Avatars, egregores and the writing of the self1

Abstract

My article is concerned with the investment in – and reality of – fictions. It looks at the magical idea of the egregore or of an entity, broadly understood, that is produced through collective investment and then speaks back to its authors as if it came from someplace else. At stake here is also an investigation into other kinds of agency – other ‘deep assignments’ – that are always already at work behind the fiction of the self. Important in this enquiry is an idea of writing – or re-writing – the self. Indeed, my claim is that various fields – from magickal practice to literary experimentation and from neuroscience to psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis – offer up important resources for this creative and pragmatic task.