Description: French philosopher Michel de Certeau wrote about seventeenth-century mysticism, religion and pluralism, architecture, everyday life, and the history of anthropology. But because critics of his work have tended to fragment it into hermetic compartments, dealing only with what is relevant to their own fields, the expansiveness of his oeuvre has suffered damaging distortions in the secondary literature. This special issue of SAQ provides the first comprehensive view of his complex work, with contributors evaluating his weaknesses as well as his strengths.

With articles that engage directly -- as well as theoretically -- with de Certeau, this collection corrects a long-standing imbalance in the criticism by covering works from two periods about which little is known in anglophone circles: his early books on religious history and his midlife histories of mysticism and possession. It also includes critiques from queer theory and feminist theory, as well as comparative readings that assess de Certeau alongside his famous contemporary, Michel Foucault. With articles by an international array of scholars who address both the secular and the religious thinker, this special issue is the most definitive study to date of this important twentieth-century thinker.

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