Apocalyptic Narrative Recalls and the Human: Rawi Hage’s De Niro’s Game

Discourses of 'security,' which have been closely linked to power, have often taken the form of an apocalyptic vision. Recuperated as inevitable ending and destruction, rather than as revelation, disaster is then inflicted on humans. Significantly, the immeasurable violence concerns the other, not the self. Ultimately, this apocalyptic spectre is self-perpetuating and self-fulfilling, the source of its violence internal. War becomes its privileged mode to attest to its own existence. Its violent repression displaces the political onto religious narratives, negating the other as 'diabolic' and constituting a form of dehumanization. Alternative imaginings of apocalypse recuperate disorder into creative possibilities of inclusion and restructuring. The opening of the political lies in the potentiality of apocalyptic visions that remember the other and insist on the human. Rawi Hage's De Niro's Game allows for a vision of history in which the human quest for freedom and relation opens to a beginning and a future.