The Could-Have-Been Lives of Political Theology: An Ode to Miscarried Knowings

Drawing on the metaphor of miscarriage for explanatory power, this essay uses feminist and autoethnographic methods to explore what is lost to political theology as a consequence of the discipline's cis-male ethos. It reviews trajectories of thought that I abandoned when I encountered circumstances that suggested the burden of continuing to develop them within the male space of political theology would be too costly. The essay examines the disciplinary impact of epistemological loss when such ideas-in-formation are miscarried due to environmental stress of the guild's ethos on those who desire to birth them. Through articulating a specific set of political theology's could-have-beens, the essay works to build an informed sense of the breadth of such loss throughout the field and to identify attendant dynamics within the field that systemically contribute to epistemological miscarriage.