Paramnesia

I analyze the phenomenon of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls; for Joseph Conti, the body monument, and its constituent joints of memorialization; and for the memory, the dissociation practices. Drawing from a wide range of texts, I assert that these plays expose—and provocatively comment on—the contingencies and paradoxes upon which the soul, and thus life itself, established itself in the wider conceptual realm. Throughout, I utilize trauma theory, and portions of its psychoanalytic genealogy, to illuminate the patterns of representation. The soul, I contend, acts as a distinct form of trauma, producing a symptomology of attempts to narrativize and claim it even as it eludes signification. Read Less