Revisitando Lilith: um estudo sobre indecência e libertinagem em diálogo com a Teologia Queer de Marcella Althaus-Reid

Abstract

Lilith: Demon Woman, Adam's first wife, deport from paradise for refusing to be under him during the sexual act. Sentenced to live alone, roaming the darkness, tormenting newborn children. The myth of Lilith has several nuances, which often converge on one point – that of association with chaos and the libertine. Every religious myth is contextual and constitutes itself as a language of religion that tells and teaches systems and representations. But it is not a neutral zone. On the contrary, the myth is a powerful tool whose meaning is attributed from the beliefs, values, experiences and intentions of a group or community. Traditionally, Lilith has been used as an example not to be followed. Especially for women, it teaches a sexuality and behavior that, rather than avoided, should be feared. But why? How it came to this interpretation? What are its effects? And yet, how is it possible to reconstruct the myth of Lilith from a less static interpretation in terms of gender and sexuality? I started from these questions to investigate the pedagogical constructions of this myth, under the hypothesis that it has told and taught certain pedagogies, especially restrictive gender and sexuality pedagogies, which have been little investigated in traditional studies, and that it is possible to know them in another way from an indecent hermeneutic, in the terms of Marcella Althaus-Reid. The dissertation used a qualitative methodology, i.e., a partial documentary survey on Mesopotamian and Lilithian mythology and a bibliographic survey on queer hermeneutics in religious studies. The intention is to investigate how gender and sexuality pedagogies have been operated in the Lilith myth and how they can be subverted into an indecent proposal.