Omnicide, 147–177

Chapter

Ecdemomania (Wandering)

EXCERPT

One dawn a woman reluctantly left
the city of light, love, pain and darkness.
It was a confused bird
who had lost her way
that weary and weeping headed nestward.

—Forugh Farrokhzad

We encounter our fifth ecdemomaniac astride an apparent contradiction that takes us beyond the architectonics of the conscious/unconscious: we are told of a woman who ‘reluctantly left’ but who also somehow ‘lost her way’, introducing a doubt as to whether she operates in the particular chambers of will, contingency, or repression. But this remains problematic only when we conceive this going-astray as a psychic matter, rather than as an antipsychological alternative to the survival instinct (seceding so as to live)…