Deconfinement by: Teodora Marija Grigaitė

Exploring Mystical Encounters and Bad Faith in the Post-Pandemic Era

In the first Deconfining Writers’ Residency, four talented authors—Teodora Grigaitė, Greta Ambrazaitė-Norkūnė, Laura Sheilla Inangoma, Kibsa Anthony Ouedraogo—embarked on a collaborative exploration of shared themes, emotions, and narratives that transcend geographical boundaries. Through debates, workshops, and lectures, they delved deep into the universal human experiences that bind us together despite our differences. The culmination of their collective efforts resulted in a series of literary texts, each offering a unique perspective yet resonating with interconnected emotions and values.

Teodora Marija Grigaitė’s text consists of two stories. The first story, which depicts a mystical experience and Gelassenheit, interlaces these concepts into a narrative where the main character is an abandoned flat in the Kaunas district filled with Soviet-era buildings. The story unfolds the amplitude of an individual’s relationship with space and depicts how interpersonal, interobjective communication depends on changing states of consciousness.

The second part, with bad faith experience at its centre, talks about the 21st century’s common image, illustrating how a person associates freedom with a certain exotic space, which, by the principle of connotations, embodies various practices of the new age spiritual life.

Both parts are intended to critically contemplate on what we consider liberation from the consequences of the pandemic that has been shaking the world for several years and to rhetorically ask why the basic impulses to escape from the usual space do not meet expectations and disappoint the individual existentially, psychologically, and ontologically even more.

Teodora Marija Grigaitė

Teodora Marija Grigaitė is a Ph.D. student at the Lithuanian Institute for Cultural Research, a philosopher, translator, publisher, and educator. At ‘Phi Knygos’, she worked on texts ranging from ancient philosophy to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. She also writes philosophical books for children. Her international publication on the role of laughter and humor in the feminist movement is forthcoming.