1. On Twilight
Twilight marks the period of time – or state – where light is present without its source. A time when the sun is still below the horizon, but already shines before its rise; or, alternatively, when light continues, or insists, to linger on after the sun had already set.
Twilight is the time of first light and last light – a time when things break away from the shadows and assume their own shade, or conversely, a time when things break away from their own shade and recede back among the shadows. A doubled and reversed time. A time of illusion and deception, where things are early to appear and late to leave. A state where things manifest almost, or seemingly, as themselves, yet still insist to be more than they are. This is the time – or the state – where effects and things co-exist, without any clear distinctions, without hierarchy. Time for metaphysical reflections: about Being, Existence, and the Real.
1.1 On the Negative Perception of Twilight
In the beginning there was Being. And it indicated truth, existence, and the Real. The first philosophers contrasted it with the effects and impressions, with the image and the illusion. These can, at most, inspire conjectures and opinions, but not actual knowledge. Suffice it to mention Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave and the distinction he draws between the light of the sun and the darkness of the cave – the light of the mind that understands things as they really are, and the shadows dancing on the cave’s walls. This contrast between things and effects have led to the prevalent use of the term “twilight” in a one dimensional, mostly negative way, as indicative of the fall and a prelude to darkness and loss. The reference to twilight is usually mentioned to characterize a state in which world orders have been upturned, or a time when values – those that establish Being and confer meaning upon reality – are no longer valid. Twilight points to a culture found in a state of decay and imminent catastrophe. (This is also why, for the most part, the term “twilight” is used in political and moral contexts).
1.1.1 On the Pertinence of Twilight
The contention that we are currently in the midst of a moral and political twilight, a period of decay and decline, is a compelling observation – meaning, one that is anchored in discourse. These are times of destabilization of world orders and shifts of the powers that shape reality; times when values and “common sense” seem to have lost their legitimacy. (Today, as we know, values can be found mostly in glossy corporate brochures and the Ministry of Education’s circulars, while “common sense” have been made a mockery by reality, and is used by comedians to comment on current affairs).
Nevertheless, this portrayal of twilight is incongruent with the fact that we are living in what is the most floodlit period ever, a time without shade, at “high noon.” We are surrounded and engulfed by light 27/4. These times are so illuminated that we can be seen from outer space. An age so teeming with lights, glimmering and shining in all colors, that the moniker “Age of Enlightenment” – a time that did not know electricity – feels like a feeble joke. If the people of ancient Greece, or 18th century philosophers, saw themselves as walking towards and in search of light, what can we – who are under its full glare, who are force fed it, who are reflected in and project it – say? We, who wish to shine and illuminate so that we will not be seen? Can we still consider twilight under the metaphor of light and vision? Is the challenge we are facing to reinstitute values and “common sense”?
1.1.1.1 A Note on the Real
Attempting to explain Jacques Lacan’s use of the term “Real,” Slavoj Žižek invoked the paradox of 5th century BCE Greek philosopher Zeno: The Paradox of the Tortoise and Achilles. Achilles, the greatest hero in Greek mythology, competes in a race with a tortoise. In order to level the playing field, Achilles gives the tortoise a small head start. Now, claims Zeno, whenever Achilles makes a step, the tortoise also progresses. Indeed, the distance between the two becomes smaller yet still remains. Logically, claims Zeno, in order to cover a certain distance, we must cover half of that distance, and since the distance between two points can be split ad infinitum, in order to outrun the tortoise, Achilles will have to cover an infinite number of “half distances.” Since infinity marks that which never ends, it follows that one cannot “cover” it, but only be in it. Thus, concludes Zeno, in direct opposite to our impression and perception, Achilles will never catch up with the tortoise and pass it.
Zeno himself wished to prove that in contrast with how we perceive things – influenced by their impressions and effects – time and movement and sensory perception do not coincide with logical truth. However, if we take this paradox to real flesh and blood people, we will face a look of boredom, perhaps even disdain, followed by the resolute response: “O.K., I get it. Achilles ‘almost’ or ‘nearly’ catches up with the tortoise, and yet in reality, after less than two steps, he will overtake it!”
In contrast with Zeno, Žižek does not wish to refute or reconcile the paradox. Rather, he wishes to see it as an ontological expression of the Real. The thing about the Real, Žižek tells us, is that you can be in front of it, approach it, or you can be after it, circumventing it, but you cannot be “with it”; you cannot touch or grasp the Real. As far as the Real is concerned, the action that wishes to leave an impression on reality is in a state of paradox, where it is almost, or as-if, the thing – forever kept at arm’s length from what it seeks – and still or yet, the thing – refuses to let go, keeps holding on, transgressing boundaries, though the light has already gone out.
1.1.1.1.1 On the Effect and the Real
In contrast with the category of “Being,” which we measure in relation to existence – following the principle set up by Plato for future generations: the degree of Being determines the degree of existence – we face the Real through its manifestation and presence. In other words, through the effect. The Real is involved with the effect for its “nature.” After all, the effect is inherently paradoxical: On the one hand, it poses an (often overbearing) demand for attention, and at the same time insists on being random and accidental, ephemeral. The Real – being real – provides the effect with the confidence necessary to reveal and rely on its own nature: Being paradoxical. Thus, and in return, the effect allows the Real to surprise us in what is always-already familiar and in what is already always-familiar. In this sphere, where the effect and the Real adhere to one another, harness one another to their own benefit, action can meet that which does not acquiesce to invitations, just as it does not succumb to the request to leave. To act in the twilight of the experience. In the realms where Being perhaps does not exist, but where the Real can be present, most certainly present.
2. Logic at Dawn, Rhetoric at Dusk
How do we render presence present? How does one make an impression – that is to say, how do you allow the effect to rejoice in the attention showered on it, in order to celebrate and leave a mark? How do we deal with the elusiveness of the Real, which glimpses from the gleaming flicker of the effect? In what way does twilight allow us, our actions, our transient presence, to say something about the reality of things – about what truly, so truly, exists; to really do something, for Real!
Let us return to the logic that sought to toy with reality, and distinguish the Real from the effect. This time, however, we would like to appear at early dawn, before the emergence of logic as a priori rules of thinking to be used by philosophers. We will visit it when it first appears as metaphysical thought: generates far-fetched competitions, instigates made-up confrontations, and poses essential paradoxes. Or, to use the testimony of Immanuel Kant, without a doubt a man versed in such matters: Metaphysical thought is "a battle-ground quite peculiarly suited for those who desire to exercise themselves in mock combats."1
In the twilight of the morning, when the faculties of the mind are still wrapped in fleeting images of last night on the one hand and imagined plans and intentions for the coming day on the other, logic can evade the reach of one's reasoning, materialize as itself out of the sheer effects of its mere action. At this early-hour practice, logic reveals its nature and character as derived from its very Being, its very presence. It does not emerge as a set of rules that allows one to conceive of things through a dilemma: As subject to one’s judgment or choice. As if we need to choose whether to believe our eyes or to prefer abstract logical perception over experience. In preparation for our daily tasks, logic trains the forces of the soul so that we can, for example, keep paradoxes from becoming dilemmas. So that it can help and harness the pleasure evoked by the dilemma and the joy entailed in decision making to our actions. So that we can conduct ourselves in a performative manner in relation to reality.
And when evening comes, when Being blends into the lights of discourse, remaining real by virtue of the relations and connections it insists on forming and maintaining, we are dazzled and exhausted. To our credit, we can count the fatigue, and the blows we had taken throughout the day, when we bumped into the existence of things, and their reality. The Real surprises us, hits us, because it is present. Again. Still present: Really, but really, present. And while earlier, at the dawn of the day, we faced the paradox of how to precede what comes first (precede the a priori), now we have to defer and think after the fact, after what leaves an impression and lingers on. To defer so as to turn the outcomes of things – the effects, into their cause – into things. And if at the beginning of the road we had to hasten in order to arrive ahead of the earlier, we are now required to wait and pause. A little bit longer. With alert patience, like a hunter stalking his prey; with the vigilance and ingenuity of warriors who find themselves at a disadvantage and try to leverage their adversaries' advantage to their benefit. This is the time for thoughtful and attentive meditation. A time when reservations and nebulous thoughts insist, with provocative childishness, to formulate strategies of action and ways to approach things.
In the twilight of the day, the fictional techniques we devised to regulate our fabricated daily routine – various illustrations, literal manifestations, analogies, examples, contradictions, and negations – are tested and used, now when they are no longer needed. Now they are present as what they are: Practices that depend on the treacherous faculties of the imagination to create a purposeless, purposeful impression – a “worldview.” This is the time when all of these functions re-gathered as Rhetoric. A special kind of practice that, as Aristotle teaches us, is concerned with human action: The one that could have been different from what it is or not exist at all; and yet, here it is, now: Really, like, for real!
As opposed to the unfolding day, where the Imaginary (the “subjective”) and the Symbolic (the “objective”) orders meet so as to uphold Being, to establish Being as truth; now, at the end of the day, a time of recaps and summations, the Imaginary (effects) and the Real (things) converge in order to allow reality to be tangible.
In order to allow the action to be concrete.
In order to allow experience to become and to be a performance.
June, 2018
*Based on the panel ”Really, Like Really!”, International Performance Conference 0:6: Twilight, School of Visual Theatre, Jerusalem, 2017
Translated by Maya Shimony
1 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, Macmillan, p.21 (Introduction to the second edition, p. xvi).