Michel De Certeau's the Mystic Fable

Pilgrim in a Rocky Valley: Carl Gustav Carus Illumination without Knowledge: Michel de Certeau's The Mystic Fable By Philip Sheldrake For some mainstream religious an ultimately mysterious God may believers and religious authorities, be “known” or defined. Thus, the “mysticism” evokes a notion of the great medieval German mystical dangerous promotion of esoteric theologian, Meister Eckhart, loved knowledge, based on claims by to cite St Augustine on speech certain individuals to a privileged about God. “If I have spoken experience of God that seems to of it, I have not spoken for it is bypass doctrine and law. However, ineffable” (Augustine, Christian on the contrary, Christian mystical Doctrine, 1.6). Eckhart also writers precisely question whether emphasised in his sermons that 75 the ultimately unknowable God is De Certeau’s deliberately ultimately beyond all philosophical enigmatic style was based on and theological categories. Other his underlying approach to mystical writings contrasted epistemology – that is, to the knowledge with love. For example, nature of knowledge, its scope the anonymous fourteenth- and its origins. Overall, de Certeau century English monk who wrote rejected what he saw as the dangers the popular mystical text, The of philosophical fundamentalism Cloud of Unknowing, suggested that he detected in some aspects that there was a “cloud of of European post-Enlightenment unknowing” or darkness between thought, notably a tendency us and God. We may only reach towards rationalist positivism. God by “a dart [arrow] of longing Thus de Certeau questioned both love” but not by thought.1 the extent to which anything can In this context, the writings on really be fully known and also mysticism by the French Catholic whether “knowledge” is reducible merely to a mental capacity to priest and Jesuit, Michel de think logically or to make rational Certeau (1925-1986) are especially deductions about reality. Clearly relevant and challenging. De this standpoint is particularly Certeau was one of the most relevant to the question of creative interdisciplinary thinkers whether, to what extent and how of the late twentieth century as an ultimately mysterious God may well as a highly original writer in be “known” or defined and plays reference to Christian mysticism. a central role in his late, unfinished At the same time, de Certeau is work on Christian mysticism, The particularly difficult to summarise Mystic Fable.2 or to interpret definitively. To That said, de Certeau’s begin with, he approached every additional emphasis on mysticism subject from a transdisciplinary as a form of subversive social as standpoint, drawing extensively well as religious “otherness”, upon history, theology, spirituality, rather than merely a retreat into cultural theory, politics, philosophy, interiority, also sought to counter psychoanalysis and the social the power of dominant cultural, sciences. However, in addition, de political or religious narratives. Certeau’s writings –and not merely Such an attitude had already those concerning mysticism – also played a role in de Certeau’s deliberately resist any attempt at scholarly approach to historical systematisation. theory. For example, his 1975 76 work The Writing of History and his subjective experiences brought 1985 essay collection Heterologies him close to the emphasis on challenged conventional appro- Christian mysticism as a way of life aches to historical study and its present in the writings of Bernard temptation to present itself as a McGinn.4 form of dogmatic realism rather For de Certeau, mysticism was than acknowledging its proper above all bound up with spiritual limits as the product of the social, desire. “Desire” is a key concept cultural and political assumptions in his writings – one that he shared and the context of the historian.3 with such French postmodern philosophers as Michel Foucault Interiority and Desire and Jacques Derrida. However, the Michel de Certeau’s trans- focus on “desire” also summarises disciplinarity is readily apparent the heart of the Christian spiritual in his study of mysticism. His tradition (Ignatius of Loyola’s interest focussed predominantly Spiritual Exercises) to which de on sixteenth and seventeenth Certeau was personally indebted. century Spanish and French For both the mystic and the mystical writings and on his postmodern person, “desire” perception that the period saw expresses a persistent drivenness, a growing preoccupation with intensity and restless movement subjectivity and the experiential. onwards inspired by what is not This emphasis related to de known, not possessed and never Certeau’s own fascination with definitively reached. In religious modern psychoanalysis. However, terms, this ultimate horizon is God. de Certeau’s understanding They [the mystics] are, she said of the meaning and role of [Hadewijch, the thirteenth- “mysticism” cannot be reduced century mystical writer], “drunk to mere interiority or individual with what they have not drunk”: experience. He wrote in the inebriation without drinking, context of a late-Modern western inspiration from one knows not culture that had lost faith in the where, illumination without bedrock of an autonomous, clearly knowledge. They are drunk defined human subject – whether with what they do not possess. grounded in a notion of “the Drunk with desire. Therefore, soul” or in Descartes’ individual they may all bear the name “mind”. At the same time, de given to the work of Angelus Certeau’s interest in mysticism as Silesius: Wandersmann, the a social practice rather than simply “wanderer”.5 77 Although de Certeau knew that Rather, mysticism subverted this the genre of Christian mystical entire way of thinking and pointed writing began to emerge in the towards a quite different approach thirteenth century, in his researches to Christian religion. De Certeau on “mysticism” as a recognisable underlined that Christianity was category in Christian writing (or not founded to be an institution “mystics”, from the French, la or a body of doctrines but as a mystique) he established that way of life. De Certeau’s approach the key point in its formalisation portrayed Christianity as a was between the mid-sixteenth journey towards the mystery of century and the mid-seventeenth God. Precisely because mystical century and particularly in early language tentatively engages 6 seventeenth century France. This with the Absolute (God), it can paradigmatic period of mysticism only speak about this by, in de proliferated in the context of Certeau’s words, “erasing itself”.9 what de Certeau refers to as “a Because the object of mystical loss”. The various movements writing, God, is infinite, such and writings were born (to use de writing is “never anything but the Certeau’s words) “with the setting unstable metaphor for what is sun”. This referred to the gradual inaccessible”. So, for de Certeau, demise of the previously culturally the study of mysticism “only dominant Christian worldview.7 assembles and orders its practices De Certeau asserted that the “dark nights” expressed in various in the name of something that it sixteenth and seventeenth century cannot make into an object (unless 10 mystical texts refer not merely to it is a mystical one)”. subjective states of spiritual loss For de Certeau, the subversive but also to the overall situation of quality of mysticism is represented religious institutions and ways of by the theme of perpetual thought in Western culture.8 departure. For him, there was a close relationship between the Mysticism as Subversion post-Enlightenment (or Modernist) For de Certeau, the classic emphasis on objective rational sixteenth and seventeenth century knowledge and issues of power. mystical texts that he studied did Thus Michel de Certeau suggested not attempt to replace the ailing that people whose lives spoke of system of intellectual theology with the “otherness” of an essentially new frameworks of knowledge mysterious God were outsiders to or alternative contexts of power. this Modernist project. 78 Unbeknownst even to some story of a journey” that ultimately of its promoters, the creation of defies conclusive investigation. mental constructs…takes the In his somewhat opaque words, place of attention to the advent the language of mysticism of the Unpredictable. That is why “overpowers the inquiry with the “true” mystics are particularly something resembling a laugh”.13 suspicious and critical of what Mystic literature offers “a way not passes for “presence”. They to come back” to whoever “asks defend the inaccessibility they directions to get lost”.14 confront.11 The various strains of As early as the thirteenth mystics, in their reaction to century, that is, since the time when the vanishing of truths, the theology became professionalised, increasing opaqueness of the spirituals and mystics took up the authorities and divided or challenge of the spoken word. diseased institutions, define In doing so, they were displaced not so much a complementary toward the area of “the fable”….. or substitutive knowledge, Everywhere they insinuate topography, or entity, but an “extraordinary”: they are rather a different treatment voices…..grown more and more of the Christian tradition…. separate from the field of meaning they institute a ‘style’ that that writing had conquered, ever articulates itself into practices closer to the song or the cry.12 defining a modus loquendi De Certeau’s interest in and/or a modus agendi…What sixteenth and seventeenth century is essential, therefore, is not a mysticism arose from the parallels body of doctrines (which is the he perceived between this period effect of these practices and and his own times when the above all the product of later religious word could no longer be theological interpretation), but effectively proclaimed in the old the foundation of a field in ways. The world was increasingly which specific procedures will seen as opaque and unreadable. be developed…15 In response to this spiritual disenchantment the people we Mysticism and Social ‘Practice’ refer to as mystics sought to speak At first sight, the writings of de a different kind of language.

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