On Becoming God: Late Medieval Mysticism and the Modern Western Self

1. Some Recent Versions of Mysticism

The chapter discusses the accounts of mysticism found in the works of Jacques Lacan, Luce Irigaray and Amy Hollywood. It shows how each of the theorists, although turning to mystical texts as an example of an alternative model of human identity, nevertheless remains committed, at the level of their fundamental assumptions, to the very model of an isolated, sovereign individual subject that their position purports to criticize. An alternative approach to mystical texts needs to give up the attachment to modern models of the subject to engage with the different practices of identity evident from the medieval documents.