Postmodern Personalism? The Queer Condition of Ontological Instability

This paper explores the potential for a "postmodern personalism" by reinterpreting Boston Personalism(s) foundational ontological claims. While Boston Personalism typically centers on the ontological primacy of persons and their social relations, a postmodern approach interrogates the social conditions — such as race, gender, and sexuality — that shape these relations and which define personhood itself. Drawing on Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, this framework highlights how the current U.S. political regime enforces hegemonic norms of personhood, making "deviants" hypervisible to enforce the norm. Rather than requiring recourse to universal moral absolutes, a postmodern personalist can utilize alternative interpretations of the existing value systems within which they are located, such as U.S. democracy or their Christian ethics, to reformulate ethical relations. They destabilize the hegemonic conception of personhood without essentializing alternatives, revealing the historical contingency of all concepts. This approach seeks not to discard personalism but to expand its critical relevance.