“Here we are, then, returned to the emblematic order through which the world itself is revealed to us. It will be considered here as the primary source of that philosophical dualism inherent in religions, yet rejected by the scientific conception of the world, which psychology strives to reduce and eliminate, and whose material foundations, function, and particular logic are only now beginning to be unveiled through the original approach of ethnology.
Ethnology, indeed, no longer concerns itself (as the philosophy of the Enlightenment did, for example) with what might be factually questionable in the truths of cultures (tradition), but rather (as psychology now does) with the role such representations actually play in the functioning of society. From this perspective, that famous dualism accounts for the lived reality of our experience better than an excessively positivist materialism ever could.
Yet it then becomes apparent that this dualism is only seemingly so. There is indeed a realm of experience corresponding to what we call ‘transcendence’, but it can be brought back into the fold of immanence without suffering any loss. There is, indeed, a beyond, an ‘other world’, but it is nothing more than the reflection, projected upon the clouds, of the other side, still poorly understood, of this very world.”
Michael Francis Gibson, Ces lois inconnues, Métailié, p. 117.
Where, as we momentarily lose sight of Igniatius and Lucian, walking along the same path but at different times, a phenomenon of “temporal confusion” manifests itself or, more precisely, a “jolt in time”, during which two… or three stories mingle and intertwine without obeying any known rule.
An Extract from Don Carotte’s Journal
We continued moving forward. Out of necessity. The path, if it had ever existed, was now little more than a memory overrun by gnarled roots. The silence, which we had at first perceived as noble, was now crushing us. It was unfathomable, too dense for our poor ears. And within that silence, the rare sounds — the rustle of a wing, the cracking of a branch — took on enormous proportions. They echoed inside my skull, growing louder within me as though my bones themselves had become a sounding board. I believe it was much the same for Sang Chaud.
