I. THE GIFT OF BORGES
BORGES, SELECTED POEMS, PENGUIN, p. 21
Remorse for any death
Borges – selected poems, p 353, the suicide
II. Detonating borges
What is inside a poem? What is outside of it? Where are its boundaries? This is the paralogical status of a poem – a singularity which holds an infinite series of interpretations
This is poetry’s challenge to systemized knowledge: a glipse of the unknown; a star collapsing to an infinite destiny in zero space; a singularity. All attempts to interpret the poem amount to a violent arresting of dynamism; an erasure of radical alterity.
Similar to the structural indeterminacy of the poet’s intent,t he poet can never be known, the reader’s interpretation cannot be known by the poet, they never know how they’ll be read.
There is a hidden relationality shared with the suicide bomber. We may never access their intent and they never know how their act will be read. All attempts to know or comprehend the suicide bomber are aa violent effacement of a singular gesture.
It is this unknowability, glimpsed in poetry’s suicide bombing, that opens up the space of alterity, a metaphorical relation without totalizing equivalence that effaces all meaning and makes living impossible.
Poetry terrorizes western philosophical systems by pointing beyond knowledge. Similar to how the suicide bomber is never sure of the way the gesture is received – the poet is blind to the fx of their writing. Inversely, similar to the way we may enver know the motives of the now dead suicide bomber, we may never know the meaning of the poet. In fact, each attempt to answer an over writing of the bomb/poem with the self. So we are left in a dead lock: obliged to respond whilst painfully aware of the inadequacy of each attempt to reply insofar as it overwrites the other within our selves. Herein lay meaning! In a transparent universe of pure exchange, only a singular object for which no response or interpretation is adequate opens up the necessary space of otherness, for comparison without equation, for value without equivalence.
Fernando 10, The suicide bomber; and her gift of death, atropos press, NY, 213-222
The poet, irremediably split between exaltation and vulgarity… she is dead.
III. The ethics of the unknown
1. All attempts to understand the singular gesture of the suicide bomber amount to an obscene impositon of a hermeneutic model that flattens all difference – this is the true terror – an effacement of alterity by a mundane recirculation of the same in a transparent universe of metaphysical comfort. This too is a type of death: a sterile life that negates the unknown and drains life of its own potential. It is fromt his dead structure that suicide bombing escape.
Fernando 10
The suicide bomber; and her gift of death, atropos press ny 148-150
“At the risk of banality…mere dogma and orthodoxy.”
2. We must maintain the incomprehensibility of the suicide bomber. The alternative of attempting integration locks us into an economy of reciprocation. This is the logic of the wars in Afghanistan and iraq: an attempt to respond to the incomprehensible act of 9/11 via an obscene, calculative methodology. Such a response vulgarly reduces lives to their mere statistics, where we match their death with ever more death, creating an infinitely regressive cycle of violent escalation. Against this, the death of individuals should be viewed as a singular and incomprehensible event which opens space for reflection.
Fernando 8
Reflections on (t)error, VDM verlag/Lightning source, pg 41-42
“In desperation we attempt to ‘understand’ … and it is this impossibility that has captured our imagination.”
Perscription of the other is integral to the ability of the modern nation state to wage war. It is this ability to narrate the other into existence, as an invading vermin, or savage, or fundamentalist, is what white washes the institutional violence which is the fabric of the modern nation state—Jeremy fernando ,Reflections on Terror,—2008
Having eviscerated the playing field…of the self.
Nation state is founded on war based on the construction of a other against which it can pit its narratice of the invading enemy vermin—the blaming of the other for the violence of the state is an act of whitewashing that covers up the blood spilt on behalf of the civilized world. It is the disappearance at the heart of suicide bombing and poetic terror that terrifies you for it reveals that we in essence are torturing ourselves in the name of security-- Jeremy fernando ,Reflections on Terror,—2008
The strategy of all nation states…somewhere out there
Conessions of a suicide bomber-- Jeremy fernando ,Reflections on Terror,—2008
We have not forgotten …attempts to unveil
To remind us of those who have died as a result of suicide bombing is to suggest an equalizing paradigm whereby all lives are interchangeable. In this sense, defense of the suicide bomber is the foremost way to argue for the singularity of all life as invaluable. Oh, an even and especially this description this description falls short, because one cannot respond to an event in a calculated manner-- Jeremy fernando , The suicide bomber, and her gift of death , Atropos press—2008
Surely you don’t…attempt to unveil
