21/05/2024 14:15 - 16:30

HALL: LA PIRA - ROOM 5

Proponent: Jacobs C., Larner L.

Chair: Kahl B.

Speaker: Jacobs C., Kahl B., Larner L., Mohme D., Ritter K., Thomaier S.

How does theology include (queer-)materialist perspectives into its debates on liberation? This question is to be raised and interrogated in light of the "material turn" that has stimulated a paradigm shift within various social sciences. In theology and religious studies, the hard lines of conventional mind/matter and spirit/body dichotomies are getting "queered" towards a new recognition of materiality as essential part of religious experience. With this aim the interdisciplinary, open panel seeks to encourage (queer-)materialist research within the broader framework of liberation and religion. It thereby seeks to extend the (theological) notion of liberation by asking for its material facets: What are the roles of bodies and matter in the struggle for liberation? How can religious reflections on liberation incorporate the diversity of bodily experiences? How do they approach everyday realities in their concrete materiality, such as questions of reproduction, gender transitioning, care work and labour? What are the challenges a materialist biblical hermeneutics is facing? What do theories of embodiment contribute to the study of religion?