This paper interrogates recent appropriations in the philosophy of religion of Lee Edelman’s anti-fascist call to “fuck the future” by way of an abortive relation to the figure of “the Child.” Kent Brintnall, Linn Tonstad, Marika Rose, and Emily McAvan (among others), each in their own way articulates an abortive faith in which divinity is realized in a transformed present that has refused the future of “the Child” as the symbolic placeholder of the sacredness of current socio-political norms. Extending Gila Ashtor’s incisive reading of Lee Edelman in Homo Psyche: On Queer Theory and Erotophobia(2021) to these recent appropriations of Edelman, this paper will question the psychic investments of relating to “the Child” abortively. It will suggest that the purported desire for “nothing,” for a present free of “the Child” (or its avatars), while undoubtedly a compelling political polemic, is nevertheless psychologically conservative and uncritical, trading on a fantasy that represses unconscious sexuality. The implications of this critique for the philosophy of religion will be explored.
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