The Poetics of Embodiment in Islamic Mystical Philosophy

Abstract

RELIGION THE POETICS OF EMBODIMENT IN ISLAMIC MYSTICAL PHILOSOPHY KATHARINE DENISE LOEVY Thesis under the direction of Professor William Franke What modes of reading can be provoked by reading different kinds of texts and textual practices? How might these alternative modes enable us to rethink our conception of the relationship between discourses and embodiment, and the functioning of discourse upon bodies that is identified by the notion of discursive mediation? This thesis considers texts and practices that emerged from traditions of Islamic mysticism, and that demand a transformation in the reader as a result of the way in which embodiment and discourse interact. The analyses that follow thus bring literary, religious and cultural dimensions of sufism to questions of reading. What we stand to gain from this engagement with Islamic mysticism is thus a reorientation toward texts and toward textually-mediated practices with regard to embodiment and its relationship to text. Approved______________________________________Date_______________