Episode 2: Body and Resistance

 

29 mins

 

Transcript

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[00:00] Open & welcome

Seyo singing: When no white grandpa got afraid to save us, we realize we need to rewrite questions. Who is God? What is my gender? What is sex? What is God talk? For me, who is perversions? Perversions! This is our theology. This is the way we move. Do you want to come for us? 

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Lis: Welcome to Theological Perversions, a podcast offering different versions about God, gender, and politics. We are scholars of color not born in the United States of America who have studied religion and theology in the USA. Our purpose is to amplify our voices, the voices of scholars of color. In this episode, theological ethicist and doctoral candidate Immanuel Karunakaran facilitates a conversation about body and resistance. 

This episode is possible thanks to support from the American Academy of Religion and the Luce Foundation. 

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Seyo: This is my theology!

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[01:19] "What comes to mind when I say body?" 

Immanuel: Hi, I hope all of you are doing well. I am Immanuel Karunakaran. I am from India and I'm going to talk to you about the body and resistance and love. When I say body, what comes to your mind immediately? 

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Lis: This, flesh. Shouldn't we all introduce ourselves? I'm Lis. Hi, I'm Lis. I'm Puerto Rican, meaning I am from Puerto Rico, and right now I am in Louisville, Kentucky. Who else is here?

 

Chrisida: Hello, I'm Chrisida Anandan. I'm from India, and right now I'm in Chicago. 

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Seyo: Hi, I'm Seyo, I'm from Seoul, Korea, and right now I'm in Chicago. 

Immanuel: Thank you! 

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Lis: So, Immanuel is being extra silly today, well, because he's performing. I have seen him perform like this before. I do that too. I do that too, but not tonight. So I think this, this, this thing that I have, that I have been, as long as I have, yeah, I am a body, and I am more than a body. Yeah, flesh. When you say body, I think flesh. 

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Immanuel: Flesh, oh good, what are the others thinking? 

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Chrisida: So for me, body is something like moving, movements. 

 

Immanuel: Oh, beautiful!

 

Chrisida: Doing something. 

 

Immanuel: Doing something, okay, and moving, yeah.

 

Seyo: For me, body, yeah, body made me think about, yeah. Flesh was the first word that came to me, and yeah, materialism. 

 

Immanuel: Material, thank you. When I say, like, when I ask this question to all of you, what do you think about the body, then immediately you went to yourself and started telling what you feel about the body. So, you did not go to, you know, that the body is something somewhere. So, it is very much present with us. So, thank you for all of your inputs. I'm going to take them one by one and build something concrete on how we, as bodies, work together in the body. 

 

[04:15] Why we need bodies 

Immanuel: So, next thing, the question for all of us to think about is: why do we need bodies? What are your desires? No? You said it is me. When you say it is you by yourself and you have something, right? Senses, we call it touch, are things that we love to do with our body. What are they? 

 

Lis: Yeah, that's a different question because, like, why do we need bodies? I mean, we don't know anything different. That's what we know. We've always known that humans and animals and plants have bodies, and even non-living, allegedly non-living beings also have bodies. Rocks…

 

Immanuel: Mm-hmm. 

 

Lis: … have bodies, and bodies have needs. We need to eat. Yes. We need to protect our bodies from the weather, so they need homes, homes perhaps. 

 

Immanuel: Shelter. 

 

Lis: Shelter, yes. And also clothing. 

 

Immanuel: We'll come to that later. I'm just holding to what is body, why is body. 

 

Lis: The body needs shelter from the weather, and that includes clothing. 

 

Immanuel: No.

 

Lis: Depending on the weather, because I am a happy camper without clothing. I would prefer it, but right now I'm in a very cold place, so I'm wearing a heavy jacket. But you know, if it were up to me, I would be in the Caribbean enjoying an almost all-year summer. No clothes. It's freedom. That's total freedom. We need to eat. We need to breathe. Hopefully clean air and drink water. Hopefully also clean. 

 

Immanuel: I hear you saying that in the nakedness we have freedom. 

 

Lis: So I consider that in nakedness we have freedom. 

 

Immanuel: Everybody, but we know we are confined to something called cloth, and you say that it is protection; it is covering our, you know, our own body to not be visible to others and things like that. So, but exact freedom comes even in the biblical narratives we see that when God created, they were naked and they did not have any problem with that, and when they found that they committed a sin…

 

Lis: Yeah, I didn't say that we need to cover it from others. I need to say that we need to protect it from the weather, just as shelter, you know, shelter. I see clothing as shelter. So, it's needed depending on the weather.

 

Immanuel: Yep, definitely. 

 

Lis: But I am with you. Yeah, I am with you. It was not needed. 

 

Immanuel: So the first thing that came through our conversation that I found meaningful is that, in the nakedness, we have freedom, and that is what our bodies need: freedom.

 

Lis: Yes! Free the nipple! Oh, that's something else. 

 

Immanuel: We call it within the house or within the bathrooms, or sometimes we see, like, when we see our bodies naked, we feel that we are freed. And sometimes we also have this idea of being well-dressed, you know, being the best, good, and showing it in public. And it's still like it is the choice that we enjoy ourselves with the body, so that's something that we need to know and differentiate: that this freedom comes in nakedness. Some people don't agree with that. How can I be nude in public places? But that is where the open body invites us to be like; how the body wants us to be sometimes. 

How many of you have felt in yourself that something is bad in your body or something is not accepted in society when they see your body?

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[09:05] Beauty standards & colorism 

Chrisida: Yeah. I think even the very thing “I don't like something about my body” comes from society because there are always standards saying that, “Okay, you are beautiful only if you look like this or if you're dressed in a certain way or if your body looks like this.” But we learn all these things to say, "Okay, I'm dark, so I'm not feeling beautiful. So that is one of the things that I have felt in my childhood. I even often asked my mom, “Why am I dark?” (Because my sister is a little fairer than me). 

 

Immanuel: Exactly, that’s exactly what happens with the standards of the world. It's a norm that the dominant culture actually keeps us to, you know, continue to live with. But we are not confined to that idea of how they look at us as beauty or something that, you know, to accept. How our bodies need to be acceptable is for us, first thing. How we accept our bodies. Like, I being a person with darker skin, being called Crow. Everybody used to call me Crow. I was angry in the first place, and I also felt inferior to everybody who is brighter than me. I'm from my childhood, I've been called Crow. Do you have any experience like that? 

 

Seyo: Well, in South Korea, yes, at my age, people who have darker skin type, they must be referred to by some Southeast Asian country name, such as Laos or something else. Well, Korean society is some kind of homogeneous society. So that's just, yeah, it's different from racism in American culture. However, yeah, that's obviously, obviously kind of. 

 

Immanuel: Yeah, we are deeply diving into the concept called colorism. You know, all these colors matter, not just in society, but very much in the church. How do you feel that in your church? So probably, if you go to your church, how do they identify you? That it is you? Like, by looking at you, that's something that's far away from anywhere, as they see you, then they say, hey, this person comes to our church, and this person looks like, you know, these kinds of identification marks that are being given to our bodies. 

 

[Break] Lis (speaking in Spanish): Salsa Te quiero. Añádesela a todas tus comidas para que puedas quererte mejor. Con un poquito de esta Salsa en tu plato favorito vas a poder amar a tu cuerpo como a ti mismo. ¿Y a los otros? También. Salsa Te quiero.

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[12:33] Your body is the image of God 

Immanuel: As we started, we love our bodies. Now, I want a measurement of how much we love. You have a measurement of, some days you feel like you don't want to get up, groom yourself, and you know, be like what you are, like free, freedom. But sometimes you want to go out, you just color your hair, put on lipstick, and then shave, you know, put on a good shirt, and then high heels, go to an event to present yourself and your body in an acceptable way. 

But how do you accept your body? Whatever it is, you accept your body. Whatever happens within your body, you accept it as it is. But sometimes you get angry. Why is this like, why was I born black? You know, I always go and ask my mommy, why did you give birth to me with this dark skin? My sister is a little fairer than me. I always compare; she is fairer than me. Why am I dark? You know, those kinds of things come within the family. But my mom, so thoughtful, she always says, “When you're born like this, you look like God.” You know, that is something very new to me because she was a theologically trained woman, and she said, because God created you all, we are all in God's image, you know. 

We seldom think about how our own bodies are created in the image of God. You know, we just take the traits; we theologize in a way that it is not the body; it is the likeness. No, it is the body. I see that it is a body. And that is important for us today because if our bodies are not considered as God's image, then we are missing something in the whole life. 

Why I'm bringing this up is, as I began. You know, if I live or if I die in this body, as Christians, we believe that there is resurrection of the body and not the soul. You know, we always think we win souls; we go there, we preach the gospel, tell them the good news of Jesus, and make them Christians. And then make them come to Jesus. And what we think is soul winning? I don't believe in soul winning. I believe in the body winning, where this body becomes one in the body of Christ. So, and that is also affirmed throughout the Christendom. I don't want to call that Christian-dumb. It's dumb. It's the following of Jesus; probably will add to this context because we have just now come out from the great Christian country, electing something different than what the Christ body has to do with. So the body of Christ, as we talk and navigate, you know, how we identify in the body. So that is where the problem is. We affirm as the body of Christ that the body will resurrect, not the soul. 

But people are very much unhappy with their bodies and say, hey, this body is one day going to die. Why are you taking so much care about this? Why do you want to focus on your body? Are you trying to, you know, attract somebody? You know, that kind of slur comes out whenever we dress up well, whenever we take care of our own body, going to the gym; somebody will say, hey, diet, oh, something is going to happen. Something is wrong with that person. You know, the kind of, you know, monetizing things, you know. Norms are from society; look at the dominant ways these bodies are taken for granted. So now the point is, do you hug somebody you like? How hard do you hug? 

 

[17:12] How much do you love your body? 

Immanuel: Now, I said in the beginning, how much do you love? There is a measurement, right? Can you show me the measurement? This much? This much? This much? This much? 

Lis: Are you asking how much I love myself? Depends on the day. Sometimes I love myself this much. Sometimes I love myself this much. Like this. 

Immanuel: Do you have a measurement? That's my question: do you have a measure of your love for yourself?

 

Lis: Yeah, but like, but like Chrisida was saying, it's because we have internalized something about what constitutes beauty and what constitutes… Yeah, what constitutes… earlier, you were saying like, when we asked our parents, like, why was I, you were, you were asking your mom, why was I born black? I was thinking just a few weeks back, I was writing a poem about like, why didn't I, why didn't I, oh my god, I cannot say it in English, I did write it in Spanish. 

 

Immanuel: So that's the Sofia moment. We can hear you speak Spanish now, yeah. 

 

Lis: ¿Por qué no nací varón? Why oh god, didn't you make me male? My life would be so much easier if I were male. 

And the kind of mockery I received as a child had to do with being tiny. I was younger than most of my classmates. I was always younger, but also I was very thin, and so they always mocked me, even in middle school. I remember one time people from church, like the other kids from church, were saying, “Hey, Lis, you have two threads hanging from your skirt.” And I would look, and they’d say, “Oh no, sorry, it's your legs.” You know, that kind of thing. So, there's always something like that, you know.

 

Immanuel: So the question is how much measure we have for our own body, loving our own body, right? 

 

Lis: Yeah, it depends on the day; sometimes it's like this, sometimes it's like that, yeah.

Immanuel: So, the same applies… Yeah.

 

Chrisida: Yeah, to the question of whether we can measure that or how much, I would say probably to the measure that I don't hurt myself, at least I don't want to hurt myself, or I don't want anyone to hurt me. So probably that's the measure that I would say that I love my body. But I'm not able to say how much of a measure it is. But also I'm trying to remember the verse “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your body.” Probably I'm trying to love God as much as that, but at the same time my whole body loves, trying to love myself like that.

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Immanuel: Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, I was just coming to that, actually. And then the second commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself, you know. So the love that we have for ourselves is also reflected in the neighbor, which actually is a challenge right now.

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[Break] Immanuel and Chrisida (speaking in Tamil):

Immanuel: Hi Chrisida, what’s up? Your skin is becoming lighter day by day.

Chrisida: Oh, really? Did my skin get lighter?

Immanuel: Are you using this cream?

Chrisida: Oh, you thought so? Actually, I was applying that cream for some days. But I realized it won't change anything, except emptying my pocket. 

Immanuel: Okay. 

Chrisida: Now, I am using another new cream. Do you want to know about it?

Immanuel: Oh, will it make my skin lighter too?

Chrisida: Of course, it will make us all colorful and brighter.

Immanuel: Thank you. 

Chrisida: The name of that cream is LOVE — SELF-LOVE. 

Immanuel: Self-love. 

Chrisida: When we love ourselves, we become brighter. God has created us beautifully. When we love ourselves, we become beautiful, and the whole world looks beautiful. 

Immanuel: Kandipa, thank you. 

Chrisida: Absolutely, thank you!

Chrisida: Self-love!

Immanuel: Self-love!

 

[22:25] Neighbor, enemy, and the danger of love 

Immanuel: The whole idea of being in the United States is putting each other into a category called enmity. I am, because of my skin color, my features, and my body, in the United States, seen as a threat to those who are part of this country. Some take it for granted, that is, white folks, black folks, Latino folks, or whoever. But the Christian commandments, or the great commandment by Jesus, my friend, actually is to love how you love yourself; you love the other person as you love yourself, which is a very difficult thing. And to some extent, we also see there is a call to all of us to think. To love the enemy, and that is actually what the neighbor is: an enemy. You have to love that person who is your neighbor, and loving the neighbor, loving the enemy, is a great thing that we failed in the church. 

I think what our body needs is love; the same love is needed for this person next to us. For whatever they are, whoever they are, they love their body as they are. So I just want you to think today that we love our body and the next body to whom we are attached, so we become not like separatists, but we become kin. We become one body, being in the body of Christ. So that's actually what I wanted to share today. So see yourself as someone in the body; you love yourself, and the same thing that comes to the next person, and love. 

So, do you really love your body? How do you love taking care? Yeah, I know that. But I want to help you love your body today in a different way, okay? So, do you know how to hug yourself? Yeah? Do it. Do it this way. Yeah. So, and then, you know, take your time in the body, and then give a pat on your cheeks. Touch your body and feel. Yeah, that looks from the back [like] somebody is hugging you. Yeah. 

So, the body is important, and that is the whole idea, and we know that this body is going to die one day, and until the death of this body, we take care of this body. For that matter, we get sick, but we try to recover in the body. We try to do things for the body. We try to make this body alive as much as it can be. Then, when it dies, we die with the belief that this body will come up again. And the body doesn't have a stop through death. But this society is continually standing on the death of all these bodies. These marginalized black brown Latino bodies, and that is how it is working, and it's continued to go to that same route again, working on the bodies. They don't care about any body. So, love yourself. And that is important. And love your neighbor. And more, love your enemy. That's the way that we understand love. Sometimes this love looks very dangerous when we are complacent with the systems. When we love more than what we love ourselves and our neighbor, we get into the trap of abuse and manipulation, so I think we need to have that clarity that we need to love our body more than others, and we love the same way the others who we call neighbors. And if we do that, I think that gives meaning to be in the body of Christ as one. Now let us raise our right hand, do like this, and the left hand, do like this. 

 

Lis: Jazz hands! 

 

Immanuel: All like this, do like this. Thank you. 

 

Lis: Thank you for listening to this episode of Theological Perversions. Subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends.