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ISBN: HB: 9780857421906

Seagull Books

September 2014

184 pp.

21.6x12.7 cm

HB:
£16,00
QTY:

Call of the Trance

"The Call of the Trance" is a magnificent book that takes us to the unchartered frontiers of the forbidden. From initiation ceremonies to crises of hysteria, from suicide attempts to the ecstasies of witches, Catherine Clement explores in simple but scholarly terms the responses that civilizations have offered to the humanistic need for escape from the body. These "eclipses" from life and reality, pursued by people across cultures, are elusive and invariably inexpressible. Clement details this phenomenon through the past and the present, from the witches of Loudun to current Mongolian shamans and from the eighteenth-century convulsionaries of Saint-Medard to Greeks of today, who follow in the footsteps of their earlier practices. Along the way, she questions the countless ways humans push back the limits of the mind and body, and she shows how, from Dionysian antiquity to our own day, the ecstasy of the trance state shows up in anorexia, rock music, rap, sexual reassignment, eroticism, and even "Twilight"-style vampire stories.

About the Author

Catherine Clement, prominent French feminist, has published numerous essays and novels, including "Opera: the Undoing of Women" and "Theo's Odyssey".