Certain lives are transcribed like musical scores that compose themselves in a transparent register and whose traces—memories and written works—remain present, long-lasting or eternal. In a way, biography consists in deciphering them, then recomposing them through some process—condensation, for example—in modifying chronological time into writing-reading time or in shifting, regrouping certain facts or certain parameters. In some cases we discover that they give a dynamic and structure homologous or very near to those of narratives, epics or marvelous tales. The life (...) of Lou Andreas-Salomé belongs to these cycles that are, in some respects, exceptional. (shrink)

Among the many story groups of The Thousand, and One Nights, few demonstrate with such clarity, precision and even some audacity the vicissitudes, privileges, fortunes and joys of sexual polymorphism. The geste of Boudour belongs to such a cycle.

In our time “spirits” have been reduced to mythical beings often objectified in the form of masks.The mask-figure of Toornarsuk, this cunning and mischievous Eskimo shamanistic spirit-figure’, seems to offer us both a mirror image of the various ways shamanism has been observed and a reflection of the complex picture shamanism presents to contemporary researchers. Shamanism, like Toornarsuk, seems both to mimic and to make sport of people and their moral and social orders. This is why shamanism, for a long (...) period of time now, has constituted a kind of counterculture for minority communities. (shrink)