Jalal Toufic Forthcoming Second Edition Jalal Toufic
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journal Jalal Toufic Forthcoming Second edition Jalal Toufic Forthcoming Second edition Books by Jalal Toufic Jalal Toufic is a thinker whose influence in the Beirut artistic community over the past two decades has been immense—notwithstanding that, as he What Were You Thinking? (Berliner Künstlerprogramm/ put it, many, if not all of his books, most of which DAAD, 2011) were published by Forthcoming Books, “continue The Portrait of the Pubescent Girl: A Rite of Non-Passage to be forthcoming even after their publication.” In (Forthcoming Books, 2011) relation to one of these books, he wondered: “Does not a book titled Forthcoming suggest, ostensibly What Is the Sum of Recurrently? (Galeri Nev, 2010) paradoxically, a second edition?” Here’s the revised edition of Forthcoming, a book first published nearly Graziella: The Corrected Edition (Forthcoming Books, 2009) a decade and a half ago by Atelos press. The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster (California Institute of the Arts/Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts —Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle Theater [REDCAT], 2009; Forthcoming Books, 2009) Undeserving Lebanon (Forthcoming Books, 2007) ‘Āshūrā’: This Blood Spilled in My Veins (Forthcoming Books, 2005) Two or Three Things I’m Dying to Tell You (Post-Apollo Press, 2005) Undying Love, or Love Dies (Post-Apollo Press, 2002) Forthcoming (Atelos, 2000) Over-Sensitivity (Sun & Moon Press, 1996; 2nd ed., Forthcoming Books, 2009) (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (Station Hill Press, 1993; revised and expanded edition, Post-Apollo Press, 2003) Distracted (Station Hill Press, 1991; 2nd ed., Tuumba Press, 2003) In memory of the Nizārī Ḥasan ‘alā dhikrihi’l-salām (on his mention be peace), the Qarmaṭī Abū Ṭāhir Sulaymān al-Jannābī, and the Twelver Shi‘ite Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Alī b. Muḥammad al-Samarrī As many as 576,000 Iraqi children may have died since the end of the Persian Gulf War because of economic sanctions imposed by the Security Council, according to two scientists who sur- veyed the country for the Food and Agriculture Organization.… The results of the survey will appear on Friday in The Lancet. New York Times, December 1, 1995, A6 Each Friday, professors, writers, engineers and students can be found selling off their libraries on its [El Saray Street, Baghdad] sidewalk.… Samir Abu Zaid, a government worker, went one day to sell a favorite book of poems. “I almost began to cry,” he said. “I took my book and ran away.” Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1996 Contents 13 Avertissement à l’écrivain 15 The Threshold of No Return 16 Every Name in History Is I 19 Gertrude; or, Love Dies—Followed by, A Fourth Wall that Proved to Be a Radical Closure’s Gateless Gate 39 If You Prick Us, Do We Not Bleed? No 49 Forthcoming 85 You Said, “Stay,” So I Stayed 106 First Aid, Second Growth, Third Degree, Fourth World, Fifth Amendment, Sixth Sense 107 Radical-Closure Artist with Bandaged Sense Organ 117 Copyright Free Farm Road 118 Middle Eastern Films Before Thy Gaze Returns to Thee—in Less than 1/24 of a Second 142 Notes Toward Cinematic Biographies of Some Qur’ānic Prophets 156 Oedipus in Egypt 165 On Entities Older Than the World 170 Monstrous Units over the Plateau 174 The Anamorphic Skull’s Aside 176 On Names: Letter to Lyn Hejinian 189 The Dancer’s Two Bodies 200 On Portraits: Letter to Christy Turlington 209 A Hitherto Unrecognized Apocalyptic Photographer: The Universe 224 Natural Apprehension at Human Burial Avertissement à l’écrivain Most writers and filmmakers address the social person in us; a small number address the solitary person; but there are others still, rare, who address the one who, for whatever circumstances, is in a state of depersonalization—they accompany some- 13 one even when he has deserted himself. Since these instances of depersonalization are rare, and since one often does not wish to be reminded of them, the latter writers and filmmakers, books and films are not popular. The Threshold of No Return How not to miss the point—the point of no return? The following symptoms imply that one has neared a threshold to a realm from which one cannot return: — One feels the urge “to say who I am,” that “I am such and such.… Don’t mistake me!” (even when 15 one’s “habit, and even more so the pride of” one’s “instincts, fundamentally rebels” against doing so [Nietzsche, Ecce Homo]); and/or to reiterate and reaffirm one’s plans (Alma in Bergman’s Persona: “I will marry Karl-Henrik and we will have a few chil- dren, whom I will raise. That is all determined. It is inside me. There is nothing to worry about”), be they no other than that one day one will return. — One discovers that one has gone through a lapse of consciousness, if not of being (“Chapter II: Jonathan Harker’s Journal [continued]. 5 May.—I must have been asleep, for certainly if I had been fully awake I must have noticed the approach of such a remarkable place”1). — One trips on even ground (Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice). — On the pretext of reacting to the noisy depar- ture or the actual or hallucinated farewell or final warning of those who have just ceased accompa- nying one (if they are compassionate, they intui- tively depart too early and in an arresting manner, “given that at the threshold itself I do not have the chance to deliberate, to make a decision, since I am then and there entranced, thus have no will of my own, and find myself when I come out of the trance already to the other side of the threshold, ‘in’ the labyrinth, always already ‘in’ the labyrinth”2),3 one turns one’s head backward ostensibly to try to encourage them to accompany one or to bid them farewell or to reiterate one’s injunction or entreaty to some, if not all of them to stay behind, but actu- (whether because he is flying a stealth fighter or ally to check that one can still turn and, if yes, to because the radars of their unit have been blinded). reconsider whether to proceed or reckon this turn In the state of undeath from which the call is sent, a leave-taking of turns, of the ability to success- and in the state of death before dying in which it is fully turn, since thenceforth, owing to over-turns, received, one at times feels: every name in history it is going to be impossible for one to accomplish a is I.5 Every name in history is I is one way to fight 16 turn (the threshold to the realm of over-turns is a the reduction to anonymity and generality. Jacob 17 point of no return, the limit beyond which turns are Maker’s sacrifice does not reside only in dying before over-turned). In Murnau’s Nosferatu, Harker, who, dying to access such a call, but also in his becoming due to prolonged living with a telepathic wife, hence oblivious and confused in the realm of the dead as to with someone from whom he was never totally his initial motives for dying before dying, his gesture disconnected, had lost the habit of bidding fare- getting entangled in the generalized guilt of that well, turned his head backward while crossing the state. As long as I, as dead (whether or not before bridge to Nosferatu’s castle, ostensibly to look in the dying physically), have not totally disintegrated into direction of the sound made by the two departing disparate bits of thoughts and affects functioning Gypsies who had brought him to the Borgo pass but mostly according to displacement and association refused to transport him to the other side in their of sounds, figures, etc., I will try, through the most coach. I can easily imagine a remake of Nosferatu incredible contortions—which are not felt to be in which a little (?) farther (?), as far as the protago- contortions since they are allowed by the nonlinear nist was concerned, he turned on hearing the noisy time and the non-exclusive disjunction reigning in departure of the coach, yet—as a result of an over- death and dying before (physically) dying—to arrive turn—he continued facing in the same direction. at a semblance of justice, discovering that I, who will shortly kill, was killed by my anticipated victims: it is Every Name in History Is I because I, as Zoltan Abbasid, was murdered by the (Iraqi) dead taking the form of (Mesopotamian) bees6 In memoriam William S. Burroughs4 in 1919 that I, Jacob Maker, will take revenge on them in 1991, during the Gulf War, by firing a missile Every Name in History Is I Is History in Name Every To fight the anonymity with which the war enemy is at Iraqi soldiers in a tank, killing them. Vengeance killed even by precision bombing, the soldier has to here becomes circular, with the consequence that receive, from their state of being already dead, the guilt seems to have been done away with since those calls of the unknown persons who will soon be mur- concerned are dealing with a series of reactions with dered by him. Such a call is possible in the nonlinear no initial action. Yet guilt is neither mitigated nor time of undeath. The Jacob Maker of David Blair’s really dealt with through recourse to this circular- Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees ity where the constitutive injustice in the realm of (1992) has to receive the call of the two Iraqi tank the dead—due to the blindness of the vengeance soldiers at whom he is shortly going to fire a mis- of some of the disparate bits of the minds of the Jalal Toufic Jalal sile during the Gulf War and to whom he is invisible dead—is occulted.