Religious Imagination and the Body: A Feminist Analysis

In recent years feminist scholarship has increasingly focused on the importance of the body and its representations in virtually every social, cultural, and intellectual context. Many have argued that because women are more closely identified with their bodies, they have access to privileged and different kinds of knowledge than men. In this landmark new book, Paula Cooey offers a different perspective on the significance of the body in the context of religious life and practice. Building on the pathbreaking work of Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain, Cooey looks at a wide range of evidence, from the Argentine prison narrative of Alicia Partnoy, to the novels of Toni Morrison and the paintings of Frida Kahlo. Drawing on current social theory and critique, cognitive psychology, contemporary fiction and art, and women's accounts of religious experience, Cooey relates the reality of sentience to the social construction of reality. Beginning with an examination of the female body as a metaphor for alternative knowledge, she considers the significance of physical pain and pleasure to the religious imagination, and the relations between sentience, sensuality, and female subjectivity. Cooey succeeds in bringing forward a sophisticated new understanding of the religious importance of the body, at the same time laying the foundations of a feminist theory of religion.

About the Author :
Paula M. Cooey is Professor of Religion at Trinity University in San Antonio, where she has taught since 1981. The author of several books, she is currently focusing her research on the epistemological significance of the body.

Review :
"Cooey's descriptions are refreshingly clear. Her examples drawn from the literary works of Alicia Partnoy, Paule Marshall, and Toni Morrison, and the paintings of Frida Kahlo are compelling--at times, bone chilling--as she shows the interaction between the body as a physical locus and as a nexus of discursive practices, the body as site and sign....For anyone interested in the way in which issues of gender and sex are corporeally configured by the religious imagination and the epistemological issues such an analysis generates, this book is essential reading."--Edith Wyschogrod, Rice University "Paula Cooey insightfully navigates the path through myriad interpretations of the self and the body. Exploring the intersection between the body as "lived" and as "imagined," she illuminates sets of thorny issues ranging from knowledge and power, pain and suffering, religious experience and symbolization, gender and representation. Religious Imagination and the Body is a significant contribution to both religious studies and women studies. Its clarity and balance make it an admirable textbook for courses."--Francis Schussler Fiorenza, Harvard University "Dr. Cooey has developed a clear theological voice and a unique perspective on the sensual-bodily meanings of religious experience. Her work is creative, solid, and will, with this new book, be greatly influential in reshaping our critical understandings of embodiment and religion."--Sharon Welch, University of Missouri "This work is relevant to any scholar interested in women's issues in religion, in the philosophy of religion, and in stretching the boundaries of what we mean by the `scientific study of religion.'....This is certainly timely, in light of the increased awareness regarding domestic abuse cases."--Sociology of Religion "...intellectually weighty book...novel and thought-provoking.....originality and scholarship are evident throughout....Cooey's work has significance for many areas of religious studies, it is especially valuable for contemporary feminist moralists...."--Theological Studies "Cooey's analysis provides readers with yet another avenue for situating and coming to terms with the complexities of Frida's work. This approach acknowledges the transformative quality of her imagery in her political and personal need to construct a self as a site of conflict, resistance, confusion, clarity and understanding."--Latin American Research Review