POIESIS VI

Despite its rather poor formulation, one proposition concerning the representation of the camps or of the Shoah continues to circulate within the sphere of public opinion with a certain degree of insistence: either one is incapable of representing the extermination or one is not allowed to do so. Either it is impossible or forbidden or, it is impossible and in any case, forbidden (or forbidden and in any case, impossible). In its very indecision on these matters, the proposition is already confused. The confusion becomes even more difficult when the attempt is often hastily made to establish the semblance of a comparison with what is called the Biblical prohibition of representation. (Here is not the place to go looking for the written traces of these propositions. Suffice it to recall the ways in which they circulated especially amid the controversy that surrounded the release of Spielberg�s Schindler�s List and even more especially, in what opposed this film to Lanzmann�s Shoah. We could recall many other episodes besides, ones involving other films or works of art.)

Arnie lived a full life at the edge of depression. He was born in the south, warm weather, warm water. He feels that the Caribbean women who cared for him, along with his mother, over-fulfilled him. He believes that they gave him too much, everything, a Garden of Eden. Beach, swimming, boating, fishing, endless play time to run wherever he wanted, and lots of attention, a child’s paradise. This, he claims, is the first bane of his life: things came too easy. He was not prepared for what lay ahead. He wonders, too, about sexual molestation, vague images, sensations, a woman mouthing his penis, a man doing something or wanting to do something. Images and sensations in the background of his feeling self.

The sixth annual issue of POIESIS has just come back from the printers’, much to the pride and delight of the production crew.

This special issue, “Re-Imagining Trauma,” is bigger and more colourful than ever before, and ready to be sent to your mailbox!