ABSTRACT
The human body was perceived by means of a comparative method in which the human was discerned by “deciphering all the signs that mark the human body with the seal of limitation, deficiency, incompleteness, and that make it a sub-body”. In asceticism, time was ritualized by practices of repetition, like Symeon’s repeated prostrations, while space was ritualized by practices of exaggerated subtraction, like Symeon’s fastings and self-mutilations that altered the “space” of his body. The body of plenitude signified an existence that would defy the constraints of time and space. Hence desert reporters typically used metaphors of light to convey how this exemplary embodied self looked. The chapter suggests that the ascetics’ manipulation of their bodies was integral to the form of perception that produced “the body from nowhere”, and considers the role that ascetic practices themselves played in coaxing the body toward plenitude.
