In the Presence of the Corpse

Abstract

The presence of the corpse is a call to reconsider the work of mourning in Lebanon and a means of challenging the protracted temporality, indeed protracted now, maintained by politico-sectarian factions structurally capable, through the deployment of intermittent bouts of violence and tenuous truces, of renewing the conditions of civil war and maintaining their prolonged dominance. The author argues that the presence of the corpse provides a condition for stripping the protracted now of civil war of its wishful discourse, exposing it as the time of a flagrant abuse of political representation and economic resources by a ruling coterie of powerful beneficiaries. The presence of the corpse marks a refusal to part with what, in certain situations, constitutes the only remaining evidence of violence, a refusal to allow for indifference, or the feigned amnesia that holds sway when the body is surrendered to inhumation.