The vision of justice and political progress that reigns in American culture and progressive religious circles is one of restoring the individual’s dignity, which imagines the individual—even as a member of a community—as somehow whole. This vision of wholeness, however, often has to function differentially: for my wholeness to be meaningful, then someone somewhere, if only imaginatively and fantastically, has to be understood as lacking wholeness, as needing restoration.
Kent L. Brintnall
Kent L. Brintnall is an assistant professor of religion and modern culture in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He holds a Ph.D. in theology and film studies from Emory University. His research focuses on representations of the suffering male body and constructions of masculinity, especially as informed by psychoanalysis, queer theory and the work of Georges Bataille. His first book, Ecce Homo: The Male-Body-in-Pain as Redemptive Figure, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press.
