What Does the Veil Know? PDF
Preview What Does the Veil Know?
What does the Veil know? Eva Meyer &Vivian Liska (editors) What does the Veilknow? Heike Behrend Stephanie Benzaquen AyseErkmen Rike Felka Silvia Henke Benda Hofmeyr Rembert Huser 11s Huygens Carol Jacobs Elfriede Jelinek Vivian Liska Eva Meyer Willem Oorebeek Johannes Porsch Laurence A. Rickels Avital Ronell Hinrich Sachs Eran Schaerf Gisela Volger Jan van EyckAcademie,Maastricht Institute ofJewish Studies,University ofAntwerp Edition Voldemeer Zurich ttl Springer Wien NewYork Editors EvaMeyer.Berlin Vivian Liska.Antwerp PublishedwithsupportfromtheJan vanEyckAcademie.Maastricht. andtheInstituteofJewishStudies.UniversityofAntwerp. Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.Allrights arereserved.whetherthewholeor partofthematerial isconcerned.specificallythoseoftranslation.reprinting.re-useofillustrations.broadcasting. reproductionbyphotocopyingmachine orsimilarmeans.and storageindatabanks. Copyright ©2009bytheeditors.theauthors.andVoldemeerAGZiirich. ~7r EditionVoldemeerZiirich ~ P.O.Box2174 CH-8027Ziirich Fortheworks ofart copyright©2009bytheartists. Fortheillustrationscopyright©2009bythephotographers. Allrights reserved. Translators:CathyKerkhoff-Saxon&WilfriedPrantner(ElfriedeJelinek.HinrichSachs. EvaMeyer},HuangQi(!i7~·~l!-itJt?l.CecileRossant (RikePelka), Production.design.and layout:EditionVoldemeerZiirich (HuangQi.JanisOsolin), ThelayoutisbasedonaconceptbyPascaleGatzen,EvaMeyer.JohannesPorsch,Eran Schaerf. Printing:Gebr.Klingenberg Buchkunst,Leipzig. Paper:MunkenPure(ISO14001.EMAS.PaperProfile.FSC.PEFCl. With84illustrations ISBN 978-3-211-99289-0 SpringerWienNewYork ~ SpringerWienNewYork Sachsenplatz4-6 A-12OIWien www.springer.at www.springeronline.com Contents What does the Veilknow? 9 VivianLiska UponRevisting - the Veil 12 ElfriedeJelinek The Cast-off Gaze 19 HeikeBehrend& GiselaVolger ABC ofthe Veil 25 Hinricn Sachs APresent-DayVeil: The Fiction ofCompleteness 31 WillemOorebeek Michael in the Snow 40 Avital Ronell OFF DUTY: The VeilsofServility 41 LaurenceA. Rickels VeilofTears 46 RikeFelka BetweenWord and Space 57 IlsHuygens Kiarostami's Ten: Mobilizing the Viewer's Look 66 BendaHofmeyr The Future that Death/Other gives 73 Stephanie Benzaquen Harbin Express 85 JohannesPorsch Uneseconde: Sample 103 SilviaHenke The Possibility ofa Sign 128 CarolJacobs Reading,Writing, Hatching 130 EranSchaerf AMatter ofConfidence 144 RembertHuser Fichu's Fritz 156 EvaMeyer The Veil'sFree Indirect Discourse about Itself 173 Ay§eErkmen Inserts 401 561 721 881 1041 1201 136\ 1521 168\ 1841 What does the Veilknow? ifil~"1-tJ~-itIt·? 183 Contributors 192 What does the Veil know? What does the veil know but will oness and flees into a cave. leaving not tell us directly? This phrasing her veil behind. The lioness, whose may sound like an odd personifica muzzle is dripping with the blood of tion- the veil is not a person and a fresh kill, rips Thisbe's veil.When cannot know anything-but for the Pyramus finds the torn and blood moment I would like the question stained veil.he concludes that the li and the figure ofspeechjust to cross oness has killedThisbe and commits your mind. like an epigraph or a suicide with his sword.WhenThisbe haunting melody.Against this back findsPyramus'sdeadbody.shethrows ground music. we can reexamine herselfon his blade. how we define knowledge, know These are some ofthe first known ledge by experience or personal ac referencestoveiling.andinterestingly quaintance,knowledge as awareness enough.they allrefertothe veil'spo offacts.knowledgeasanunderstand tential for leading to wrong conclu ing of patterns of relations, and re sions. It is this very potential which alize that the veilinsists. knows that is embraced by storytelling but re there is more to it than we can ever strictedbylawinorderto containfe know about it. male sexuality and to structure the AnAssyrian legal text of the thir social status imposed on women: In teenth century BCE restricts veiling the Assyrian, Greco-Homan, and By to respectable women and prohibits zantine empires.as well as inpre-Is it for prostitutes. The Middle-Assyr lamicIran.veilingandseclusionwere ian Lawsfrom 750-612BCEprescribe marksofprestige and symbolsofsta punishment for a harlot or slave girl tus. Onlywealthy families could af foundwearingaveilinthestreet. Ovid ford toseclude their women.The veil (43BCE-17CE) inBookIVofhisMeta was a sign of respectability but also morphosesrelies onthe veiltoconvey ofa lifestylethat did not require the aBabylonianlovestory:Pyramus and performance ofmanual labor.Its ab Thisbe fall in love.but their parents sence was asignofpoverty and pros disapprove oftheir relationship.The titution.but also ofthe performance lovers agree tomeet insecrecy at the of movement, in the streets and on tomb of the Babylonian KingNinus. the fields. unimpeded by the veil. It Thisbe, who arrives early, sees a li- is the practice ofveiling that makes 9 women's absence omnipresent and forces us to suspend the parameters in Delphi.Philosophyturned this into turns the veil into cause and sym ofour investigation carefully. the transcendentalpostulatethathu bol of political, social, and religious Wemustbe awarethatoncethe se mans are to know themselves as ra controversy. mantics oftheveilcanbedefinedthey tional beings.Evenifit is meanwhile Movingforward to the present day, set a dynamic in motion that dictates assumed that this refers not only to wefindourselves confrontedwith an aparadigmaticcontext.Andwhilethe theoreticalself-knowledge butalsoto ideological split that instrumental politics ofthe veilcan be dividedinto the experienceofthe boundarywhere izes a cultural and religious artifact twomainreactions,againstorforthe oneknows one isjustahumanbeing, for various reasons.Analyses of dif veil,we must refrain from doing the what is still missing here is the dis ferentpolitical representationsofthe same byinstead exploringthe differ tinction whereby one knows one is veildemonstratethatitssymbolicsig ences within these reactions, going onlyonehumanbeing and needsoth nificance is constantly being defined from difference to difference within ers as a quality in which we are im and redefined, to the point of ambi the foldsofthe veil,and releasingthe mersed, as in a veil.Yetthis immer guity.In Iran the veil was abolished veil from any certain meaning, be it sion can only take place as a willed in 1936for its backwardnessbyReza religious, sexual, social, or political. and systematic indirectness, a multi Shah and less than fifty years later It is its ubiquity that seems to allow voicedmonologue,cutloosefrom any reinstated bythe Islamic Republic of everyone toform an opinion aboutit, subjectivity.Itpossiblyshowsalackof Iran to mark its progress along the and it is its ambiguity that stops us imagination,expressingitselfwithout ideological path of Islam. And let us short and imposes on us not the veil, reference to anything else, indepen not forget the West that rejects the but the omnipresence ofabsence, its dently of any question of its actuali veilasbeing associatedwithwomen's potentiality. zation.Ofcourse,this does not mean oppression under Islam, while capi "Taking the veil" means to with thereis anythingunrealaboutit.Itis talizing on the enormous marketing draw from the world. For it is not awayoflookingthe world's complex potentialofits secretsexiness.More as it appears to be or as we would ityin the face. over,there exists a vast relay oftexts like to have it. Our withdrawal does Insummer 1996,theMinistryofCul and filmsinwhich the veilisused not not concern some good or bad qual ture and Islamic Orientation in Iran only as metaphor, metonym, or syn ity of that world. Rather it concerns published rules for the Iranian cin ecdoche for the experiences ofwhat no quality at all or the very fabric of ema,censoringnotonlythe represen are for the most part, though not al the quality that surrounds the sub tation of the woman's body but also ways,Muslimwomen,but also for its ject, confined within the space ofits the contactbetweenwomen and men. visual and literary dynamics. Allthis consciousness,likeaveil."Knowthy Womenwere forbidden tightclothing, testifies to the semantic versatility of self'were the words with which visi not allowed to show any part of the amerepiece ofcloth and, indoingso, tors were welcomedatApollo'sshrine bodyexceptface and hands,andthey 10 could not have physical contact or from its self-presence by subject that underrepresents its complexity exchange tenderwords orjokes with ing it to the otherness of a different whilegivingup onrepresentation al men. Confronted with these restric language, by introducing a barrier together, exceeding rather than un tions, Iranian filmmakers had to fi which, again and again, separates dermining its goal. It surpasses the gure out a form ofpatience;they had us from and connects as with a for interpretativethoughtorganizingthe toturn tothe image not as represen eignlanguage.Itiscertainlyimpossi discourse ofemotion that unites the tation but as nodal point or passage ble toliftthatbarrier and, infact,we inside/outsideimageryofpersonalex in the circulation ofmeaning.It dis wouldprefernotto,sinceitisour only perience by projecting both sides. It places the locus ofthe gaze,which is means ofaccess-less translation in stretches between a world in which not a subjectivity, but the right dis itselfbuttranslationofourselves-to representation is in charge, and an tance fromthe beliefinGodthatputs a plural place.The interference be other world that opens onto its own at adistance boththe explicitcensor tween two or more heterogeneous presence. It reveals that it is there, shipofrepresentationbythe Eastand systems displaces the barrier,makes despite the ideologyofemotion's ten the implicitcensorshipcarriedoutby it visible as the movement ofinade dency to effaceitinfavour ofsubjec representation in the West. quation and the work ofdifference. tive expression, and it compels us to Writing about the veilinvolvesthe What has recently become synony do what it asks for:to redefine both necessity ofencountering something mouswiththosecultural andreligious knowledgeandemotionasastructure radicallystrange.Tobesure,eachlan differencesrepeatedlypresentedtous that cuts expression loose from per guage has its own system ofthought asunbridgeable,alien,and terrifying, sonal feeling and does not fall back which conditions the thinkable. We has infact been part ofbothWestern on the mediation of professionals. cannot detach ourselves from the and Eastern cultures for millennia, That is whywe have to organize the decisions our language has already from aristocratic women of ancient veil's impulses into two areas linked made for us and which dictate us Greece to contemporary brides and bythe conjunction"and":description, self-evident assumptions and pro widows worldwide.The veil is not a includingunwillingdescription,ofac scriptions.Buttothe extentthatcon sign oftruth but ofchange, an emo tual experience that givesway to an servatism consists in the fear ofcon tional territory which is peculiarly experience leadingtooverdetermina sequences,whileradicalismisdefined resistant to any theory ofthe subject tion ofthe image ofthe veil;and an by the desire to push consequences that refers to a thinking, feeling,and ontologyofthe unthought that gives to their furthest limits, what we are willingselfasan existingpartofwhat waytoaself-differentialtext,the text dealing with here is a radical import used to be called a person. Both the ofthe veil. of strangeness into our language. A discourse ofthe subject and the ide failure of translation that cannot be ologyof the subject converge in the EvaMeyer repressed.It dislodges our language veilasanarrativeabout the discourse II Vivian Liska a field of knowledge. Thinking the materiality of these metaphors not UponRevisiting-the Veil only unfolds possibilities for a rear rangement of social and philosophi cal spaces but also unleashes the ki The veilis one, it divides into two,it netic forces (as possibilities inherent occupies the place ofa third, and of in language) to no longer mark but fers the observer the position of a make a difference. fourth.Butistheveilone?Doesitpar Whencethese forces?Theimpact of tition in two,since it generates rela the veiland otherimagesofliminality tionsasmuch asitdivides?Nottaking reside in the interface between their up much space, it surely does not oc linguistic (metaphoric, iconographic, cupyaplace, be ita"third."Anddoes symbolic) existence and their "real" itallowfor an observer's"fourth"po function in the world. This interface sition,or any position at all? duplicates the valour of the division Is the veil one? It is an object, a they convey and perform what they symbol,an icon,apiece ofclothing,a refer to,destabilizing it:Athreshold sign,aword.Lingerie,curtain,mask, "happens" at the threshold between membrane, it suggests transparent their real and their metaphoric use. secret,seductive taboo,visibleseclu This divisionis again the locus ofthe sion. It is a problem, a discourse, a divisionbetweentheiractual function contentioustopic,ameansofoppres and their linguistic existence.Bring sionandaninstrumentofdefiance,an ing these terms into circulation en obstruction, a protection from intru meshes world and textwithout allow sion,a sign ofdiscretion, a device of ingthemtofalltogether, neitherwith concealment,and atoolofrevelation. each other nor with themselves-a Heavilygender inflected and cultur porous, mobile,ineffable divisionre ally loaded, the diaphanous,weight mains. less thing hangs between men and Theveil,likethe threshold,the bor women,Orientand Occident,tradition der,the limit,triggers a self-reflexive and the modern.Itsignals prohibition movement that does not arrive back and evokes curiosity, eros, pudeur, to itself because, superseding any taboo at once.It calls up tactile and synthesizing, harmonizing dialectic, visual sensations:soft,fragile,yet re it carries the spirallingmovement as sistantandimpenetrable.Aparadigm a permanent "shifter" within itself. ofambiguity,itisneitherone nor two When the action ofthe veilis turned and confuses rigid divisions, as, ad on itself, the separation, distinction, mittedly,other"thirds" do,too. divisionit is supposed to provide be The veilindeed belongs to a series comes uncertain and opens the veil oftopographicalmetaphors- thresh to new use. But what, among other old, border, margin-used to con metaphors ofliminality,is specificto ceptualize and,in away,visualize di the veil? vision. The inflationary topicality of More concrete than thresholds or these terms in recent discourse lies borders, endowed with richer and in their potential to disturb a static more varied iconographic histories logic of inside/outside, exclusion/in and anthropological functions, the clusion, totality/separation, that sug veil involves the aesthetic, the reli gests hierarchic power relations in gious,and the politicalrealmat once. politics and a potentially self-defeat Itorganizesdistinctionsrangingfrom ing epistemology out to dominate gender relations (the veilofwidows, 12 of Muslim women, or of belly danc ers) to divisions between public and private,sacredand profane (curtains in windows, before Torah scrolls, or around beds) or degrees offictional ity(suchasveilsinfront ofastage for dreamlike or fantastic atmosphere). Between opacity and transparency, the veil plays on mystery and sem blance and features in phantasms of ultimate unveiling-of truth, of the body, of being itself-just as much as in celebrations ofsemblance and appearance. In this proliferation of ambiguities what the veildivides re cedes, and its shape and texture, its ownsignificance and mode ofsignifi cation comeinto focus. Its own?Asall means ofdivisionit seems to constitute a third between the sides thatit partitions. Belonging neither to the one nor to the other side, thresholds and divisions were, in traditional cultures, places of an nunciations and apparitions, ofgood or evil spirits, spots of dereliction for magical or holy contact between worlds. In another register, they are lociofepistemologicalcomplexity.But is the veila third at all? Inextricably linked to perception,it is more mov able, flexible, unstable than thresh olds: the veil can take the shape of that which it covers; transparent, it remains suggestive ofwhat it hides. And since it can cover both the eyes and the object they perceive, or re side anywhere in the space stretch ing from the one to the other, it has nofixedplace within the in-between. Carryingalongthe metaphoricalfield oftexture,text, weaving, and folds,it is woven into the very fabric of the medium transporting its memory,its discourse,its history. Inthe faceofseeminglyendlesspro liferation of potential signification, what are wetodowiththeveilbeyond writingitshistories,structuringitsty pologies,and measuring its multiple, 13
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