The Object of His Heart: Subjectivity and Affect in Mystic Texts

Abstract

This essay examines how attention to affect in mystic texts complicates notions of subjectivity by highlighting the relational effects of affect. Noting that recent pre‐modern scholarship has favored the history of emotion over affect studies, this essay turns instead to an investigation of the ways that affect can be discerned in historical and literary texts. Shifting attention to the way affect travels between author, text, and reader allows me to problematize the formulation of the mystic/woman as a hyper‐emotional subject and move towards an investigation of how the cultivation and repetition of affect contribute to the formation of relational communities.