27 May 2010

Thursday 27 May at 19.30

In the Assyrian, Greco-Roman and Byzantine empires, as well as in pre-Islamic Iran, veiling and seclusion were marks of prestige and symbols of status. The veil was a sign of respectability but also of a lifestyle that did not require the performance of manual labor. Its absence was a sign of poverty and prostitution but also of the performance of movement, in the streets and on the fields. It is the practice of veiling that makes women’s absence omnipresent and turns the veil into cause and symbol of political, social and religious controversy.

While the politics of the veil can be divided into two main reactions, against or for the veil, the authors of the book What Does the Veil Know? refrain from doing the same by instead exploring the differences within these reactions, releasing the veil from any certain meaning, be it religious, sexual, social or political.

Eva Meyer is a writer and filmmaker based in Berlin. Her latest work includes the book Von jetzt an werde ich mehrere sein (From Now on I Will Be Several, Frankfurt a.M. Stroemfeld Verlag, 2003), the radio play Flashforward (2005, written with Eran Schaerf), and the film My Memory observes me (2008, also made with Eran Schaerf). Forthcoming book is Frei und indirekt (Free and Indirect, Frankfurt a. M. Stroemfeld Verlag).

Vivian Liska is professor of German Literature and director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp. Her latest books are Giorgio Agambens leerer Messianismus (Schlebrugge, 2008) and When Kafka Says We. Uncommon Communities in German-Jewish Literature (Indiana University Press, 2009)

Contributions
Vivian Liska, Upon Revisting - the Veil
Elfriede Jelinek, The Cast-off Gaze
Heike Behrend/Gisela Völger, ABC of the Veil
Hinrich Sachs, A Present-Day Veil: The Fiction of Completeness
Willem Oorebeek, Michael in the Snow
Avital Ronell, OFF DUTY: The Veils of Servility
Laurence A. Rickels, Veil of Tears
Rike Felka, Between Word and Space
Ils Huygens, Kiarostami’s Ten: Mobilizing the Viewer’s Look
Benda Hofmeyr, The Future that Death/Other gives
Stéphanie Benzaquen, Harbin Express
Johannes Porsch, Une seconde. Sample
Silvia Henke, The Possibility of a Sign
Carol Jacobs, Reading, Writing, Hatching
Rembert Hüser, Fichu’s Fritz
Eva Meyer, The Veil’s Free Indirect Discourse about Itself
Ayse Erkmen , Insertss

What Does the Veil Know?
Eva Meyer & Vivian Liska (eds.)
2009
Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht / Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Antwerp
Zürich: Edition Voldemeer, Wien / New York: Springer
English — 193 pp. — softcover — 84 b&w illustrations
ISBN 978-3-211-99289-0