Abject aesthetics in contemporary Christian art: the de-euphemizing impulse in Flannery O’Connor, Andres Serrano, and Bruce Beasley

Examining works by Christian artists Flannery O’Connor, Andres Serrano, and Bruce Beasley, this thesis explores the role of abject aesthetics within the contemporary American devotional imagination. While recent scholarship in medieval, early modern, and seventeenth-century Christian art has turned to examine the religio-artistic value of the abject body, this study not only revises such readings to accommodate a vastly different milieu, but also employs a multivalent Kristevan conception of the abject—one that accounts for the oft-neglected social and spiritual dimensions of abjection that exist alongside the corporeal. Interpreted against a prevailing Gnostic energy within contemporary American evangelical discourse, the abject aesthetics employed by the three aforementioned artists operate as a potent discursive and aesthetic countercurrent to the compulsory euphemism and anti-corporeal logics that breed sexism, racism, classism, and ableism in Christian circles.