Musical reading : Kaddish des Mouches
Saturday 19 September
14:30 - 15:00
with
Presentations
Book
In her project *Kaddish des mouches*, Olivia Tapiero—a Jewish and Arab writer born on the unceded territory of Tiohtià:ke (Montréal)—explores how fascism influences language and takes her breath away. By drawing on syntax from contemporary and historical political speeches, as well as from nineteenth-century entomological studies (an era in which scientific racism took shape), she writes a prayer for the dead and, at the same time, a reflection on bearing witness to it. *Kaddish des mouches* is also a spellbinding monologue, whose syntax breaks down into rhythm and sound movement, in which musicality itself is the “insect” of literature, bringing meaning back to sound, giving substance to reason, and at the same time threatening its very contours.
“voici le bourdonnement du massacre
discursif
voici une mort blanche voici une pluie
de cendres
voici la tête armée d’une idée dont le
Lieu constitue le terme du
développement
l’idée pond ses œufs dans l’oreille
interne de ses proies
à présent on dirait la voix de dieu
au c
au commencement non”
Performance
*Kaddish des mouches* is a prayer: a voice that, like eyes bearing witness to massacres, shifts between the world of the dead and that of the living. Its jagged, incantatory language springs from an anti-Zionist Jewish perspective, which takes a stand against the settlements and the genocides committed in the name of the Land. The text unfolds where language breaks down, worn down by lives cut short and totalitarian distortions of meaning. As it fractures, stumbling over its own consonants, its voice embraces timeless violence, embracing the dead of the past and those yet to come.
Our speakers
Olivia Tapiero
