Go, silly worm, drudge, trudge, and travel,
Despising pain,
So thou may’st gain
Some honour, or some golden gravel:
But Death the while (to fill his number)
With sudden call
Takes thee from all,
To prove thy days but dream and slumber.
“
The world of illusions — the world of religions — brings to light or embodies the prohibition that has us speak. Thus, it gives legitimacy to hatred if it does not invert it into love. Embodying, legitimizing — today we are too aware of their techniques to yield to them. The worlds of illusions, now dead and buried, have given way to our dreams and deliriums if not to politics or science — the religions of modern times. Lacking illusions, lacking shelter, today’s universe is divided between boredom (increasingly anguished at the prospect of losing its resources, through depletion) or (when the spark of the symbolic is maintained and desire to speak explodes) abjection and piercing laughter.
“
Julia Kristeva | Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection