WEBVTT

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It was very strange
reading with Zaqtan

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because, you know, get tired
of reading the poems again

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and come up with this--

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so I'll read some few
poems-- or new poems.

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I was talking to
Tyler earlier today,

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and I'm trying to negotiate
this idea of moving

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from the concept of the
world body to the word body,

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being both a Palestinian
and an Arab-American

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with the idea of sort
of a Hegelian concept

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of the individual that
defines our age in a sense,

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even if neglected,
so is actually

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the stateless individual in
an age of the nation state.

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And so it's interesting,
and as a physician,

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it's also interesting
to move across

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that spectrum from the
world-- just focus on the word

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body moving from world to word.

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And so what happens when one
discusses eros and sexuality

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as a discipline, almost
as a science, as something

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subjugated to science and
hormones and what have you.

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So I'm trying to
write these things.

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I'm not sure that the poems
that I'm going to read

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will allude to this as much,
but we'll give it a try.

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And I do think,
again, going back to--

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I will say this openly
because maybe it

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is time that things get spoken
about in a more transparent

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way, besides this pretense
that we live in a country that

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is not in perpetual war.

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I think that I found out that
there is a particular reflex

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if we don't receive--

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and I think obviously in
our experience in America,

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we have the same problems with
or against the Black body,

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for example.

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I think similarly that we have
certain reflexes that we don't

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examine if an Arab is
to speak of the body

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because we only know the
Arab body as a dead one.

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And if the Arab man is to
speak of a Western body-- which

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is also an interesting shift
in the idea of if you use

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a classic concept of
orientalism, of feminizing

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the vanquished or the
dispossessed or the conquered.

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It's very interesting
if the weaker party

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begins to talk of the body
of the powerful as erotic.

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Then what happens
to that language?

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I don't even think
that actually we

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are quite ready to receive
these things at a deeper level

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of textuality, so to speak.

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So I will begin--

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and maybe I'll finish
with these three poems

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unless you guys feel
a terrible desire

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to continue to be
hypnotized by my reading.

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You just wave.

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