My project Mysticism and Neomysticism. Topologies of the soul in the Writings of Teresa of Avila and Simone Weil intends to highlight the links between two inflections of mystical thought. Teresa of Avila is a representative of early modern Spanish mysticism, a scholar whose influence on both the West’s mystical and philosophical discourse was fundamental. Drawing on the works of Simone Weil (1909–1943), I then want to introduce the term neomysticism to define a strand of 20th-century French philosophy as mystical discourse. Although Weil develops her mysticism by returning to and expanding early modern mysticism, the prefix ‘neo’ here indicates that she does so from within a markedly different horizon. She studied the bible, and was deeply interested in Spanish mysticism. Her Cahiers include negotiations of French mysticism (Marguerite Porete, Thérèse de Lisieux) and repeated references to John of the Cross and the Dark Night of the Soul, but according to my research, they do not mention the writings of John’s teacher and companion, Saint Teresa – despite the fact that both women shared a very similar understanding of God’s mercy, humility, and ineffability. I intend to trace this connection that neither Simone Weil nor research have made visible so far, and distill it into a figure of thought that I want to refer to as a topology of the soul.
Such a topology of the soul as a nexus between both women will have to identify a topologically conceived “space of the soul” (Seelenraum) as the kernel of mystical thought, both in the writings of Teresa and Simone Weil. Unlike topography, topology does not designate a specific, (geo)graphically or materially enclosed space.
Instead, it establishes spatial relations, a fact that allows me to base my reflections on the conditions of spatial arrangements, and yet from the outset avoid the risk of homogenizing these relations or considering them as givens. The innovative potential of approaching mysticism via a topology of the soul lies in its linking of topology as a description of spatial relationality with semantic methods of relationizing and deferral (metaphor, for example), which enables analysis to shift from the descriptive or representational level of both the topographical and of content (énoncé) back to the level of the énonciation. In this way, analysis can take into account the fact that neither Teresa of Avila’s nor Simone Weil’s texts simply describe or map specific spaces of the soul. Rather, they proceed topographically by integrating into their reflections the conditions under which they constantly open up and make accessible these spaces, and they remarkably often do so by resorting to structural and/or semantic analogies: Teresa’s metaphors are, on the one hand, very specific, and attempt to assign to the soul a conceivable and enclosed space (for example a fortress, a mansion or chambers); on the other hand, she dissolves the borders of this space through the manner in which she uses analogies to layer possible spatial constellations vertically or horizontally. In this way, each new analogy captures the manner in which each of her individual spatial conceptualizations differs from the next. It also makes visible rhetorically in early modern analogical thought not only that which is similar, but especially that which is non-identitary. In this way, Teresa already articulates within the episteme of resemblance (Foucault) structures that will be rediscovered in 20th-century France from within a different intellectual horizon. I want to argue that Simone Weil’s Cahiers are on the one hand an emblematic expression of différance-based thought emerging in France at the time – a school of thought continually reflecting its own conditions of thought and writing, expressing them for instance in the spatial arrangement of words as lists. At the same time, though, her Cahiers bear witness to a form of analogical reasoning firmly rooted in the tradition of Platonism that seeks to identify behind the visible differentiality of such lists the realm of the similar as an aspect of analogy focused on the identical. I intend to show that her mysticism spells out in words – and literally spreads out across the Cahiers’ pages – the soul’s relationship with God as a differential topology of the soul. To distinguish such an observer-dependent topology of the soul from a topography or architecture of the soul, my project will analyze Teresa of Avila’s main work Castillo interior o Las moradas and Simone Weil’s Cahiers, and contrast them with selected passages from Plato’s Timaeus.

Since Western mysticism cannot be understood without reference to Platonic thought and its theological radicalization in Neoplatonism, I will also ask how Teresa and Simone Weil specifically reformulate and shift the emphasis of Plato’s somatic localizations of the soul in the Timaeus. My hypothesis is that both women radicalize the topography of the soul developed in the Timaeus into two forms of a topology of the soul, and thus into two possible inflections of mystical, analogy-based reasoning. While the Cahiers make Simone Weil’s references to Plato explicit, it will take further research to show whether Teresa’s moradas were influenced by (Neo)Platonic thought.

I therefore intend to reveal how Teresa creates, against the background of (Neo)Platonic thought, a body-affirming topology of the soul, while Simone Weil engages in a physical and literary process of décréation to take (Neo-)Platonism’s mind-body dualism to extremes. My project will develop its unique angle by intersecting literary studies, philosophy, theology, and logics. Building on the topology of the soul as a core concept will allow me to pursue two tasks: to develop a sophisticated theoretical approach, and, on the basis of a close reading and interpretation, to provide literary topology, which is still a relatively young discipline, with new insights.