Happy New Year

In wishing for a happy new year I am hoping like Barthes for the absolutely new which disturbs and brings bliss; not for the mere stereotype of novelty.

The new is an escape route from the present into the future and a necessary precondition of jouissance. 

The stereotype that reigns triumphant within contemporary culture, is simply a form of humiliated repetition in which superficial forms are varied, but their meaning remains fixed and ever the same. In this manner, we are denied any chance of escape; robbed even of the possibility of dying. 

For me, Auld Lang Syne, sung at the stroke of midnight each and every new year's eve without enthusiasm or joy, is a form of curse via which we are once more burdened with bad conscience and memory of the past thereby undermining our resolve, shattering our dreams, denying our orgasm.    

Comrade Dawn

As day breaks, I often think of her ...

And as the moon flashes phosphorescent between night skies
I recall the whiteness of her flesh fitfully exposed between 
skirt and stocking-top. 

Stripped naked before the impersonal violence of the market place
whilst wearing a rubber crown of freedom, she succeeded only in 
becoming the favourite read of rapists.

Our God is Woman: Our Mission is Protest!

Many congratulations and all best wishes for the New Year to Josephine Witt, the courageous twenty year-old philosophy student and Femen activist who staged a one-woman protest at St. Peter's Cathedral in Cologne, briefly but beautifully disrupting a televised Christmas mass. 

Mounting the altar, wearing only a loin cloth in both imitation and mockery of Christ, her naked torso painted with the words I AM GOD, she looked powerful and vulnerable at the same moment; her exposed breasts challenging the authority and exposing the misogyny of a Church which continues to discriminate against women, whilst nonetheless believing it has every right to control their bodies.  

Her protest did not last long: half-a-dozen horrified clerics wearing an assortment of robes, quickly pulled Josephine from the altar, covered her up, bundled her out of the building, and handed her over to the secular forces of law and order. But such an action does not need to last long to be effective and the Femen message - that the Vatican needs to recognise that women are fully capable of making their own decisions over issues such as abortion and should have the right to do so without priestly interference or condemnation - was broadcast via the international media. 

To witness the protest go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjFlzRNkKDs or visit the Femen website: femen.org

The feminist group FEMEN crashed a Christmas service at the High Cathedral of St. Peter in Cologne, Germany, with a topless activist getting up on the altar exposing herself to the congregation with the words "I am God" written on her body.

The activist group, which says that it is based on "sextremism, atheism and feminism," was apparently trying to protest against patriarchy and the Vatican's pro-life views. According to EuroNews.com, the woman was identified as 20-year-old philosophy student Josephine Witt.
The incident, which has been captured on video, shows her running onto the altar in front of the large congregation, but clerics quickly surround her, cover her up and take her away.
FEMEN, which was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Paris, France, often participates in topless protests aimed at "fighting patriarchy in its three manifestations – sexual exploitation of women, dictatorship and religion." It demands "that the old people in the Vatican and their fanatical adepts bring their religious dogmas into compliance with the modern world and human rights."

Read more at http://global.christianpost.com/news/feminist-group-crashes-german-christmas-service-with-topless-i-am-god-protest-on-altar-111606/#ER6V3gwIxdco66sK.99

The feminist group FEMEN crashed a Christmas service at the High Cathedral of St. Peter in Cologne, Germany, with a topless activist getting up on the altar exposing herself to the congregation with the words "I am God" written on her body.

The activist group, which says that it is based on "sextremism, atheism and feminism," was apparently trying to protest against patriarchy and the Vatican's pro-life views. According to EuroNews.com, the woman was identified as 20-year-old philosophy student Josephine Witt.
The incident, which has been captured on video, shows her running onto the altar in front of the large congregation, but clerics quickly surround her, cover her up and take her away.
FEMEN, which was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Paris, France, often participates in topless protests aimed at "fighting patriarchy in its three manifestations – sexual exploitation of women, dictatorship and religion." It demands "that the old people in the Vatican and their fanatical adepts bring their religious dogmas into compliance with the modern world and human rights."

Read more at http://global.christianpost.com/news/feminist-group-crashes-german-christmas-service-with-topless-i-am-god-protest-on-altar-111606/#ER6V3gwIxdco66sK.99

It's My Name Day (And I'll Decry If I Want To)

St. Stephen: first Christian martyr 
and anti-Semite

As Maria is keen to remind me, today is my name day [ονομαστική εορτή]: a traditional form of celebration in Greece, as in other Orthodox and Catholic countries where the veneration of saints is a popular practice, but which doesn't mean a great deal to me - particularly as I don't even seem to get a cake out of it. 

As for the saint to whom I am connected by name, what do I know of him? 

St. Stephen was a Greek-speaking Jew who made the fatal mistake of outraging the members of numerous synagogues by his unorthodox teachings inspired by Jesus. Accused of blasphemy and perverting Mosaic Law, he didn't help matters by making a long speech at his trial in which he denounced the authorities who were sitting in judgement upon him whilst keeping a holier-than-thou and supercilious expression on his face; a speech which concludes with the following slur which would resonate to murderous effect through the ages:

"You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One, whom you also betrayed and murdered; you who received the law as delivered by angels, but did not keep it." [Acts 7: 51-53] 

This so infuriated members of the Sanhedrin and the people who had gathered to witness the proceedings, that they rushed upon him, dragged him outside, and then stoned him to death; thus making Stephen the first Christian martyr and an inspiration to anti-Semites keen to hold the Jews guilty of deicide.  

Imitating Christ to the last, Stephen asked that God forgive those who were about to slay him (they know not what they do). More interestingly, sparks were said to fly off his body every time he was struck by a stone; sparks that his later Christian admirers would insist were not of anger, but of love, and which ignited the hearts of those who witnessed his death; sparks which we now know actually helped ignite the Auschwitz crematoria.     

An Atheist Responds to Pope Francis

Well, there you go: I've just been insulted by Pope Francis in his first Christmas Day message to the faithful!

Speaking to a crowd of 70,000 people from the balcony of St Peter's, he called on even atheists to share in the desire for peace that fills the hearts of all true believers in God.

I mean, really, it's a bit much, no?  

Even atheists - as if we were the scum of the earth who knew only of hatred and were filled with a lust for violence. I might remind His Holiness that it is invariably religion that proliferates and intensifies tribal, racial, and sectarian conflict in this world: witness what is happening presently in the Middle East and in Africa.   

For ultimately, despite all their talk about desiring peace and being happy to receive their rewards in the next world, the leaders and followers of the great religions want power in this world and will slaughter anyone who might stand in their way - not least of all those who subscribe to a different faith, or to no faith.   

And with that I have done and pronounce my judgement: religion has left nothing untouched by its depravity. I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind ...  

- Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ

And so this is Christmas ...

Feigning joy and surprise at the gifts we despise 

over mulled wine with you

  

If there has ever been a better opening line to a Christmas song than this sung by Justin Hawkins of The Darkness, then I'd like to hear it.  

For there is something despicable at the commercial heart of Xmas and something increasingly desperate about our compulsion to celebrate it and insist that everyone enters into the spirit of the season lest they be branded a killjoy. Or a Scrooge. Or in someway suspect (not one of us).

Well, I'm sorry, but like Charlie Brown this time of year always makes me depressed: and a little ashamed. I don't want the bells to end; but I'd like for the tills to stop ringing and for people to not be bullied. And not be afraid.

On the Question Concerning Technology

 

I recently watched The Social Network (dir. David Fincher) and I have to say I enjoyed this fictionalized and stylized account of the founding and phenomenal success of Facebook. Not only did the film contain some memorable scenes, but there were many instances of amusing dialogue; including the following line uttered by Justin Timberlake in his role as Sean Parker:

Once we lived on farms and in cities - now we're gonna live on the internet.

The line was spoken with zeal and in triumph by a young master of the digital universe; someone who clearly viewed the shift from a rural existence to an urban and then to a virtual lifestyle as progressive, if not, indeed, as an opportunity for human transcendence and transformation.

This techno-utopian vision of abandoning the actual world and entering into some kind of online paradise is simply a Platonic fantasy, however; i.e. rooted in a long tradition of moral idealism. And although there are transhumanists who wilfully subscribe to such an anthropomorphic conception of life's becoming based on a linear and perfectionist model of social and biological evolution, others are beginning to wake up to the dangers of surrendering ourselves to the future as an act of blind faith.

They realise that the more we mediate our lives and our relationships via technology, the more we numb and atrophy our own senses. And they realise also that whilst we have spent our time emailing pictures of lol cats to one another, checking status updates, or masturbating to pornography, the rich and powerful have been busy claiming even more of the actual world's resources for themselves.

Where salvation is promised, lies the greatest danger ... 

Fasten Your Seat Belts! (In Support of Pussy Riot)

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina 
Photo: Reuters / Ilya Naymushin (2013)

Obviously the early release from prison of Pussy Rioters Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina as part of Putin's amnesty law is a PR move designed to improve his image in the West ahead of the Sochi Winter Olympics in February and both women immediately condemned it as such. 

That said, I'm happy they are free; though, sadly, in Russia today this is only a relative term for those who hold anti-authoritarian views or practice non-traditional sexual relations. 

Of course, it would be as easy to be as cynical about the media-stunts of Pussy Riot as it is about Putin's new found humaneness. Indeed, more people seem to take pleasure in violently abusing and condemning Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina than in speaking out against the Russian regime's clamp down on political rights and socio-sexual freedoms.

Doubtless it is this hostility that they generate that makes me love them so; that and the sheer courage that they demonstrate. Both have promised to continue their protest: "We will try to sing our song to the end", said Alyokhina. Whilst Tolokonnikova warns with a smile: "Everything is just starting, so fasten your seat belts!" 
  

In Praise of Stalking (The Case of Sophie Calle)

Stalking - be it of an actual kind in what remains of and passes for the real world, or a virtual activity conducted online - doesn't have a great reputation. Doubtless this is due to the fact that stalking is often related to harassment and intimidation and because it can be not only predatory but creepy in character; no one, it seems, likes to be followed and spied on by strangers (even in a world of Facebook and CCTV).

And yet, is it not possible that we might understand stalking not in terms of physical and psychological abuse, but rather as a fascinating instance of neo-courtly love in an age after the orgy ...?

For it is certainly the case that many stalkers feel a strong and genuine bond of affection for the person they choose to secretly shadow and, in essence, there's a striking similarity between medieval erotico-spiritual practice and this illicit postmodern phenomenon: both are a highly specialized expression of a love that is all too human and yet transcendent; passionate and yet restrained; true and yet founded upon fantasy. 

The stalker, whilst accepting the independence of the object of their desire, nevertheless attempts to bring themselves to the attention of the latter by various means and often goes to extraordinary lengths in order to prove the seriousness of their ardour and commitment. They may or may not be hoping for sexual intimacy, but this hardly seems to be the point and it would be mistaken, I think, to posit this as the ultimate goal; there are certainly easier ways to get a date or get laid, even for the most incompetent or inadequate of would-be lovers. 

        

Indeed, in certain cases of stalking there is no sexual motive involved at all: consider the famous case involving French conceptual artist, Sophie Calle. Here is an example of a woman stalking a man - known as Henri B. - without having any particular interest in him and certainly no erotic aspirations or expectations. It was Calle's indifferent determination to follow Henri B., without motive or any identifiable type of psychoses or neurotic compulsion, that made her story so intriguing to Jean Baudrillard, who - as we shall see - interprets her actions in terms of his theory of seduction (i.e. an ironic and fatal game of hide-and-seek to do with power, appearance, reversibility, loss of will, and being led astray). 

For those of you who don't know this case, the facts are these:

After stalking several strangers through the streets of Paris, Calle met Henri B. at a party. He told her he was travelling to Italy the following day and so Calle decided to go to Venice herself and track him down. After phoning round a large number of hotels, she finally found him. Then, suitably disguised, she spent the next few days following Henri B. around the city; photographing his movements and encounters with others and recording details in a diary alongside her own musings. 

Eventually, Henri B. spotted and confronted his stalker and the game was effectively over - although Calle still contrived to arrive back in Paris at the same time as her object in order to get one last secret picture of him disembarking from the train on which he had made his way home. She eventually published the black-and-white photographs accompanied by a text as Suite vénitienne (1983).

The book also included a typically insightful essay by Baudrillard entitled 'Please Follow Me' which contains the following passage on the seductive joy of becoming-other and becoming-object:

"To stalk the other is to take charge of their itinerary; it is to watch over their life without them knowing it. It is to ... relieve them of that existential burden, the responsibility of their own life. Simultaneously, she who follows is herself relieved of responsibility for her own life as she follows blindly in the footsteps of the other. And thus a wonderful reciprocity exists in the cancellation of each existence, in the cancellation of each subject's tenuous position as a subject. Stalking the other, one replaces them, exchanges lives, passions, wills, transforms oneself in the other's stead. It is perhaps the only way one can finally find fulfilment."


Note: An English edition of the Calle/Baudrillard work, trans. Danny Barash and Danny Hatfield, is available from Bay Press (1988). 

  

Notes on the Conflict Thesis

The conflict thesis proposes that there is intrinsic antagonism between persons of faith and those who prefer to rely upon reason. Although this mid-19th century idea is now thought untenable by academics who have researched the long and complex historical relationship between science and religion, in my view it's one which demands revision rather than abandonment; particularly in this new age of religious fundamentalism and wilful stupidity.

For as a philosopher, I can't quickly overlook the trial of Socrates nor fail to remember that one of the charges made against him was that of impiety. Nor, if I'm honest, can I forget the treatment handed out to Galileo by the Roman Inquisition; or the mockery and abuse of Charles Darwin and other evolutionary scientists which continues to this day within certain religious circles almost ninety years after the Scopes Monkey Trial.     

These and other isolated episodes may be exceptional rather than typical and the Draper-White thesis may offer us a greatly distorted and simplified view, but it seems to me that their basic proposition still resonates and that the faithful would - if they could - make a violent sacrificium intellectus.

How Murder of the Other Ends in Self-Destruction

Whilst an adversary is often accorded respect and even admiration, an enemy is always despised and frequently demonized. Because an enemy, unlike an opponent, is not merely set against us, but seen as fundamentally alien and other - culturally, morally, and even physically; they look repulsive and they smell bad. 

This long and shameful tradition of depicting our enemies as monstrous and inhuman - enemies who can never be defeated and assimilated into our world, only exterminated like vermin - is nowhere better illustrated than in Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda which displays an irrational (at times insane) level of racial hatred. What we might term the metaphysics of enmity clearly acted as the murderous dynamic of National Socialism, as well as the indispensable precondition that made genocide not only inevitable but, for many Germans, acceptable. 

Of course this hatred might be contextualized within the religious, cultural and social history of Germany. But it's never fully explained by placing it within such a context. For there is something else - something almost incomprehensible - about Nazi anti-Semitism for those who do not share this obsessive mania and the Final Solution results from a mystical as well as an ideological and biological fantasy to do with health, strength, and purity.

Ironically, of course, the idea of a master race is inconceivable without the Jews being assigned their role as the eternal Other whom it is necessary to annihilate, in order that the Aryan superman might live. But there is a further fatal irony all the time unfolding here: for this murderous fantasy is as suicidal as it is homicidal and war becomes not simply a means of eliminating a mortal enemy, but of regenerating one’s own blood via self-sacrifice. Ultimately, Hitler is as happy to shed the blood of those he promised to protect, as those he desired to exterminate. Indeed, it might even be argued that the objective of the Nazi Regime was not really the demonization and destruction of the Jews, but the idealization and subsequent sacrifice of the German people themselves.

In a brilliantly insightful passage, Michel Foucault writes:

      "The destruction of other races was one aspect of the project, the other being to expose its own race to the absolute and universal threat of death. Risking one’s life, being exposed to total destruction, was one of the principles inscribed in the basic duties of the obedient Nazi, and it was one of the essential objectives of Nazism’s policies. It had to reach the point at which the entire population was exposed to death. Exposing the entire population to universal death was the only way it could truly constitute itself as superior race and bring about its definitive regeneration once other races had been either exterminated or enslaved forever.

      We have, then, in Nazi society something that is really quite extraordinary: this is a society which has generalized bio-power in an absolute sense, but which has also generalized the sovereign right to kill. The two mechanisms … coincide exactly. We can therefore say this: the Nazi state makes the field of the life it manages, protects, guarantees, and cultivates in biological terms absolutely coextensive with the sovereign right to kill anyone, meaning not only other people, but also its own people.”

- Society Must Be Defended, trans. David Macey (Penguin Books, 2004), pp. 259-60.

And this is why the Third Reich ends not only with the Final Solution, but also the infamous Nero Decree [Nerobefehl] in which Hitler calls for the total destruction of German infrastructure in the face of impending defeat and occupation, regardless of the consequences to the population.

Who Killed Bambi?

Gentle pretty thing / Who only had one spring 

You bravely faced the world / Ready for anything

Whilst it's true that Steve Jones in his role as an amateur detective is only interested in finding Malcolm and piecing together the clues that might explain where it all went wrong for him and his fellow band members (tragically so, in the case of Sid Vicious), there is, nevertheless, another question at the heart of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle which transforms the movie from an amusingly mythologized history of the Sex Pistols into a profound murder mystery and morality tale: with one big shout we all cry out - who killed Bambi?

It is, of course, a rhetorical question: when McLaren screams it into the faces of the assembled reporters at Henley Airfield, he's not expecting an answer. And neither is he simply giving reference to an off-screen incident involving the shooting of a deer by a decadent rock star, although, clearly, this scene - which belongs to the originally proposed film to be directed by Russ Meyer - is a non-too-subtle visual metaphor.   

So what, if anything, do we learn from Lesson 10 of the Swindle?

That innocence is easily lost? That it's a good thing to be disillusioned and believe only in the ruins of belief? That we should never trust a hippie? That the spirit of punk will never die; or that Johnny Rotten was a collaborator and that big business will always find a way to assimilate and market youthful rebellion? It's probably a (qualified) yes to all of these ...


Note: The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, directed by Julian Temple, was released in cinemas in 1980; probably you can now find it on YouTube, or elsewhere online. Those old punks and film-buffs who are particularly interested, might like to read the script written for Who Killed Bambi? by Roger Ebert, which he has kindly made available on his website: http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/who-killed-bambi-a-screenplay

Caliban

Mirrors don't reflect flesh, only history
and so his own face made him rage.

Ah Caliban! You task me, moon-calf, you task me! For what am I to make of you; malevolent monster and would-be child rapist, or indigenous subject dispossessed of your native land and enslaved and brutalized by European colonialism?

It's impossible to hate you: my liberalism won't allow it. But it's also difficult not to find you repugnant. For you fail to reflect my image and my values and you suggest the pre-dawn or twilight of my own kind. Your ugliness is both sign of a thwarted development and symptom of degeneracy compounded by cambionic origins. 

Indeed, for the ancient Greeks your hideous aspect would constitute a telling moral objection in itself and the fact that you spoke with a certain lyrical power on occasion would do little to redeem you in their eyes: As the face, so too the soul.    

Ghosts

The reason that most people have never seen a ghost is

because they like to stay hidden behind their sheets.

For we, the living, disconcert the souls of the dead;

it is with fear and confusion that they moan when

encountered. 

 

On Big Breasts and Adult Babies

As someone who has always had a thing for ankles and eyes, I have never been a committed mazophile.  However, if I were to express a preference, then it would be for small, pert breasts tipping slightly skywards. Breasts that have none of that blue-veined, bovine-maternal aspect: breasts that make you want to smile, not suckle; feel like having fun, not being rocked to sleep.

For to be honest, I find the thought of adult male babies squirming and letting themselves go in an ecstasy of Madonna-worship, as they kiss and nuzzle in perverse exaltation between the milk-heavy breasts of an ersatz nurse or nanny, somewhat disconcerting. And one suspects that the women who hold and press their infantilized lovers to their bosom, if thrilled in part to have a man so helpless and in their grasp, nevertheless in some corner of their female soul despise and hate them with savage contempt. 

As Lawrence notes, it's one thing for an infant to drool and dribble at the sight of a big pair of tits, but for a grown man to be pornographically reaching out for child-gratification is shameful and disgusting.

Three Great Dictators and One Mad Poet

 

One thing that the great dictators of the twentieth century had in common was an ability to articulate their own philosophical pessimism with as much memorable brutality as they exercised their political and military power. They also shared a startling level of candour. 

Thus Hitler, for example, reveals all that we need to know about his paranoia and sociopathology in the following remark: There will only be peace on earth when the last man has killed the last but one. 

Whilst Stalin betrays the Machiavellian and murderous nature of his thinking with this chilling declaration: If you want to get rid of the problem, get rid of the man. 

Even Mao will be long remembered for his observation that: Political power grows from the barrel of a gun.  

But what of Mussolini? Try as I might, I really can't recall anything he ever said. Apart from the following, which, ironically, explains why this might be the case: I was never a great dictator; always a mad poet.

Urophilia: From Golden Showers to the Art of Pussing

Man Ray: Tears (1930)

The above photo, despite the title, has always suggested something other than a weeping subject. 

In fact, it brings to mind the charming scene in Bataille's short novel, The Story of the Eye, in which sixteen-year-old Simone asks her equally young but nameless lover to piss up her cunt. When the latter points out that due to the position of their bodies, his urine will almost certainly splash on her dress and face, she simply asks: So what?

This rhetorical question is thrown down as a kind of challenge; it wants to provoke an action, rather than be met with an answer. In a sense, it's as profoundly nihilistic as asking who cares? Met with this, the protagonist-narrator has no choice but to do as he is told. Not that he seems reluctant to indulge in watersports, or any other perverse sexual act that aims not at pleasure so much as the destruction of human happiness and integrity.

Personally, I'd find it a little disconcerting to be asked by a woman to urinate on her like a male porcupine. On the other hand, I'd have no objection were the roles reversed and, like many men, find the sight of a woman pissing strangely enchanting; not simply arousing, but also reassuring and rather touching. It's no wonder, therefore, that it's such a recurrent and popular theme in Western art.

And nor is it surprising to discover the growing popularity of pussing - although one suspects it's the semi-clandestine and semi-illicit nature of this activity that excites almost as much as the consensual voyeurism, or the sex that often follows.  

Of course, not everyone approves of this. Indeed, some might suggest that despite the close anatomical connection between our sex organs and the excretory functions, it's a sign of instinctual collapse to conflate acts of love with the voiding of bladders and so end up fucking in public toilets.  

Aberdeen

Christy Turlington by Mario Testino

for Vivienne Westwood (1993)

Grey sky meets grey sea meets black rock: I've been to Aberdeen in winter and, let me tell you, despite what the Scottish Tourist Board might have visitors believe, a silver city with golden sands it is not. 

And yet, miraculously, from the granite and elemental misery were born women wrapped in tartan splendour, whose white breasts are as warm and soft as the women of the sun-happy south.

Flightpath

Photo: Matt Cardy/Getty Images (www.theguardian.com)

Daybreak in Hounslow
and passenger jets
roar overhead.

Midday in Hounslow
and passenger jets
roar overhead.

Twilight in Hounslow
and passenger jets
roar overhead.

But in between the metallic hum of engines,
you can hear little birds singing as gaily as
on the fifth day of creation.

The Face of Marlene Dietrich

What Roland Barthes felt about the face of Greta Garbo, I feel about the face of Marlene Dietrich: it's a pure and perfect object that appears to be untouched by time or finger-tips; unmarked by traces of emotion. It's a face that belongs to art, not to nature and which has all the cold and expressionless beauty of a mask; a face that has not been painted so much as sculpted. An archetypal and totemic face. A fetish object.

Dietrich knew all this herself. And she knew better than anyone how to capture on film the face that she and von Sternberg created between them; make-up artists, lighting technicians, cameramen and directors all spoke of her brilliance in their fields of expertise.

She was an icon also to the top fashion designers, who were seduced by the fact that she dressed neither to please them, her lovers, her public, nor even herself, but solely for magical effect.  

I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/marlene_dietrich.html#zBgFe3sa1iLvR7bc.99

I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/marlene_dietrich.html#zBgFe3sa1iLvR7bc.99

I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/marlene_dietrich.html#zBgFe3sa1iLvR7bc.99

Sun - Lizard - Rock

Sun, lizard, rock: between the three flows life. And I can't help wondering who it is that is deprived in world - him or me?

For whilst it may be true that our reptilian friends are unable to encounter other beings as such, or understand themselves within the wide and sophisticated context of meaning that we as human beings have developed, it strikes me nevertheless as a form of anthropocentric conceit to talk about Dasein's richness of world in comparison to the animals' poverty and the inanimate objects' complete absence of such.

When challenged on his thinking in this area and the Nietzschean attempt to revalue our relationship to the non-human world, Heidegger sarcastically responded by asking 'are we then supposed to revert to being animals?'
     
The remark shows little understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy of becoming, which is non-linear and so neither progressive nor retrogressive. It also displays ignorance of the fact that the idea of reversibility in evolution is not as outlandish as was once believed. In fact, Dollo's Law, first proposed in 1893, is increasingly recognised as non-binding as more and more examples of atavism come to light and new genetic discoveries are made.

However, I don't wish to develop this line of argument. Rather, I simply wish to echo in closing something that Lawrence writes:

If men were as much lizards as lizards are lizards, they'd be worth looking at.
 

The Living and the Dead

The dead they do not die; they look on and help, says Lawrence, in a letter to a bereaved friend. Comforting, perhaps, to believe this; but it's not entirely accurate.

For the dead certainly don't look on from the sightless and impersonal realm of material actuality to which they have returned and it seems absurd to even suggest this. Nevertheless, they may very well continue to provide support. Or its opposite. 

Either way, for good or ill, the departed have a posthumous existence in the thoughts and dreams of those who knew them and I would suggest that a soul attains a state of grace when they are remembered fondly and remembrance of them provides a source of strength and encouragement.   

Damnation, therefore, consists not in being forgotten, but in becoming a bad memory and a malevolent obstruction to the living: in becoming one of the evil dead.

Tilikum

amberhawkswanson.com

The fascinating and tragic tale of Tilikum, the male killer whale held captive at SeaWorld (Orlando Florida), is brilliantly told in the documentary Blackfish (2013), directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite.

The film focuses on the cruelty and stupidity of keeping such a large and intelligent mammal in what is essentially a fish tank and obliging him to perform like a seal and act as a living sperm bank for SeaWorld's lucrative breeding programme. 

If he enjoys doing tricks for the trainers who, when not throwing him food from a bucket, are masturbating him with a cow's vagina in order to gather his semen, it hasn't stopped him from being actively involved in the deaths of two of them (Keltie Byrne and Dawn Brancheau); as well as a Sea World visitor, Daniel P. Dukes, who made the fatal mistake of hiding in the park until after closing time and then getting into Tilikum's pool. His naked and mutilated body was found the next morning draped over Tilikum's back.

    

Inasmuch as Tilly has undeniably been objectified by owners who believe him to exist solely to generate profits and sire young and spectators who think his duty is to entertain them and their children, then the above deaths might well be described as the brutal and bloody revenge of the object. 

Undoubtedly, the person who best appreciates this aspect of Tilikum's tale is the very wonderful video and performance artist Amber Hawk Swanson, for whom issues of power, violence, sex and objectification are clearly of great import. She is probably best known for her Amber Doll project (2007-10) in which she married a RealDoll made in her own image and jointly explored the distinction between fantasy and reality. 

Predictably, Amber Doll, and Ms Swanson's relationship with her, solicited some extreme reactions and they were involved in strange and disturbing situations. But who would have guessed that the severely damaged sex doll, with her silicone flesh and plastic skeleton, would one day resurrect and be transformed into ... Tilikum!

This, however, in December 2011, is precisely what happened and, I have to say, it's a brilliant move by the artist; as one pure object is turned into another, by a woman who is herself the object of her own work. The critic and blogger, Megan Milks, describes this best:

"With the transformation of Amber Doll into Tilikum, Swanson’s exploration of compound female subjectivity becomes an exploration of human-doll-animal intersubjectivity. Swanson figures Tilikum in the pose of the entertainer, with tail raised, greeting his spectators, with the collapsed dorsal fin characteristic of orcas in captivity; meanwhile his upward, unflinching gaze, communicates his enforced submission and his history of and potential for violence, inscribed back onto the female-gendered doll body that forms his own. Swanson as doll as Tilikum: the art object flickers with the radical passivity of these co-mingled subjects."

- Megan Milks: Free Tilikum, or the Transfiguration of Amber Doll: Radical Passivity in Amber Hawk Swanson's Doll Projects, posted on the multi-authored blog montevidayo.com (Oct 11, 2012) 

Good News / Bad News

 

In the news this morning: a UN General Assembly committee has agreed a resolution put forward by a Norwegian-led coalition to protect women's rights activists working around the world. 

That's the good news. 

The bad-but-sadly-predictable news is that the resolution was opposed by all the usual forces of reaction and religious stupidity, including the Vatican, which, working in alliance with the regimes of Russia, China, Iran and other Islamic states - not to mention some particularly unpleasant African governments - sought to weaken the resolution by refusing to endorse the idea that all forms of violence against women's rights activists were completely unacceptable, whatever laws, customs, traditions, or beliefs might be used to justify such. 

This led to prolonged negotiations over the wording of the document and, in the end, concessions were made; something described by the Icelandic ambassador, Greta Gunnarsdottir, as a low point for the UN rights committee who could have and should have remained resolute about the wording of the resolution.

Still, it's a small victory of sorts. Although, of course, the real work begins when it comes to enforcing the resolution and ensuring no more health workers, for example, are murdered for trying to immunize children or teach young women about the use of contraception.

  

On the Right to Bare Arms (A Post in Support of Pussy Riot)

The Right to Bare Arms (ffabyrd.deviantart.com)

Lawrence once insisted in a piece of fragmentary writing that he felt no deep hostility towards Christianity. Indeed, on religious fundamentals he maintained there was no breach between himself and the Church of Rome, whose authority he believed in.

Of course, this is slightly disingenuous to say the very least ... But, there is one occasion on which Lawrence leaps to the defense of the Holy Father and affirms Catholic teaching. In his long essay written à propos Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lawrence savages George Bernard Shaw for daring to mock the Pope's attempt to maintain the modesty of women by insisting that they cover-up their bare arms and legs whilst attending Mass and, ideally, when in any public space whatsoever.

Not unreasonably, Shaw points out that the irony of wanting to veil female flesh is that this more often than not leads to its eroticization; that it is clothing that arouses thoughts of sex, not nakedness. For Lawrence, however, this remark is indicative of the flippancy and vulgarity of intellectuals and whilst he agrees that half-naked, modern women fail to stimulate genuine desire in the modern male, this he feels is a reason to despair and to rethink our relationship to the body (the female body in particular).

Ultimately, like the Pope, Lawrence, wants women to keep their limbs and their hair covered. Not because the exposure of such arouses sexual desire, but because it doesn't and that is a sign that something is sadly wrong: with men as well as women; but mostly with women who have lost their natural allure and become as sexually undesirable as plastic dolls. 

If, on the other hand, women have gained their economic and political freedom and the right to participate in society as equals; i.e. to work and to vote as well as to have control over their bodies, this means very little to Lawrence. It's the fact of female flesh being publicly displayed that continues to exercise and deeply trouble him. 

I was reminded of all this - of Lawrence's insistence that the bare arms (legs, necks, and shoulders) of women constitute a dangerous and vulgar form of atheism - whilst watching a film of the trial of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich. These three courageous young women - members of feminist punk group Pussy Riot - were convicted by a Russian court in 2012 of 'hooliganism motivated by religious hatred' and sentenced to two years in a penal colony, after performing a brief anti-government protest in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

During this performance, they shouted and swore and called on the Virgin Mary to support them. But, as pointed out at the trial, they also did so whilst dressed in an inappropriate and offensive manner to those who subscribe to the Orthodox faith; that is to say, they had bare arms and this seriously compounded their crime. The fact that they had their hair covered (beneath brightly-coloured balaclavas), unfortunately did nothing to redeem the situation and save them from jail ...

There's really not much more I can say on this: Lawrence's position is sincere in its puritanism, but mistaken in its sexism. I prefer Shaw's flippancy to the Pope's misogyny. And I support the right of Pussy Riot and of all women everywhere to expose or cover their bodies, however they choose, wherever and whenever they want to, regardless of men with beards who think them all witches at heart.


See: Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, Produced and Directed by Mike Lerner/Maxim Pozdorovkin (2012)

Taste the Rainbow

Taste the Rainbow by Kameolynn: deviantart.com

Left, right, back to the middle / head on swivel, neck till I quivel 

taste the rainbow, taste my Skittles - Iggy Azalea

It has been said that oral sex is as American as apple pie; but this invariably refers to fellatio and not to cunnilingus. It's almost as if the latter is somehow un-American, or a little too exotic. And there also seems to be a very real concern amongst many men that giving head, rather than just receiving it, is unmanly and emasculating; or something rather abject to perform, like all jobs involving physical labour.     

Thus it is that, within the super-macho world of rap, whilst the magic and softness of the cock-sucking female mouth is enthusiastically celebrated, there has been very little sung in praise of pussy-licking. At the very least, we might say this refusal to reciprocate is a little ungenerous. And, as hinted above, a sign of male laziness and insecurity.  

However, things have recently started to change and going down on a girl is now no longer regarded as something to be ashamed of or grossed out by, but is seen rather as the sign of a real man. Suddenly, male rappers are falling over themselves to boast of their skills and techniques in this area; bragging of either how quickly they can make a 'bitch' come, or of how long they can pleasure a woman orally.

Check out, for example, the following three tracks selected by Rebecca Haithcoat of LA Weekly: 

- Eat the Pussy, by Ty$ and Joe Moses ft. Reem Riches and TeeCee4800
- Do It With My Tongue, by YG
- I Will, by Danny Brown.

As Ms Haithcoat nicely points out, the latter scores extra points for rapping that he doesn't even care if a real cunt doesn't taste of fruit Skittles.

White Skin, Black Mask: The Case of Iggy Azalea

Photo of Iggy Azalea: www.iamhiphopmagazine.com

According to one of her critics - and she has many - Australian-born rapper and model Iggy Azalea is hip hop's nightmare; a privileged blonde white girl who plays with African-American identity and exploits black culture and history, reinforcing the very worst racial and sexual stereotypes in the process of making mega-bucks for herself and the corporate-media pimps she hustles for.*

Now, whilst I understand and sympathize with this position - which is not simply based on personal hostility, so much as it is rooted in a long and shameful past that only an idiot would seek to deny - I'm wary about sharing or supporting it. Because in order to share and support this view one would have to understand race as an essential categorization.

And that's tricky for me, as I see blackness in terms of artifice and attitude, not authenticity; as a question of style, not soul. I also believe it to be performative; that is to say, a way of walking and talking, as well as dressing, thinking, laughing and loving.

In other words, negritude, because it is culturally constructed, is something that can be legitimately assumed by anyone - even a pale-faced young woman from Down Under. She might be wearing a mask and playing a role - but so are the rest of us - and despite some rather depressing and regrettable aspects of her persona it is important to recognize also the complexity of her performance as a postmodern minstrel. 

* See the essay by Aimee Valinski; Hip Hop's Nightmare - Iggy Azalea, (www.iamhiphopmagazine.com)

No One is Innocent

Innocent Drinks was founded in 1999 by Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright: three Cambridge graduates working in the well-paid world of corporate consultation and advertising who knew precisely how to market idealism in the form of fruit smoothies. As did design director, David Streek, who developed the brand identity based on fair trade, environmental friendliness, and making sure people get their five-a-day. Or bringing nature, community, and business closer together for mutual benefit.

Via the Innocent Foundation, a UK registered charity set up in 2004, the company donates a percentage of its profits to good causes, including development projects in the Third World. Innocent also run a campaign in partnership with Age Concern each autumn known as the Big Knit, in which people are encouraged to make tiny little woolen hats to go on top of 250ml bottles. Every sale of such results in a 25p donation to charities attempting to save the thousands of old folk who risk freezing to death during the winter because they can't afford to heat their homes.

So far, so saintly. But, of course, no one is innocent; not even Messrs. Reed, Balon and Wright ...

And so it came to pass that in April 2009, they announced that they had agreed to sell an 18% share of their company to Coca-Cola for a sum in the region of £30 million. Despite the horrified reaction of many customers to this news and the threat of a boycott, one year later Coca-Cola upped its stake in Innocent to 58% for a further £65 million. Coke applied the coup de grace in February of this year; increasing its holding to over 90% and taking full operational control whilst the three founders pocketed another £100 million.

Richard Reed described the deal as beautiful and pointed out that if it were not for capitalism we would all be living in mud-huts, or shivering to death from the cold like the elderly. It's easy to be cynical and sneering, but at some point customers and companies alike need to grow up and get real. 

It is, of course, an old story that follows a predictable path and no one should really be surprised by this sell-out. Nor shocked to hear that Innocent have now signed a deal with McDonald's. Even so, for the first time a fruit smoothie is starting to leave a nasty taste and one remembers again Malcolm McLaren's sage advice: never trust a hippie - particularly a hippie with a calculator.

Be a Wise Monkey

 The Three Wise Monkeys (Tōshō-gū shrine, Nikko, Japan)

Having recently written a post in praise of Iwazaru - the wise monkey who spoke no evil - I've been thinking over the last few days about the other two: Mizaru and Kikazaru; i.e. the monkeys who choose to see no evil and hear no evil respectively. 

Although it is often said that by encouraging us to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the unpleasant reality of the world we live in, the above thereby foster a wilful and shameful form of ignorance, I have to confess to a growing sympathy for those who choose to look away from scenes of grotesque violence and brutality (be they real or simulated) and listen not to the stream of foul and abusive language pouring from the mouths of those who conflate hate speech with free speech. 

I don't accept for one moment that it's cowardice or the refusal of our duty to acknowledge evil that's depicted in the famous carving at the Tōshō-gū shrine in Japan. Mizaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru may be guilty of many things, but moral indifference is not one of them. 

Rather, I think the point is this: evil corrupts in its sensational character on the one hand and desensitizes on the other and it is therefore wise not to dwell on evil, or get it in your head, as Lawrence would say. Otherwise, before you know it, all you can palpitate to is murder, rape, and hatred and you end up feasting on corpses like some kind of zombie with atrophied feelings.

Anasyrma: Upskirt Politics and Vulva Activism

Illustration to La Fontaine's Nouveaux Contes (1764)

Once upon a time, when a woman lifted up her skirt and displayed her cunt, it invoked profound horror in male onlookers. Even gods, demons and insects were disconcerted by this apotropaic act of magical indecency and her anatomy was not merely her destiny, but also the source of her terrifying power over life and death.

Sadly, however, within our epilated culture of digital pornography and labiaplasty, the cunt has lost much of its monstrous beauty and effective capacity. Women have been fatally exposed in the name of emancipation and equality and close-up images of their exposure are today endlessly circulated via the media; an act of violent and systematic exorcism.

For their feminine power is rendered null and void when their sex is put on permanent display and everything is made visible and accessible. No longer the site of secrets, the cunt has become a disenchanted and sanitized hole that waits to fulfill a function by being filled; just another empty sign in a hypersexual and hyperreal universe.

Having said that, some women are at least trying to reclaim their own genitals. The Labia Pride movement, for example, seeks to combat the growing trend for designer vaginas and raise awareness of the fact that the cunt comes in many shapes, sizes, and colours and should not be expected to conform to a hairless and odourless ideal determined by pornographers and cosmetic surgeons.

And whilst some of the statements I have read by vulva activists strike me as philosophically naive, I'm more than happy to support the goal of genital diversity and to resist trends which seek to further shame and humiliate women via the creation of misogynistic cultural norms and new insecurities.

Revolutions are so vieux jeu

Image by party9999999 on deviantart.com

Having just watched the latest depressing news out of Libya, I can only send a message of sympathy and solidarity to my friend, the London-based freelance journalist and blog editor, Nahla Al-Ageli. She had high hopes of the Arab Spring and for a post-Gadaffi Libya. Indeed, despite the armed gangs of militiamen and the rising threat posed by Al-Qaeda, she still has what we might term revolutionary faith.      

For better or for worse, this is something I lost long ago, thanks to Nietzsche. For Nietzsche encourages his readers to reject notions of political redemption and belief in great events. Instead, he advocates a politics of pure resistance based upon opposition to all forms of idolatry (including state idolatry) and a refusal to trust those who promise salvation. By learning how to laugh at our own seriousness and ambition - as well as those who hold positions of leadership and authority - we may be able to offer at least a temporary defense against the desire for some kind of final solution to life's complexity, or the dream of a New Jerusalem.  

In an interesting passage of Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche warns against revolutionaries who, in an attempt to garner public support, "transform their principles into great al fresco stupidities in order that they might paint them on the wall" [I. 8. 438]. He also argues that whilst political violence can be the source of stimulation via the resurrection of the most savage energies, it can do no more than this. For change of a truly important nature requires something else; not something bigger or more extreme, but, on the contrary, small doses of difference administered homeopathically. Nietzsche writes:

"If a change is to be as profound as it can be, the means to it must be given in the smallest doses but unremittingly over long periods of time! Can what is great be created at a single stroke? So let us take care not to exchange the state of morality to which we are accustomed for a new evaluation of things head over heels and amid acts of violence ..." [Daybreak, V. 534].

This crucially important passage concludes with a series of remarks on the French Revolution, but which might just as easily be read in relation to the recent upheavals in Libya and elsewhere: 

"It is now ... beginning to become apparent that the most recent attempt at a great change in evaluations, and that in a political field – the ‘Great Revolution’ – was nothing more than a pathetic and bloody piece of quackery which knew how, through the production of sudden crises, to inspire ... the hope of a sudden recovery – and which therewith made all political invalids up to the present moment impatient and dangerous." [Ibid.]

As Voltaire reminds us: Quand la populace se mêle de raisonner, tout est perdu. And this is particularly true when large sections of the public are infected not only with political idealism, but religious mania.