ABSTRACT
I want to thank Professor Wimbush for the opportunity to join him once again in acts of transgression directed toward monolithic concepts that often direct how we conceptualize human religiosity. Early in my career, Vincent invited me to participate in a conference on asceticism. Although I would not have used the term “transgression” then, that was precisely what the conference was attempting to do: to subvert, call into question, interrogate, deconstruct, and otherwise destabilize entrenched notions of asceticism and ascetic practice. For me, the most interesting discussions at that conference undermined the notion that “asceticism” was an unproblematic category of academic inquiry and that it named something obvious enough that only nuances of detail needed to be worked out.
