This collection of essays considers how recent critical theory contributes to debates about mystical and negative theology. It draws upon a wide range of material, including Biblical texts, autobiographical, confessional and fictional writing from the 16th to the 20th century, and divinity in English, German, Spanish and French traditions, as well as work on God and metaphysics by Schelling, Weil, Levinas, Derrida, de Ma, Irigaray, and Cixous.
PHILIP LEONARD is lecturer in English at Nottingham Trent University where he teaches Critical Theory and twentieth-century literature. He has published articles on Levinas, Derrida, Spivak, Bhabha, Joyce, and Rushdie.
Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors Introduction PART I: TRAJECTORIES OF MYSTICISM IN LITERATURE AND THEORY Language and Mysticism in the 'Spiritual Canticle' by St John of the Cross; A.Barro The Metaphysics of Language in Emily Dickinson (As Translated by Paul Celan); S.Wolosky Semantics of the Unspeakable: Six Sentences by Simone Weil; J.Winchell The Fertile Mystical Gaze: From Derrida's Dry Theological Gorge to Cixous's Dialogue Disgorging; E.Carrera PART II: TRAJECTORIES OF MYSTICISM IN THEORY AND LITERATURE 'Black Fire on White Fire': Kabbalah and Modernity; H.Domon Otherwise than God: Schelling, Marion; D.J.Clark 'The Emptiness of Intelligent Questions': Georges Bataille and the Mystical Tradition; P.Connor Through the Eyes of an Artificial Angel: Secular Theology in Theodor W.Adorno's Freudo-Marxist Reading of Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin; M.F.Connell Divine Horizons: Levinas, Derrida, Transcendence ; P.Leonard Index