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Gender, Theory, and Religion
Acute Melancholia and Other Essays: Mysticism, History, and the Study of Religion
Acute Melancholia and Other Essays deploys spirited and progressive approaches to the study of Christian mysticism and the philosophy of religion. Ideal for novices and experienced scholars alike, the volume makes a forceful case for thinking about religion as both belief and practice, in which traditions marked by change are passed down through generations, laying the groundwork for their own critique. Through a provocative integration of medieval sources and texts by Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Talal Asad, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, this book redefines what it means to engage critically with history and those embedded within it.
416 pages, Paperback
First published March 29, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 8, 2023
Amy Hollywood maintained that gender is more than significant in terms of religious studies concepts. With gender being a social construct, it is paramount to understand the gender assumptions and expectations that accompany various religious thoughts. Hollywood argued that this social construct of gender was directly implicated by sacred texts, religious doctrines, and the patriarchal scheme thereof. She argued that divine sources prohibited women’s agency and authority in the context of being inferior, weaker, malleable, and submissive. In this manner, women were subject to social themes dictated by religion and divine power, that ultimately gave men the ability to subject them.
Through all of this, Hollywood argued that women often only found transcendence through mysticism, where their bodies didn’t hold such a weak, shamed, deviant, and malleable form, but instead held a powerful, revered, sacred, and authoritative form. She does this through careful analysis of French feminist theorists, scrutinizing the ideal that women had to seek transendance through male power or a male divine deity. She argued that we must hear the narratives of women not through our own contemporary and modern standards, but through their own. This is more than useful for addressing issues of religion and gender because it’s a call for action. It’s a call for us to discard our own lenses and biases, to further understand that unique perspective of how other women seek out transcendence, power, authority, and agency in their own specific religious concepts. Hollywood stated, “Women do not transcend their nature or their sex in the mystical, but rather the mystical is a futher extension of their gendered identity”(Hollywood, 1994). This is important because it’s Hollywood’s critique of how Beauvoir and Irigaray didn’t discard their own biases and lenses when analyzing women in Christian mysticism, and is the pivotal thesis of Hollywood’s call to do this. Ultimately, she presents these modern and postmodern French feminsit theories as modes of disservice to the gendered religious experience of women, highlighting how it disproportionaly discards the unique experience of the woman entirely, often painfully equating women’s transendence solely relying upon male subjectivity. In turn, Hollywood stated, “Beauvouir and Irigaray both suggest that the free subjectivity attained by women mystics is compensatory and inadequate in that it does not directly challenge larger social and cultural constraints. Both stress the needs for societal transformation; for Beauvoir individual change is impossible without it, and for Irigaray, the interiority of mystical jouissance is politically insufficient. Yet within the cultures in which late medieval women lived, in gaining religious authority they gained what was most important in their eyes and those of many of their contemporaries. The gap between their world and ours should not be forgotten in interpreting and assessing their texts”(Holllywood, 1994).
I could apply Hollywood’s insights in the formulataion of my own research project by seeking out the unique ways that women sought out their own power and transcendence in the given time, location, and religious thought and scheme. This is monumentally important because I will most certainly have to discard my own contemporary lens of gender equality, feminism, and inclusivity to grasp a full understanding of how these specific women played a major role in ancient Mexica thought. This is important because it will help me see how women seen themselves in their own roles, their relationships with the divine, and how that dictated their daily lives. This will also help tremendously when I seek to report on multiple wives, female deities, and understand how those concepts weren’t historically portrayed as contradictory, but a crucial element of society. Yet, seeing how all of this enveloped feminine power, transcendence, and agency through an otherwise patriarchal social scheme. This gendered divide in the respective social climate is obvious, but Hollywood’s theory will help me break down the actualities of those who lived under them. Hollywood stated, “Yet if the description itself contains an explanation, then the scholar of religion is perforce situated in opposition to her subject matter, for her explanation of religious experience will ultimately be at odds not only with the religious person's explicit explanation of his experience but also with the explanation of that experience embedded within the description”(Hollywood, 2004). For this reason, I think it’s important to note that approaching the rights of women in a religious context is more than tricky, where its even possible. First and foremost, all western ideologies are seen as threatening to many societies because of past discrepancies related to imperialism, capitalism, global restructuring, and colonization. And rightfully so. Many of these societies are rejecting any western notions of equality because they see that injustices still occur in western societies, and that western societies have been directly correlated to human rights abuses abroad, historically. Others may see it as an unwelcome condescension of culture and religion in a society’s traditions. Furthermore, many women worldwide are indeed, religious. Solely addressing the religion and its gender inequality dimensions may come across as being religiously superior and condemning traditions of a certain religion. Furthermore, many of the patriarchal religions have members who are reanalyzing scriptures and ancient texts to reveal that the religion itself, was never meant to be patriarchal, but the patriarchy hijacked the meaning, through hermeneutics and educational oppression of women to disprove them. For these reasons, it is often easier or more feasible to address the patriarchal sentiments that have historically plagued religions worldwide, instead of condemning the entire religion as patriarchal. Empowering women to find their own truths in a given religion is more tangible than encouraging them to abandon their religion altogether. This can cause them to lose their family and kinship ties that are bound by said religion. Encouraging women to read and study scriptures of their religion can provide them the light they need to see through the patriarchal darkness that has consumed their religion in the first place. I think this is something that Hollywood was trying to convey in her call to action for us to hear women out through their own narrative and perspective in regards to their religion, while also calling for us to discard our own modern lens of gender dualism for this reason. In such a personal moment, of religious gendered embodiment, it is a matter of necessity to uphold openmindedness and perhaps more importantly, open ears to these women and their own respective gendered experiences in their religious spheres. This will help stall the loss of important ideologies, and focus on wholesome social contexts where more than one narrative is accounted. After all, Hollywood did state, “If part of the project of women's history is to hear the other--in all of her alterity--we cannot unquestioningly presume that our own explanatory and descriptive categories are valid and those of our subject are invalid”(Hollywood, 2004).
Hollywood, A. (2004). Gender, Agency, and the Divine in Religious Historiography. Journal of Religion, 84(4), 514–528. https://doi.org/10.1086/422478
Hollywood, A. M. (1994). Beauvoir, Irigaray, and the Mystical. Hypatia, 9(4), 158–185. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810427
Through all of this, Hollywood argued that women often only found transcendence through mysticism, where their bodies didn’t hold such a weak, shamed, deviant, and malleable form, but instead held a powerful, revered, sacred, and authoritative form. She does this through careful analysis of French feminist theorists, scrutinizing the ideal that women had to seek transendance through male power or a male divine deity. She argued that we must hear the narratives of women not through our own contemporary and modern standards, but through their own. This is more than useful for addressing issues of religion and gender because it’s a call for action. It’s a call for us to discard our own lenses and biases, to further understand that unique perspective of how other women seek out transcendence, power, authority, and agency in their own specific religious concepts. Hollywood stated, “Women do not transcend their nature or their sex in the mystical, but rather the mystical is a futher extension of their gendered identity”(Hollywood, 1994). This is important because it’s Hollywood’s critique of how Beauvoir and Irigaray didn’t discard their own biases and lenses when analyzing women in Christian mysticism, and is the pivotal thesis of Hollywood’s call to do this. Ultimately, she presents these modern and postmodern French feminsit theories as modes of disservice to the gendered religious experience of women, highlighting how it disproportionaly discards the unique experience of the woman entirely, often painfully equating women’s transendence solely relying upon male subjectivity. In turn, Hollywood stated, “Beauvouir and Irigaray both suggest that the free subjectivity attained by women mystics is compensatory and inadequate in that it does not directly challenge larger social and cultural constraints. Both stress the needs for societal transformation; for Beauvoir individual change is impossible without it, and for Irigaray, the interiority of mystical jouissance is politically insufficient. Yet within the cultures in which late medieval women lived, in gaining religious authority they gained what was most important in their eyes and those of many of their contemporaries. The gap between their world and ours should not be forgotten in interpreting and assessing their texts”(Holllywood, 1994).
I could apply Hollywood’s insights in the formulataion of my own research project by seeking out the unique ways that women sought out their own power and transcendence in the given time, location, and religious thought and scheme. This is monumentally important because I will most certainly have to discard my own contemporary lens of gender equality, feminism, and inclusivity to grasp a full understanding of how these specific women played a major role in ancient Mexica thought. This is important because it will help me see how women seen themselves in their own roles, their relationships with the divine, and how that dictated their daily lives. This will also help tremendously when I seek to report on multiple wives, female deities, and understand how those concepts weren’t historically portrayed as contradictory, but a crucial element of society. Yet, seeing how all of this enveloped feminine power, transcendence, and agency through an otherwise patriarchal social scheme. This gendered divide in the respective social climate is obvious, but Hollywood’s theory will help me break down the actualities of those who lived under them. Hollywood stated, “Yet if the description itself contains an explanation, then the scholar of religion is perforce situated in opposition to her subject matter, for her explanation of religious experience will ultimately be at odds not only with the religious person's explicit explanation of his experience but also with the explanation of that experience embedded within the description”(Hollywood, 2004). For this reason, I think it’s important to note that approaching the rights of women in a religious context is more than tricky, where its even possible. First and foremost, all western ideologies are seen as threatening to many societies because of past discrepancies related to imperialism, capitalism, global restructuring, and colonization. And rightfully so. Many of these societies are rejecting any western notions of equality because they see that injustices still occur in western societies, and that western societies have been directly correlated to human rights abuses abroad, historically. Others may see it as an unwelcome condescension of culture and religion in a society’s traditions. Furthermore, many women worldwide are indeed, religious. Solely addressing the religion and its gender inequality dimensions may come across as being religiously superior and condemning traditions of a certain religion. Furthermore, many of the patriarchal religions have members who are reanalyzing scriptures and ancient texts to reveal that the religion itself, was never meant to be patriarchal, but the patriarchy hijacked the meaning, through hermeneutics and educational oppression of women to disprove them. For these reasons, it is often easier or more feasible to address the patriarchal sentiments that have historically plagued religions worldwide, instead of condemning the entire religion as patriarchal. Empowering women to find their own truths in a given religion is more tangible than encouraging them to abandon their religion altogether. This can cause them to lose their family and kinship ties that are bound by said religion. Encouraging women to read and study scriptures of their religion can provide them the light they need to see through the patriarchal darkness that has consumed their religion in the first place. I think this is something that Hollywood was trying to convey in her call to action for us to hear women out through their own narrative and perspective in regards to their religion, while also calling for us to discard our own modern lens of gender dualism for this reason. In such a personal moment, of religious gendered embodiment, it is a matter of necessity to uphold openmindedness and perhaps more importantly, open ears to these women and their own respective gendered experiences in their religious spheres. This will help stall the loss of important ideologies, and focus on wholesome social contexts where more than one narrative is accounted. After all, Hollywood did state, “If part of the project of women's history is to hear the other--in all of her alterity--we cannot unquestioningly presume that our own explanatory and descriptive categories are valid and those of our subject are invalid”(Hollywood, 2004).
Hollywood, A. (2004). Gender, Agency, and the Divine in Religious Historiography. Journal of Religion, 84(4), 514–528. https://doi.org/10.1086/422478
Hollywood, A. M. (1994). Beauvoir, Irigaray, and the Mystical. Hypatia, 9(4), 158–185. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810427
May 16, 2019
Only read the Marguerite Porete chapter, but this is Hollywood at her best
December 18, 2025
Like many other recent books on mysticism, Hollywood interrogates the possibility of reading texts in a non-Western naturalist manner that is not only recognizable to and within Western rationality. One way that Hollywood undertakes this project is by reading Thomas' "Life of Christina the Astonishing," asking if we can see the suffering of Christina not as a hysteria caused by a traumatic event or as a site of male fantasies about women, but as a site of joy. To do this, she cares less about the historical accuracy of Thomas' account and more about how Christina, a female Christ, figures as one whose joy is ineffable and communal redemptive power is palpable.
Hollywood thus contends that medieval women mystics, like Christina, perhaps possessed the interpretative capacity to understand their suffering and were not, as Barbara Newman or Simone de Beauvoir would have it, hysterics. This shifts our understanding of Christina's life from one of repression and misery to joy. Yet, Hollywood's reading of Christina is charged with its own affective weight and, admirably so, insistent on not letting medieval women be spoken for.
Of course, this is just one example among many from Hollywood's work. However, at this point, I've tired of the question "is critique secular" and would appreciate new questions and new problems.
Hollywood thus contends that medieval women mystics, like Christina, perhaps possessed the interpretative capacity to understand their suffering and were not, as Barbara Newman or Simone de Beauvoir would have it, hysterics. This shifts our understanding of Christina's life from one of repression and misery to joy. Yet, Hollywood's reading of Christina is charged with its own affective weight and, admirably so, insistent on not letting medieval women be spoken for.
Of course, this is just one example among many from Hollywood's work. However, at this point, I've tired of the question "is critique secular" and would appreciate new questions and new problems.
October 14, 2021
A truly wonderful collection of theoretical, historical and personal essays with a great creative spark and eye for the ways our times and others can draw out each other’s beauty.
Read
July 7, 2025Amy Hollywood at her best and most readable, particularly on Marguerite Porete. I can tell I’m going to return to this one.
July 4, 2022
Absolutely blew my mind to consider Christian mysticism as the place where Christianity critiques itself.
I had also never encountered the scholarship of Luce Irigaray and others who connect the adoration of Christ's side wound in Medieval European mysticism with vulvic imagery.
Y'all, I blushed: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
I had also never encountered the scholarship of Luce Irigaray and others who connect the adoration of Christ's side wound in Medieval European mysticism with vulvic imagery.
Y'all, I blushed: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews