QUEERize the Bible

Theoretical propositions for a cuir reading of the Bible in a Latin American context

Abstract

This article proposes a queer hermeneutics for biblical reading in Latin America. From the author's own perspective, it criticizes the reduction of “queer” to “gay,” identity anachronisms, and the cisheteronormativity of the biblical tradition, arguing that queering is not about labeling, but rather dismantling technologies of control and opening the text to sexual and gender dissidence. To operationalize this, it formulates four moments: (1) critical-historical reading that avoids literalism and recognizes the wording and Sitz im Leben; (2) recognition of subjects and affections, integrating the option for the poor with marginalized bodies and desires; (3) reading bodies as text, where emotions and materialities are hermeneutic data; and (4) imagination and commitment, understood as the refiguration of the world of the text into practices. The exegetical example of Matthew 5:3-12 rereads the Beatitudes as political counter-discourse: not spiritual consolations, but structures of possibility for precarious lives (poverty, mourning, persecution). It concludes that a queer hermeneutics of the Bible de-hierarchizes religious normality, restores agency to ungrammatical bodies, and returns the Bible to its liberating power by articulating desire, politics, and spirituality in concrete communities today.