Crucifixion, Self-Immolation, and Queer Refusal: The Power of Radical Negativity

This paper uses Lee Edelman's theorization of queer negativity to read the crucifixion of Jesus together with the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell in protest of the Palestinian genocide, arguing that Edelman's construction of the "nothing" as critique of the social order can interpret (some of) the inarticulable power of these public deaths. In the context of Western biopolitics, both events present a confrontation of the "meaninglessness" of a painful, innocent death against the explicit meanings stated before their deaths and by interpreters. Through Edelman's theory, this meaninglessness becomes itself an affective political force which exposes the fantasy of invulnerable wholeness that sustains the illusive rational subject and the intersecting axes of marginalization that both enable and maintain that illusion.