Report: A Nonsite Talk w/ Thom Donovan ("Presencing the Disaster")

On Saturday, July 28, Thom Donovan presented a talk entitled “Presencing the Disaster.” In attendance were: Bruce Boone, Beverly Dahlen, Taylor Brady, Tanya Hollis, Brandon Brown, Lee Azus, Miranda Mellis, Brian Whitener, Stephen Vincent, Jocelyn Saidenberg and Rob Halpern.

The talk’s point of departure was a question: how do artists, writers and activists “presence” otherwise inaccessible social and cultural disasters while remaining sensitive to the possibility that the disaster may have rendered traditional forms of representation impossible. Thom addressed a series of difficult concepts developed by Lebanese writer and artist Jalal Toufic in Toufic’s essay “Forthcoming” from the book *Forthcoming* (Atelos 2000) [see Curriculum Resources for link to article]. In particular, Thom focused on Toufic’s idea of the “surpassing disaster,” which refers to a catastrophic socio-political event of such magnitude that it creates a rupture and destabilizes, at the deepest level, a culture’s relationship to its history and even its understanding of time. Under conditions of the surpassing disaster, victims of social divisions, ethnic cleansing or imperial militarism are as if under quarantine, severed from their traditions or land, and subjected to a situation where to continue living is “to die before dying.” For Toufic, this constitutes a state of “undeath” and describes those geopolitical subjects whose personal identity and recognition have been repealed, as it were, as a result of a radical enclosure whereby normative forms of self-representation and transcultural communication are no longer available.

One effect of the surpassing disaster is an “occultation” of the culture’s own tradition, a blockage that suspends any authentic transmission of, or relationship to, the past. Toufic references many examples, from the Lebanese “civil” war and the Shoah, to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and the Native American genocide. Thom emphasized Toufic’s idea that under conditions of the surpassing disaster, “nothing” is the only thing that can be seen. (“You have seen nothing in Hiroshima,” says the Japanese lover to the French woman in Hiroshima mon amour). In the aftermath of these catastrophic events, according to Toufic’s conceptualization, any reference to, or use of, the past and its materials—including aesthetic techniques and forms—can amount to either “counterfeit” or “resurrection.”

Toufic illuminates these concepts in his conclusion to “Forthcoming”:

"A Kashaya Pomo chief and scholar recently expressly discontinued the transmission of a tribal dance. Something must have indicated to her that the discontinuation of the transmission of the dance would be less detrimental and problematic than its handing it down. Were it the case that their forebears had undergone only a vast catastrophe, the issue for the contemporary Native Americans would plainly be to do everything possible to transmit the traditional songs and dances to their contemporary youths in spite of the latter’s acculturation and indifference. But in case what was suffered was a surpassing disaster, one must be sensitive to the eventuality of the withdrawal, and, in the absence or failure of the resurrection of tradition, of the obligation to suspend transmission, so as not to hand down counterfeit culture."

Thom drew the group’s attention to these concerns while contextualizing Toufic’s difficult concepts within the framework of Islamic mystical traditions. Upon concluding his talk, Thom hoped that we as a group might discuss the possible relation between Toufic’s ideas and our own artistic projects and related social engagements. He also wanted to link his talk on Toufic with an essay by Rebecca Solnit, “The Price of Gold, the Value of Water,” which considers the ongoing ecological disasters of mining in both the eastern and western Sierra, as well as those cultural disasters relating to mining that affect the indigenous communities in Nevada.

Some of the threads elaborated on during our discussion include the following:

[a list of ideas, questions, threads, pursued by the group is forthcoming. Please visit Forum: “Presencing the Disaster” to contribute to this list, and/or related discussions. For those not present at the talk, you can access Toufic's essay under Curriculum Resources: Materials for "Presencing the Disaster," and then join in.

Initial report by Jocelyn Saidenberg and Rob Halpern. Edits, emendations, elaborations, extensions welcome.]