Are anxiety or dread negative stages before freedom a confrontation with humans' own mortality
and finitude? Joana Serrado inaugurates anxiousness as a category of mystical knowledge in this
innovative historical and philosophical study. Based on the life and mystical writings of Joana
de Jesus a Cistercian nun intellectual disciple of Teresa of Avila this study shows the
cultural embeddedness of anxiousness: a feeling akin to the Portuguese term »saudade« (yearning
Sehnsucht). A mystical project that reshapes feminist principles of autonomy agency and
desire.
