Reflexes, reflections

The same etymological root gives us, surprisingly enough, two very different concepts, those of reflex and of reflection, that is the most immediate performance of a living being, and the very figure of mediation, the figure within which our link to the most intimate tends to fall in an endless labyrinth, to lose the way in an infinite game of mirrors. The same happens with the ancient and persisting image of the mirror itself, which suggests an immediate proximity, a form of knowledge which is absolutely close, and at the same time a fundamental distance which involves the whole variety of enigmas, illusions, suggestions, tricks, traps, metaphores, and inventions.