Publishers Note In Lebanon, before a play can begin its public life, it must be cleared by the Department of Print and Audiovisual Media of the General Directorate of General Security, a division of the Ministry of Interior. Whether it is fully banned, partially censored or emerges unscathed, the fact of its passage in the hands of the General Security calls into question its very right to exist in the public domain. As such, every play and script carries the anxiety of its own stillbirth--it is already a ruin. In Lebanon, also the national school curriculum for history stops at the founding of the Republic in 1943. All attempts to forge a consensus on updating the textbooks have, time and time again, met with failure. In that the attempt at a consensual narrative calls into question the rights of different histories to co-exist, history, like the censored script, is also a ruin before it is born. Perhaps one day, future generations will uncover these dormant narratives, the histories and scripts rotting in stained files and rusty boxes. Locked behind the anxiety to weave a bulletproof account. I imagine the seals breaking: their stillness rattled, their syntax shaken and, as they come undone, the unchecked words released. Christine Tohme Beirut, 2012 Rabih Mroue and Fadi Toufiq, How Nancy Wished That Everything Was an April Fools Joke, Ashkal Alway, 2012, p. 7.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 16:36:53 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015