Stathis Gourgouris

Transformation, Not Transcendence

This essay belongs to a series of meditations on the secular imagination, by which I mean, very broadly, the capacity of humanity (occasional though it is) to conceptualize its existence in the absence of external and transcendental authority, and thus to exercise its radical potential for transforming the conditions of its existence in full cognizance of its historical character. Obviously, such a meditation also involves an interrogation as to what constitutes the historical subject, the subject of history, as well as, of course, the subject in history, and would thus require equally an investigation of subjectivity’s psychic dimensions. (Hence, the simultaneous interest of the overall project in the politics of sublimation, though on this occasion this will be broached only tangentially.) The central figure in this essay is what Edward Said has called ‘‘secular criticism,’’ a notion I take to be indicative of an intransigent intellectual position that seeks to critique and transform existing conditions—and this holds true both in matters of aesthetic form (literature, music) and social-political action—without submitting to the allure of otherworldly or transcendent solutions. The motif of transformation against the grain of transcendence is the core element in Said’s con-

Philosophy and Sublimation

Cornelius Castoriadiss theory of sublimation is not only innovative within the Freudian tradition, but opens up the domain of inquiry as to societys process of radical social institution. Sublimation is indeed socialization, not merely aesthetic cathexis. A specific sort of sublimation that may be said to mobilize the project of autonomy is linked to philosophy both because it is implicated in a process of interminable interrogation, and because it involves the psyches practical and poetic engagement with the creation of new imaginary forms. Philosophys task, in this sense, is to consider thought from the standpoint of the unthought, a daring task that cannot ultimately take place without ones fully-fledged acceptance of ones own finitude.

Dream-Work of Dispossession: The Instance of Elia Suleiman

Essentially a cinema of occupation and dispossession, Palestinian cinema disrupts standard notions of national cinema, complicating conventional expectations of national aesthetics or national dreams. As the borders of Palestine9s historical territory are continuously under erasure, so too are the symbolic boundaries of its language, which is flexible and inventive; the language of Palestinian cinema is a limit-language . No one has expressed this “limit condition” more succinctly than Elia Suleiman, whose cinematic language exemplifies a poetics of dispossession that depicts the asphyxiating spaces and truncated temporalities of Palestinian life with tragic humor and bold fantasy in defiance of narrative simplicity. Suleiman9s films run counter to the conventional representation of Palestinian existence and are arguably the sharpest expressions of what can be deemed to be the dream-work of that existence against its conventional representation.

The Stratigraphy of Dislocation - Jerusalem, Cairo, New York: An Interview with Edward Said

The fundamental questions that guided this interview have been informed by Edward Said’s long-term project of exposing the complicity between the cultural and the political, between constructions about objectivity and structures of imperialism and colonialism, and processes that have assigned ethical accountabilities to differing cultural formulations. What emerges clearly from Said’s answers is the complexity of modalities that make the identity of the post-colonial critic possible. The interview was originally commissioned by the independent public television series On the Paths of Thought, for the National Broadcast System in Athens, Greece, initially conducted by Yiorgos Chouliaras and Stathis Gourgouris and broadcast in Greece. Some of the original questions, and a number of new ones, were resubmitted to Said by Neni Panourgiá on 10 June 2002; the interview was then edited again, working closely with Said.1