The Infinity of Desire: The Erotic Mysticism Documentary Film Project

Co–Directors: Zeke Mazur and Sasha Makarova

Projected completion date: December 2016

This ongoing project (which began in 2006) consists of the production of a digital video documentary on the topic of erotic mysticism in the traditional (i.e. premodern) religious imagination.

The essential purpose of the film will be to ask a fundamental question–– perhaps the fundamental question–– that repeatedly arises in discussion of mystical experience and / or mystical modes of expression in traditional contexts: namely, what is the relationship between human sexual love and love of god?

To be more precise, mystical experience is often expressed with strikingly sexual images: images familiar to us from the experience of human, worldly erotic love. What, then, does the mystical experience of the divine (or its expression) have to do with actual, embodied, human sexual experience, with which it is often–– but not always–– thought to be in tension? Is this relationship merely metaphorical, or is there a more robust analogy at play? To what extent do the common erotic, sexual, or biological–reproductive discourses reflect deep conceptual structures underlying various traditional notions of the nature of divinity? What role does gender polarity, the transgression of gender norms, and hetero– or homoeroticism play in a given mystical tradition? How and why does radical renunciation of sexuality or even self–mutilatory sexual asceticism often coincide with intense mystical aptitude? (Can we speak of a ‘continuum’ of sorts?) And, most interestingly, why do these questions themselves create so much discomfort?

Certain traditions, such as medieval Christian mysticism, explicitly place human sexuality and love of god in (often deeply problematic) opposition with each other; others, such as the tantric and yogic traditions of Asia, employ structures of sexuality (either literal sex or interiorized or subtle sexual physiology) in the service of mystical union. Even in these cases, however, there is often a fertile tension between actual social mores and religious or spiritual formulations. Of course, different traditions deal with this question in different ways, and there is no single ‘answer.’ Yet it seems important to finally be able to confront this issue head–on, and at least be able to ask the question. The point is not to receive any definitive answer, but rather to explore the fundamental problems that often tacitly serve to structure the discourses surrounding the vital core of these complex and multifarious traditions. Ideally the end result will consist of broad (but by no means exhaustive) array of topics involving both traditions that are no longer extant as well as living mystical traditions; these might involve medieval Christian mysticism, Kabbalah, ancient Mediterranean paganism, Gnosticism, Sufism, Tantric yoga, Taoism, and potentially many others.

The format involves posing versions of this fundamental question to academic scholars of traditional mysticism, as well as a number of actual practitioners from various traditional backgrounds (to date, September 2015, we have several interviews with several practitioners of several varieties of Sufism, tantric yoga, Eastern Orthodox hesychasm, and Taoist inner alchemy, as well as innumerable scholars of these and other traditions). In each case, the fundamental question is tailored to the particular scholar or practitioner, and centered around his or her own field of expertise. The interview questions should be designed to elicit substantial reflections on the topic as well as the informant’s own relationship to the material in question, preferably without much further prompting from the interviewer. In certain cases we may play portions of previous interviews to the informants to create a virtual discussion and to obtain further responses, although this interactive element certainly needs more thought. The details and extent of each interview will depend upon the individual case. The final version of the film will therefore be composed of a number of interviews, to eventually be edited together thematically.

We should make clear that while this project emerges from our scholarly interests, shares certain methods with anthropological documentary, and (ideally) aspires to the same standards of intellectual and historical rigor, it will not be constrained by quite the same rules that we follow in our formal (written) academic work. As we are well aware of the various methodological problems that attend cross–cultural comparative studies, this project is not ‘comparative,’ strictly speaking; rather, simply by juxtaposing discussions with respondents from different backgrounds, the confluences and divergences that are sure to emerge should serve to stimulate further reflection. This means the film will ultimately serve the purpose of a ‘virtual conference’ of sorts, bringing together into a single discussion a number of scholars and practitioners who might not otherwise meet and in any case might not share a common idiom. In this way we avoid reifying the (in our view) somewhat epistemologically–naïve notion of a discrete “insider / outsider” divide that typically informs the contemporary academic study of religion. The film will also deliberately avoid the excessive problematicization of certain ‘fuzzy’ categories; for example, we will not employ a strict definition of “mysticism” or attempt to arrive at one; rather, the intent of the project is, precisely, to remain categorically loose and open–ended so as to avoid the potentially stifling strictures of the methodological caution required of conventional academic discourse, and to allow a creative and experimental approach we would not dare to try in academic writing. If the project fails on this account, so be it; it will then be a necessary failure. Finally, the film itself should have a symbolic, thematic, and aesthetic structure and a kind of multidimensionality impossible in ordinary scholarly work.

A final note about the choice of topics

It may be objected that we seem to be focusing primarily or exclusively on literate or 'high' traditions. At this point it is unclear to what extent this is an accidental result of our enormous (but unfortunate) ignorance of non–literate or folk traditions, and to what extent this could be due to the fact that textual tradition is in fact a surreptitious precondition of the kind of mystical 'problematic' that interests us. This is a question that we really need to address before the film is complete. Also, in terms of the practitioners, we have chosen to avoid ‘new–age’ and ‘non–traditional’ or ‘modern’ reconfigurations of premodern traditions, which is not to insist that there is a clear dividing line between ‘genuine’ traditional and ‘inauthentic’ modern practices, nor is it to avow the ‘authenticity’ of one but not another tradition. Rather, our sense is that the basic argument of the film will have more rhetorical power and be more interesting if it addresses incontrovertibly pre–modern traditional religious forms. This is because many more modern (or post–modern) religious contexts generally deproblematize sexuality to such a degree that the film might end up saying nothing interesting at all. (This is, of course, not a firm rule, since there are certainly interesting postmodern exceptions which might be the subject of a different film).

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