Eros and the Argonauts (2017) Constance M. Furey Theology and Sexuality, 22 (3), 1-10
Taking its cue from Lynne Huffer’s paper on the politics of eros, this paper focuses on the relational dynamics such a politics might entail. The paper thereby suggests that the project of reimagining politics should be linked to a hermeneutics of intersubjectivity by (1) assessing Maggie Nelson’s Argonauts as exemplary in this regard; and (2) comparing what Nelson’s account of the erotics of parenting and partnering might contribute to theoretical discussions of intersubjectivity in works by Judith Butler and Amy Hollywood.
Erring Together: Renaissance Humanists in Certainty’s Shadow* (2015) Constance M. Furey The Journal of Religion, 95 (4), 454-476
Discernment as Critique in Teresa of Avila and Erasmus of Rotterdam (2014) Constance M. Furey Exemplaria, 26 (2-3), 254-272
This essay interprets recent interest in "surface reading" or "just reading" as one manifestation of widespread interest in finding alternatives to critique. Noting that critique and its alternatives alike have been notably secular in their self-understanding as in their sources, this essay turns instead to premodern religious sources and argues that their explicit concern with questions of judgment and interpretation provides unexpected resources for reviving critique. In brief, I argue that the process of discernment on display in mystic texts by Teresa of Avila and humanist writings by Erasmus of Rotterdam offer a more holistic vision of critique's project.
Body, Society, and Subjectivity in Religious Studies (2012) Constance M. Furey Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 80 (1), 7-33
Attention to bodies has transformed the study of religion in the past thirty years, aiding the effort to overcome the discipline's Protestant biases by shifting interest from beliefs to practices. And yet much of this work has unwittingly perpetuated an individualist notion of the religious subject. Although religionists are now well aware that bodies cannot be studied apart from the social forces that shape them, all too often the religious subject stands alone in a crowd, participating in communal rituals, subject to religious authorities and disciplinary practices, but oddly detached from intimate relationships. In this article, I first argue that the turn to the body was motivated by what it appeared to reject: theoretical questions about subjectivity. I then seek to challenge prevailing trends by arguing that these same theoretical insights should now prod us to attend to the import of intimacy and personal relationships.