Introducing a Hermeneutics of Cispicion : Reading Sarah and Esau’s Gender (Failures) Beyond Cisnormativity

A hermeneutics of cispicion challenges cisnormative presuppositions that shape and, at times, occlude the variations in gender and sex exhibited by key characters in the ancestral narrative of Genesis 12-50.It charts the progression from Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of suspicion, through liberation, feminist and queer approaches.Focusing on Deryn Guest’s queer and trans hermeneutics, Henderson-Merrygold then offers a new strategy for reading against fixed, binary gender assumptions, where a character’s sex always matches that assigned at birth.The initial case study addresses Sarah, who is the proto-matriarch of the ancestral narratives in Genesis.Masculinities contrast with femininities, and Sarah’s own agency makes the picture of a consistent gender hard to identify.By closely reading the text, different facets of Sarah’s story emerge to emphasise how much the narrative directs the reader towards a cisnormative reading.However, Henderson-Merrygold shows it is not only the images of Sa