ABSTRACT
What is desire? Is desire conceived ‘by the grace of God’? Or is desire death, ‘frantic-mad’ in tormented restlessness? Or is it both? How does a configuration of desire affect the representation of what it is to be a person? – a woman? Feminists have worked hard to reconfigure and reclaim desire. But desire does not stand alone: it is interconnected with other key ingredients of the masculinist cultural symbolic. In this chapter I wish to outline a way of reconfiguring desire by drawing on the work of Julian of Norwich and other writers in the Christian mystical tradition that shows it not to be deathly but central to human flourishing. By this appropriation of Julian’s teaching I shall illustrate how religion can be a significant resource for feminist philosophical thought. I am inviting feminists who have dismissed religion as patriarchal and unhelpful to think again, and not to assume that religion is antithetical to critical and progressive thinking. But I am also challenging philosophers of religion, especially those of the Anglo-American analytic persuasion, not to suppose that feminist engagement will permit business as usual. Boundaries, methods, and aims are all redrawn when philosophy of religion is approached from a feminist perspective (Jantzen 1998).
