Sex, Sin, and Our Selves. Anna Fisk

between women’s need for autonomous selfhood and feminist emphasis on connectedness and relationality. I then turn to psychoanalytic accounts of subjectivity as explanatory narratives of the conflicting human desires for separation and connection. Chapter 4 considers how the themes of sin and self-sacrifice in the Christian tradition have been radically critiqued in feminist theology, whilst arguing that feminism tends to privilege ideals above reality in its contention with issues of suffering. In chapter 5, I revisit the discussion of eros and loss of self taken up in chapter 3, via the interplay of sexuality and religious experience in ‘erotic asceticism.’ The final chapter brings together these theological fragments, looking to the sea for a metaphorical way of thinking about the divine that does not reinscribe idealized notions of purity and certainty.

1. IS, 2–3.

2. Rich, “When We Dead Awaken,” 91.

3. Rich, Poetry and Prose, 54.

4. Ostriker, Stealing the Language, 211.

5. Loades, Searching for Lost Coins.

6. See Christ, “Why Women Need the Goddess”; Jantzen, “Feminism and Flourishing”; McFague, Metaphorical Theology; Morley, “I Desire Her”; and Soskice, “Turning the Symbols,” for feminist theological thought on symbol and metaphor.

7. See for example Christ and Plaskow, Weaving the Visions.

8. Johnson, She Who Is, 12.

9. Chopp, Saving Work, 74–75.

10. For example Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, can be read as a systematic feminist theology.

11. See Sands, Escape from Paradise; Walton, Imagining Theology; and Walton, Literature, Theology and Feminism.

12. IS, 2.

13. Ibid., 3.

14. See Jasper, “Study of Literature and Theology”; Walton, Literature, Theology and Feminism; and the essays collected in Walton, Literature and Theology.

15. Sands, Escape From Paradise, 167.

      1

      Annunciation

      Autobiographical Fictions

      Writing the Self

      “The Waltz of the ‘As A’s”: Autobiography in Academic Writing

Feminist theology’s (not untroubled) faith in the authority of women’s experience is far from alone in feminist discourse in asserting that what we see depends on where we stand. A central aspect of academic feminist theory—be it in philosophy, sociology, political science, literary criticism, and so on—is the argument that abstract and universalized accounts of knowledge serve to obscure the perspective and interests of those of the dominant social classes. Early feminist theorists such as Carol Gilligan and Nancy Hartsock (who coined the term “standpoint epistemology”) claimed that women’s social circumstances entail that they see and know differently from men.1 This, in light of postmodern thought and the critiques of black and postcolonial criticism, led to an emphasis on the particular situation of the critic, researcher, or theorist. This is neatly summarized in the words of Margaretta Jolly: “[i]n today’s pluralist culture, individuals assert that knowledge is by definition conditioned by its context, embodied and relative to its speaker. For them, the job of an academic is not to argue until we arrive at some final objectivity, but to find ways of understanding and living with our differences.”2

Thus in the last three decades it has become standard, at least in certain academic discourses, for an author to open a piece of work with a statement of their own social location; for example “as a white, western, middle-class woman.” This convention, which Nancy Miller terms “the waltz of the ‘as a’s; the obligatory dance cards of representivity”3 does not always entail that the academic writer will continue throughout their work to discuss the ways in which their own circumstances have influenced its production. More often than not, it is a way of paying tribute to the “anxiety over speaking as and speaking for,”4 while avoiding full consideration of that very anxiety. Yet the academic culture of ‘as a ___’ has enabled the emergence of ‘personal criticism,’ in which the academic writer self-consciously reflects on their own experience.

Personal criticism—variously termed “engaged,” “autobiographical,” “confessional,” “testimonial,” “reflexive,” and so on—is a form that deliberately transgresses normative conventions of academic objectivity.5 It may highlight the process of the production of academic work, thus catching “intellectual authority . . . in the act of its own construction.”6 When scholarship is “self-conscious” about its own process, it points to “the fictional strategies inherent in all theory.”7 It is a move away from the academic culture of “books written by someone who, though appearing by name on the cover, endeavors with delight to argue for the unreality of his own existence.”8 In personal criticism the unique, embodied reality of the writer is not bracketed off, but given a central role in the text, with reference to their experiences, interests and desires. Personal criticism may use detailed or lengthy autobiographical material, but more significantly it involves “a certain intensity in the lending of oneself,” in the words of Mary Ann Caws.9 Anecdotes employed to illustrate a concept or argument are not necessarily personal in the same sense, even if drawn from real life experience, whereas personally engaged academic writing expresses a real sense of care towards the subject matter, saying ‘this is important to me, and here is why.’

      Autobiography in Feminist Theology

The use of the personal voice has not been as widespread in feminist theology as one might have expected, with its emphasis on ‘women’s experience’ often not going hand in hand with detailed autobiographical reflection. It is more common for feminist theologians to give a perfunctory statement of their social location—ethnicity, nationality, class, and so on—and perhaps give some mention of their experience within the church or university, or involvement in a particular political struggle. There are some exceptions to this generalization, for example Carol Christ has written from an increasingly personal standpoint—something she considers in the preface to the second edition of Diving Deep and Surfacing—and in Rebirth of