The Grotesque Christ, or Why Theology and Disability Studies Need One Another

This paper argues that the harmony tradition operates as a theological-aesthetic apparatus that filters out the form the Limitless Other took in Christ; that the apophatic counter the same tradition has held names what the apparatus excludes; that the grotesque — categorial rupture in the medieval sense — is the shape of the Christological inversion the apparatus filters; and that the disabled body is one site where this filtering is structurally legible in flesh. The argument develops in four sections: §I diagnoses the harmony tradition's apparatus through its Western theological genealogy; §II locates the apophatic counter the same tradition has held; §III develops grotesque theology as Christological inversion; §IV applies the diagnosis to crip accumulation as the contemporary instance of the apparatus operating against rupture-formed theological speech. The paper holds that theology needs disability studies for the apparatus-analytic, and disability studies needs theology for the Christological grounding of the rupture it names.