Yurok Children & Society in Erikson's Vinland The Good

[Terrance]

Part I   Prosecuting Chaos In The Bronx 




In the Bronx we say, "it's a jungle out there." That used to mean
something to me.  Now, with so many Japanese newscasters and journalists
living on my block,  it doesn't mean a thing to me anymore. Well, it
does
mean that in the Bronx we think of our society as inhabited by us. We
think of the rest of the world as the unknown and indeterminate space
that surrounds us. The Bronx is the world (more precisely, our world),
the Cosmos; everything outside the Bronx is no longer a Cosmos but some
sort of "other world," a foreign chaotic space, people by spooks,
thanatoids, demons, ghosts, gringos or "foreigners" (who are assimilated
to demons and the souls of the dead). Now, at first sight this cleavage
in space appears to be due to the opposition between an inhabited and
organized-hence cosmicized-territory and the unknown space that extends
beyond its frontiers; on one side there is a cosmos, on the other a
chaos.  But we shall see that if every inhabited territory is a cosmos,
this is precisely because it was first consecrated, because, in one way
or another, it is the work of the Gods or in communication with the
world of the Gods. This world, (that is, our world The Bronx) is a
universe in within  which the sacred has already manifested itself, in
which consequently, the break-through from plane to plane has become
possible and repeatable.