The Hypertext Triomnibus

Give Them Nothing to Watch

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tagstriad, difficulty/4, kind/conflict, kind/shared-figure-or-motif, kind/oblique-structural

4 min read

Triad 11 of 32 · 2026-10-04 · Difficulty 4 · Conflict, Shared figure or motif, Oblique/structural

The thread

Three books about a severed head shown to a crowd, and three answers to what the crowd should do with it. Kadare, The Traitor’s Niche (1978): the Ottoman state displays rebels’ heads in a niche by an obelisk in the capital; the courier Tundj Hata rents Ali Pasha’s head to frontier villages, for whom ‘this spectacle was at the same time their literature, theater, art, philosophy, and perhaps love’ (ch. 3). Lu Xun, Jottings under Lamplight: the Sendai slide of a man ‘about to be decapitated by a Japanese soldier’ (p. 20) and strong, apathetic onlookers turns him from medicine to literature; later, ‘the only cure is to give them nothing to watch’ (p. 261). The Sacred Conspiracy (Bataille/Acéphale, 1936–39): an annual festival proposed for the guillotining of Louis XVI, the king’s ‘supposed skull’ to be left at the Concorde obelisk (p. 113), and ‘Man has escaped his head like a condemned man escaping from prison’ (p. 125). Conflict: the empire sells the spectacle, Lu Xun refuses it, Bataille restages it as rite. Structural: each is unsure of its head (Ali’s buried by a dervish; Hurshid’s exhumed after forty hours; Lu Xun’s slide never found and elsewhere described as a shooting, Editors’ Intro p. 8; Acéphale’s skull only ‘supposed’). No book cites another; the bridge is built here.

The three books

Notebook

  1. The courier’s patter: Tundj Hata uncovers the head ‘First he exposed the right eye, and then the nose, the cheeks…’ (ch. 3) and adds ‘some sort of story, to make his show more attractive’ (ch. 7). Reveal one object to a silent audience part by part; then rewrite under Lu Xun’s ‘give them nothing to watch’ (p. 261). How do you write the scene so it cannot be a show?
  2. Escaping the head: Bataille’s ‘Man has escaped his head like a condemned man escaping from prison’ vs. Lu Xun’s ‘The neck is the most delicate part of the body, so we invented decapitation; the knee joint is capable of bending, so we invented the gesture of kneeling’ (p. 280). Write a page of gestures for the acephalic body: with no head to bow, what does it kneel with? Where does the labyrinth on its stomach send the hand?
  3. The supposed skull: Lu Xun’s slide possibly a shooting (Editors’ Intro p. 8); Ali’s head buried by a dervish; Acéphale’s ‘supposed skull’ (p. 113). Write a provenance file for a relic no one can check (inscription, keeper’s log, doctor’s note under the Regulations for the Care of Heads). Which document makes the head real?

Rabbit holes

Links as checked on the day of the reading.

To carry

“the only cure is to give them nothing to watch.” — Lu Xun, ‘What Happens after Nora Walks Out’ (1924), trans. Bonnie S. McDougall, Jottings under Lamplight, p. 261

Themes

acephale · Ali Pasha Tepelena · caput · Caw-caw · crowd · forgetting · gesture · gesture of kneeling · headlessness · labyrinth · literature vs. spectacle · Louis XVI · Lu Xun’s slide · oath of silence · obelisk · Ottoman Empire · Place de la Concorde · provenance · relic · sacrifice · secret society · severed head · sovereignty · spectacle · spectators

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