The oneiric mode of narrativization and of imagistic articulation: hiperconnectivity in the religious languages

Abstract

This article deals with complex religious texts that not only differentiate themselves from everyday language, but also challenge academic interpretative models. They are myth-like forms, related also to displaced forms of the myth. In order to discuss that kind of expression we adopted a working definition, that allow to handle with visual forms as well: oneiric mode of narration and articulation of images. To analyze that kind of text we use two sets of theoretic approaches. The first, is the dream theory of Ernest Hartmann, who considers the dream, above all the REM-dream, a kind of consciousness (within the broad spectrum of consciousness) with intense neuronal activity, articulated by means of images and guided by emotions. In dreams imagistic and narrative context is given to the subject’s emotions. Because in REM-dream thought is lateral, hyper connective, there is more space for textual creation. That is the kind of consciousness that predominates in mystics and poets, according to Hartmann. The second concept we use for understanding the dense religious expressions is the grotesque. It is a kind of text and image that articulates disparate, contradictory and even excluding elements in a whole. The grotesque not only leads with contradiction, it pursues it. It not only articulates contradiction, it leaves it unresolved. The kind of expression of the oneiric mode of narration and articulation of images is potentially appropriate for rendering realities of suffering, alienation and violence. Maybe that is reason why popular religiosities tend to express themselves by means of it.  But it also points to the limits of the representational systems of the culture.