A Ciência Nova

ponderações sobre a mística moderna em Michel de Certeau

Abstract

This article analyzes modern mysticism based on the theoretical contributions of Michel de Certeau, taking as its central axis the understanding of mysticism as a new science, situated at the intersection of experience and discourse. Far from proposing a universal definition of the mystical phenomenon, it argues that "mysticism" emerges historically in modernity, when it ceases to be merely an adjective and consolidates itself as a noun, that is, as an autonomous field of knowledge endowed with its own language, methods, and objects. Based on a reading of The Mystical Fable and The Place of the Other, it argues that mysticism constitutes a discursive genre marked by the attempt to say the unsayable, articulating itself in fragmentary, symbolic, and corporeal narratives that express the absence and excess of its object—the Other. The notion of heterology occupies a crucial space in the analysis, allowing us to understand both the mystical and the divine as a place of alterity. By characterizing mysticism as the "account of a failure," Certeau makes explicit its epistemological singularity: it is a discourse that insists on speaking despite the limits of language. It can be concluded that the Certeautian approach offers a fruitful hermeneutical key for contemporary studies on mysticism, by emphasizing its historical and discursive dimensions.