Incarnational Power: The Queering of the Flesh and Redemption in Lovecraft Country

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay interrogates the Christian concept of incarnation as a salvific device through an womanist/feminist, ethical analysis of the gender/sexuality/race bending storyline and romance of Ruby Baptiste and Christine Braithwaite, in HBO’s cinematic speculative fiction Lovecraft Country. Pressing at the meanings of salvation and ontology, it considers how Lovecraft Country’s queering of incarnational power, gender/sexuality and race critiques, complicates and reimagines the religious, socio-material and erotic significance of “the flesh” and its implications on redemption.