Taxonomies of Terror

Abstract

The dogs of Hurricane Katrina, citizens turned refugees in the United States, disappeared “ghost-detainees” held incommunicado in prolonged detention, sick cows kicked and prodded in slaughter, nooses found in trees, in university offices, bombs dropped in residential areas of Gaza, the rationales and rituals of terror proliferate. The story I want to tell is not easily narrated, since the events do not move forward but keep repeating themselves, backtracking into a past that won’t quit. In this reenactment, random details, little things like spirits, pieces of wood or dirt, bones, blood, and skin matter. These remnants have a strange staying, or, to put it another way, saving power.

“But the past is past; why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright sun has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned over new leaves.”

—Delano to Don Benito, Melville’s Benito Cereno, p. 103