Abstract This chapter clarifies how two major representatives of the postmodern philosophical discourse known as “French feminism” engage with Christian mystical sources to theorize the conditions of women’s subjectivity and flourishing. It traces the development of their ideas from the 1970s through the 2000s. It begins with Irigaray’s early account of women’s mystical ecstasy as a subversion...
Abstract This chapter clarifies the contributions of one of the most significant Catholic theological proponents of the mysticism of ordinary life. It discusses Rahner’s understanding of mysticism in relation to his account of the experience of uncreated grace and his retrieval of mystical sources from the Bible and early, medieval, and modern Christianity. It demonstrates that although he...
Abstract This chapter contrasts two postmodern philosophical approaches to the mysticism of ordinary life: one based on a phenomenological account of the inner experience of the flesh (Henry), the other informed by psychoanalytic, historiographic, and cultural-studies theories about the self’s relation to the other (Certeau). It argues that these interpretations of the immanence and alterity of...
Abstract This chapter offers a constructive feminist reading of mystical theological texts by an influential Catholic theologian of the twentieth century (Balthasar) and the lay contemplative woman who was central to much of his work (Speyr). It embraces feminist critiques of their gender essentialism and certain problematic aspects of their relationship, while proposing a feminist...