(ANTIGONE AS USUAL!) OR, REX HOFMAN, BURIED ALIVE

Cross and Antigone (burial alive).—Simone Weil, Notebooks

(Antigone as usual!)—Simone Weil, letter to parents, 16 December 1942, after being imprisoned on arrival in London for eighteen and a half days

BOTH ARE BURIED ALIVE I

BOTH ARE BURIED ALIVE II

In The Vanishing (1988) both are buried alive. A look between them predicts towards the start of the film (not the look above) that both will be buried alive; therefore the whole film disintegrates into that look. We know we will be buried alive. (The look retro-projects. It is a spade.)

BOTH ARE BURIED ALIVE III

BOTH ARE BURIED ALIVE IV

In that case, the look means: we know we will be buried alive, and the love that we will not pay the price for because it is worth more than life will have been a function, a cause even, of knowing about being buried alive in the end. (This sounds unbearable, and is; but anyone who has seen the film knows this is the content of the look.)

BOTH ARE BURIED ALIVE V

Anthropos is that which won’t even talk about it even when it happens. It is the function of anthropos as not talking about it—and this is what means it will be buried alive in the end—to not want to look this look that digs it in, digs its ribs, won’t let itself be talked about as it is, in the face.

BOTH ARE BURIED ALIVE VI

Tom Cohen writes: ‘Anthropos is (not) talking to himself, mulling, insistent on identifying with the archival-technic the Western mutation launched.’ The worst thing is not not talking about it. To be precise, it is not knowing one has not talked about it and stopping. As soon as they stop talking about it, they will be buried alive. The ‘look’ is knowing they will be buried alive, which they are. The look is identifying with any new piece of the archival-technic that arrives—so as (not) to talk about it. The look is a looking luckless late testament of absolute predation.

BOTH ARE BURIED ALIVE VII

His name is Rex and his name is Hofman. Rex Hofman.

The story is.

Rex Hofman is a Dutch traveller on holiday with his girlfriend Saskia Wagter in France. Saskia is played by Johanna ter Steege.

In primal terms, the boyfriend is E.T.A. Hoffmann and The Sandman (1816) and he is also Oedipus Rex. The look means the whole thing will be buried alive.

All these names.

Hofman / Hoffman / Kofman / Antigone / Anne Frank.

Antigone is buried alive and then kills herself. Sarah Kofman killed herself. Tina Chanter in an essay about Sarah Kofman and Antigone being buried alive says:

In 1943 a member of the Gestapo came to warn her [Kofman] and her mother (her five siblings were already hidden in the country) that they must go and hide: they were on the list to be picked up that night. She and her mother made haste along the Rue Marcadet. In her anxiety, she vomited her dinner onto the Rue Marcadet.

Simone Weil:

Adam and Eve sought for divinity in vital energy—a tree, fruit. But it is prepared for us on dead wood, geometrically squared, where a corpse is hanging. We must look for the secret of our kinship with God in our mortality.

Only the look is worth looking into. Only going extinct alive can be the thing.