Behold the Monkey : Queer Jesus and the Queer Posthumanist Account of Art

Sammanfattning: This paper attempts to combine queer and posthumanist theories in order to re-think the figure of Jesus and challenge the anthropocentric readings of art. The site of the analysis is the phenomenon of Ecce Mono, the restored fresco in the small town in eastern Spain which gained popularity on the internet in summer 2012. The mechanisms of playing down the non-human agency in art are studied with the goal of providing a different language for thinking about art, a language that does not privilege humans over non-humans. It is argued that, in Ecce Mono, Jesus transgresses the boundaries of species, sexes, and life, while queering matter, religion, and queerness itself.