From perversion to synthesis

Abstract

This collection of short fiction draws upon Theodor Adomo's claim that "[p]erspectives must be fashioned that displace and estrange the world, reveal it to be, with its rifts and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will appear one day in the messianic light" (Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life 247) meaning that, to raise compassion and to reach higher levels of awareness, we must step outside ourselves so that we can give ourselves a critical look from the other side. In particular, the stories in this compilation center around the perversion of addiction in several arrangements-alcoholism, intense involvement with internet social networking sites, obsessive compulsive routines and abnormal fascination with paranormal activities. I hope to achieve a state of synthesis in my deep exploration of perverse addictions, following leading French psychoanalyst Janine Chesseguet Smirgle's insistence that "perversion is one of the essential ways and means [man] applies in order to push the frontiers of what is possible and to unsettle reality" (Creativity and Perversion 1)