THE ACCIDENT WAITING TO HAPPEN THINKING WHAT’S THOUGHT-PROVOKING! THE ACCIDENT Series Editor: Jalal Toufic WAITING — Jalal Toufic, The Dancer’s Two Bodies — Matthew Gumpert, The Accident Waiting to Happen TO HAPPEN Matthew Gumpert Series: Thinking What’s Thought-Provoking! THINKING WHAT’S Matthew Gumpert THOUGHT-PROVOKING! The Accident Waiting to Happen © 2015 Matthew Gumpert; Sharjah Art Foundation What is thought-provoking? It would seem that one Series Editor: Jalal Toufic should be able to easily and straightforwardly answer: Publishing and Distribution: Karen Marta what provokes thought (or that concerning which Editorial Coordinators: Dustin Cosentino, Ahmad Makia a psychotic or schizophrenic could at some point Design: Hani Charaf feel theft of thought). In which case, if no thought is First published by Sharjah Art Foundation. provoked, and ends up being produced, then what Sharjah Art Foundation we assumed to be thought-provoking (for example, Arts Area the atomic bomb) would turn out not to be thought- PO BOX 19989, Sharjah United Arab Emirates provoking (Gertrude Stein: “They asked me what I www.sharjahart.org thought of the atomic bomb. I said I had not been able to take any interest in it. They think they are interested ISBN 978-9948-22-973-5 about the atomic bomb but they really are not not All text © the authors. The chapter “Pretext: Notes on 9/11,” excerpted any more than I am. Really not. They may be a little from “The End of Meaning: Studies in Catastrophe,” is printed with kind permission from Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012. scared, I am not so scared … and if you are not scared the atomic bomb is not interesting”1)—unless its failure Pages 34-5: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, ca. 1528-1569. Oil on canvas, mounted on wood. Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts to provoke thought were to strike us as a thought- de Belgique, Brussels. Photo © SCALA, Florence. provoking anomaly and paradox (Heidegger: “Most thought-provoking is that we are still not thinking—not Pages 36-7: Thomas Hoepker, Young People on the Brooklyn Waterfront on September 11, 2001. Photo © Magnum Photos. even yet, although the state of the world is becoming constantly more thought-provoking”2). What is most All rights reserved. thought-provoking may be the following conjunction: This book is also available for download free of charge as a PDF file from some thing or happening that most people assume and the website of the Sharjah Art Foundation (www.sharjahart.org), as well as from the series editor’s website (www.jalaltoufic.com). declare to be thought-provoking even while continuing to be thoughtless is said by some thoughtful writer or thinker, who is “a great deal more reliable in his i diagnosis than most,”3 not to be actually thought- may occasionally draw from a thinker the impulsive provoking; and yet the absence of a provocation of and futile protest, “Think, you thoughtless thought- thought with regard to it is experienced as anomalous provoking artist!” through making some of them self- and paradoxical by, and provokes further thought in reflexive thoughtful thought-provoking artists, ones some other thinker and/or the birth of thought in a who are themselves provoked into thinking by their previously thoughtless person. thought-provoking work.5 In order for those who are A substantial number of the videos, installations, and paradoxically not provoked into thinking even by paintings said to be thought-provoking nonetheless what is thought-provoking, for example, the results do not provoke thought in the artist who made of the double-slit experiment, the Shoah, Resnais/ them—as well as in most if not all others. How to Duras’ Hiroshima mon amour, or the “most thought- account for this anomaly? Would the persistence of provoking … that we [including the author of the thoughtlessness on the part of the one who made a quote, Heidegger] are still not thinking … although reportedly thought-provoking work indicate that the the state of the world is becoming constantly more latter was not actually thought-provoking? Are some thought-provoking,” they would have to be initiated if not most of those reputed to have made thought- into thought. Given that, with the exception of those provoking artworks, to which they were exposed at who died before physically dying; the rare pubescent least while making them if not following their premiere girls whose portraits were made;6 and those whose or publication or launch, refractory or immune to movement projected them as subtle dancers into the thought, doomed to thoughtlessness, seeing that dance realm, with its altered bodies, movement, space, they persist in being thoughtless? Or have we not left time, music, and silence,7 there is so little initiation in yet or resumed living in an age where what is “most this period that is to a large extent oblivious if not thought-provoking is that we are still not thinking … averse to it, initiation into thought is also largely an although the state of the world is becoming constantly initiation into initiation. How rare is (the encounter more thought-provoking”4? As the editor of the with) thought, and hence how rare, for thoughtless book series “Thinking What’s Thought-Provoking!” people, is the experience of the rarity of thought! published by Sharjah Art Foundation, I wish to, While this rarity is the daily experience of thinkers among others things, contribute to decreasing the (Deleuze: “Having an idea is a rare event, it is a kind number of artists whose persistent thoughtlessness of celebration”8),9 it is fundamentally encountered in ii iii an initiation into thought, since thought occurs then— has to have resulted from an initiation into thought, enfolded—for a fleeting interval between the surprised and its maker has to have transmitted, whether stark realization, “I’ve never thought before!” and the intentionally or unconsciously, to the receiver not panicked apprehension, “I am on the verge of being this or that explicit thought but the enfolded “food submerged by a vertiginous and seemingly infinite for thought” and thoughts whose creative unfolding extension of thought as well as by an excessive may otherwise remain outstanding. Nicolas Abraham rapidity and proliferation of evanescent associations writes in his “Notes on the Phantom: A Complement between these thoughts, with the consequence that I to Freud’s Metapsychology” (1975), “The phantom is will not be able to catch up with, let alone accompany a formation of the unconscious that has never been any of these thoughts and their associations, thus conscious—for good reason. It passes—in a way yet missing boundless riches.” The initiate may later feel to be determined—from the parent’s unconscious to fairly relieved that many if not all of the obscurely the child’s.…13 What haunts are not the dead, but the sensed thoughts were enfolded in the incredibly gaps left within us by the secrets of others”14; I would dense fleeting interval between “I’ve never thought say in relation to initiation into thought, “What haunts before!” and “I will imminently be both blown away are … the gaps, in the form of enfolded thoughts and stupefied by the just began thought inflation,10”11 and ‘food for thought,’ left within the one who was and can later be unfolded creatively; it is in this sense initiated into thought and then passed from the that, during thought-initiation, thought is largely if latter to the reader’s or spectator’s unconscious.” It not fully the promise of thought. While the unfolding is in the process of unfolding creatively one of these of what was enfolded during the thought-initiation enfolded thoughts that the reader or spectator, now can only be done creatively, the latter, expect if functioning as a writer, filmmaker, artist, or musician, repressed, has already radically altered the intuition of undergoes the complementary two moments of the the thought initiate, guides him or her obscurely, that initiation process: “I’ve never thought before!” and “I is, not through knowing explicitly what was enfolded will imminently be both blown away and stupefied by during the initiation, but through feeling what it is a thought inflation.” A thinker is someone who was not (“That’s not it!”). Are there thought-initiating and initiated into thought; unfolded creatively at least one not just thought-provoking books, artworks, films?12 thought among the seemingly countless ones that For that to be the case, the book, artwork, or film were received, enfolded, in his initiation into thought;15 iv v transmitted to the receiver of his or her work not only 1 Gertrude Stein, “Reflection on the Atomic Bomb” (1946), first this or that thought that he received in his initiation published in Yale Poetry Review, December 1947, http://www. into thought and that he subsequently unfolded writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stein-atom-bomb.html. creatively, but also those still enfolded thoughts and 2 Martin Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking?, trans. J. Glenn “food for thought” whose creative unfolding may Gray (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 4. otherwise remain outstanding, thus implanting in 3 That is how the doctor is described in Maurice Blanchot’s the receiver one of the conditions of initiation into Death Sentence. thought; and produced thought-provoking thoughts 4 Martin Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking?, 4. regarding something thought-provoking. This series 5 If a thoughtful artist is to include thought in his work, he or hopes to include not only thought-provoking thought she should, like the thinker, include mostly if not only thoughts regarding what’s thought-provoking, but also at that happen to be thought-provoking (for thought, alas, is not least one book that is (not only thought-provoking always itself thought-provoking)—and/or thought-initiating.