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Feminists, Philosophers, and Mystics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Grace M. Jantzen
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Abstract

This article challenges the widely held view that mysticism is essentially characterized by intense, ineffable, subjective experiences. Instead, I show that mysticism has undergone a series of social constructions, which were never innocent of gendered struggles for power. When philosophers of religion and popular writers on mysticism ignore these gendered constructions, as they regularly do, they are in turn perpetuating a post-Jamesian understanding of mysticism which removes mysticism and women from involvement with political and social justice.

Type
Revisioning Religious Experience
Information
Hypatia , Volume 9 , Issue 4: Special Issue: Feminist Philosophy of Religion , Fall 1994 , pp. 186 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by Hypatia, Inc.

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