Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals (Selected) by Brandy Daniels
Religions, 2019
On February 8, 1971, Michel Foucault announced the formation of Le Groupe d'information sur les p... more On February 8, 1971, Michel Foucault announced the formation of Le Groupe d'information sur les prisons (the Prisons Information Group [GIP]), a group of activist intellectuals who worked to amplify the voices of those with firsthand knowledge of the prison-reflected in their motto, "Speech to the detainees!" In highlighting and circulating subjugated knowledges from within prisons, the GIP not only pursued political and material interventions, but also called for epistemological and methodological shift within intellectual labor about prisons. This essay turns to the work of the GIP, and philosophical reflection on that work, as a resource for contemporary theological methodology. Counter to the optimistic and positive trend in theological turn to practices, this essay draws on Foucault's work with and reflection on the GIP to argue for a negative theology of practice, which centers on practice (those concrete narratives found in any lived theological context) while, at the same time, sustaining its place in the critical moment of self-reflection; this means theology exposes itself to the risk of reimagining, in the double-movement of self-critique and other-reponse, what theology is. In order to harness and tap into its own moral, abolitionist imagination, this essay argues that theology must risk (paradoxically) and pursue (ideally) its own abolition-it must consider practices outside of its own theological and ecclesial frameworks as potential sources, and it must attend closely, critically, and continually to the ways that Christian practices, and accounts of them, perpetuate and produce harm.
Political Theology, 2018
This essay argues that queer theory’s ongoing reflection about its own disciplinary identity yiel... more This essay argues that queer theory’s ongoing reflection about its own disciplinary identity yields insights that could benefit contemporary political theology. Exploring how internal discussions and debates on the queerness of queer theory can serve as an instructive analogy for similar conversations about the “theologicalness” of political theology, this essay proposes two potential insights that can be gleaned. First, political theology should continue to draw on and do theology, but it should not worry about venturing outside the bounds of what is presumed to be the theological. Theological reflection develops from, and also engenders, communicative and critical expressions, which are deeply important theological modes of political theology, central to its identity even as they appear at times to broaden or stray from it. Second, political theology should look more to politics, broadly understood as the various ways of ordering human life and the utilization and manifestation of power in that structuring, for the theology it offers. In these ways and more, this essay concludes, political theology, like queer theory, is both theory and praxis, a body of knowledge and way of life.
Theology & Sexuality, 2017
This essay critically examines Stanley Hauerwas’ ecclesial-based virtue ethics, arguing that his ... more This essay critically examines Stanley Hauerwas’ ecclesial-based virtue ethics, arguing that his account of formation risks foreclosing differences that exist within Christian community. Placing Hauerwas’s virtue ethical framework in conversation with queer theoretical work on temporality, turning to Elizabeth Freeman’s notion of chrononormativity and José Esteban Munoz’s critique of straight time, and with Kathryn Tanner’s theological work on culture, this essay demonstrates how Hauerwas’ account narrowly assumes what community and character does and should look like, and in doing so relies upon and reproduces a logic that undermines and ultimately oppresses difference—through assimilation, normalization, and exclusion. This essay also explores constructive resources queer temporality might offer for a virtue ethical framework that avoids difference-foreclosing normalization. Placing Muñoz in conversation with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, this essay proposes an apophatic anti-telos of erotic encounter that shifts focus from a prescriptive telos seeking success and stability to a horizon of eros and encounter.
Feminist Theology , 2016
This essay explores the relationship between nature and grace and the theological impact of this ... more This essay explores the relationship between nature and grace and the theological impact of this relationship on feminist anthropological debates. Engaging this debate through an examination and critique of Serene Jones’ ‘eschatological essentialism’, this essay suggests that Jones mistakenly characterizes constructivism, and thus turns too quickly to an essentialist paradigm without considering its risks. Using Judith Butler and Karl Barth, this essay proposes an account of identity that the author calls a ‘Christological constructivism’. Suggesting that the person and work of Christ instantiates a grace that disrupts nature, Daniels argues for an account of identity as ‘more-than’, suggesting that this anthropology engenders healing for women, and men, within communities religious and otherwise.
Theology & Sexuality, 2014
Ekstasis (ecstasy) is central to Eastern Orthodox theology, an encounter that sets the self on th... more Ekstasis (ecstasy) is central to Eastern Orthodox theology, an encounter that sets the self on the way towards knowledge of and union with God. Ekstasis is fundamentally apophatic — achieved through the eschewal of cognitive knowledge, and experiential — precipitated by practices that foster self- renunciation and transcendence. This article examines how this notion of ecstasy, as narrated in the Orthodox theology of Staniloae and Lossky, can aid, and be aided by, queer theoretical claims regarding sex. Through examining Lacan’s notion of jouissance and Bersani’s utilization of it, as well as Williams’s analysis of sex as ‘‘the body’s grace,’’ this article explores how sex, particularly orgasm, can function as a spiritual resource, as a site of and practice towards ecstasy. This article concludes with a brief examination of the ethical implications of this frame.
Theology & Sexuality, 2012
This article offers a critique of contemporary Christianity’s emphasis on family and gestures tow... more This article offers a critique of contemporary Christianity’s emphasis on family and gestures towards possible alternative visions. Juxtaposing early Christian narratives of kinship with Judith Butler’s analysis of the story of Antigone, this article argues that the sacrament of baptism enables and supports re-envisioning kinship in a ecclesiological, as opposed to reproductive, framework. This essay suggests that an ecclesiological and a poststructuralist account of kinship are mutually generative, with attendant ethical and political implications.
Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 2013
Chapters in Edited Volumes (Selected) by Brandy Daniels
Sexual Disorientations: Queer Temporalities, Affects, Theologies, 2017
Embodied Religion (Handbook on the Study of Religion), 2016
Today, many of us hear the word queer and don't bat an eyelash. This is not the case for everyone... more Today, many of us hear the word queer and don't bat an eyelash. This is not the case for everyone, of course, but chances are that if you are of the millennial generation or in college in the United States, queer is common parlance. You may have friends who identify as queer-perhaps you identify as queer-or you've heard the term in your intro to sociology or literary studies course (or even had a course in queer theory). For many, the only eyelashes seen batting at queer are those worn by the drag queens during the show at the local gay bar on Friday nights.
Ontology and Ethics: Bonhoeffer and Contemporary Scholarship, 2013
In his lecture series, Society Must Be Defended, Michel Foucault provides one of the clearest ar... more In his lecture series, Society Must Be Defended, Michel Foucault provides one of the clearest articulations of his groundbreaking theorizations of power, tracing the shifts from sovereign power to disciplinary power, and finally to biopower, that is, the "power of regularization;" of "making live and letting die:" In these lectures in particular, he explicates specific technologies, or mechanisms, of biopower. Racism, he suggests, functions as the basic mechanism of biopower, operating through and as the construction of categories of difference, whether ethnic, social, linguistic, or otherwise-a "way of separating out the groups that exist in a population." Nazi Germany functions for Foucault as a paradigmatic instance of these racial operations of biopower. Foucault's analysis of racism is especially salient when read in conjunction with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, much of whose theological scholarship was produced during the ascendancy and reign of the Third Reich. Biographers like Eberhard Bethge and Ferdinand Schilingensiepen have indicated how Bonhoeffer's opposition to Nazism shaped his theology, and scholars such as Charles Marsh and Clifford Green have done insightful work articulating the broad contours of Bonhoeffer's concept of social life. This essay argues that Foucault provides one helpful lens through which we may see why Bonhoeffer's experience in a Nazi context gave rise to christological social concepts that continue to prove so valuable for addressing concrete social problems. Foucault shows us how the thinking and discourse involved in Nazism as well as many more modern malformations of social power as biopower is "racial" at its core. Thus, in responding to the way elements of German thought involved in Nazi ascendancy performed the inscription of this power, Bonhoeffer forms a theological conception of community that presciently responds to racializing mechanisms more broadly. Specifically then, my argument is that Bonhoeffer's narration of Christ's mediation of our knowledge of the Other provides an alternative epistemological hermeneutic and correlative ethical vision that overcomes racialization, and thus biopower, at its core.
Essays/Public Scholarship (Selected) by Brandy Daniels
Religion and Culture Forum, 2017
The third post in our October issue of the Forum comes from Brandy Daniels (University of Virgini... more The third post in our October issue of the Forum comes from Brandy Daniels (University of Virginia), a religious leader and scholar who participated alongside other clergy and religious leaders in the Charlottesville counter-protests. In this essay, Daniels considers her own experience and the implications of #Charlottesville for her scholarship in particular as well as the study of religion more broadly. For our October roundtable, we have invited several scholars of religion to reflect on the recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia, recognizing #Charlottesville as a moment of national reckoning with white supremacy and the manifold forms of racism operating in American culture and politics, including both those which are explicit as well as subtle-but-no-less-sinister forms. Contributors to the roundtable will offer analyses of the relationship of religion to race and white supremacy, and they will think about the potential contributions of scholarship in religion for helping shape broader discourses about race in the US.
Religious Studies News, 2015
The Spire: Vanderbilt Divinity School magazine , 2013
The Other Journal, 2012
When thinking about religious communities and progressive social justice work, many of us assume ... more When thinking about religious communities and progressive social justice work, many of us assume an oppositional relationship—perhaps we think of the church groups and activist organizations who protest gay pride parades or canvass neighborhoods to repeal Obamacare, or conversely, perhaps we think of activist organizations who blame Christianity for limitations on women’s reproductive rights and who assume that Christianity is synonymous with conservatism. But today, organizations like Sojourners, Progressive Christians Uniting, and Muslims for Progressive Values are challenging these perceived dichotomies. In her book All You That Labor,1 Melissa Snarr not only makes a case for the ways religious communities should have a voice in social justice work but also depicts how such communities are already making a difference, particularly in the living wage movement. In this interview, Snarr shares from these insights and reflects theologically and ethically on the role of religious activism as a response to economic injustice.
Religion Dispatches, 2010
Selected Conference Papers by Brandy Daniels
An engagement with Nick Salvato's Obstruction (Duke University Press, 2016)
The AAR-SBL Women’s Caucus session on ‘Beyond Down and Dirty: From Good to Great Sex’ revisited t... more The AAR-SBL Women’s Caucus session on ‘Beyond Down and Dirty: From Good to Great Sex’ revisited the Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the World’s Religions project and book with the participation of two of its co-editors, Mary E. Hunt and Patricia Beattie Jung, and co-author and collaborator, Wanda Defeilt. Scholar colleagues, Brandy Daniels, Fitri Junoes, and Alicia Besa Panganiban, presented intriguing papers on feminist religious and ethical reflections on what constitutes great sex as they examined the issues discussed by feminist scholars and activist authors of Good Sex.
Moreover, the session was an exhilarating dialogue of international, interreligious, and intergenerational perspectives on what women think is great sex. It was an exciting starting ground for intergenerational discussion with senior scholars, associated with the Good Sex book, providing generous, constructive, and well-considered responses to the presentations of their colleagues. The diverse international audience of masters, doctoral and senior scholars – male and female – was included in the complex, fun, and challenging discussion of sex. Amidst various issues raised, there was a consensus that discussions on great sex must address issues of safety, justice, and pleasure. Overall the session was a success as the platform for the presentations modelled a feminist method that was intentionally designed to give more time for discussion, not only among panelists but also with the audience.
As mass incarceration and the racial and socio-economic injustices that fuel it continues to plag... more As mass incarceration and the racial and socio-economic injustices that fuel it continues to plague the U.S., contemporary religious scholarship has become increasingly aware of and responsive to these problems through a variety of theological analyses and ethical calls for change. Yet many of these religious responses seem to fall short, myopic in their analyses of what has created and sustained the prison industrial complex and limited in their subsequent calls for reform. Drawing upon the work of Richard Osmer and Juan Luis Segundo, this paper argues that practical theology offers a useful corrective theo-ethical lens, their methodological frames simultaneously engendering more precise and thorough analysis as well as more imaginative and liberative responses. Specifically, this paper argues that practical theology calls for a shift in theo-ethical discourse and action from prison reform to that of prison abolition.
I am incredibly honored to be a part of this panel, and want to thank the organizers for, well, o... more I am incredibly honored to be a part of this panel, and want to thank the organizers for, well, organizing it. I was first introduced to Huffer's work in the spring of 2012, my second semester at Vanderbilt in a course on "Queer Theory and Religion." Despite my deep-what my friends might call obsessive-love of Foucault (or, as I had assumed at the time, because of it), I was not eager to read Mad for Foucault; "madness"/mental health was not one of my interests (or so I thought), and I was bothered that we were reading a text focused on Foucault's early work-on a topic tangential to queer theory (clearly I hadn't read, or put faith in, the subtitle)-rather then tending to the content of his later lectures, which was clearly more relevant and interesting.
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Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals (Selected) by Brandy Daniels
Chapters in Edited Volumes (Selected) by Brandy Daniels
Essays/Public Scholarship (Selected) by Brandy Daniels
Selected Conference Papers by Brandy Daniels
Moreover, the session was an exhilarating dialogue of international, interreligious, and intergenerational perspectives on what women think is great sex. It was an exciting starting ground for intergenerational discussion with senior scholars, associated with the Good Sex book, providing generous, constructive, and well-considered responses to the presentations of their colleagues. The diverse international audience of masters, doctoral and senior scholars – male and female – was included in the complex, fun, and challenging discussion of sex. Amidst various issues raised, there was a consensus that discussions on great sex must address issues of safety, justice, and pleasure. Overall the session was a success as the platform for the presentations modelled a feminist method that was intentionally designed to give more time for discussion, not only among panelists but also with the audience.
Moreover, the session was an exhilarating dialogue of international, interreligious, and intergenerational perspectives on what women think is great sex. It was an exciting starting ground for intergenerational discussion with senior scholars, associated with the Good Sex book, providing generous, constructive, and well-considered responses to the presentations of their colleagues. The diverse international audience of masters, doctoral and senior scholars – male and female – was included in the complex, fun, and challenging discussion of sex. Amidst various issues raised, there was a consensus that discussions on great sex must address issues of safety, justice, and pleasure. Overall the session was a success as the platform for the presentations modelled a feminist method that was intentionally designed to give more time for discussion, not only among panelists but also with the audience.