ABSTRACT
The aim of the present chapter is to create a new interdisciplinary space for readers of this volume. What makes this new is that I propose critical reflection upon ‘a story of love and death’ which is intended to be both singular as a particular novel and universal as a philosophical fiction. This space for reflection on human experience is not new for me personally or intellectually, since it is a place which has become deeply embedded in my thinking and living. Yet it needs to be made more explicit to my readers as a space which has been carved out of my engagement with the writings of colleagues in the fields of literature and of theology since 1986. My engagement began, initially, as a philosopher of religion interested in French hermeneutics and developed, subsequently, as a feminist philosopher of religion interested in the ‘philosophical imaginary’3 which shapes our gendered and textual relations. As a feminist philosopher I have endeavoured to cultivate certain critical tools for readers of literary and philosophical texts, in order to unearth theological
norms and concepts in a space where our human ability to love and flourish in this life is seen to be decisively damaged. However implicit, the theological concepts which will emerge in damaged forms (as problematic, patriarchal norms) in this chapter include the love of a woman for a man which takes on either sadistic or masochistic forms; the desire of the body in degraded sexual and sensual forms; the gratuitous sacrifice of the sensualized feminine lover; and the loss of belief in unconditional forgiveness and in God as pour-soi-en-soi.
