Reinterpreting Lacanian Concepts in the Structure of Islamic Mysticism

This study undertakes a comparative exploration of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Islamic mystical experience, aiming to demonstrate how two seemingly divergent epistemic systems—despite their distinct ontological and linguistic foundations—nonetheless converge at the level of structural and experiential dynamics. The central problem is the relation between lack as the motor of desire in Lacan and poverty (faqr) as the horizon of the mystic path; a nexus where desire, jouissance, the objet petit a, the Big Other, and other Lacanian categories are reread through the lens of mystical notions such as longing, annihilation (fanāʾ), divine ruse (makr), and the ethics of spiritual discipline (adab). The method employed is a homological reading of classical Sufi texts in the light of Lacanian vocabulary, avoiding both reductionism and mechanical equivalence, while allowing each discourse to illuminate the blind spots of the other. Findings indicate that SharÄ«Ê¿a and the ethics of the á¹­arÄ«qa can be read as analogues of the “Name-of-the-Father” and the symbolic order; that infinite longing and burning desire parallel the function of the objet petit a; and that limit-experiences of annihilation and bewilderment mirror the disintegration of the divided subject in psychoanalysis. Mysticism thus foregrounds the teleological horizon of lack, whereas Lacan insists on its structural logic. The study concludes that the encounter between the two discourses not only enables a cross-disciplinary understanding, but also redefines the central categories of each within the horizon of contemporary theory.