WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you so much Marcelo.

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I feel like you've already
sanctified the space,

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seriously, in poetry,
which is all I ever want.

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My name is Farid Matuk,
and it's my great honor

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to introduce Marwa
Helal tonight.

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I have been watching
videos of talks

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by abolitionist
scholar Joy James

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and she's got me
thinking about agape.

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It's a word that helps us mark
a different kind of love, where

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"eros" is romantic, where
"filial" is sisterly, "agape"

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is supposed to be transcendent.

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Agape, we are told, is
realizing God's sacrifice

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of a child for the world.

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And agape is realized in
that child's faithful answer

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to the sacrificial call.

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It's a confounding
story, Christianity,

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which is maybe why it
engenders so many misreadings.

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Its mistaken premise
is a singular God,

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and its pathos is misplaced in
the preciousness of a singular

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son.

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The preciousness
of a singular son

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is a given to a
patriarchy or the power

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to engender and hoard
property through generations

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is situated in a collaboration
between the penis

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and the family name between
the phallus and the signature

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and where the state
reveals its purpose not

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in facilitating liberty
but in co-signing

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patriarchal accumulation
with its violence.

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Sometimes the
theme is too buried

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under the armature of the plot.

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Sometimes the culture
clings too heavy

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on the transcending spirit.

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Refusing to atomize the field of
existence into self and other,

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agape transcends the
mortal, singular self.

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And agape doesn't convey the
lover to a heavenly elsewhere.

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Alive or dead, agape
returns the lover.

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Agape brings the lover back.

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As Marwa Helal quotes
from Oum Kalthoum song,

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"To the one I saw before I saw
and to the body before the body

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worries."

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Joy James finds agape
realized in the actions

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of anti-imperial rebels
disciplining their lives

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to a strategy of confrontation
with the violence of the state.

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These rebels have already
transcended singularity

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and returned to a love
so vast and so raw

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that only the ante
body can bear it.

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That's the title of
Marwa's new book,

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the portal we've come here
to approach, the crochet hook

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onto which we can
hope to be wound.

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Ante, A-N-T-E, as in before.

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The body before it
was promoted only

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after much professional
development

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to the rank of a singular self.

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The body before it
was awarded only

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after sifting through
unprecedented numbers

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of worthy candidates
with the honor

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of everyday American loneliness.

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If the rebel refuses
these honors,

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the state can try
to absent the rebel,

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can try to pluck them out of
the vast ante-body of the people

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and isolate them in
a clandestine prison.

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But Joy James says,
"It's already too late.

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The sacrifice has been made.

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The example has been set.

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The fact of transcendent
love for the collective

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is already understood."

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So this isn't a
sermon or a lecture.

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It's an introduction.

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But am I to read you
a list of accolades,

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are we that committed to
the ritual of distinction?

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Analogous to the state,
the foundations and award

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granting bodies, the poetry
academies and the poetry

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societies can try to honor
the poet into a prison

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house of singular achievement.

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But the poet,
especially this poet,

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who has reversed the
very waters of English

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and made them run from
right to left, this poet who

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knows enough to say give Caesar
back what belongs to Caesar,

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this poet did not come to
play at being distinguished.

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Marwa did not come to be plucked
from the collective field

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where poetry is a technology
to braid body and word, self

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and other, music and
meaning, present and past

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at the double edge
of body and breath.

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We do not introduce the
poet, we make way for poetry

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so that we can join
in its braiding.

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When Marwa writes, "who real?

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Who free?' they are
not distinguishing.

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They are not threshing
the wheat from the chaff,

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the chosen from the unchosen.

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That's trifling religious shit.

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That's trifling empire shit.

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Return to Caesar
what is Caesar's,

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but return the poet to poetry.

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When Marwa writes "Who real?

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Who free?"

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it's the voice of agape that
speaks its loving invitation

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and call.

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How are we going to answer?

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Please welcome Marwa Helal.

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