Queer Readings of the Song of Songs

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Because of its positive, exciting representation of extramarital sexual desire, not only of a man, but also and in particular of a woman, Song of Songs can be read today as a queer, biblical counter-text in relation to contemporary conservative ideas of marriage, which are still cemented by certain interpretations of the Genesis creation accounts. Queer is thereby understood as “against the dominant marital norm”. While the woman is subordinate to the man according to the second creation account in Genesis, Song of Songs bears witness to a mutual desire and a fundamental enthusiasm for human eros. The Song of Songs tells of the attractiveness and beauty of the lovers and can therefore be interpreted as a queer counter-text to Gen 3:16–19 of the second creation account, in which pains of childbirth and of agricultural labour are etiologically described as the consequence of Adam and Eve having eating of the fruit from the tree of knowledge. In contrast to the mostly androcentric perspective of other texts in the Hebrew Bible, Song of Songs expresses female desire from a woman’s point of view, even more often than the male protagonist sings of his sexual passion for his female lover. Paradoxically, feminine eroticism is celebrated but also controlled in the Song of Songs, although the latter is never quite successful. The woman’s succinct self-assertion in Song 1:5: “I am black but beautiful” has become a locus classicus of the Afro-American civil rights movement, whose slogan is “Black is beautiful”. This passage from Song of Songs is open to a queer, anti-racist reading. In Song of Songs, we encounter a different language of eroticism. Queer readers might be particularly interested in Song of Songs because of its mundanity. This collection of non-religious songs among the otherwise religious texts of the Bible can be seen as queer because of its sexual innuendos and metaphorical, often ambiguous descriptions of sexual acts.

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