ISH #4
20:00 – 22:00 2nd Oct 2009
Theodor Barth
— I am not: a Jew (I exist)
I do not speak from a planned space,
nor from the space of plans
I speak from a place where someone brought me…
—Je ne suis pas: un juif (j’existe)
Je ne parle pas d’un espace calculé
ni de l’espace des calculs
je parle d’un lieu où quelqu’un m’a mené…
—Jeg er ikke: en jøde (jeg eksisterer)
Jeg snakker ikke fra et planlagt rom
ei heller fra planenes rom
jeg snakker fra et sted dit noen førte meg…
Theodor Barth, teacher at Oslo’s National Academy of the Arts, anthropologist, art writer and social analyst will give a lecture at The Institute of Social Hypocrisy.
With particular reference to the Institute’s claims of his not being Jewish, and the issues of identity that thus emerge in his position as a Jewish thinker, he was faced with a quandary: to accept the invitation would be to admit that he was a hypocrite and yet to refuse would seem that he had something to hide.
The talk will touch on these issues of identity, hypocrisy, religion, creation, belonging and art and will be given in English with French.
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Dear Victor,
I am sending you the CV required by the institute. As usual, the institute has an exquisite sense of the props needed to qualify – beyond seemliness and measure – to give a lecture in this honourable institute.
I am sending you the long CV – which in the context of the Institute demonstrates with all desirable clarity that a CV is a pedigree, the likes of which is hung around the necks of dogs (in this case to document a case of boundless crossbreeding that, of course, precludes all racial purity).
But I am sending you another CV, which I think is more appropriate to the topic of my talk at the institute, which is a visual CV: the text that goes with it is “Anthropologist hiding out in the Oslo Academy of the Arts”.
It goes with the talk because, this détourage of the CV features the clandestinity with which I have deemed necessary to pursue an anthropological career with due honesty, and concern for decency.
The individuals featuring on the visual CV – besides my self – starting from top left, are: Abraham Abulafia, Theo Barth, Fredrik Barth, Felix Klein, Giorgio Agamben, Mungoose and Benzécri (all of them are with me for a precise reason).
In essence I refuse to be portrayed on your web-site with a conventional CV.
But then, the nature of institutions is violent: because it’s preliminary arrangements are of such a nature that bureaucratic systems are set up before there is anything to administrate – indeed before the subject to be administrated even exists – it routinely overrules the desires of its subjects.
On the other hand, since it is sovereign – or, granted sovereignty in a certain area – the Institute also can make exceptions. If it does not make an exception then I will be in the classical position of the marginal subject (essentially a stowaway): which is the issue. If it does make an exception, it will still make my case a case of the rule.
That is, the rule of the Institute. But if you listen to me – and abide my request – you will not be an Institute, in the pure (sovereign) sense of the term. While if you proceed with denial you will not properly inform your audience what this talk is about.
I figure that you now understand how important it is for me to be bedded inside the confines of the institute. And ask you to please accept my assurance of my most sincere consideration.
All the best,
Theodor
