‘I am the martyr (x)’ Philosophical Reflections of Testimony and Martyrdom Shela Sheikh A thesis submitted to the Department of History, Goldsmiths College for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London, January 2013 1 Declaration I certify that this thesis is solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without the prior written consent of the author. I warrant that this authorization does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. Shela Sheikh 2 Acknowledgements If I hadn’t decided, upon something of a whim, to join Howard Caygill and Elina Staikou’s ‘Contemporary Thought’ seminar mid-way through the year in 2006 (the course that year focused on the writings of Jacques Derrida), I doubt that I would have embarked upon the course of a PhD. As my supervisors, Dr. Staikou and Professor Caygill exceeded any obligations of duty, allowing me to proceed at my own pace and take a course that I often thought was my own but which was in fact guided with the utmost unobtrusive skill, and offering sensitive insight and encouragement at every turn. I cannot imagine having worked with anyone else. Besides this, I thank them for their friendship. I am also grateful for the generous and inspiring reading of my ‘upgrade’ paper by Professor Josh Cohen. Rabih Mroué and Elias Khoury’s performance-video, Three Posters, provided the initial fodder for questions that had yet to fully take form, and the enigma of the work has not ceased for me over the years. When the ‘Contemporary Thought’ seminar eventually came to an end at Goldsmiths, after having for several years offered readings and discussions of the highest calibre in a nonetheless welcoming and non-hierarchical milieu, the Goldsmiths InC Research Group seminars (and the conversations that often ensued well into the evening) offered a welcome environment for exchange. I thank my interlocutors – too many to mention by name – and above all David Smith for his tireless organisation. Similarly, my fellow members of Derrida’s The Beast and the Sovereign seminars reading group in the summer of 2010, also valued intellectual companions, are due thanks: Alice Andrews, Deirdre Daly, Jenny Doussan and Sam McAuliffe. The years spent undertaking this research have been animated by the time spent with cherished friends, both within the walls of the British Library and beyond: Chiara Alfano, Rashid Ali, Ali Alizadeh, Tuncay Gurhan, Leena Petersen, Alice Riegler, and many more whose names I regret not being able to include here. I am particularly indebted to the support and humour of fellow Derrideans and interlocutors Chiara Alfano and Alice Andrews during the final months of writing, and I hope that I was (and will be) able to offer them the same. I thank my dear fellow house-mates, Hannah Abdullah and Jean- François Goyette, for our happy abode and for bearing with me in the final stages of completion; and Fady, whose poetic word has provided welcome nourishment over the last year and a half. Thanks are also due to Antony Gormley and Vicken Parsons for allowing me the flexibility that was necessary to simultaneously work and study, and to my ever-humorous colleagues at the studio in Kings Cross, above all to Bryony McLennan, who graciously covered for me during an extended writing-leave. Lastly, and most importantly, I thank my family across the globe – Julian and Larissa Gatenby-Davies; and Waheed, Margo, Zaidi, Zeba and Fazal Sheikh – for their love and for supporting me in so many ways. Above all I thank my beloved parents, Gaby and Ali, for everything. This thesis is dedicated to my ‘jocoserious’ cousin Fazal, who, as far as I can see, truly knows the passion of witnessing. London, 1 May 2012 3 Abstract Historically, martyrdom and testimony have always been conjoined: martyrdom has always implied some form of witnessing, as testified to by the Greek and Arabic etymologies. Taking the locution ‘I am the martyr (x)’ (popularised in Lebanese martyr video-testimonies of the 1980s) as exemplary testimony, it is argued that in the thought of Jacques Derrida each and every singular instance of testimony implies an act of martyrdom, and that a generalised and constitutive thinking of the testimoniality and passion implicit in any performative event and in each and every instance of the ‘I’ traverses Derrida’s thought. Following Derrida, it is proposed that différance be translatable as passion, albeit in a paleonymic sense that is far from simply passive. In its quasi-suicidal logic, passion is shown to deconstruct the very possibility of the ‘sui-’ of suicide or the telos of sacrifice, instead affirming survival and the event of the other (for better or for worse). By probing the possibility of ‘I am the martyr (x)’, the ‘philosophical reflections’ indicated by the title pose the motifs of passion and testimoniality as philosophy’s deconstructive conditions of possibility. By taking the ‘encounter’ between two historical testimonies – those of Derrida and the Lebanese communist martyr Jamal Satti (d. 1985) – as a starting point, and by demonstrating the sufferances of testimony and the archive, the thesis aims to reconcile Derrida’s philosophical thinking with historical enquiry. By supplementing these testimonies with further ‘performances’ of passion and encounters with other reader-writer-witnesses from the realms of philosophy, literature and art, the scandal that is ‘I am the martyr (x)’ becomes at once both extraordinary and the ordinary story of language. Reading this ‘and’ through the ‘x’ of repeatability and substitutability, the aporias of testimony are folded into the wider context of such tele-mediated martyr-testimonies and their terrifying force and effect. 4 Contents Title page 1 Declaration 2 Acknowledgements 3 Abstract 4 Contents 5 List of Abbreviations 8 Epigraph 12 Introduction 13 Chapter 1: Martyrdom and Testimony 18 ‘I am the martyr comrade Jamal Satti’ 21 The emergence of ‘I am the martyr’ 25 Martyrdom and testimony 26 ‘Anā as-shahīd’ 30 Testimony and testimoniality 35 Martyrdom, today 37 ‘Doing history’? 39 Singularity, exemplarity and ‘an ethics of form’ 42 ‘Applied deconstruction’? 43 The quasi-transcendental 44 Responding: to Derrida 45 Chapter 2: ‘I am dead’ 48 Introduction 48 • ‘I am the martyr comrade Jamal Satti’ – ‘I am dead’ 51 • ‘I am dead’ 54 • ‘I can’t say “I am dead”’ 55 Form and Meaning 60 • ‘Ego = ghost. “I am” would mean “I am haunted”’ 62 • ‘I mourn therefore I am’ 71 The scandal of utterance 73 S is P 75 Chapter 3A: ‘I am the martyr (x)’ 83 Introduction 83 I: The passion of and for testimony 86 • ‘I am the martyr (x)’ 88 As if 90 • ‘Believe me’ 91 • ‘As for me…’ 93 • ‘I promise. Believe me’ 94 • ‘I confess, forgive me’ 95 II: The promise 97 • ‘I promise’ 97 Yes 97 • ‘I will speak of a promise’ 98 • ‘La promesse que je suis’ 99 5 Die Sprache (ver)spricht (sich) 99 Die Sprach verspricht 100 • ‘Par le mot par commence donc ce texte’ 105 Die Sprach verspricht 107 • ‘As if there were only arrivals [arrivées], and therefore only events without arrival.’ 108 • ‘[A]s if, even before learning to speak, I had been bound by some vows’ 109 Die Sprach verspricht (sich) 110 I am the martyr (x) 111 III: The performative; or, theatricality 113 • ‘That simplest of performances, an “I am”’ 113 ‘Typewriter Ribbon’: the event and the machine 115 • ‘[T]ake precisely this example’ 121 • ‘I am alive. No, you are dead’ 122 ‘The Facts in the Case of Iterability’ 123 • ‘I am dead, Horatio’ 129 • ‘I am the martyr comrade Khaled Rahhal’ 131 Chapter 3B: ‘I promise a language’ 134 Introduction 134 I. ‘[T]he exemplary or testimonial singularity of a martyred existence’ 138 • ‘I have only one language; it is not mine’ 140 • ‘But who’s talking about living? In other words on living?’ 147 • ‘I am only an example’ 150 • ‘I therefore venture to present myself to you here, ecce homo, in parody, as the exemplary Franco-Maghrebian’ 151 • ‘I will be accused of confusing it all. Of course I am not!’ 153 II. Traces, marks and scars 157 • ‘What is the nature of that hyphen?’ 160 • ‘I am always speaking about myself, without speaking about myself’ 162 III. The paradoxopoetic matrix of testimony 164 • ‘As if […] I were finally able to say and sign I’ 164 • ‘I promise a language’ 165 • ‘A poem, I never sign(s) it’ 166 • ‘You will call poem from now on a certain passion of the singular mark’ 168 Chapter 4: Operativity, Différance and the Testimonial 170 Introduction 170 I: Real and symbolic suicides 174 • ‘“One of the questions I will not avoid is that of religion”’ 174 Autoimmunity 180 II. The invention of the impossible 185 ‘Might that I be the martyr’: The mighty might of an unheard-of performative 188 Circumcision; Or, the Operation of the Other 192 6 Chapter 5: The Wounded Archive 211 Introduction 211 It is happening 211 I. The madness of the date 215 • ‘Each time what is involved is a machine, a tele-machine’ 216 The trace of the wound 217 The poematic experience 220 • ‘This is my body’ 221 • ‘Only one time: circumcision takes place once only’ 222 The fabrication of truth 224 ‘The delirious sense of wann’ 226 • ‘20 January’ 228 20 January 229 Faire date 231 • ‘Circumcise the word [bedchneide das Wort]’ 234 ‘Ash-glory [Aschenglorie]’ 238 The truth that wounds 240 II.