rebelion to the performance: seeking authenticity in all things

Several years ago I was a mentor for a Wesleyan institute called “Faith Passage.”  One of the students that I mentored during that year-long program is now a student at Dartmouth College.  We have cultivated/grown a friendship. 

What I have always appreciated in our relationship, now friendship, is how honesty and authenticity has been a virtue OR an important element.  When my now friend was a student in the program, we had discussions around politics, theology, and sought to be engaged in faith-related discussions.  My friend and I have journeyed with one another, and I have sought to partner my now friend in some of the “big” questions of life:  What does it mean to believe in God?  Is it possible to believe in God today?  And if so, who and what is God and how do we know?  I offered Existentialism as a narrative tool, theology as a practical framework, and feminism[s] as on-going tools of resistance.  We had longs discussions during this year-long program!  Our talks continued through the year and even now as my friend is a student at Dartmouth.

We have continued our correspondence and have partnered one another in the discussions of friendship and have sought mutuality and authenticity in all things.  One of the themes to our discussions has been the question of human rights, peace, war, politics, gender discrimination/gender practice, sex discrimination/sexual practice, and the like.  It seems as though I am living in the theories of feminisms and gender constructions as my friend is transitioning into what my friend terms as more of a trans-identity.  It is my hope that my friend and I will have an opportunity to engage critically in the creation of some essays which will privilege critical analysis and critical evaluation and yet essays that will also privilege as well as exist in between the academy’s critical theories and our own personal narratives.

I want to undo gender–that static and limited contruction that is ever more limiting.  As a feminist liberation theologian, perhaps the socio-analytic tools will be cross trans-disciplinary.  Judith Butler and Mary Hunt…what do you say Kris?