Atdtda28: Somewhere on the other side of the world, 782-783

[Paul Nightingale]

Two paragraphs, one in which the narrative sides with Kit, the other
featuring Prance's "religious mania", a diatribe that is unanswered by the
silent Kit. If Prance's speech is aimed at Kit, perhaps a continuation of
the earlier "going round and round as usual", it seems Kit has turned his
back on such local interaction; instead he favours silent contemplation of
global interaction (and one might think of Latour's dismissal of any
distinction between 'local' and 'global'). Consciousness is not confined to
what one can see: "critters he was destined never to see ..." etc (another
example of the fast-forward here). However, Prance's "mania" constructs
another "connected set". He describes the return of some kind of malevolent
agency ("... whatever force decides to come in ..." etc, or "... had chosen
to reenter the finite world", 783). If Kit invokes 'continuity', then,
Prance has opted for 'change', each borrowing from mathematical discourse to
make the point. At the same time, Prance is rather more open to speculation.
For Kit, "forms of life [are] a connected set" (782); whereas Prance
describes the consequences of one possible course of events, ie "[a]s if
something ..." etc (782-783).