To Overcome Oneself
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€83.99
16th century
17th century
18th century
A01=J. Michelle Molina
Age Group_Uncategorized
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anthropology
Author_J. Michelle Molina
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJK
Category=HBLH
Category=HBLL
Category=HRCC7
Category=NHK
Category=QRMB1
catholic
catholic missionary expansion
christian institutions
christian organizations
christianity
COP=United States
Delivery_Pre-order
eq_bestseller
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
god and religion
history
humanity
intellectual tradition
jesuit meditation
jesuit thought
jesuits
Language_English
latin america
mind and body
missionary
missionary colonialism
modern self
new spain
PA=Temporarily unavailable
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
religion
self transformation
social reality
softlaunch
spiritual
spiritual directors
spiritual exercises
spiritual practices
transcend self
western intellectual tradition
Product details
- ISBN 9780520275652
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jun 2013
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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To Overcome Oneself offers a novel retelling of the emergence of the Western concept of "modern self," demonstrating how the struggle to forge a self was enmeshed in early modern Catholic missionary expansion. Examining the practices of Catholics in Europe and New Spain from the 1520s through the 1760s, the book treats Jesuit techniques of self-formation, namely spiritual exercises and confessional practices, and the relationships between spiritual directors and their subjects. Catholics on both sides of the Atlantic were folded into a dynamic that shaped new concepts of self and, in the process, fueled the global Catholic missionary movement. Molina historicizes Jesuit meditation and narrative self-reflection as modes of self-formation that would ultimately contribute to a new understanding of religion as something private and personal, thereby overturning long-held concepts of personhood, time, space, and social reality. To Overcome Oneself demonstrates that it was through embodied processes that humans have come to experience themselves as split into mind and body.
Notwithstanding the self-congratulatory role assigned to "consciousness" in the Western intellectual tradition, early moderns did not think themselves into thinking selves. Rather, "the self" was forged from embodied efforts to transcend self. Yet despite a discourse that situates self as interior, the actual fuel for continued self-transformation required an object-cum-subject - someone else to transform. Two constant questions throughout the book are: Why does the effort to know and transcend self require so many others? And what can we learn about the inherent intersubjectivity of missionary colonialism?
J. Michelle Molina is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University.
