Panel: QUEER(ING) LIVING SYSTEMS: AN INTERFAITH DIALOGUE



991.5 - BACON'S WEDDING: IMAGINED FAMILY, ECOLOGY, AND REPRONORMATIVITY IN REDARGUTIO PHILOSOPHIARUM, 1608

AUTHORS:
Aruan A. (Villanova University Theology and Religious Studies Department ~ Villanova ~ United States of America)
Text:
This article revisits the unfinished 2008 scientific/ecological debate on Francis Bacon's wedding metaphor in Redargutio philosophiarum (1608). Unlike both historiographic salvagism (Brian Vickers) and feminist environmentalism (Carolyn Merchant, Katharine Park), I contextualize this metaphor within Bacon's more spiritual intent in the text, thus resisting the secularist reading of early modern thinkers. Shifting from "rape" imagery, I focus on the wedding/wedding (connubium) metaphor itself. With queer theories drawing from Michael Warner, Lee Edelman, and Katherine M. Franke, I argue that Bacon's invocation of cosmic wedding between Mind and Nature is a "repronormative" political theology, namely, a significant, almost mundane socio-political concept that functions as theology; but here, it is a political theology invested in the specific narrative that "our lives are somehow made more meaningful by being embedded in a narrative of generational succession" (Warner). Rather than making the Human-Nature relationship more egalitarian, Bacon assigns more burdened labor on Nature by ascribing her the identity of Wife, thus perpetuating inequality through a more inclusive, ethically front-loading metaphor. To establish my argument, I will (1) clarify Bacon's theological stances within the context of the English Reformation, (2) frame this wedding metaphor as political theology, (3) discuss the archives of late medieval Royal Marriage tradition, and (4) return to Redargutio and discuss the role of Nature in this marriage. In the conclusion, I caution contemporary Euro-Western environmentalists and ecological theologians of the malleability and liability of the popular Wife/Mother metaphor that often obscures the "capacity" with the "role" of reproduction.