Cuir theology as political spirituality

Abstract

The article proposes understanding cuir theology as a political spirituality situated in Latin America, in critical dialogue with liberation theology and queer theory. It assumes that all theology encodes sexuality and power, and argues that displacing the locus theologicus toward excluded bodies, desires, and affects entails contesting cisheteronormative regimes that administer the lives of believers. The text develops a situated theological-conceptual reflection that articulates the liberationist intuition of theology as critical reflection on praxis, the indecent theology of Marcella Althaus-Reid, and the notion of performativity in order to analyze norms, communal practices, and rituality. It identifies three displacements: relocating the locus theologicus in concrete embodied life; understanding sexuality as a political practice that produces subjects and exclusions; and resignifying rituality—including dissident liturgies—as theological production grounded in epistemologies of the South. The article offers criteria for thinking spirituality as an embodied, public, and conflictual praxis within Latin American contexts and communities.