People in virtual worlds like Second Life form complex relationships with their avatars, simultaneously feeling identification and distance, truth and pretense. The genuine emotions experienced through avatars raise paradoxical questions about authenticity—players cannot pretend to feel unless they are pretending to pretend—and about who actually experiences those feelings, the avatar or the player. Shifting between identities challenges the consistency and continuity of the self. The analysis draws parallels between these virtual experiences and possession phenomena or out-of-body travel in traditional societies, informed by scientific literature on multiple identity and dissociation.
Amazonian Runa shamans (yachak) perform therapeutic songs (ikara) that summon invisible beings—spirits, demons, animals, or hybrid entities—during rituals. The shaman's utterance involves a composition-translation that deliberately exploits the sign's deficiency: its duplicity, evanescent presence, and secret evocation. This partial deciphering and transgression of ordinary communication rules gives the mental image its power to persist and spread among participants. The article challenges Western communication models based on signifying intention or relevance, replacing them with a pragmatic approach emphasizing multiplication of voices, points of view, and possible interpretations. It reexamines Lévi-Strauss's ideas on symbol effectiveness through sensory apparatuses that affect representation and belief in ritual contexts.