Reading, Rending, and Queering the Web of Story with the Lens of “Con-creation” and Process Theology
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Event Website
https://www.mythsoc.org/oms/oms-2024.htm
Start Date
2-17-2024 5:30 PM
End Date
2-17-2024 6:20 PM
Description
Recent scholarship has addressed the connected problems of Tolkien as “Author/Author(ity)” and the exclusivist readings of Tolkien’s work that follow this construction (Chunodkar, Emanuel, Reid). This “constructed Tolkien” seems to parallel common readings of his Legendarium’s own Creator God, Eru—understood as the monolithic “Author” of Ea. Yet “subcreation” within Tolkien’s narrative and extra-narrative works is routinely exhibited not as monolithic but rather as literally (and figuratively) multivocal, and hence inherently queer.
In this paper Cameron will propose that the Legendarium can be read through the lens of “con-creation” (the total choice-making activity of all rational beings) both internally as events in the Secondary World, and externally as both a text and a pseudohistory in the Primary World. This approach levels the playing field between all actors in—and readers of—“The Drama,” providing a queer (non-normative) approach to creativity (and interpretation of creativity) when compared to “orthodox” doctrines of creation. Nick will further argue that con-creation resonates with process theologies of creation, particularly Jacob J. Erickson’s Irreverent Theology and Catherine Keller’s creatio ex profundis. Both emphasize the participation of a multiplicity of creatures in divine creativity, shaking off a monolithic determination of creation.
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Reading, Rending, and Queering the Web of Story with the Lens of “Con-creation” and Process Theology
Recent scholarship has addressed the connected problems of Tolkien as “Author/Author(ity)” and the exclusivist readings of Tolkien’s work that follow this construction (Chunodkar, Emanuel, Reid). This “constructed Tolkien” seems to parallel common readings of his Legendarium’s own Creator God, Eru—understood as the monolithic “Author” of Ea. Yet “subcreation” within Tolkien’s narrative and extra-narrative works is routinely exhibited not as monolithic but rather as literally (and figuratively) multivocal, and hence inherently queer.
In this paper Cameron will propose that the Legendarium can be read through the lens of “con-creation” (the total choice-making activity of all rational beings) both internally as events in the Secondary World, and externally as both a text and a pseudohistory in the Primary World. This approach levels the playing field between all actors in—and readers of—“The Drama,” providing a queer (non-normative) approach to creativity (and interpretation of creativity) when compared to “orthodox” doctrines of creation. Nick will further argue that con-creation resonates with process theologies of creation, particularly Jacob J. Erickson’s Irreverent Theology and Catherine Keller’s creatio ex profundis. Both emphasize the participation of a multiplicity of creatures in divine creativity, shaking off a monolithic determination of creation.
