In de herhaling ontstaat iets nieuws. Agency in het discours van Teresa van Avila
Auteurs
Bibi Straatman
Samenvatting
In this contribution, the spiritual and textual
innovations in the work of Teresa of Avila are
questioned. If we are not to consider Teresa
as a revolutionary writer, nor as a cultural
dupe, disciplined by the patriarchal power of
the catholic orthodoxy, what is it, that can
make her texts of interest for nowadays readers?
The author uses the concept of iterability
(Butler, 2000; and Derrida, 1972) and that
of repetition as a productive source (Lacan,
1976) to re-open the discussion on mystical
texts. She argues that Teresa’s discursive
agency can be found in the re-appropriation
of certain rhetorical tropes such as the ‘mystical
experience’, and the ‘(inner) conversation’
as methods in a new configuration of science.
The mystical movement of the 16-th century
is mostly regarded as a literary genre, or at
best as an unfortunately disqualified form of
knowledge. With Mignolo (2000), Foucault
(1976) and De Certeau (1986) however, Teresa’s
texts are diagnosed as a new locus of
enunciation, and as a particular local, regional
knowledge, incapable of unanimity, not
open for the procedures of falsification, but
still interesting. Teresa’s texts can be seen as
a testimony of non-hegemonic experience,
but moreover they can provide inspiration for
the actual epistemological debate in social
science, post colonial studies and cultural
studies, were agency is to be re-interpreted
(Mahmood, 2005) and new methodes such as
‘conversation’ (Mignolo, 2000) are discussed.