Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History (Religion and Postmodernism) - Softcover

Hollywood, Amy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226349527 ISBN 13: 9780226349527

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2002

Synopsis

Sensible Ecstasy investigates the attraction to excessive forms of mysticism among twentieth-century French intellectuals and demonstrates the work that the figure of the mystic does for these thinkers. With special attention to Georges Bataille, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Lacan, and Luce Irigaray, Amy Hollywood asks why resolutely secular, even anti-Christian intellectuals are drawn to affective, bodily, and widely denigrated forms of mysticism.

What is particular to these thinkers, Hollywood reveals, is their attention to forms of mysticism associated with women. They regard mystics such as Angela of Foligno, Hadewijch, and Teresa of Avila not as emotionally excessive or escapist, but as unique in their ability to think outside of the restrictive oppositions that continue to afflict our understanding of subjectivity, the body, and sexual difference. Mystics such as these, like their twentieth-century descendants, bridge the gaps between action and contemplation, emotion and reason, and body and soul, offering new ways of thinking about language and the limits of representation.

About this title

About the Author

Amy Hollywood is an associate professor of religion at Dartmouth College. She is the author of The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0226349527
• ISBN 13: 9780226349527
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384