| November 6, 2002 | ||
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LETTER TO PETER L. WILSON Peter, Something tells me we are now hurdling toward an infinite war. It is the day after the mid term elections. I had no pretensions that a strong democratic finish in the senate and governor races would somehow stop the march against “terror”. But in light of the overwhelming Republican victories at the local and national level, it seems that there won’t even be a restroom break. It’s a strange phenomenon that when people are afraid they cling to neither reason nor hope, but salvation. They (or maybe just us Americans) want to be saved all at once, and long for a cult of personality, a kind of faith where the resonance of virtue (real or projected) is enough to produce a politics to feed, to cloth, to care. And then there are those horror stories about flyers being passed around Maryland in poor (predominately black) communities stating voting was today and that one must have paid their taxes, their parking tickets, their warrants (!), in order to vote. Heidegger must have meant America when he said there exist a time that is not its own time. Thank you for the advice about Iraq. The first thing I did was select the two long and difficult books to take (Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory is one). The Iraq peace teams are slowly streaming into Iraq. The first group of 7 activists went in September and teams have been going in every month. By the time I go in there will be at least 100 IPT members and other hundred foreign press and humanitarian groups working, volunteering, and remembering the place. I’m still planning to go (late December is the target date for the December team to go in). I have been in contact with the group I’ll be traveling with. They are handling the logistics and paperwork of being in Baghdad, and they have the blessing of the Iraqis for being there. I have to handle getting a Jordanian visa (we fly into Amman and take a bus ride into IRQ… do you know anyone in Jordan?). Fundraising is my main task at this point. Raising money for the trip, for the team, and getting the word out about the IPT. I still cannot “soundbite” my reasons for going for those concerned about my safety. I have slowly come to realize that this might be a good thing. History is complicated and so is desire. I have no pretensions about IPT being able to stop the war. Unless there is a mass mobilization that calls into question the military industrial complex and its collusion with oil companies and our federal government to dominate the middle east for empire-building, Iraq will be decimated. Going, however, doesn’t seem to me to amount to a death wish, since remembering a place through art (and media) preserves the place in memory and form that is otherwise annihilated in time and space. And perhaps this kind of memory is the kind that is foundational for counter-historical movements we need and want and hope for. It is what I hope for, in any case, which seems more like a life wish to me. I am practicing the kind of memory I want to make. I recently went to Japan to present some video work and had a chance to “exercise” my skills: talking to writers, video graphing things I like and things I don’t understand. Tokyo is almost a planet away from Baghdad, but Tokyo has its own rhythms of survival that I imagine any city with enormous social burdens must have in order to continue simply being, or risk collective suicide. Massive unemployment is different than the threat of being totally bombed out of existence, this is true. But I’m beginning to think this is a quantitative difference, and not a qualitative one. Both push a kind of social hopelessness, one simply kills you slower. In Japan I followed your advice about Iraq except one. I didn’t bring back any books for translation. Tokyo’s readership seems already quite acclimated toward English so there was no need. I actually found a rather large section (in my opinion) of Sufi poetry books in one of the independent bookstores in Ginza. A lot of independent bookstores in Tokyo, which was nice. I distinctly remember wanting to get one that was put out by the University of California press (the title escapes me) but put it back after realizing it would be around $30 USD. I figure Strand would have it. Instead I found an nice copy of Kobo Abe’s The Box Man and went on my way. I will keep you up to date on my travel plans. If you have any more suggestions or advice about the Middle East, I would appreciate them. Hope Water Street is as serene as it sounds. P. |
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