RUBEM ALVES: FROM DE MYSTIC TURN OF PROTESTANTISM TO THE PROTESTANT TURN OF MYSTIC

Abstract

Protestantism is, for Rubem Alves, a kind of arché, a mobilizing and inventive principle, a power of creative insubordination. This arché runs through all of his writings, and is the guiding thread of his thought. The Strong critical content of his thinking derives from a certain mystical understanding that Rubem Alves has of the protestant spirit; mystique understood here as a movement of trans-ancestry of bodies towards exceeding the world-historical contours that oppress life. This 'mystical turn of Protestantism' was operationalized by Rubem Alves to deconstruct the foundations of what he called "Protestantism of the Right Doctrine" (PRD). At the same time, by affirming "corpotency" as the possibility of plenitude in the midst of penury, as the affirmation of life in the midst of the naturalization of death, as the plenitude of an unsatisfied satisfaction, Alves promotes a 'protestant turn of mystique', deconstructing a certain notion of mystique as an experience of plenitude and satiety.

KEYWORDS: Rubem Alves. Protestant spirit. Mystic.