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Speculative subjectivity as expressed in the works of Octavia Butler and Luce Irigaray is analyzed. Both of them seek a method to probe dualism in terms of mind/body as well as self/other and they use the body for exploring intersubjective fusion using the metaphor of maternity.

In a series of books and articles published over the past two decades, the authors have developed a five-stage system for identifying and modifying the mythic structures that guide individual development. In this essay, they draw upon the integral relationship between personal and collective myths in applying this five-stage model to contemporary social issues. They focus, in particular, on the mythic conflicts that underlie the tensions between progress and sustainability and between individualism and community. based on the contradictory designs inherent in a prevailing myth and in an emerging myth, the authors present a dialectical model that is formulated to lead to a new myth that incorporates the most functional elements of old and emergent forces, while transcending their limitations. The essay closes with a discussion of social actions that may embed a new myth within a culture, along with the conditions that are required to effectively reinforce and maintain it. KEYWORDS: community, conflict, future, individualism, myth, mythology, psyche, progress, sustainability

The present paper attempts to clarify the cognitive conditions which make it possible to define so-called reality from five individual criteria and a confrontation to the paradigms of the community. Reality unfolds from potentially infinite reiteration, but can actually be caught only through finite operations. Our access to discoveries and increased knowledge depends upon abduction which enables us to probe the viability of unlikely hypotheses. Man becomes autonomous through using abduction; that is to say through interacting within the family and the constraints of social ecosystems which built his identity, and his conflictual access to the construction of reality. KEYWORDS: pointers of reality, cognition, frameworks of reference, self-identity, abduction, autonomy.