Toward a New Collectivity

A sensation of my neighbor's misfortune pierces me and I begin to comprehend

In this dark age the bond of our common fate and a compassion more real than I was inclined to confess

In Kara Walker's words, “history is the oft-repeated fable; power is the oft-repeated script.” From Walker's art in THSLNWN: In the Colorless Light of Day, to Karim Dajani and Eyal Rozmarin's conversation in Speaking of Home: An Intimate Exchange on Israel-Palestine, ROOM 10.24 is a testament to our collective heartbreak and resilience. Exactly one week after the 2016 US election, we created ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action. We knew that to “live out,” in Sartre's words, “that unbearable, heart-rending situation known as the human condition in a candid unvarnished way,” we needed to do it together. For the last eight years, ROOM's worldwide community has engaged in a collective struggle for recognition and authenticity across generations, culture, and political pressure. Now, just one week after the re-election of Donald Trump, ROOM 10.24 could not be more prescient.

Aicha Bint Yusif's poem, Bread and Salt, which opens this issue, harkens back to the place in Dante's journey where his ancestral grandfather forewarns the pilgrim that in exile he will come to know the bitter salt of another's bread, and the hardship of climbing another's stairs.

Tu proverai sì come sa di sale

Lo pane altrui, e com'è duro calle

Lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale

In their journeys of exile, the Israeli analyst Eyal Rozmarin and the Palestinian analyst Karim Dajani, as they have come to know one another, have experienced the salt, not of bread but of tears.

“As much as we love each other,” Dajani says, “there are ways that we actually cannot hear each other.”

“I'd like to really emphasize Karim's last point,” responds Rozmarin. “It really happens that the two of us reach a place of understanding with each other and then we have to start again. And I think