Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the connection between mysticism and love. The analysis, which also, through a Lacanian lens, explains in what consists the specific jouissance of the mystic consists in, will be undertaken through a psychoanalytically-informed reading of a short story by David Foster Wallace contained in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. The female protagonist of the short story, who never directly appears, sums up a number of features typical of the mystical position. By means of compared readings of various classical mystical texts, we will argue that mystical love implies a peculiar relationship to the body, the Other and language. Mystical love is thus described as a form of radical emptying of the self which coincides with a total openness toward the Other.