Forgiveness

Derrida says:

One cannot, or should not, forgive; there is only forgiveness, if there is any, where there is the unforgiveable. That is to say that forgiveness must announce itself as impossibility itself. It can only be possible in doing the impossible.

-On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, P.32

NEVE GORDON: How to Sell "Ethical" Warfare

NEVE GORDON: How to Sell "Ethical" Warfare

One of my students was arrested yesterday and spent the night in a prison cell. R's offence was protesting the Israeli assault on Gaza. He joins over 700 other Israelis who have been detained since the beginning of Israel's ruthless war on Gaza: an estimated 230 of whom are still behind bars. Within the Israeli context, this strategy of quelling protest and stifling resistance is unprecedented, and it is quite disturbing that the international media has failed to comment on it.

Simultaneously, the Israeli media has been towing the government line to such a degree that no criticism of the war has been voiced on any of the three local television stations. Indeed, the situation has become so absurd that reporters and anchors are currently less critical of the war than the military spokespeople. In the absence of any critical analysis, it is not so surprising that 78% of Israelis, or about 98% of all Jewish Israelis, support the war.

f/f in São Bento da Vitória(Porto, Portugal)

This is from a SKITe/Sweet and Tender 2008 in Porto this summer.

Speech for my installation's opening event

Feliz Ano Novo!!

I just wrote a text for the speech of my installation's opening event today.
I think this is the most clear and simple text so far which says what I mean in my piece.

----

This piece is a discourse about the Other.
I avoid to explain my piece, how it has been developing.
Instead, I try to talk about the Other.

The Other helps me. The Other loves me. The Other hates me. The Other sometimes hearts me.
The Other is always coming from where I do not know. I can not expect anything, even I already know something about or around the Other, that does not mean I know him or her.
I do not know.

The question is, how I can live together with the Other.

While I am talking, hundreds of bombs are exploding in Palestine.
It seems, we can not find a way to live together.

Look his/her face, which always asks us "don't kill me.".
What we can do is just we do "not" kill him/her.
In order to reach there, we have to see his/her face.
Or at least we should be conscious that we can see his/her face.

Needless to say, always there is a difficulty of forgiveness.
There is the unforgiveable, surely.

Even so, I hope we can draw our dream, here and now.

Kotatsuneko