In recent years feminist scholarship has increasingly focused on the importance of the body and its representations in virtually every social, cultural, and intellectual context. Many have argued that because women are more closely identified with their bodies than men are, they have access to privileged and different kinds of knowledge. In this landmark new book, Paula Cooey offers a new perspective on the significance of the body in the context of religious life and practice. Religious Imagination and the Body addresses such vital concerns as the role of the body in religious experience, the impact of gender or sexual difference on religious experience and its authority, and the viability of women's religious experience as an authoritative alternative to male-centered and male-dominated culture. Cooey argues an innovative position that is both critical and constructive, thus contributing to the ongoing debates in contemporary theory of religion, philosophical theology, and feminist theory. Building on the pathbreaking work of Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain, Cooey looks at a wide range of evidence, from the Argentine prison narrative of Alicia Partnoy, to the novels of Toni Morrison and the paintings of Frida Kahlo. Using current social theory and critique, cognitive psychology, contemporary fiction and art, and women's accounts of religious experience, Cooey relates the reality of sentience to the social construction of reality. Analyzing the female body as a metaphor for alternative knowledge, Cooey considers the significance of physical pain and pleasure to the religious imagination, and the relations between sentience, sensuality, and female subjectivity. This important studybrings forward a sophisticated new understanding of the religious importance of the body, at the same time laying the foundations of a feminist theory of religion.
Industry Reviews
"Cooey's descriptions are refreshingly clear. Her examples drawn from the literary works of Alicia Partnoy, Paule Marshall, and Toni Morrison, and the paintings of Frida Kahlo are compelling--at times, bone chilling--as she shows the interaction between the body as a physical locus and as a nexus of discursive practices, the body as site and sign....For anyone interested in the way in which issues of gender and sex are corporeally configured by the religious
imagination and the epistemological issues such an analysis generates, this book is essential reading."--Edith Wyschogrod, Rice University
"Paula Cooey insightfully navigates the path through myriad interpretations of the self and the body. Exploring the intersection between the body as "lived" and as "imagined," she illuminates sets of thorny issues ranging from knowledge and power, pain and suffering, religious experience and symbolization, gender and representation. Religious Imagination and the Body is a significant contribution to both religious studies and women studies. Its clarity
and balance make it an admirable textbook for courses."--Francis Schussler Fiorenza, Harvard University
"Dr. Cooey has developed a clear theological voice and a unique perspective on the sensual-bodily meanings of religious experience. Her work is creative, solid, and will, with this new book, be greatly influential in reshaping our critical understandings of embodiment and religion."--Sharon Welch, University of Missouri
"This work is relevant to any scholar interested in women's issues in religion, in the philosophy of religion, and in stretching the boundaries of what we mean by the `scientific study of religion.'....This is certainly timely, in light of the increased awareness regarding domestic abuse cases."--Sociology of Religion
"...intellectually weighty book...novel and thought-provoking.....originality and scholarship are evident throughout....Cooey's work has significance for many areas of religious studies, it is especially valuable for contemporary feminist moralists...."--Theological Studies
"Cooey's analysis provides readers with yet another avenue for situating and coming to terms with the complexities of Frida's work. This approach acknowledges the transformative quality of her imagery in her political and personal need to construct a self as a site of conflict, resistance, confusion, clarity and understanding."--Latin American Research Review
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