Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SYRBODY (The Tragic Body in the Syrian Context)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2020-09-16 do 2021-09-15
Although the tragic body is at the center of the images and narratives coming from Syria, it has not yet been considered, in itself, as a subject of philosophical research. However, this body is pivotal in understanding the catastrophe that marks Syrian society from an existential point of view, insofar as it is thanks to the body that the human being is a “being-in-the-world”; in our case, in a destroyed world. Therefore, SYRBODY aims to develop a dynamic philosophical approach to the body, by studying the effects of nihilism and extreme violence on the being-in-the-word as a corporal being, and by reflecting on the creative ways to resist that violence, which allow the construction of a new awareness of corporality. To that end, the project raises the question of the body in a multidisciplinary perspective, relying on artworks, narratives, and fictions, considered from now on as raw philosophical material.
SYRBODY combined fieldwork, conducted in Lebanon (Partner Organization: Ifpo), and theoretical work developed at the Université de Paris (CERiLAC). The first months of the outgoing phase were dedicated to identifying testimonial literature, fictions and artworks for the research, and to conceiving the initial fieldwork. During that period, SYRBODY has also identified partners, artists and writers interested in participating in this research. As of the fourth month, the analysis phase started, during which a large number of texts, videos and images were studied, addressing the question of the body and its destruction. In parallel, discussions were carried out with the authors, and three seminars were co-organized to create a common and interdisciplinary dynamic of reflection, while taking into consideration the complex crisis in Lebanon
1- Seminar “Body: Words and Images of Flesh and Blood”, in cooperation with Ifpo and ANR “Shakk”. This seminar studied the conceptual mutations emphasized by the new narratives and images in the Syrian context, and the resulting bodily perspectives that accompany them. The theoretical starting point was as follows: the body cannot be a pure material presence, it is always conditioned by images and words that constitute the medium of its modes of phenomenalization. The seminar’s aim was to study how the changes that are provoked by revolution and war, which affect our language and our images awareness, initiate new perspectives on corporality.
2- Seminar “Create - Destroy - Disappear”: SYRBODY has contributed towards the creation of a “Philosophy” pole at Ifpo and organized this second seminar, which has studied, in dialog with art, literature and psychoanalysis, several manifestations of destruction that we can observe in the Syrian and Lebanese contexts, focusing on the representations of the destroying/destroyed body.
3- Meetings around cultural production in Syria: SYRBODY has participated in the organization of a cycle of meetings and dialogues around the new Syrian cultural production.
The second year of the project was dedicated to deepen these analyses by writing and editing 6 books, in dialogue with more than 70 authors and artists. At the same time, SYRBODY has actively participated, during that incoming phase, in several seminars and events, in particular at EHESS, University of Paris and Ifpo, taking into consideration the restrictions related to the pandemic, which limited movements and favored intensive writing work.
During the two years of research, all these publications, seminars and interventions have dealt, first of all, with nihilism as a deep awareness of the loss of the world: the deep consciousness of a naked and meaningless existence. The world is lost, because when we are faced with the detainees and victims’ narratives, it is not evident to believe in that world anymore. More specifically, the world is lost, because the human being, as a being-in-the-world, is reduced to a subjugated and devastated body. From this point of view, the project has developed a concept of nihilism which is not limited to an intellectual perspective, but which implements above all a corporal approach, through which one feels the loss of the world through smelling, tasting, touching, watching and hearing. These publications, seminars and interventions then raise the following question: how can we create new body perspectives from the wreckage of the world? This question is an existential commitment that SYRBODY has tried to think about in a plural perspective, through the multiple narratives, artworks and literary texts, each of which offers a particular response.
1- Seminar “Body: Words and Images of Flesh and Blood”, in cooperation with Ifpo and ANR “Shakk”. This seminar studied the conceptual mutations emphasized by the new narratives and images in the Syrian context, and the resulting bodily perspectives that accompany them. The theoretical starting point was as follows: the body cannot be a pure material presence, it is always conditioned by images and words that constitute the medium of its modes of phenomenalization. The seminar’s aim was to study how the changes that are provoked by revolution and war, which affect our language and our images awareness, initiate new perspectives on corporality.
2- Seminar “Create - Destroy - Disappear”: SYRBODY has contributed towards the creation of a “Philosophy” pole at Ifpo and organized this second seminar, which has studied, in dialog with art, literature and psychoanalysis, several manifestations of destruction that we can observe in the Syrian and Lebanese contexts, focusing on the representations of the destroying/destroyed body.
3- Meetings around cultural production in Syria: SYRBODY has participated in the organization of a cycle of meetings and dialogues around the new Syrian cultural production.
The second year of the project was dedicated to deepen these analyses by writing and editing 6 books, in dialogue with more than 70 authors and artists. At the same time, SYRBODY has actively participated, during that incoming phase, in several seminars and events, in particular at EHESS, University of Paris and Ifpo, taking into consideration the restrictions related to the pandemic, which limited movements and favored intensive writing work.
During the two years of research, all these publications, seminars and interventions have dealt, first of all, with nihilism as a deep awareness of the loss of the world: the deep consciousness of a naked and meaningless existence. The world is lost, because when we are faced with the detainees and victims’ narratives, it is not evident to believe in that world anymore. More specifically, the world is lost, because the human being, as a being-in-the-world, is reduced to a subjugated and devastated body. From this point of view, the project has developed a concept of nihilism which is not limited to an intellectual perspective, but which implements above all a corporal approach, through which one feels the loss of the world through smelling, tasting, touching, watching and hearing. These publications, seminars and interventions then raise the following question: how can we create new body perspectives from the wreckage of the world? This question is an existential commitment that SYRBODY has tried to think about in a plural perspective, through the multiple narratives, artworks and literary texts, each of which offers a particular response.
SYRBODY hopes to contribute to the development of a new conceptuality of the body. Throughout the history of philosophy at large, the body has often been treated as a material object. And when treated as a subject (in particular with phenomenology), it has often been approached in terms of identity: it is no longer only mine (my object), it is also “my Self.” The body thus becomes a primary site for each individual to affirm their self-identity. In this regard, SYRBODY tries to accentuate the place of the non-identity in the Self that marks the tragic subjective body, to which war narratives sensitize us: my body is also inhabited by an irreducible alterity that haunts it.
At the same time, SYRBODY hopes to contribute to the advancement of philosophical studies related to the Syrian context by offering a new field of research and a new methodology: approaching the Syrian conflict through the expressions of corporality from an existential perspective; and treating testimony, literature and artworks as philosophical raw materials that offer a laboratory for the construction of new concepts. From this point of view, the project hopes to develop a new approach to art and literature in times of war. On this level the question was: what can literature or art do in a devastated country? Unfortunately, almost nothing. But to say “almost nothing” does not mean to say “nothing.” Despite the collapse of great hopes, artists and authors still create aesthetics for their shattered bodies and lost world. Aesthetics we can identify, for example, in the art of “counter-painting”, or in the art of “spectral degeneration”, or even in the “total darkness” method, that SYRBODY has conceptualized. Through these aesthetic and literary shifts, these works present principles of an unpredicted commitment, as they offer a space for the creation of new possibilities, in a reality that destroys, first of all, the very idea of the possible. Therefore, the aesthetic and literary creations constitute an ethical event in themselves, when they disrupt the identification that prevails in our wounded imagination: identification with a reality in which monsters sit on their thrones forever, and in which the victims lose all dignity. From making an impossible gift to “creating” bodies for the disappeared dead, through the transformation of the abject bodies into sacred memories, SYRDOBY tried to develop a new conceptualization of testimonial literature, art and fiction in terms of an “almost nothing” that refuses to be reduced to “nothing”.
The results of the project are mainly published in 6 books:
Destructiveness in Works, I (in French) and II (in Arabic)
Images of Flesh and Blood. Body in the Syrian Context, I (fr.) and II (ar.)
Words of Flesh and Blood. Body in the Syrian Context, I (fr.) and II (ar.)
At the same time, SYRBODY hopes to contribute to the advancement of philosophical studies related to the Syrian context by offering a new field of research and a new methodology: approaching the Syrian conflict through the expressions of corporality from an existential perspective; and treating testimony, literature and artworks as philosophical raw materials that offer a laboratory for the construction of new concepts. From this point of view, the project hopes to develop a new approach to art and literature in times of war. On this level the question was: what can literature or art do in a devastated country? Unfortunately, almost nothing. But to say “almost nothing” does not mean to say “nothing.” Despite the collapse of great hopes, artists and authors still create aesthetics for their shattered bodies and lost world. Aesthetics we can identify, for example, in the art of “counter-painting”, or in the art of “spectral degeneration”, or even in the “total darkness” method, that SYRBODY has conceptualized. Through these aesthetic and literary shifts, these works present principles of an unpredicted commitment, as they offer a space for the creation of new possibilities, in a reality that destroys, first of all, the very idea of the possible. Therefore, the aesthetic and literary creations constitute an ethical event in themselves, when they disrupt the identification that prevails in our wounded imagination: identification with a reality in which monsters sit on their thrones forever, and in which the victims lose all dignity. From making an impossible gift to “creating” bodies for the disappeared dead, through the transformation of the abject bodies into sacred memories, SYRDOBY tried to develop a new conceptualization of testimonial literature, art and fiction in terms of an “almost nothing” that refuses to be reduced to “nothing”.
The results of the project are mainly published in 6 books:
Destructiveness in Works, I (in French) and II (in Arabic)
Images of Flesh and Blood. Body in the Syrian Context, I (fr.) and II (ar.)
Words of Flesh and Blood. Body in the Syrian Context, I (fr.) and II (ar.)