by Christine Libby
This paper proposes to rethink the somatic and affective reverberations of ecstasy, in a celibate religious context, as a way of expanding the horizons of sexuality beyond an acts and identities paradigm. Focusing on the medieval mystic text The Flowing Light of the Godhead written by Mechthild of Magdeburg in conjunction with Jack Halberstam’sThe Queer Art of Failure, I argue that shifting attention to the way negative affect resonates at the limit of the ecstatic experience allows for a queering of the territory of affect by moving beyond the isolated “subject that feels” towards what I am calling the mystic assemblage.
Christine Libby is a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at Indiana University. In 2009 she received an M.A. in Historical Theology and Feminist Studies from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA. She is currently working on a dissertation entitled, “Mystic Assemblages and the Translation of Affect,” that explores the role affect played in shaping the devotional practices recorded in late medieval mystic texts.