A Queer Reduction: Heteronormativity and the Limits of Contemporary Continental Philosophy of Religion

Drawing on recent developments in continental philosophy, this project stages a methodological confrontation between queer theory and the phenomenology of religion to reinvigorate the latter as a critical method for the study of religion capable of accommodating all forms of empirical difference. To that end, it provides a queer critique of contemporary continental philosophy of religion by diagnosing and interrogating the implicit heteronormativity of its main phenomenological accounts of love and embodiment as a question of method (focussing on Levinas, Marion, Henry, and Falque). It argues that, if these accounts fail to do justice to queer experiences in particular, this means that they are insufficiently methodologically rigorous as phenomenologies in general: heteronormativity belongs to the ‘natural attitude’ and thus requires reduction. Consequently, the supposed naiveté of phenomenological accounts is not inherent to the method, but the result of its undue limitation. To remedy this heteronormative limitation, the project proposes a ‘queer reduction’ as a further reduction to ‘queerness’ or the very experience of differing from the socially constructed norm. Yet, this applies equally to the religious as to the sexual or gender norm, suggesting that the queer critique of contemporary continental philosophy of religion can in this way contribute to the development of a (queer) phenomenology of religion as a critical method for the study of religion.