Modes of dismembership

The most decorated work of overseas

journalism since the Indochina wars,

Philip Gourevitch's "Stories from

Rwanda" (1998), carries the title,

We wish to inform you that tomorrow

we will be killed with our families.

Against the objection to comparison

of the repressive siege in the United

States, with the genocidal "dignity"

of the tribal bloodbath in Rwanda, I

offer the defense only of his ingeni-

ous elevation of the darkest certainty

to the height of proving the report.

We resist distraction to the mode

of embedding severe social cleavage,

to highlight denial of the constant.

Dawn after dawn, missing almost never a

day, and persistently escalating nicely

since the riots he praised in Charlot-

tesville last Summer, the President of

the United States has incited barbaric

tribesmen and statesman-enablers to dis-

member every integument of civil space.

This is nothing new. Only the portrait

is new. Is there any coffee left?

Javier Biosca

  photography