LOCATING A NARRATIVE OF RESISTANCE prelude poetry: notes on revolution
by Maya Kamal
FRAMEWORK
This book of poetry is built on the notes from the Arab Revolutions 2017 class as a starting point, with Edward Said’s After The Last Sky and Mahmoud Darwich’s resistance poetry as main inspirations. It started off with a Secret Santa gift, on “what constitutes a revolution”, given on the last day of class (and due to it’s secrecy, I do not know whose gift it is from; but my what a gift it is!), which reads, “A pen and a flashlight so we can write each other letters and poems… from different fronts, from different cells”
I was quite touched with this idea, the idea that poetry and letters given to and for each other; letters to ourselves, could be a starting point: a beginning, an origin, of perhaps an archive… all the while retaining our voices and, recording it for the future. Letters and poems as bearing witness, holding evidence, something to excavate, and the bricks of a foundation to selfhood and nation. In After The Last Sky, Edward Said states, “The striking thing about Palestinian prose and prose fiction is its formal instability: Our literature in a certain very narrow sense is the elusive, resistant reality it tries so often to represent. […] Our characteristic mode, then, is not a narrative, in which scenes take place seriatim, but rather broken narratives, fragmentary compositions, and self-consciously staged testimonials, in which the narrative voice keeps stumbling over itself, its obligations and its limitations.” (1999: p. 38)
Looking through my notes on revolution — I was struck by the similarities in how one’s thoughts are formed when translating from the verbal to the written, to a ‘fragmented, broken narrative’. Could this be a narrative? If so, formed, how would it look like? Mahmoud Darwish’s Absent Presence explores form, style and textual as vehicles for dismantling, where aesthetics of language scrambles the coherence, instigates trauma, witnessing the irreconcilable, displacing narrative. Considering oral histories and tying it to the Palestinian context; how does one speak when one’s existence is translucent? When invisibility and a lack of recognition persists? I reiterate Said’s words (above): “stumbling over itself.” However, a map. If poetry is the act of tracing: sketching presence with the bare minimum, then the act of excavating from the shadows is a trace for presences, especially for the Palestinians. Shedding light on the dispossession; presence as resistance.
The paradox builds on each other, and yet negates at each collision. To construct a coherent scene, one uses incoherent genres of narrative. To express the (lack of a present), one works with the impossibility of reimagining, retelling, re-narrativising (the past). One interrogates unspoken, untold truths. As Edward Said writes, “But for the people who live in or near the interiors where it is impossible to deny their Palestinian origins, there is at least the privilege of obduracy. Here we are, unmoved by your power, proceeding with our lives and with future generations. These statements of presence are fundamentally silent, but they occur with unmistakable force.” (1999: p. 68)
With these thoughts in mind, I selected key terms from my notes on revolution that fitted into an imagery of loss, a lacking, and acts of reclamation engraved within these absences. These ‘poems’ aim at locating a narrative — through fragments, questions, instigations, thought processes… a kind of “prelude: poetry” because it escapes genre.. it is told very directly as a prose would, yet lacks the paragraph a prose carries. It’s method of delivery could be compared to a manifesto, yet the style is subdued. At times, it can be read as a stream of consciousness. This explorative shuffling and interruptions of a linear path is an act of resistance itself, generating alternative possibilities of a narrative. By focusing on urgency, it’s combination of stasis and movement desires to encourage a reaction, through the deconstruction of words and terms, which itself acts as capsules of significance. It’s writing style is done through a decolonial attempt, that is to not add nor subtract to existing forms, but to conceptualise and construct a somewhat coherent path. Creating something somewhat novel, straying away from acts of reproduction, from accepting the given narrative genres as ‘universal’. In trying to locate a voice — much like director Mohanad Yaqubi’s Off Frame, excavating the shadows — material is sought, but how to make visible the material; the formation of content itself wants to be the coordinates that question the trajectories of hegemonic monopoly. After all, how does one map out an origin which is vague? A disintegration that loops? An indeterminate identity? Some of the sentences carry truistic undertones: perhaps an ironic statement caused by the disbelief, the incomprehensibility, the preposterous and excessive negation of Palestinian lives. It’s urgency carries the spirit of a protest sign, quick and transparent messages at which one proceeds to act. One could imagine, writing these sentences down, as a source of hope and sustenance, on the fronts and in the cells. Edward Said on resettlement and visibility declares, “Just as we once were taken from one ‘habitat’ to a new one, we can be moved again.” (1999: p. 12)
However we may frame this movement, whether it is the lack of a genre that neglects a consistent shape, or a poetry of testimony, we can be moved again: hope, regeneration and perseverance. It acts as textimonies — Write Down! I am Here.
Secret Santa gift in Arab Revolutions 2017, on Revolution.
Divine Intervention. Dir. Elia Suleiman, 2002.
When (They) Place People
Consider “incompleteness” as a verb— Image, by and for, ourselves (to seek, not to find. to build, not to refurbish. to create, not to add) Fractured access, there is no map for our images. our vulnerable existence. Absence implied Rather than revealed (for there is nothing to reveal) Couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t acknowledgement of removal acknowledge the removal
Off Frame aka Revolution Until Victory. Dir. Mohanad Yaqubi, 2016.
SUSPENDED TIME: BLOCKING OF ‘AN ABILITY’
CONSIDER ‘INCOMPLETENESS’ AS A VERB
“Nobody Has Asked Me This Question”
“People have not seen themselves” on the world theatre stage: we are what’s lacking. To be told what one looks like; to be rejected a mirror— witnessing our translucence. To go about life not knowing the gravity one holds. Dis— Embodiment Orientation Placement Critical of it’s Hereness, Criticising it’s Elsewhere Suspended Time: Blocking ‘an Ability’ Temporal Framing: It loops, it loops, it loops We return back to a somewhere; an elsewhere that we could not return to. The struggle for coherence: an impoverished migration of bodies, of land, of identity, of ‘placeness’
Stars in Broad Daylight. Dir. Ossama Mohammed, 1988.
NOW WHAT? NOW WHERE?
stasis / static
Mornings: Despite’s Afternoons: Passing Evenings: Beyond Prayers rituals include echo-chambered prayers Weaving Nationhood: “I think therefore I am / I am where I think” what can people do without geography? Now What? Now Where? what is a landscape of reconciliation? writing letters with a torchlight stamped to ourselves We don’t have to talk about (the turmoil) We are (the turmoil) How do we convey origins without a reference point?
On the set of The Time that Remains. Dir. Elia Suleiman, 2009. Photo by Marcel Hartmann.
RETURNS THAT FORM BEGINNINGS
PHYSICAL RELICS, EXILED OBJECTS
RETRACE RECOGNITION
RECONSTRUCTING AGENCY
Seeds of revival
Image creation: Identity resonance Physical relics, exiled objects Generative, Alternatives Discovery: rewriting our own, reconfiguring his(tory) Awareness : SPREAD — INFILTRATE — RAPID, RAPID. MESSING UP LINEAR TRAJECTORIES Non-linear, Continuous, Personal, Multiple Why? What? was the feeling? Initiate: Reframe, Retake, Reclaim A Gun in one hand and a Camera in the other Cinema from reality, reality from cinema We have lost count of our reconstructions Indeed, our very being is a constant construction
Amnesia: lack of continuity, individual forgotten and forgetting as a product of systematic erasure; he forgets himself. he forgets to ask. he forgets the question to ask. Access to memory: forged links - A Realisation stripped: uncounted, undocumented, Basic Human Right— “It is not the driver’s forgetfulness that nags at him. It is their silence”
Stars in Broad Daylight. Dir. Ossama Mohammed, 1988.
Productions of space
Attack on self sufficiency: “Officer, here is my statement of PRESENCE” It reads: This is a willingness for me to proclaim myself. This very document speaks to my Hereness. Embodied Presence, as a mode of being AN UNBROKEN PERSISTENCE to retrace Recognition not despite it, but beyond it neither rest nor respite
The Time That Remains. Dir. Elia Suleiman, 2009.
Red Army/PLFP: Declaration of World War Dir.Masao Adachi, Koji Wakamatsu. 1971.
Unity in imagination: possibilities
Can an archive be a vessel of freedom?
Refuge in dreams
Imagine, then embody
Embodied presence as a mode of being
LIMBS INTERTWINED BODIES CONNECTED
ATTACK ON SELFSUFFICIENCY
image creation identity resonance
found orbituaries: unsung, untold heroes
“loss of image, fear of material”
praxis— evident discordances
unveil, re-veil
Beginnings
to: Stability, Continuity, Movement “Doing” Evoked Being “realised” Excavating shadows: Excavating the invisible Can an archive be a vessel of freedom? and return to visibility to ourselves, for ourselves Unity in imagination: Possibilities Imagine, then embody Love, Love, Love The violence that stems from love Refuge in dreams People as poetry, love as action Limbs intertwined, bodies connected Unveil, Re-veil Persist, Resist
The Open Door. Dir. Henry Barakat, 1964.
HOLES AS SKY
traces: poetry of loss
shadow work: traces of presence
Waiting
Oscillating in Returns that form beginnings: “Loss of image, fear of material” Waiting: when memories come and do not hurt Remakes; Retakes Found obituaries; Unsung, Untold heroes Traces: poetry of loss Shadow work: traces of presence No “Placeness”, No Spatiality HOLES AS SKY “What does it mean to constantly be on standby mode?” Praxis: Evident discordancies Sleeping with guns; an organ: extension of hands Roads and journeys — an exile’s home is measurement
Ici et ailleurs. Dir. Jean Luc Godard, Anne-Marie Mieville & Dziga Vertov Group. 1976.
Ici et ailleurs. Dir. Jean Luc Godard, Anne-Marie Mieville & Dziga Vertov Group. 1976.