Jack Mitchell

3/9/17

REL 490

Sensible Ecstasy Review

Amy Hollywoods Sensible Ecstasy is, on a basic level, about mysticism. What

differentiates this work from the likes of an Aldous Huxley or William James, however, is that

Hollywood is less concerned with explaining what is actually happening within mysticism and

instead is seeking to analyze the response from a handful of key intellectuals to the (new)

cultural ideal of mysticism, which Hollywood sees as embodied in the association of the mystical

experience and feminine jouissance. The theories on mysticism most emphasized by Hollywood

are those of Georges Bataille, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Lacan, and Luce Irigary, all of

which have, to say the least, an ambivalent relationship to the (specifically Christian) idea of the

female mystic and the role this idea plays in the predominantly psychoanalytic framework

utilized by the four of them. Before addressing Hollywoods ultimate conclusion on what made

this intersection between mysticism and femininity so appealing in this era, we should first

summarize her diagnosis of these four thinkers and their relation to mysticism.

If we were to imagine Hollywoods work progressing on a linear track, we could think of

the first section on Bataille as Hollywood establishing what she sees as the fundamental

conception of mysticism shared to some degree by all of these French intellectuals. What this

means is that, although in a psychoanalytic sense, the ideas Bataille puts forth have plenty to

contribute to our discussion on femininity, what is important for Hollywood here is to think

about Batailles visceral descriptions of his own psychological state in relation to his
appreciation (fetishization?) of female Christian mystics such as Angela of Foligno.1 What

appears to be Hollywoods ultimate conclusion with Bataille is that we shouldnt merely view

him as a 20th century thinker responding to an invented idea of mysticism, but instead as Bataille

himself being a 20th century mystic (of course, this is largely meant in a secular sense, despite his

explicit Christian influence and background). Bataille heavily focused on the value of the

mystical experience as the shattering of the subject or self, something that led to him receiving

criticism from people such as Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre states that Bataille evokes the temporality

and historicity of the human condition only in order to attempt an escape from that condition

through the instantaneous.2 In other words, for Sartre, Batailles destruction of the self is in

fact totalitarian, in the sense that by attempting to relinquish ones subjectivity, what is actually

accomplished is the transference of the particular situation onto the universal. The struggle to

grasp the Absolute is inseparable from the struggle to become the ahistorical, transcendent

Absolute in Sartres eyes, something Hollywood disagrees with. This is explained via a

psychoanalytic reading of one of the most important parts of Batailles body of work, Story of

the Eye. What Hollywood focuses on is the narrative structure of the text, which is told in two

parts: one that vividly describes a characters sexually sadomasochistic actions from a first-

person point of view, and another which claims to be the real author of the first part, who

analyzes the events in his own life that caused him to create such a gruesome text. This second

part is commonly read as purely autobiographical, however for Hollywood this autobiography

is also itself a fiction, a realization at the heart of psychoanalytic discourse, and the key to

Batailles self-dissolution. If we were to read this text as the manifestation of Batailles sexual

unconscious or subjectivity, the first part (sadomasochistic sexuality) is not simply the false

1
Amy Hollywood, Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History, (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2010), pg. 25
2
Ibid, pg. xliv
story crafted by the narrator in order to explain his actual experience; it is instead the primal

sexual content which is actually more real than the narrators interpretation. Another way to

consider this is that the narrators explanation of the earlier sexual content in the second part is

not the writing of the subject-who-knows, i.e. the individual who has completely mastered his

subconscious and is aware of the memories/experiences which shape his overall subjectivity and

sexuality, but is instead the representation of the conscious experience of the unconscious by the

subject, something which is always attempting to cover up the actual real, or the psychological

content which remains fundamentally inaccessible to the conscious mind shaped by ones

imaginary self-image. By displaying this impossibility of real self-knowledge, Hollywood claims

that this is where Batailles concept of mystical experience is most obvious: it is not simply the

universalization of the particular, but instead is the realization of the constructed and lacking

nature of ones self image, which is to shatter it. This is the idea of mysticism and the self/subject

which will primarily be used throughout the rest of the text, and applied to the phallocentric

patriarchal society by Lacan.

Lacans idea of the symbolic order can, in many ways, be seen as a description of the

components which create patriarchal society, a reading which is employed here by Hollywood.

Although this is a gross simplification of the dense theory underlying this idea, Lacans position

on patriarchy may be understood as such: the phallus (which itself is a constructed symbol,

detached from any biological essence) is the signifier of patriarchal society, which by default

means that to be woman is to be defined by a certain lack, however this lack acts to mask the true

lack of the signifier of the phallus itself. If the phallus is a linguistic creation, this means that it

can never be the actual thing it describes, or in other words it is imaginary, and based on the
fundamental lie that: the reality signified by language and language itself always coincide.3 For

the woman then, a curious symbolic position is held: the feminine subject, by already inhabiting

the space of lack signified by her not having a phallus, is made more aware of the negativity

underlying human symbolic subjectivity than the male subject, who mistakenly accepts the

wholeness and unity claimed by the phallic signifier. This idea of a gap inherent to feminine

subjectivity is where Lacan enters into a discussion about female mysticism. If we accept the

understanding of mysticism advocated above by Bataille as the moment wherein the fallacious

nature of the self-image is exposed, this means that the mystical moment is in essence a feminine

one, since it is the realization of the fundamentally empty claims of the male-dominant, phallic

symbolic order. It is almost as if, for Lacan, psychoanalytic discourse is a mystical one, for when

psychoanalysis is successful, it results in the same traumatic ecstasy described by Teresa of

Avila or Angela of Foligno.

Irigary, the last and perhaps most important philosopher discussed in the text, has a

feminist, constructive, response to the descriptive ideas of those like Lacan. For Irigary, the

feminine mysticism we see in Bataille is an example of a feminized male figure, who

becomes woman through being wounded, [and] remains grounded in phallogocentrism.4 In

other words, Lacans analysis of patriarchy is itself rooted in the language of patriarchy,

expressed in the usage of terms like lack or castration, and there is room for a more

emancipatory psychoanalytic feminist project. How we may read this in relation to the discussion

of Christian female mysticism is that the portrayal of the suffering, lacking female mystic is an

unnecessary and patriarchal creation. Irigary sees the idea of the unconscious as being defined by

this opposition of lack and wholeness as a product itself of the binarism which patriarchal

3
Ibid, 119
4
Ibid, 145
western rationality finds itself prone to in several different contexts. She instead contends for a

theory of psychoanalysis which recognizes these patriarchal notions and, in reaction, engages in

a framework built upon fluidity and the body itself. This is where we see the entrance of one of

the most radical parts of Irigarys thought, what at least appears to be the building blocks for a

new kind of feminist mysticism, one built upon this very idea of bodily fluidity and the

placement of divinity not in a patriarchal deity but instead in biological sexual difference. By the

end of the text, Hollywood largely advocates for an understanding of divinity similar to Irigarys,

with less of an emphasis on an ahistorical notion of sexual difference, and instead a life-

affirming spirituality based upon the physicality of the human body.

Sensible Ecstasy does not have a simple message. In fact, it is suspect whether or not we

can say that there is one homogenous message to its contents at all, at least this is the impression

I got from my initial reading. What is certain, however, is that Hollywood has complete mastery

over the subjects discussed within this text. From psychoanalysis to an academic understanding

of Christianity to feminism, Hollywood repeatedly demonstrates her skill in explaining them.

What is interesting to think about is whether or not there is any use for the kinds of ideas we see

in Sensible Ecstasy for the contents of our class. Moving forward, I claim that what might be

most intellectually rewarding to consider are the seemingly limitless places religion can appear,

from psychoanalysis to feminism. The question this book causes me to ask myself is whether or

not there is a single context, academic or otherwise, which religion hasnt in some way

permeated.
 Bibliography

Hollywood, Amy. Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.