toufic

The first in a landmark three-volume series gathering the complete writings of an indispensable voice in contemporary thought and aesthetics.

No Place Press is collaborating with Jalal Toufic on an ambitious publishing project: The Collected Writings (1991-2024) of a Mortal to Death: Jalal Toufic. Spanning three volumes of more than six hundred pages each, the series gathers re-edited versions of his earlier works alongside two newly written books, arranged and organized by the author himself. For new readers, the volumes provide an introduction to Toufic’s central concepts--including the withdrawal of tradition past a surpassing disaster, radical closure, silence-over, the 180-degree over-turn, and the dancer’s two bodies--while for longtime readers they offer a comprehensive view of more than three decades of thought, presented in their most rigorous and fully articulated form. Yet, in keeping with Toufic’s practice--which participates in untimely collaboration (including with future filmmakers, thinkers, and artists) and abides in the suspension of the avenir of messianism/Mahdism--some of these works remain forthcoming even after their inclusion in the Collected Writings.

Volume 1 (2025) includes newly revised editions of Toufic’s first three books--Distracted (1991/2003); (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (1993/2003); and Over-Sensitivity (1996/2009)--together with the script Jouissance in Postwar Beirut (2014) and, new, The Unreviewed Writings of a Peerless Thinker (2024).

Jalal Toufic is a Lebanese thinker, writer, and artist. His work spans philosophy, film theory, and visual art, often exploring themes of tradition, mortality, and the metaphysical. He is the author of Distracted (1991), (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (1993), Forthcoming (2000), and What Was I Thinking (2017), among others. He has also created over 20 films and videos, and his work has been featured in Documenta 13, the Sharjah Biennials, the Shanghai Biennale, and at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, and MoMA PS1. Currently, he is a professor of film studies at The American University in Cairo.