Articles - July 2020

The aesthetic stridency of modernism was frequently accompanied by strong political stances, often with disastrous results. Among the innovative writers who managed to navigate the twentieth century without becoming entangled in its worst excesses was Francophone Egyptian poet Edmond Jabès (1912­–1991). Did Jabès’s attitude toward language offer some degree of immunity from totalitarian attitudes? 

I like sweeping. Ironing clothes. Tasks that mainly utilize repetitive motions, like digging or sawing with hand tools. Tasks that make my body present in their repetitions. Then, little by little, like drops of water, waterless and soundless, recollections appear one by one, to join in the celebration of the event of sweeping that I’m currently performing. The tools I use don’t represent (are not a representation of) my body or vice versa.