{"id":217,"date":"2026-08-27T08:08:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T08:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mahdisshalchi.com\/?p=217"},"modified":"2026-08-27T08:09:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T08:09:32","slug":"between-the-antichrist-and-a-venir-a-hauntological-reading-of-houshang-golshiris-the-fifth-innocent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mahdisshalchi.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/27\/between-the-antichrist-and-a-venir-a-hauntological-reading-of-houshang-golshiris-the-fifth-innocent\/","title":{"rendered":"Between the Antichrist and \u00e0-venir: A Hauntological Reading of Houshang Golshiri\u2019s The Fifth Innocent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nearly twenty years after Houshang Golshiri\u2019s The Fifth Innocent<\/em>, Jacques Derrida reread the appearance of the Ghost of the King of Denmark to Hamlet and Marcellus and went on to formulate his reflections on spectrality in Specters of Marx<\/em>. He argued that, in order to learn how to live, one must seek an answer somewhere between life and death, in a space inhabited by ghosts. Ghosts are embodied spirits, revenant figures that tear the present apart, expose an emptiness within it, and watch us through a single eye. Derrida connects this condition to Hamlet\u2019s famous statement that \u201cthe time is out of joint\u201d (Derrida, 1994, p. 1). It is precisely through this temporal dislocation that a responsibility toward the dead and toward generations yet to come becomes visible. Had Derrida read The Fifth Innocent<\/em>, he might have recognized specters whose appearance was perhaps less conspicuous than that of Marx, yet whose haunting, excluded from official history, nevertheless left an unavoidable inheritance for those who came after them.<\/p>\n

The Fifth Innocent<\/em>, whose full title is The Fifth Innocent, or the Tale of the Dead Man\u2019s Hanging of the Horseman Who Will Come<\/em>, is a narrative written in a language deeply influenced by classical Persian texts. Its narrative is constructed through a chain of oral transmissions derived from numerous books and chronicles that it cites. Golshiri, as the writer of the text, presents the account of Abu\u2019l-Majd al-Warraq as a narrative ostensibly stripped of allusions and embellishments, although he is aware that the original account may itself have been distorted by structures of power, particularly through the commands of Amir Razi al-Din and the interventions of Khwaja Amid.<\/p>\n

The book recounts the story of an image hanging from the right-hand pillar of the Bab al-Sharq gate, an image described in numerous books and historical chronicles. It depicts someone who seems strangely familiar to everyone. Caravanners and pilgrims become so captivated by the image that the city\u2019s rulers order those who stop to look at it to be killed. Consequently, numerous severed heads are hung from the city battlements. The image possesses a magical quality: even when a dust storm approaches from the east of Herat, it remains untouched. When it is set swinging, the Mobad of Mobads holds it still with his staff, fearing that it might provoke anxiety and sedition among the people. Painted on deerskin, the image is covered with fresh saffian leather every twelve years. Its gaze is fixed upon the distance, compelling everyone to search among the stones for the meaning of this strange sign. It is said that when one sits beneath the elm and cypress trees, where the hill and sky meet, one can see the figure in human form, with his hands clasped together, approaching and saying: \u201cHere I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the story, Golshiri repeatedly foregrounds the uncertainty of history and places it in tension with the notion of the official archive. Different chronicles offer contradictory accounts of the city, its maps, and its hidden routes. No two sources describe these matters in the same way. Ultimately, however, all of them refer, with various modifications, to a single \u201cimage.\u201d Since Abu\u2019l-Majd is imprisoned at the time of recounting these narratives and citing the various sources, the origin of these descriptions necessarily becomes memory, or, more precisely, a second-hand narrative derived from written accounts and, in a sense, an oral history: \u201cThe narrator tells a tale that Muhammad ibn Nasr relates from his master, who himself had read it in the margin of a book: the figure that exists is like the figure of the saints of God, and when the millennium is completed, he will emerge and summon the people to himself\u201d (Golshiri, 1979, p. 22).<\/p>\n

The narrator recounts numerous stories concerning the lovers of the image, all of whom are critics of their own circumstances (Golshiri, 1979, p. 54). These figures are known as the \u201cWhite-Robed Ones.\u201d Their alleged crime consists of claiming ownership of land and labor, in addition to being subjected to various other accusations. Under Butahir, anyone among the people who spoke of them in anything other than condemnation had their tongue cut out, while anyone suspected of belonging to the White-Robed Ones was beheaded and their bloodied head hung from the battlements.<\/p>\n

Everyone awaits the arrival of the owner of the image. According to a ritual, a horse is prepared for him and eventually sacrificed (Golshiri, 1979, p. 36). Derrida\u2019s notion of a messianism without a messiah describes an openness to the arrival of the unexpected, a promise whose content and addressee cannot be determined in advance (Derrida, 1994, p. 25).<\/p>\n

In The Fifth Innocent<\/em>, this expectation takes on a peculiar form. The narrator explicitly states:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cLet no one know who he is, or what those signs belonging to him are\u2026 One cannot rely on them, for anyone else may claim these signs as his own. Therefore, it is more fitting to say that he is such that anyone, upon merely seeing him, will know that it is he, whether or not they recognize any signs in him\u201d (Golshiri, 1979, p. 34).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This passage demonstrates that the messianic figure of the narrative is, from the outset, detached from any determinate semiotic identity. He cannot be recognized through a fixed sign; he is apprehended through an immediate recognition that precedes the identification of any particular sign. It is precisely this absence of determinate signs that connects him to Derrida\u2019s specter. It is said that \u201cif his head is cut off, no harm will come to him\u201d (Golshiri, 1979, p. 34), an assertion that establishes his invulnerability even in the face of death and places him in an intermediate condition between life and death\u2014the very liminal space inhabited by the specter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThus it continued until the seventh year, when they said that something had appeared. They say that the gypsies of the closed city were the first to speak of him, or perhaps a dervish had traveled with a caravan and returned; then everyone added something of his own. Whatever it was, whatever they said, even when they whispered into one another\u2019s ears or spoke in private, everyone spoke of him: of the horseman and his horse at dawn, or of a pedestrian wearing a white turban\u2026\u201d (Golshiri, 1979, p. 41).<\/p>\n

At one point in the narrative, a man sees, in a state between sleep and wakefulness, the figure of a white-robed, turbaned man. He wounds him and suddenly recognizes his father\u2019s ring on the stranger\u2019s hand. He realizes that he has wounded his own brother, for which the Shah rewards him. The scene immediately recalls the Ghost of Hamlet. Both figures function as messianic specters bearing the image or trace of a father.<\/p>\n

Here, a crucial dimension of Derrida\u2019s hauntology emerges: the specter is precisely that which both is and is not, while simultaneously exercising a tangible and active force. The owner of the image appears absent, yet he is more alive than all the living. People become captivated by him, sacrifice their lives for him, their eyes turn green, and they lose control of themselves. No astrologer remains, and people attribute even natural disasters to him or to some sign he has given.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, the specter, positioned on the threshold between being and non-being, generates a force that terrifies the machinery of power and haunts everyday reality. When Abu\u2019l-Majd begins to write, he effectively draws that image on paper (Golshiri, 1979, pp. 68\u201369). The act of writing thus becomes a repetition of the very spectral figure he seeks to narrate. Writing becomes an invocation of the specter\u2019s trace, reproducing the very figure whose existence it attempts to record.<\/p>\n

The Sultan confronts this specter in a highly theatrical and almost cinematic manner. He mounts the horse that was supposed to carry the awaited figure. The horse enters the city square, and when it returns, the Sultan is dead, hanging from its stirrup. The horse then departs again and disappears into the snow (Golshiri, 1979, p. 75). The Sultan mounts the horse in an attempt to present himself to the people as the savior. Against the invulnerability of the awaited horseman, however, the Sultan\u2019s premature and spectacular death exposes the fragility of historically constituted power. It is as though whoever attempts to preserve a recognizable and visible form of sovereignty in the face of the specter is ultimately consumed by the very force that he cannot comprehend.<\/p>\n

Reading history thus becomes an encounter with confused and damaged pages (Golshiri, 1979, p. 64), a form of reading that has no access to an original and unmediated text. In all the travelogues and official historical books, only the Sultan\u2019s bravery in this scene has been recorded, while other dimensions of the story\u2014the stories of women, or the story of Zayd and his tortures\u2014continue to pulse in the margins of the text (Golshiri, 1979, p. 79).<\/p>\n

Derrida\u2019s specters likewise emerge from these damaged and confused pages. During the reign of Butahir, the authorities attempt to erase these specters by cutting out the tongues of their critics. Official history seeks to bury these voices, unaware that the specter returns precisely from the repressed margins. This can be read through Derrida\u2019s account of the archive and its inability to contain the spectral: the archive can preserve traces, yet it cannot permanently imprison the specter (Derrida, 1994, pp. 148\u2013149).<\/p>\n

At this point, another question emerges: where is truth concealed? In memory? In the margins of the text? Abu\u2019l-Majd sees things that he cannot remember, or that he is not even permitted to recount.<\/p>\n

The ending of the story brings this entanglement of truth and illusion, together with the simultaneous emergence of the messiah and the Antichrist, to its culmination. Abu\u2019l-Majd hears from his servant Zayd, with whom he is imprisoned, that the matter is not one-sided and that right and wrong cannot simply be separated. The narrator explicitly states that everything is \u201cveil upon veil,\u201d and that anyone who claims to have lifted the veil and encountered truth without mediation is selling his soul and lying, because truth always remains suspended.<\/p>\n

This corresponds closely to Derrida\u2019s understanding of the deferral of meaning and the impossibility of access to an ultimate, transcendental truth. We are always dealing with traces and specters. Within this space, the threat of the Antichrist is constantly present: the figure who mounts a horse and claims divinity or prophethood in order to deceive the masses.<\/p>\n

The specter can take multiple forms, blurring the distinction between savior and deceiver. This constitutes a crisis that Derrida himself does not overlook. He warns that the politics of spectrality is always exposed to the danger of becoming an ideology centered on a determinate messiah, thereby reducing messianism without a messiah to messianism in its conventional form (Derrida, 1994, p. 43).<\/p>\n

From this perspective, the Antichrist can be read as the structural opposite of \u00e0-venir<\/em>: the future that is always coming and never becomes a determinate present. If \u00e0-venir<\/em> signifies the perpetual opening of the horizon of the future toward something that can never be reduced to a determinate presence, the Antichrist constitutes the closure of precisely this horizon\u2014the moment when the future is reduced to a fabricated and supposedly definitive present.<\/p>\n

The specter, in this reading, remains indeterminate and elusive precisely insofar as it belongs to the horizon of \u00e0-venir<\/em>. The Antichrist, through his claim to identity and determinate presence, transforms the specter into a fixed present and consequently into a lie (Derrida, 1994, p. 224).<\/p>\n

Derrida\u2019s messianic promise without a messiah ultimately resonates with Golshiri\u2019s emancipatory vision. The era promised by the owner of the image is one in which hierarchies collapse. Zayd\u2019s enslavement and Abu\u2019l-Majd\u2019s eunuch status disappear, and no one exercises mastery over another. In that time, prisons and executions exist only in old treatises, while reading, writing, and poetry become universal capacities. The description of this liberation is so extraordinary that the pen itself splits open and the speaker becomes silent (Golshiri, 1979, pp. 80\u201382).<\/p>\n

The human being who moves toward that horizon no longer fears imprisonment, because through being haunted by this specter, the human being becomes fully human. This is the promise that Derrida conceptualizes as a justice that can never be fully realized in the present, a justice that is always to come and that therefore imposes an unending responsibility toward those yet to come (Derrida, 1994, p. 14).<\/p>\n

To inhabit this space is to practice the mode of living that Derrida proposes through an engagement with specters. The responsibility initially defined in relation to the dead ultimately becomes a responsibility toward generations yet to come. This movement brings the recursive structure of The Fifth Innocent<\/em> into alignment with the logic of Derrida\u2019s hauntology, since, in Derrida\u2019s account, our existence is constituted through the persistent return of traces and the haunting presence of those who are no longer\u2014or not yet\u2014present.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0References:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Derrida, J. (1994). Specters of Marx: The state of the debt, the work of mourning and the new international (P. Kamuf, Trans.). Routledge. (Original work published 1993)<\/p>\n

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