ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to offer an alternative theology to dominant post-Christian constructions of death and the afterlife but one which is nevertheless feminist, queer and post-modern. The post-Christian age in the world of theology is an age which acknowledges and celebrates the non-monolithic nature of Christianity. A post-theistic ethic is one in which living is a form of self-outing, a performance given without remainder, a burning out in a blaze of glory. Judith Butler has argued that in dominant contemporary western culture at least gender is a kind of melancholy. For Butler the subject is constructed upon loss; a certain foreclosure of love becomes the possibility for social existence. Sarah Coakley has argued that Butler's project of causing gender trouble, disrupting the performance of gender by repeating those performances with critical differences so as to reveal their nature as performances, has much in common with the ancient ascetic tradition within Christianity.
