Relentlessly uncompromising and sometimes exasperating, Toufic’s
radical and visionary poetics gird the reader to forge ahead
into uncharted territory.… Although sometimes couched
in what looks like the language of critical theory, Toufic’s
formal hybridity and poetic methods sharply distinguish Forthcoming
from most other titles on those shelves labeled Cultural, Poststructuralist,
or Postcolonial Studies.… One could not find in current
film theory anything as suggestive or useful as Toufic’s
writing on the relationship of medieval Islamic philosophy to
certain contemporary Central Asian and Middle Eastern cinematography.…
Toufic’s interest in figures and movements sometimes considered
heretical in the Islamic and Jewish traditions (the Nizaris,
certain Shi'ites, the cabalists) opens the way to significant
reevaluations of entire historical eras and relationships between
languages, cultures, and peoples. In his insistence upon treating
the dead as a great part of the potential force of this world,
Toufic plumbs the poetics of disaster and recuperation in ways
that remain both incredibly suggestive and relentlessly radical.
Village Voice Literary Supplement, April 2001
“Toufic is at the core of a small but staunch group
of Beiruti artists who have — collectively and separately
— made a strong case for there being an intellectually
rigorous, critically engaged, and ultra-contemporary platform
for cultural practice developing in Lebanon and in the region.
Toufic has been instrumental not only as an artist in his
own right but also as an instigator or catalyst, someone known
to push his colleagues and students to create better, more
complex, and more probing work.… Toufic is one of the
most active and ambitious figures in the Arab world who —
book by book — has endeavored to sculpt a critical,
theoretical language of the Arab world.”
The Daily Star, Lebanon, 21 August 2004
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