Déjà Vu

We’ve been here before. Except we haven't.

Empires fall and revive, populations oscillate between consensus and polarisation, crises succumb to depressions and booms, one mercurial mind replaces another. Each time, new anomalies arise, as significant as the churning historical cycles. What comes next?

The physiological experience of déjà vu is preceded by a cognitive phenomenon described as a ‘memory glitch.’ Sections of the brain disagree: is this scenario old or new? At historical junctures we find ourselves in the midst of this cognitive dissonance, carrying on as usual in uncharted territory.

History does not simply repeat itself. It rhymes. Veering off the path, slipping into the periphery. Déjà vu is alliteration and assonance, a thread of words with patterned consonants and vowels. It’s onomatopoeia—a vivid sound in lieu of the word itself. The more we grasp at déjà vu, the more elusive it becomes. It feels like lethologica: the frustrating failure to retrieve a word from the tip of the tongue despite feeling that recall is imminent.

In the gap between the real and the perceived, seemingly minor discrepancies make déjà vu vexing. The missing inserts of the sutured furniture in Nazgol Ansarinia’s Mendings (Pink Mattress) (2012). The Mediterranean Sea on the high floor of Larissa Sansour’s Mediterranean Floor (2012). The bed made too narrow for sleep, and the sea, inaccessible as it actually is for so many. Poignant and eerie. There, the shadowy substance in Rula Halawani’s Old Jerusalem alleyways, and Fouad Elkoury’s Fichawi Sac (1988). Here, Farah Al Qasimi’s classic vignettes from the UAE feel distant and loud. Now, Shahpour Pouyan’s domes appear to be objects of war rather than cultural heritage destroyed in war.

Déjà vu will continue to evade us. Whether we’ve been here or not, we will never know. Or would we?