THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

1.1 Double, Double, Toil and Trouble The Avatar in Panamaor replication in the case of twins, was considered evidence of duality,the idea of a child being the reincarnation of a parent or ancestor wasembraced. 19Distorted PerceptionThe intrinsic duality of man’s nature has been a vexing mattersince antiquity. Plato’s proposition of severed souls in search ofunification has been cited as one of the most influential in thephilosophy surrounding dualism. 20 The traditional western thinking of theindividual as a unity was based on Rene Descartes’ distinction betweenmind-soul, body and matter. These two entities were not as divergentas expected as mind and body formed a union producing a completehuman being. This thought was at the philosophical core of Cartesiandualism. The revelation that appearances may be misleading ledDescartes to his famous dreaming argument that “there are no certainmarks to distinguish being awake from being asleep”. This was anextension of his statement about the deceptive abilities of the sensesand brought about discussion on the nature of reality and the reliabilityof the existence of external objects. 21 What the individual perceived asreal in other altered states of consciousness became the subject ofmuch debate and consequently the disturbed unity of personalitybecame the fashionable topic of modern philosophy and later,psychology.It is universally acknowledged that Jean Paul Richter introducedthe term doppelgänger. The German word literally meant “pairs offriends (in the original sense of ‘fellows, two of a pair’), who togetherform a unit, but individually appear as a ‘half’, dependent on the alterego”.22 It was brought into language and literary tradition by Richter whoin 1796 defined it in a one-sentence footnote in his novel Siebenkäs:“So heissen Leute, die sich selbst sehen” (“So people who seethemselves are called”). 23 Richter employed the device of the double asa pure plot complicating technique and this became the norm. The19 For familial doubles in Enrique Jaramillo Levi’s work, see 3.2 Siblings, Objects andOffspring, 195.20 In his Symposium, Plato posits the idea of a complementary double, in the form of asoul, actively seeking out a person’s significant other half. This individual soul remainsperpetually in search of its twin in an effort to unify the self. Plato, “Symposium” trans.A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff, Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M Cooper(Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1997) 473–476.21 Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford UP,1995) 189.22 Ralph Tymms, The Double in Literary Psychology (Cambridge: Bowes, 1949) 29.23 Clifford Hallam, “The Double as Incomplete Self: Towards a Definition of theDoppelganger”, Fearful Symmetry: Doubles and Doubling in Literature and Film, ed.Eugene J., Crook (Tallahassee, Florida: U P of Florida, 1981) 1-31. 5.19