CFP: Secrecy and Revelation

In book three of De occulta philosophia, Agrippa von Nettesheim advises that whoever studies the divine, should “keep silence and constantly conceal within the secret closets of your Religious breast, so holy a determination; for … to publish to the knowledge of many a speech thoroughly filled with so great majesty of the Deity is a sign of irreligious spirit.”

 Agrippa articulates here a paradox in representations of divine knowledge. He posits that such knowledge should and even must be kept secret within the intimacy of one’s own heart; the attempt to communicate it can only express its falsity or absence. This may be because knowledge and experiences of the divine ontologically resist representation—they are by their very nature non-discursive; or it may be that silence is an epistemological condition for laying claim to possessing such knowledge.

We invite submissions that investigate how early modern texts, images, and other media navigate this paradox and transmit secrets of religion, society, and nature to an esoteric community. What type of epistemological community do they produce? What iconic, rhetorical, and other techniques do they employ to represent the occult? How do they reflect the contradiction between their esoteric content and their exoteric form? How do early modern institutions and media produce and transmit esoteric knowledge? We hope to assemble a panel from various disciplines spanning early modernity that puts into relief various modes of esoteric figuration and representation.

If interested, please send an abstract (150 words) with paper title, keywords, and curriculum vitae (one page) by June 6 to Daniel Kazmaier ([email protected]) and Anthony Mahler ([email protected]). Submissions may be in German or English.