a text of terror
and other times as a friendly text with stories about characters that
can function as queer ancestors of faith.88 It is beyond the purview
of this essay to queer the Hagar-Sarah story; however, given that I have
argued so adamantly against the implicit heterosexual privilege in the
feminist appeals to the Genesis accounts of creation, I would be remiss
not to at least indicate that a queer hermeneutics would entertain the
85
The hermeneutical approach of queering a text emerges out of queer theory. Jagose (see
n. 44 above) explains that this term early on was, at best, slang for homosexual, at worst, a
term of homophobic abuse. In recent years queer has come to be used differently, sometimes
as an umbrella term for a coalition of culturally marginal sexual self-identifications and at
other times to describe a . . . theoretical model which has developed out of more traditional
lesbian and gay studies (p. 1). Queering has been called a heuristic tool devised by scholars
like Eve Sedgwick and Judith Butler . . . to understand the function of the (homo)social
and (homo)erotic . . . in opaque, resilient texts and to foster a new kind of reading for
the questions of friendships, passion, and sex (Francesca Sautman and Pamela Sheingorn,
Charting the Field, in Same Sex Love and Desire Among Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Francesca
Sautman and Pamela Sheingorn [New York: Palgrave, 2001], p. 18).
86
Elizabeth Stuart, Camping about the Canon: Humor as a Hermeneutical Tool in Queer
Readings of Biblical Text, in Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible, ed. Robert E.
Goss and Mona West (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 2000), pp. 29 ff.
87
Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone: The Challenge of Feminist Biblical Interpretation
(Boston: Beacon, 1995), pp. 15 ff.
88
Robert E. Goss and Mona West, Introduction, in Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading of
the Bible (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 2000), pp. 45. The phrase text of terror refers to Tribles
book by that name (see n. 79 above).
208
(insurrectional) possibility that Sarah and Hagarlike Ruth and Na-

omi, for examplecould function as queer ancestors of faith.89
This proposal toward a feminist postmodern and postcolonial inter-
pretation of sin hopefully marks an advance over previous proposals
by virtue of the way it avoids (1) an oppressor/oppressed essentialism
in discussions of structural sin and (2) the heterosexual privilege en-
tailed in uncritical appeals to a natural sex binarism. However, I also
believe this proposal can reinforce the important agendas I mentioned
at the outset of this essay that have for years been woven throughout
womanist, white feminist, ecofeminist, lesbian, and other women-ori-
ented writings on sin. Those agendas include, for one, protecting and
strengthening the ability to appeal to the principle of women created
in the image of God as found in the Genesis 1 text. This is a motivating
factor especially for those feminists who situate sin in terms of a doc-
trine of creation. I strongly endorse this agenda and believe my post-
structuralist construal of the imago dei in terms of discursive identity
performativity protects this principle for feminist theological use. Free-
ing this Genesis-based notion from any assumption about a natural
male/female binarism will disassociate the appeal to creation in the
image of God from the unwanted entailment of a privileged compul-
sory heterosexuality.
A second longstanding feminist theological agenda I support is heal-
ing what has historically separated men and women. This agenda is
vitally important in patriarchal and demonarchal society, and I believe
that the most successful efforts in this area (both on interpersonal and
societal levels) are compatible with my theoretical position. Men and
women need to find new and better ways of relating (e.g., for many
men, less androcentrically defiant, and for many women, less weakly
self-effacing, as Kierkegaardian feminists might say). As men and
women learn to transcend these traditional ways of being, they can see
that healthy, productive gender roles are not biologically determined
or God given; rather these roles must be creatively negotiated and re-
negotiated. A poststructuralist approach to gender, sex, and sexuality
provides tools to expose how constructed we are and, thus, how open
we should be to a diversity of identity performances.
89
See Celena M. Duncan, The Book of Ruth: On Boundaries, Love, and Truth, in Take
Back the Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible, ed. Robert E. Goss and Mona West (Cleveland:
Pilgrim, 2000). For related discussions of queer approaches to the Christian tradition, see
Robert E. Goss, Queering Christ: Beyond Jesus Acted Up (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 2002); Mary Mc-
Clintock Fulkerson, GenderBeing It or Doing It: The Church, Homosexuality, and the
Politics of Identity, in Que(e)rying Religion: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gary David Comstock and
Susan E. Henking (New York: Continuum, 1997); Nancy Wilson, Our Tribe: Queer Folks, God,
Jesus and the Bible (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995).
209
Valorizing womens ways of being and attending to womens expe-

riences of sin is a widespread feminist agenda (reflected, for example,
in the writings of Saiving and Plaskow). There is much dispute among
feminists about what constitutes valuable womens ways of being.
Ruether, at times, criticizes traditional feminine ways of dressing and
forms of domestic labor.90 However, given that many women do find
pleasure in performing certain gender conventionsespecially ones
associated historically with femininity (in some cultural settings this
might include domesticity, nurturing, and beauty regimens)then it
will be important not to denigrate the empowerment or pleasure
women feel by cooperating with these normalizing disciplinesas long
as one is also critically aware of the effects of undue cooperation. I
believe it is possible to distinguish between performing gender con-
ventions in empowering ways on the one hand and on the other being
oppressed by those conventions or sinning by undue cooperation
with them. Some liberationist or radical separatist feminists tend to see
conformity only as oppressed complicity. Poststructuralist analysis un-
covers both complicity and (sometimes parodying) resistance in osten-
sibly conventional behaviors and attitudes. I argue that by exposing the
ways in which feminine roles are discursively constructed, one can
decenter any binarisms or essentializations and yet preserve the choices
many women make to signify their lives (in some contexts and periods
of time) in those traditional ways.
A fourth agenda can be found in feminist discussions of sin focusing
on the structural oppressions under which marginalized women suffer.
These discussions attempt to correct the often apolitical and individ-
ualizing tendencies in many doctrines of sin. I strongly support the
theological and ethical motivations behind these feminists rejection
of a subjectivized view of sin that ignores so-called social sin or rele-
gates it to a ripple-effect of personal, individual sin. In a poststructur-
alist framework, there is no private self untouched by power; there are
only subjects negotiating societal and interpersonal disciplinary struc-
tures. By emphasizing how the subject is constructed in relation to
power regimes, the dichotomy of the personal/subjective versus the
societal/objective is avoided. Furthermore, a postcolonial invocation
of strategic essentialization can mobilize oppressed subaltern or mi-
nority communities to resist particular situations of structural oppres-
sion, without entailing any static oppressor/oppressed essentialisms.
Given that a more global and multicultural perspective is spreading
throughout many theological circles, our sense both of the enormity
90
Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk (see n. 24 above), pp. 17677.
210
of human and ecological suffering worldwide as well as the complexity

of assessing moral culpability and accountability for this collective sin
will only increase. Correlatively, as philosophers continue to challenge
the ways in which the modernist paradigm of the phallic and logocen-
tric I no longer serves contemporary ways of thinking, theologians
will increasingly need to reconstrue doctrines which have been too
long explicated within that paradigm. In part because of their focus
for several decades on gendered sin, feminist theologians have acted
as midwives for creative and timely perspectives on society, the created
world and human agency. I situate this essay in an appreciative and
critical position vis-a-vis that now decades-long feminist tradition.
211

Toward A Feminist Postmodern and Postcolonial Interpretation of Sin

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Toward A Feminist Postmodern and Postcolonial Interpretation of Sin

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Toward a Feminist Postmodern and

Postcolonial Interpretation of Sin*

hopefully an understanding of selfhood that enables us to name evil,

i. deconstructing static essentialisms in discussions of social

affecting some of these discussions is a tendency to imply more or less

triarchy, it leaves too much out.13 For example, demonarchy does

stereotypes, in which she combines a Foucauldian analysis of power

poststructuralism to decenter the label oppressed is not focused on

lessly repeated play of dominations but also the breakthrough of re-

also be presented in their discursive complexity. Spivak suggests that

proach to theorizing the self who sinswithout, however, falling into

ii. deconstructing the sex binarism in feminist theological

of faith): the person caught in the despair of weakness needs masculine

we inevitably are . . . is male or female.43 I would argue that however

coherent sexuality, an unnatural inversion of a putatively natural het-

how selves are constituted through relations with normalizing discur-

that the cooperation cannot be simply explained away as unavoidable

derdevelopment be labeled sin? Wouldnt resistance to the dominant

effects of maternal authority discourses as they are disseminated by

A second way my approach differs from a Kierkegaardian model is

iii. deconstructing the binarism of sexed creation in gods

soul.68 On the whole, feminist views of creation promote a nonhier-

bodies, feminist theologians argue that sexuality lies at the heart of

regime of normative reproductive heterosexuality from which follows

uality in terms of a theory of discursive performativity, therefore,

iv. rereading the hagar-sarah story

proach to selfhood has a payoff for understanding sin in a situation of

light of some overwhelming experience of oppression.82 Womanist read-

proach shows promise for conceptualizing womens sin in ways that

(insurrectional) possibility that Sarah and Hagarlike Ruth and Na-

Valorizing womens ways of being and attending to womens expe-

of human and ecological suffering worldwide as well as the complexity

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