The enemy persists as a readable text after having been historically present.

Evidence

Having been here, the enemy is already constituted as an object of knowledge, agent or object of a violence that may or may not have become actualized, much less determined as war or battle, as psychological or social. Yet what can only be indicated here is that, as he draws away, the enemy also remains, and he remains to be read. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 373

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The idea that the enemy ‘remains to be read’ — enmity as a textual/interpretive residue rather than an event — could seed a narrative where a historical enemy’s withdrawal leaves behind a document to be decoded.