Walhout, M. Maria. 2025. In lieu of evidence: Notes towards a trans (and) glossolalic. Other thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

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Abstract or Description

The two texts ‘In lieu of evidence: notes towards a trans (and) glossolalic’ and ‘(A) mouth prompt/’s: a real life experience’ together form the thesis submitted for the degree of MPhil by practice and written dissertation at the department of Art at Goldsmiths, University of London by M. Maria Walhout.

Walhout’s practice-led research project sets out to come to a simultaneous understanding of glossolalia (the contemporary practice colloquially known as ‘speaking in tongues’) and trans embodiment. Although approached differently throughout the project, the project considers both glossolalia and trans as embodied modes of knowing, or ‘coming to an understanding’ of the world, and a way to be in it; and seeks to enter the two into conversation with each other.

‘(A) mouth prompt/s’, the practice element of the thesis, is a creative writing piece that derives from a private practice of glossolalia. Rather than making this private practice public (i.e. visible, audible, or legible), ‘(A) mouth prompt/s’ uses modes of the poetic, descriptive, and prompt-writing to describe physical sensations, experiences and meanings deriving from her glossolalic practice and trans female embodiment. A paratext of endnotes (named ‘Versions’) situates some of the text in specific references (across sacred text, theology, and trans-medical history), further prompts for the reader, and personal archive. As such, ‘(A) mouth prompt/s’ seeks to provide or describe ‘a real life experience’, a phrase reappropriated from transmedical history and re-signified here, using a method somewhere between autofiction and autotheory, employing strategies of reappropriation and placing part of the signification of the text in the experience of the reader.

‘In lieu of evidence’, the dissertation element of the thesis, seeks to more legibly outline a proposed field of ‘trans (and) glossolalic’. The dissertation begins by outlining some of Walhout’s own history with glossolalia, particularly as it comes to her history of (art) practice with it, and the current research project. She informs this personal history with a more broadly historic and theological understanding of the development of the contemporary practice of glossolalia by means of a literature review of a Pentecostal history of tongues. Folding this in with her experience of trans identity, and the current state of trans legislation and social acceptance, Walhout comes to a critique of the notion of ‘evidence’ as a disciplinary tool both in theological and dogmatic considerations of glossolalia, and in the treatment of trans bodies in society and in the medical context. Seeking to move beyond a strict understanding of scientific evidence, Walhout returns to strategies from autotheory, queer theology, and art practice, of signifying the embodied and the experiential as ways to understand trans embodiment and glossolalia practice. The dissertation closes with a number of ‘indecent proposals’ (after Marcella Althaus-Reid) that seek to understand a field of ‘trans (and) glossolalic’ otherwise by engaging theology, queer theory, speculative writing, review, and poetry in a fragmented discussion diffracting elements like terror, utterance, meaninglessness, interpretation, multiplicity, grace, t4t, exit pieces, and dysphoria.

The two texts together provide a fragmented, embedded reading of trans embodiment and glossolalia practice by bringing the two distinct, but potentially simultaneous, elements into conversation with each other. Rather than claiming the two as inherently related, Walhout makes the two simultaneous with, and porous to each other, allowing the two to learn from each other and find ways to make meaning in conversation.

Item Type:	Thesis (Other)
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00039187
Keywords:	glossolalia, trans, evidence, embodiment, autotheory, theopoetics, indecent theology
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Art
Date:	30 June 2025
Item ID:	39187
Date Deposited:	14 Jul 2025 13:40
Last Modified:	15 Jul 2025 10:08
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/39187

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