L'appel de la transe

THE CALL OF THE TRANCE
Catherine Clément
April 2011, 220 pages The Call of the Trance is a magnificent book which takes us to the frontiers of the unmentionable, the incomprehensible and the inexpressible: the state of trance, the out-of-life eclipse that every human being in search of meaning seeks at some point in his or her life. From ritual dancing to fits of hysteria, from suicide attempts to the delights of ecstasy, Catherine Clément's erudite uncluttered prose explores how different civilisations have responded to this search. Social - and sometimes religious - norms have tended to judge and occasionally to persecute individuals whose borderline state is disturbing. From the possessed in Loudun to Siberian Shamans, from Senegalese dancers to India's inspired seers, the author questions the many aspects of this urge to push back the limits of sensory and spiritual experience. She looks at the Middle Ages up to the present day, and shows how - from the thunderbolt of love to anorexia, from burning witches to reading about Stephanie Meyer's vampires - the petite mort of trance, and the eroticism that it reveals, still to this day represents an expectation that has not been exhausted.
This is an important book, describing a phenomenon that has touched every period in history and every civilisation: our need to escape day-to-day life and our search for meaning. This text comes from a great author, it is quite short, very accessible and intended for any readership, and it asks a vital question: can we live without a search for ecstasy at some point in our lives? Catherine Clément has written some forty books: essays on anthropology and psychoanalysis (L'Opéa ou la Défaite des femmes, La Syncope, Philosophie du ravissement, Les Révolutions de l'inconscient; Histoire et géographie des maladies de l'âme, Qu'est-ce qu'un peuple premier?), and novels that have been very successful in France and other countries, La Sultane, La Senora, Pour l'amour de l'Inde, Le Voyage de Théo...