Through jokes we conceal a growing conviction that newborns could in fact experience existential pain. Our wrongful presumption is not in treating child psychology as magical thinking, but in believing that ours is a problem that does not concern anyone else.
In the autumn issue of the journal entanglements - experiments in multi-modal ethnography you can read our text about how a persistently screaming infant might provoke a 'crisis of presence' for which the only solution is a cleansing ritual involving basil, rubbing alcohol and an egg. This is the first extract published from our forthcoming book A post-liminal script and explanatory notes on a film called Dreaming The Memories of Now.
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