Since 2001, visual artist Ellen Gallagher has been working on “Watery Ecstatic,” an ongoing, expansive project that depicts real and imaginary underwater life through drawings, films, reliefs, and paintings. Thus far, this series—indeed, Gallagher’s oeuvre—has not been studied by scholars of religion. Arguing that the series provokes an extended conversation about mysticism, (para)religion, and constructions of blackness, humanness, and animality, this article addresses this lacuna. Placing the series in conversation with Sigmund Freud and Fred Moten, I argue that “Watery Ecstatic” displays a particular kind of mysticism that I call blue black mysticism: an experience of sociality that, in and through the oceanic, refuses the categorical distinctions and modes of identification that ground and mark normative and racialized ideations of humanness and subjectivity. I suggest, further, that blue black mysticism, because it engages the alterity of the ocean, offers a prime site to trouble the racialized, hierarchical boundary between human and nonhuman animals.

中文翻译：

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蓝黑狂喜：艾伦·加拉格尔的水汪汪的狂喜、海洋般的感觉和肉体的神秘主义

自 2001 年以来，视觉艺术家 Ellen Gallagher 一直致力于“Watery Ecstatic”，这是一个持续不断的大型项目，通过图画、电影、浮雕和绘画描绘真实和想象的水下生活。到目前为止，这个系列——实际上是加拉格尔的全部作品——还没有被宗教学者研究过。本文认为该系列引发了关于神秘主义、（准）宗教以及黑人、人性和动物性结构的广泛讨论，并解决了这一缺陷。通过与西格蒙德·弗洛伊德和弗莱德·莫顿的对话，我认为《水汪汪的狂喜》展示了一种特殊的神秘主义，我称之为蓝黑神秘主义：一种在海洋中并通过海洋拒绝绝对区别和模式的社交体验。认同是人性和主观性的规范性和种族化观念的基础和标志。我进一步认为，蓝黑色神秘主义因为它涉及海洋的异质性，为解决人类和非人类动物之间的种族化、等级界限提供了一个主要场所。