Hybrid bodies are ambiguous not only because they can't be easily categorized but also because they incarnate our ambiguous feelings towards our own bodies.
The figure of shaman, as conjurer of spirits, trickster and healer, able to transmute himself into powerful animal forces in the shadowy depths, epitomizes a a world of continuous mutation. Shaman's body emphasizes that unity is an illusion by disrupting the boundaries between human and animal, the natural and the constructed, the physical and the non-physical. There is something chilling about this message. But there is also a promise of a world where we may not need to fear the partial and the contradictory identities, and may actually enjoy the idea of a continually disassembled and reassembled self.
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