Human experience is paradoxical, marked by a Lacanian incompleteness and inconsistency. My awakened, conscious point of view is permeated by something uncanny, something that clouds my vision. Although it is not me I cannot escape it; it follows me everywhere I go, and no matter the time. To identify the body with a conscious point of view is the estrangement of the body, the alienation of the unconscious body; the body from which the body of consciousness arises each morning like an island from the sea becomes the alien body, the anti-body.

A stable structure of experience requires the estrangement of the body; identity arises in alienation. If the unconscious is not alien territory, there is no territory to map. But the territory that is mapped is not the alien territory; the aliens can invade from either inner or outer space. Stability is tenuous; collapse is imminent.