Jalal Toufic

TheContemporaryIs StillForthcoming

Contemporary art? As far as I am largelyunconcerned, none of what is termedcontemporary art, including what is exhibitedand screened in various museums ofcontemporary art, for example the Museum ofContemporary Art in Sydney (MCA) or theMuseum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles(MOCA), is contemporary1 and most of it is notart! There can be no museum of contemporaryart since while now we can have museums butnot contemporaneity, with the coming of themessiah we are going to have contemporaneitybut no museums there is going to be no needfor a museum in the redeemed world, a worldwhere one finds only what is willed to eternallyrecur.In 1666, Sabbatai Zevi, the purportedJewish messiah, apostatized and converted toIslam; while most of his followers left him, somepersisted in viewing him as the awaited messiah.1676 should have proved to be the year of a fargreater crisis in messianism. What happened in1676? Sabbatai Zevi died, but also, far morecrucially for messianism, the Danishastronomer Ole Roemer became the firstperson to measure the speed of light. Until thattime, scientists assumed that the speed of lightwas either too fast to measure or infinite. Thedominant view, vigorously argued by the Frenchphilosopher Descartes, favored an infinite speed.Roemer, working at the Paris Observatory, wascompiling extensive observations of the orbit ofIo, the innermost of the four big satellites ofJupiter discovered by Galileo in 1610. Thesatellite is eclipsed by Jupiter once every orbit,as seen from the Earth. By timing these eclipsesover many years, Roemer noticed somethingpeculiar. The time interval between successiveeclipses became steadily shorter as the Earth inits orbit moved toward Jupiter and becamesteadily longer as the Earth moved away fromJupiter. He realized that the time differencemust be due to the finite speed of light. That is,light from the Jupiter system has to travel fartherto reach the Earth when the two planets are onopposite sides of the Sun than when they arecloser together. Roemer estimated that lightrequired twenty-two minutes to cross thediameter of the Earths orbit. The speed of lightcould then be found by dividing the diameter ofthe Earths orbit by the time difference. TheDutch scientist Christiaan Huygens, who first didthe arithmetic, found a value for the speed oflight equivalent to 131,000 miles per second. Thecorrect value is 186,000 miles per second. Thedifference was due to errors in Roemersestimate for the maximum time delay (thecorrect value is 16.7, not 22 minutes), and also toan imprecise knowledge of the Earths orbitaldiameter.2 I would like to think that it is not

e-flux journa

l #28

octob

er 2011 Jalal Tou

fic

The Co

ntem

porary Is Still Forthcom

ing

01/06

10.14.11 / 19:23:15 EDT

fortuitous, but fitting, that the death of thepurported Jewish messiah happened in the sameyear in which it was discovered that light has afinite speed and in which the first realcalculation of that speed was being done.Messianists went on as if this did not concernthem! And yet this (as well as, later, the fourdimensional spacetime of the block universe ofrelativity) should, as far as they were concerned,have been thought provoking and produced acrisis, as a crucified messiah (Jesus) or one whoapostatized and converted to another religion(Sabbatai Zevi) was and did for earliermessianists. They proved not to be really thecontemporaries of the discovery that light has afinite speed of 131,000 miles per second(actually, 186,000 miles per second), a discoverythat made it impossible for them to be thecontemporaries of what they perceived andmakes it impossible for us to be thecontemporaries of what we perceive. Taking intoconsideration that the speed of light is finite,more specifically 299,792,458 meters per secondin a vacuum (c), and that the speed of sound isfinite, approximately 768 miles per hour in dry airat 20 C, one perceives only the past. To see howthe sun is presently, I have to wait for its light toreach me. In terms of what they see and hear,indeed of what they can see and hear, people arenot the contemporaries of each other and, moregenerally, of the universe, a universe where lighthas a finite speed of 299,792,458 meters persecond in a vacuum, thus a universe that doesnot allow for contemporaneity. The awaitedmessiah/Mahd is going to end waiting, includingthe recurrent wait of the ones living then for lightto reach them from objects,3 ushering the epochof contemporaneity4 (that until then we cannotbe contemporaries, including, indeed mainly, ofthe event, should not mean that we are bound tobe behind the event [Baudrillard: It was Rilkewho said Events move in such a way that theywill always inevitably be ahead of us. We shallnever catch up with them]5 we can be aheadof it! including, as thinkers, through thoughtexperiments). The messiah is forthcoming hasseveral meanings: the condition of possibility forhis fulfilling his function, the experience ofcountless recurrence, which can becomepossible through either time travel to very similarbranches of the multiverse or virtualemulations,6 is yet to be made possible7 (had he,as we are told by many messianists, alreadycome or were he, as millions of Jews and TwelverShiites wish and hope would happen, to appearon Earth today, the messiah/Mahd would havebeen and would be still forthcoming, since theconditions for his full presence were not thenand are not yet present); moreover, once thiscondition has been actualized, between his

appearance on Earth and his ending up willingthe eternal recurrence of various events, hecontinues to be forthcoming both in relation tous, since, given that light travels at 299,792,458meters per second in a vacuum (and sound atapproximately 768 miles per hour), we perceivehim at a delay (thats imperceptible to the nakedeye), and in relation to himself, that is, he is notyet fully the messiah the messiah arrives firstas forthcoming. It may very well be that the daythat the forthcoming Messiah/Mahd as anoverman would be made to experience over andover is the very day in which he became occultedin relation to those living then and to the world(He [Jesus] went away a second time andprayed, My Father, if it is not possible for thiscup to be taken away unless I drink it, may yourwill be done [Matthew 26:42]. If, as the NewTestament reports, the crucifixion was not takenaway from the Christ, then it must have beenwilled by God, that is, willed to recur eternally,8with the consequence that Jesus would be madeto go through it countless times until he wills itseternal recurrence, and that while manyhappenings would not only disappear, but wouldretroactively never have existed in the willed,redeemed world, the crucifixion, if not all that ledto it from the time Jesus Christ prayed to God, isgoing to continue to be part of the willed,redeemed world. I would rather think that inanswer to his prayer, Jesus came to therealization that it is not the will of God that he becrucified [They slew him (the Messiah, Jesusson of Mary, Allhs messenger) not nor crucifiedhim, but it appeared so unto them (Qurn4:157)], and consequently that the crucifixion [ofanother] would most probably not be part of thewilled, redeemed world),9 or another day thatswithin a generation of when he was occulted(Truly I tell you, some who are standing here willnot taste death before they see the Son of Mancoming in his kingdom [Matthew 16:28] hiskingdom is the world resulting from his willingthe eternal recurrence of some events of thatday). Thus the messiah would have come again(in a virtual reality or in branches of themultiverse very similar to the state of the worldat the time in which he said he would come back)within the period his earliest disciples wereexpecting him to come in the case of theMahd, within the Lesser Occultation (al-ghaybaal-sughr), which lasted from 874 to 941. I canvery well imagine the following remake of theWachowski brothers The Matrix: Neo, whosebody is actually in suspended animation whilehis brain is connected to a computer simulation,believes he lives in Palestine in AD 1, then he isawakened by someone (Morpheus) andinformed by him about the actual state of affairs.At one point in the Wachowski brothers The

e-flux journa

l #28

octob

er 2011 Jalal Tou

fic

The Co

ntem

porary Is Still Forthcom

ing

02/06

10.14.11 / 19:23:15 EDT

Matrix, Neo exclaims: Dj vu! Trinity: Whatdid you see? Neo: A black cat went past us, andthen another that looked just like it. Trinity:How much like it? Was it the same cat? Neo: Itmight have been. Im not sure. What is it?Trinity: A dj vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix.It happens when they change something. Howcan one affect the world outside the simulation?In my proposed remake I envision that in some ofthe other very similar branches of the multiverse,Morpheus later subjects Neo to countlessrecurrence through trapping him in a simulation,most fittingly one of Palestine in AD 1, so that hewould end up, across many virtual suicides,willing the eternal recurrence of some events,thus making actual the epochal will, whichaffects, like meditation does, all simulations andall worlds (with the inaugural appearance of theepochal will in a simulation, many things in theuniverse or entire branches of the multiverseoutside the simulation may cease any existence,vanish as if they were simulations, and thelaws of the universe or multiverse may beabrogated) it is those who have designed andimplemented the Matrix who would try toobstruct the experiment of subjecting Neo tocountless recurrence. Dgen: When even for amoment you express the buddhas seal in thethree actions by sitting upright in samdhi allbeings in the ten directions, and the six realms,including the three lower realms, at once obtainpure body and mind all things realize correctawakening . Thus in the past, future, andpresent of the limitless universe this zazencarries on the buddhas teaching endlessly.Know that even if all buddhas of the tendirections, as innumerable as the sands of theGanges, exert their strength and with thebuddhas wisdom try to measure the merit of onepersons zazen, they will not be able to fullycomprehend it (On the Endeavor of the Way[Bend-Wa]);10 one can paraphrase Dgenswords with respect to zazen thus in relation tothe will: When even for a moment, you will theeternal recurrence of three actions all beingsin the ten (to be precise, eleven?) dimensionsand/or the multiverse, including the three lowersimulations, are affected all things that arestill there then are ones that are willed toeternally recur. Thus in the past, future, andpresent of the limitless multiverse this willingcarries on the wills affirmation endlessly. Knowthat even if all the scientists and thinkers of theten dimensions and/or the multiverse, moreinnumerable than the sands of the Ganges, exerttheir strength and try to measure the merit ofone persons willing of the eternal recurrence ofsome events, they will not be able to fullycomprehend it. The messiah is the overman whogoes through countless recurrence and ends up,

across many suicides, willing the eternalrecurrence of various events, thus making actualthe epochal will. Once the will has become anactuality, the speed of light becomes if notinfinite then so fast that the light travel timefrom the most distant objects in the universe to asentient being falls below the quantummechanical uncertainty, and allowing for theassociated changes in the electron charge, e,and/or Plancks constant, h, that would preservethe fine-structure constant11 and/or otherchanges that would permit intelligent beings tocontinue to exit those living then become thecontemporaries of what they perceive, forexample of the willful overman asmessiah/Mahd and of the sun as it is and not asit was 499 seconds (8.32 minutes) in the past.12During the transition, during the birth pangs ofthe messianic age, they might see two suns, thesun as it was 8.32 minutes earlier and the sun asit is at that very moment. In Coppolas Dracula,whose events take place in the final years of thenineteenth century, i.e., when the experience ofcountless recurrence was not yet possible,Draculas first words to Mina, See me now! aretwice ironic, twice problematic, because he isdoubly not in the now, since, as is made clear bythe absence of an image of him in the reflectivewindowpane in front of which he is ostensiblystanding, he is not really (fully) there,13 and sincethe light reflected from him and traveling toMinas eyes at 298,925,574 meters per secondwould reach her at a delay. Coppolas Dracula isan imposter, a counterfeiter of the one who canproperly utter the words See me now!;14 indeedthe latter words could very well be the ones withwhich the messiah announces that he is nolonger forthcoming.Can there be one or more events in theuniverse of relativity where every point inspacetime is mistermed an event? Yes, theappearance of the will and its overruling ofrelativity. If everything that has ever occurredcannot be redeemed, then the universe thats theend result of the attainment by the overman,then the accomplished messiah, of willing theeternal recurrence of some events cannot be theblock universe of relativity. Nietzsche wrote:Impotent against that which has been it [thewill] is an angry spectator of everything past. Thewill cannot will backward; that it cannot breaktime and times greed that is the wills loneliestmisery. Willing liberates That time does not runbackward, that is its wrath. This, yes this aloneis revenge itself: the wills unwillingness towardtime and times it was. Has the will alreadybecome its own redeemer and joy bringer? Has itunlearned the spirit of revenge ? And whotaught it reconciliation with time, and what ishigher than any reconciliation but how shall

e-flux journa

l #28

octob

er 2011 Jalal Tou

fic

The Co

ntem

porary Is Still Forthcom

ing

03/06

10.14.11 / 19:23:15 EDT

this happen? Who would teach it to also willbackward?15 (with the exception of the will inwilling liberates, the will in the rest of thecitation of Nietzsche should be qualified byquotation marks, since what Nietzsche is writingabout is not yet the will); and Derrida wrote,Forgiveness died in the death camps, he[Vladimir Janklvitch] says. Yes. Unless it onlybecomes possible from the moment that itappears impossible. Its history would begin, onthe contrary, with the unforgivable,16 andforgiveness forgives only the unforgivable.That is to say that forgiveness must announceitself as impossibility itself. It can only bepossible in doing the impossible.17 One of theconsequences of the willing by the overman ofthe eternal recurrence of various events and theensuing inaugural appearance of the epochal willis that the latter abrogates the laws of theunwilled, unredeemed world,18 including thelaws of nature,19 and that the ones still therethen would no longer be living in the blockuniverse of spacetime of relativity, in which all ispreserved,20 even what is Evil, even what isunforgivable, even what cannot be willed to recureternally, but would be living in a universe wherethings are transient but subsist only becausethey are willed to eternally recur.21 What is higherthan any reconciliation and what is higher thanany forgiveness that can accomplish theimpossible of forgiving the unforgivable but notthe impossible of undoing what has been done isthe inexistence, once the will has appeared, ofanything that cannot be willed to recureternally.22 At the most basic level, theforgiveness of the unforgivable that Derrida who, like Nietzsche (To will anything I havenever experienced this)23 and like all of us still,lacked will wrote about was still revengeful, asthe forgiveness of anyone is until the willbecomes possible and is actualized, followingwhich anything that cannot be willed to eternallyrecur not only disappears but has never existed(many films are no longer going to exist in thewilled universe, since they are unworthy of beingwilled to return eternally). The will, which willsbackward as well as forward, liberates from allthat cannot be willed, i.e., willed to returneternally, including what, until the willsactualization, had already occurred, and thusfrom revengefulness and the nihilism thats aconsequence of the pasts fait accompli, of theresigned conviction that what has already beendone cannot be undone. That the will wills alsobackward does not mean that it wills thedisappearance of specific events of the past, forthat would still be revengeful; rather it meansthat it wills affirmatively what in the past can bewilled to return eternally, with as a byproductthat what thenceforth cannot be willed to recur

eternally, including in the past, would havedisappeared, indeed never have existed.Notwithstanding an article of faith of most, if notall Twelver Shiites, the willful overman, who isgoing to be deemed the Mahd, is not going toavenge imam Husayn, prophet Muhammadsgrandson (who was slaughtered alongside manymembers of his family and his companions inKarbl), not because he is going to accomplishthe impossible of forgiving the unforgivable butbecause, by making possible a universe whereonly what can be willed to eternally recur canexist, he is going to accomplish the impossiblewhereby the unforgivable, what cannot be willedto recur eternally, would no longer have everexisted, with the consequence that there is thennothing to forgive were the forgiveness of theunforgivable or Derridas texts on his concept ofsuch a forgiveness, which is forgiveness as such,to continue to be part of the universe when thewill becomes actual, then the willful overman asthe contemporary messiah is going to forgivethis will-less forgiveness, this still revengefulforgiveness and Derridas concept of forgiveness.

PS: Is this text of mine also forthcoming, thoughfor an additional reason?

e-flux journa

l #28

octob

er 2011 Jalal Tou

fic

The Co

ntem

porary Is Still Forthcom

ing

04/06

10.14.11 / 19:23:15 EDT

Jalal Toufic is a thinker and a mortal to death. He wasborn in 1962 in Beirut or Baghdad and died beforedying in 1989 in Evanston, Illinois. He is the author ofDistracted (1991; 2nd ed., 2003), (Vampires): An UneasyEssay on the Undead in Film (1993; 2nd ed., 2003),Over-Sensitivity (1996; 2nd ed., 2009), Forthcoming(2000), Undying Love, or Love Dies (2002), Two or ThreeThings Im Dying to Tell You (2005), shr: This BloodSpilled in My Veins (2005), Undeserving Lebanon(2007), The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a SurpassingDisaster (2009), Graziella: The Corrected Edition (2009),What Is the Sum of Recurrently? (2010), and ThePortrait of the Pubescent Girl: A Rite of Non-Passage(2011). Many of his books, most of which werepublished by Forthcoming Books, are available fordownload as PDF files at his website:http://www.jalaltoufic.com. He is presently a guest forthe year 2011 of the Artists-in-Berlin Program of theDAAD.

1This applies, in terms of itsreception, even to the art thatconstructs and/or presentsuniverses in which the signalsfrom anything are notnecessarily forthcoming, wherepeople perceive the present, notthe past.

2Profile: Ole Roemer and theSpeed of Light, excerpt fromCosmic Horizons: Astronomy atthe Cutting Edge, ed. StevenSoter and Neil deGrasse Tyson(New York: New Press:Distributed by W.W. Norton &Co., 2001),http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/essaybooks/cosmic/p_roemer.html.

3Things bombard us at a quickerand quicker pace, but, given thatlight has a finite speed of299,792,458 meters per secondin a vacuum and that ostensiblyno other signal can be fasterthan the speed of light, theycontinue nonetheless to beforthcoming, however minimalthe delay.

4In this respect, and with theexception of entangledsubatomic particles, everythinghas aura before the full presenceof the messiah.

5Jean Baudrillard, Fragments:Conversations with FranoisLYvonnet, trans. Chris Turner(London; New York: Routledge,2004).

6See You Said Stay, So I Stayedin my book Forthcoming(Berkeley, CA: Atelos, 2000).

7In one of his letters from prison,Antonio Gramsci writes of thepessimism of the intellect andthe optimism of the will(Selections from PrisonNotebooks [London: Lawrenceand Wishart, 1971]; Gramsciattributes these words toRomain Rolland). Unfortunatelywe already have intellect but wedo not yet have the will, whichcan be achieved only if we oneday reach its condition ofpossibility, the experience ofcountless recurrence.

8Can an event that is willed torecur eternally be repeated?Rather, one day some people aregoing, through time travel to verysimilar branches of themultiverse or virtual emulations,to repeat or to be subjected torepetition until they will theevent, i.e., will it to recureternally. Once the epochal willhas become an actuality, Godcreates, every instant, eventsthat are willed to recur eternally,never repeating any of his self-disclosures (Ibn Arab: The Realdoes not disclose Himself in aform twice).

9

The withdrawal of tradition, andof the messiah or Mahd as partof tradition, seems to happennot on the worst day butsubsequently.

10Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings ofZen Master Dgen, ed. KazuakiTanahashi; trans. Robert Aitkenet al. (San Francisco: NorthPoint Press, 1985), 145147.

11See Variable Speed of Light,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light, morespecifically this quote by JohnBarrow: [An] important lessonwe learn from the way that purenumbers like define the worldis what it really means forworlds to be different. The purenumber we call the finestructure constant and denoteby is a combination of theelectron charge, e, the speed oflight, c, and Plancks constant,h. At first we might be temptedto think that a world in which thespeed of light was slower wouldbe a different world. But thiswould be a mistake. If c, h, and ewere all changed so that thevalues they have in metric (orany other) units were differentwhen we looked them up in ourtables of physical constants, butthe value of remained thesame, this new world would beobservationally indistinguishablefrom our world. The only thingthat counts in the definition ofworlds are the values of thedimensionless constants ofNature. If all masses weredoubled in value [including thePlanck mass mP] you cannot tellbecause all the pure numbersdefined by the ratios of any pairof masses are unchanged. (JohnD. Barrow, The Constants ofNature; From Alpha to Omega The Numbers that Encode theDeepest Secrets of the Universe[New York: Pantheon Books,2002]).

12In so far as they are in a state ofentanglement, do subatomicparticles already belong to theworld of the messiah?

13While the vampire is not foundwhere he is, as shown by themirror at the location, he isfound where he is not hehaunts.

14A consequent filmmaker wouldhave subsequently made a filmin which the words See menow! would be unproblematic.Might this essay prompt Coppolato make such a sequel? I verymuch doubt it since this essay ismost probably forthcoming,including in relation to him.

15Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche,Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Bookfor All and None, ed. Adrian DelCaro, Robert B. Pippin; trans.Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge;New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2006), 111.

e-flux journa

l #28

octob

er 2011 Jalal Tou

fic

The Co

ntem

porary Is Still Forthcom

ing

05/06

10.14.11 / 19:23:15 EDT

16Jacques Derrida, OnCosmopolitanism andForgiveness, translated by MarkDooley and Michael Hughes(London; New York: Routledge,2001), 37. Anyone who speaks aword against the Son of Man willbe forgiven, but anyone whospeaks against the Holy Spiritwill not be forgiven, either in thisage or in the age to come(Matthew 12:32). One mightinterpret these words asimplying that speaking a wordagainst the Son of Man isforgivable. But that is notnecessarily the case; rather, ifwe consider these words whilekeeping in mind those of Derridaon forgiveness, we can viewthem as indicating that speakinga word against the Son of Man isunforgivable and that byforgiving it God accomplishesthe impossible. Between thefirst part and the second part ofthe aforementioned sentence inMatthew 12:32, there is going tobe the pivotal event of theappearance of the will. While theGod of the first part of thesentence has no will yet, the Godof the second part of thesentence has will and so itmakes no sense for him toforgive anyone who speaksagainst the Holy Spirit, becausespeaking against the Holy Spiritis not going to be part of thewilled world, indeed is goingnever to have existed since itcannot be willed to returneternally.

17Ibid., 32.

18

Jalal TouficFebruary 7, 2005

Very dear Lyn [Hejinian]:

I hope that the rise of IraqiTwelver Shiites is going to beaccompanied within TwelverShiism itself, and unlike in Iranand Lebanon, by anemancipation of its esoterictendencies from the long-reigning stultifying, exotericones. If Iraq cannot become oneday one of the secular sites ofresearch into and developmentof the coming technologicalsingularity, which is going to beable to manipulate the laws ofphysics, then may the nihilisticlawlessness of present day Iraq,in large part the work of Sunnirural fundamentalists, bereplaced one day by theantinomianism of somegenuinely (Twelver Shiite)messianic era, one la (NizrShiite) Great Resurrection ofAlamut from 1164 to 1210.

19Friedrich Nietzsche: I beware ofspeaking of chemical laws: thatsavors of morality (The Will toPower, trans. Walter Kaufmannand R.J. Hollingdale [New York:Random House, 1968], 630).

20According to the theory ofrelativity, when we believe that

things pass, we are mistaken (itmay be that the sense ofunreality one experiences indeath is in part a consequenceof the circumstance that thetime one undergoes there is notthat of the block universe ofrelativity, but, humorously, whatmost living people mistakenlyconsider their time to be: afleeting time, the past vanishingirremediably moment bymoment). How to make whatdoes not pass do so? One way ofdoing this is by exhausting it(thats what we have in theMany-Worlds interpretation ofquantum physics, according towhich all the possibilities areactualized in differentuniverses). Not to be fooled bytheir seeming passage intofailing to explore and exhaustthings in order to make themreally pass. Yes, the greatattempt of exhaustive people is,paradoxically, to make thatwhich they are exhausting atlong last pass.

21It should go without saying thateternity in heaven does notmean necessarily that the one inheaven is going to be there foreternity, moving from one joy toanother; it means essentiallythat he or she has an eternalrelation to everything thathappens to him or her there, thathe or she wills the eternalrecurrence of everything thathappens to him or her there, thathe or she blesses each thing thathappens there thus: I will you torecur eternally.

22Contrariwise, many events thatare presently considered thehallucinations of schizophrenicsand the insubstantial visions ofmystics (at least some of theseeliciting from the oneundergoing them a description interms of eternity) are going to beconsidered then part of thewilled, redeemed world.

23Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight ofthe Idols, and Other Writings,edited by Aaron Ridley andJudith Norman; translated byJudith Norman (CambridgeUniversity Press, 2005), 97.

e-flux journa

l #28

octob

er 2011 Jalal Tou

fic

The Co

ntem

porary Is Still Forthcom

ing

06/06

10.14.11 / 19:23:15 EDT