Heterosis

Luma Grothe: the lovely face of fashion 

and Irma Grese: the ugly face of fascism

Nazis are obsessed with blood: both spilling the blood of others deemed racial inferiors and preserving the purity of their own blood, which is thought to possess superior qualities and derive from a divine origin. For the Nazis, therefore, the most dreadful thing in the world is the prospect of interracial sexual relations between people of Nordic stock and those who are of non-Aryan descent. They described this as a form of Rassenschande - an infringement upon the laws of Nature which Nazi policies of racial hygiene were designed to vigorously uphold and enforce.

German girls were warned that should they commit blood treason and choose to fuck with racial inferiors, not only would they be forever lost to their own people, but any unfortunate child that resulted from the illicit union would be a lamentable creature, fit only for extermination. Such irresponsible actions also had a far wider consequence: Hitler identified miscegenation as the sole cause of cultural destruction; "for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is contained only in pure blood."

Despite the pseudo-biology used to provide a scientific basis for these beliefs, they are, of course, little more than pernicious fantasies. The fact is many mixed race individuals exhibit not only extraordinary beauty - as in the case of Luma Grothe, pictured above - but what is known as hybrid vigour. In other words, certain traits are enhanced as a result of the dissimilarity in the gametes by whose union the organism was formed.

Now, this is not to say that all such unions produce supermodels. But, by and large, it’s inbreeding that’s genetically problematic rather than outcrossing. For it’s the latter practice that increases diversity and promises heterotic wonders, such as Miss Grothe, born under sunny South American skies to a German mother and a father of Japanese and African descent.

Ultimately, if given the choice between the above and Irma Grese - the blonde, blue-eyed Beast of Belsen - I know whom I’d choose to share a world with ...

Note: The line quoted from Hitler can be found in Vol. 1, Chapter 11, of Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim, (Hutchinson, 1969), p. 269. 

The Owl of Minerva

Photo of  the poet-philosopher Simon Solomon,

by Sara Larsson (2015).  

simonsolomon.ink

Here we are then at the fag end of another year; drifting about in that awful grey twilight zone that lies between Boxing Day and January 1st. Naturally, one reflects with a certain sad shyness on the twelve months past.

Indeed, according to Hegel, one is condemned as a critical thinker to do nothing but look back with large eyes and a sharp beak on historical events and ideas. For philosophy is a retrospective practice par excellence – ‘The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only when dusk begins to fall’ – as he put it so beautifully.

In other words, philosophy cannot legislate for the future or even legitimately analyse the present, because it understands only with hindsight; it doesn’t appear until life has unfolded and already completed its processes. Like anatomy, philosophy presupposes a corpse.

Perhaps that’s why so many philosophers choose to ignore Plato and turn to poetry, which is a form of thinking and speaking the truth that has maintained something of its prophetic or visionary character – something alien to the world of pure reason. Poetry memorializes the past, but it also responds to the nowness of the moment and anticipates the day after tomorrow (or the god who is coming).

The thinker-as-poet, who challenges the divide between metaphor and concept and the separation of the real and the imaginary, does far more than simply play with words from behind a fool's mask, or frolic on rainbows. Theirs is a thinking which, as Heidegger says, is the topology of Being; i.e., that which tells Being the whereabouts of its actual presence (in things).

Like Lawrence, I think it a great pity that philosophy and poetry have been kept in an antagonistic relationship for so long; it's been damaging to both our intellectual and emotional life. We should value those writers who further textual promiscuity and remember Zarathustra's eagle, or Shelley's skylark, not just Minerva's wise old owl ... 

The Case of Evelyn McHale (The Most Beautiful Suicide in the World)

Photo of Evelyn McHale, by Robert C. Wiles. 

For poets, there is nothing more romantic than the suicide of someone young; particularly if they take their lives with an element of style and manage to leave behind them a good-looking corpse. And no one has managed to achieve this feat with more success than an attractive, twenty-three year old bookkeeper, called Evelyn McHale, in 1947.

Hers is often described as the most beautiful suicide in the world and I’m happy to share this view. What makes her case so magnificent and not merely tragic (or mundane), are the following six points:

1. She chose a magical date, May 1st, an ancient spring festival, on which to make her self-sacrifice, thereby lending her death a certain mythical aspect or celebratory pagan splendour.

2. She chose the right method for her location. When in Berlin, for example, one should swallow poison or use a gun; in London, it’s appropriate to throw oneself from a bridge into the Thames, or onto the tracks of the Underground before an approaching train. But, as Serge Gainsbourg observed, New York is all about the astonishing height of its buildings. And so, when in NYC, one simply has to jump.

3. Having chosen, rightly, to jump, Evelyn then selected one of the two truly great and truly iconic modern structures from which to leap: the Empire State Building. This 102-story skyscraper, located in Midtown Manhattan, is, with its beautiful art deco design, the perfect place from which to fall to one’s death and since its opening in 1931 only a select number of lucky souls have had the privilege (and fatal pleasure) of plunging from this iconic site.

4. She was impeccably dressed for the occasion, with gloves and a simple, but elegant, pearl necklace. Before jumping she calmly removed her coat and neatly folded it over the wall of the 86th floor observation deck. She also left behind her a make-up kit, some family snaps, and a suicide note written in a black pocketbook, in which she asked to be cremated without any kind of fuss or service of remembrance. In other words, even in death, Evelyn kept her composure - which brings us to our fifth point:

5. She didn’t land with an undignified splat on the pavement of 34th Street; but, rather, with a crash onto the roof of a waiting car. And it wasn't just any old car - it was a UN Assembly limousine, as if she wanted to make an impression on the entire world. And impression, as we see from the photo above, is the key word here. For Evelyn literally impressed herself into the roof of the Cadillac, so that it seemed to fold round her, with metallic tenderness. There is almost nothing to suggest the terrible violence of the scene - apart from the ripped stockings and the absence of shoes.

6. She conspired with fate to ensure there was a photographer nearby to instantly capture the event of her death on film; thereby ensuring her place within the cultural imagination. Indeed, fifteen years later, Andy Warhol would incorporate her image into his work, just as he did images of other beautiful women, including Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.

As for the student photographer, Robert C. Wiles, he also struck it lucky that day; his astonishing photo of Evelyn was published in Life Magazine as a full-page 'Picture of the Week' in the May 12 issue. It was his first - and last - photo ever to be published and one likes to imagine he hung his camera up after taking this perfect shot, but I don't know if this is true or not.

I'll stop here - but I could of course talk about (and darkly caress) this topic forever. For Camus was right: there is only one truly serious philosophical question - and that is the question of suicide.

On the Whistling of Birds at Midnight

Image taken from Cathy Fisher's blog: Diary of an Account Manager

It's 'round midnight: but I can't sleep.

The robin who seems to live in my mother's back garden is singing still and, of all the sounds in the world, I love best the whistling of birds; more than whale song and more than even the most accomplished human voice. 

Thus, when there's a robin still filling the air with his silvery sound of defiance and affirmation, I'll always lend an ear to listen, whatever the hour. As Lawrence says, the song just bubbles through them, as if they were little fountain-heads of vitality and new creation.

But the question arises as to why the city-living robins have taken to nighttime singing; they are not naturally nocturnal birds, like nightingales, even if they like to sing well into the evening as the sun sets. 

The experts seem undecided. They used to think it was due to the increase in noise during the day - that the birds literally couldn't hear themselves think (or in this case sing) above the roar of traffic. But now the consensus seems to be that the real problem is light pollution; that it's no longer dark enough for our feathered friends to know when night has fallen and it's time to shut the fuck up and go to sleep. 

Either way, it can't be much fun being an urban robin; trapped in a perpetual electric twilight and forced to endure a constant hubbub during the day. Their numbers, unlike other species of once common garden birds, may not (so far) be declining, but they must be constantly exhausted, poor things.

How long will it be, I wonder, before something of this fatigue creeps into their song?

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Whistling of Birds', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 19-24. 

Francesca Woodman: An American Genius

Francesca Woodman: Providence, Rhode Island, 1976 (1976)

Tate / National Galleries of Scotland (AR00352)

© George and Betty Woodman

I have to confess that I only recently came across the work of American photographer Francesca Woodman, but I was immediately fascinated by her beautiful (often disturbing) black and white images which have a queer, gothic and surreal quality that is seductive in the sense that Baudrillard gives the term. That is to say, the photos partake of a game of slow exposure that is all to do with appearance and disappearance, and playing with the signs of sexuality and self-hood.

Woodman works in a manner that is not only highly stylized and disciplined, but also ritualistic and fetishistic; a combination of primitive magic and aristocratic aestheticism. She turns her own body into just another object, semi-exposed, but mostly withdrawn and concealed, existing in relation to other things (chairs, doors, mirrors, a bucket full of eels) that are equally real, equally fragile, and equally mysterious.

Born in 1958, Woodman was only twenty-two when she committed suicide in 1981, pissed, apparently, with the slowness with which her work was garnering critical attention or achieving commercial success. In a letter to a friend (written around the time of an earlier attempt to end her life), Woodman says she’d rather die young and leave behind her a delicate body of work, than see herself and her pictures fade away or be slowly erased by time.

Death, she realised, would be the making of her; for hers, like Nietzsche's, would be a posthumous existence. And this tragic realisation, coupled to her precocious talent for blurred image-making, makes me very fond of dear Francesca: an American genius.

Ben Carson: An American Idiot

Ben Carson by Gage Skidmore (2015)

Donald Trump is clearly not stupid: ignorant, perhaps, but he's mostly just a nasty piece of work; or flamboyant, as his new Russian buddy, Vladimir Putin, would say.

Ben Carson, on the other hand, who is also a candidate for the Republican Party nomination for President in the 2016 election, is not an out-and-out shit, but he does believe (and say) some very, very stupid things.

This is almost entirely due to the fact that, sadly, this retired (and much respected) neurosurgeon suffers from religious fundamentalism; a degenerative brain disorder that turns fine minds to mush.

Carson, as one commentator has put it, is an African-American who downplays the reality of slavery and continuing problems of racism in the US, and a man of medicine and higher education who denies many of the modern scientific facts and discoveries upon which our knowledge of the world is based.

Thus, for example, Carson not only thinks that evolution is a mistaken theory, but one to which Darwin was led by Satan! His argument is that something as beautifully complex as the human brain couldn't have arisen from a slime pit full of promiscuous biochemicals. In addition, Carson ridicules the idea of the Big Bang and rejects the validity of evidence provided by carbon dating.

Of course, many amongst the electorate seem to share Carson's prejudices - not to mention those who identify strongly as creationists, young-earthers, or proponents of intelligent design. But surely, even in America, there can't be many people who also subscribe to the popular medieval belief - as Carson does - that the Egyptian pyramids were not in fact ancient tombs, but elaborate grain silos, built by Joseph, son of Jacob, in preparation for a famine described in the book of Genesis.

Not only are archaeologists fairly certain that the pyramids were used for funerary purposes, but, as they also point out, they would have made pretty poor storage units for grain - as they aren't hollow!

Couple these (and many other) crackpot and controversial views to his reactionary positions on issues such as abortion, homosexuality, health care, immigration, and climate change and it becomes clear why Carson is, in the words of the song, an American idiot.

On the Truth of Things

Artwork by Tyler Feder

roaringsoftly.com

According to Foucault, the ancient Greeks were mostly interested in a conception of public and political parrhesia that obliged them (and accorded them the privilege) of speaking the truth to others (including those in authority), in order to guide them and help facilitate wise government. 

The early Christians, on the other hand, were more concerned with a personal-psychological form of parrhesia (eventually institutionalized as a system of penitence); the moral obligation of each individual to confess the truth about themselves, in order to be freed from the burden of sin and thereby saved.

This, as Foucault says, is a significant moment of transformation in the long history of parrhesiastic practice; a history that he goes to great pains within his late lectures to reconstruct in order that he may better analyze the relations between subjectivity, language, and power - this essentially being his philosophical project in a nutshell. 

Now, fascinating as this project is - and one has to invariably return to politics and psychagogy (or questions concerning the governance of self and others) sooner or later - I have to admit that one of the great attractions of object-oriented ontology and other related forms of what Bill Brown terms thing theory, is that they allow one to be seduced by those entities that make up an inhuman and non-human universe and encourage the asking of questions that do not always posit Man as the central subject, final solution, or great point of correlation.

In other words, the beauty and the truth of things is they exist mind independently and it's a real joy to occasionally write about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens (not to mention bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens), rather than just human ideas and human relations.


Note: The lyric quoted in the final paragraph is - as I'm sure everybody knows - from the song 'My Favourite Things', from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The Sound of Music (1959).

Post 555: The Scent of a Woman

The number five has no special significance or interest for me, although I'm vaguely aware of its symbolism within certain circles and that ancient Greek philosophers were endlessly fascinated by the mathematical beauty and symmetry of those three-dimensional shapes (or regular polyhedra) that became known as Platonic solids and of which there are five. 

The French fashion designer and couturier, Coco Chanel, also had a thing for the number five and it was rich with powerful associations for her. Indeed, for Chanel, five was the essential number and one which, she felt, always brought her luck. Thus, for a woman who liked to regularly launch her new collections on the fifth of May, it was only natural that she should choose the name No. 5 for her first (and to this day most famous) of perfumes.

Created by Franco-Russian chemist and perfumer, Ernest Beaux, Chanel No. 5 was released in 1921 and was designed as a scent for a new generation and a new style of independent, post-War women, with their short skirts, bobbed hair, and outlandish behaviour that pushed social and sexual boundaries.

Beaux worked from a rose and jasmine base, but brilliantly managed to make it cleaner and more daring than might be expected, by adding what he described as an element of pristine polar freshness. He also experimented with modern synthetic compounds and notes derived from a new commercial ingredient called Jasophore (an artificial source of jasmine). His complex formula also contained elements of orris root and natural musks. The revolutionary key, however, was Beaux's use of aldehydes; organic compounds which, when skilfully manipulated, can arrest and isolate specific scents, intensifying their aroma.

The bottle that the fragrance came in was also designed to counter the overly-ornate character of Victorian crystal which was then still in fashion and made popular by companies such as Lalique. Chanel wanted a container that would be lovely in its sheer simplicity and pure transparency; what she thought of as an invisible bottle. The perfection of the scent itself, she believed, meant not having to rely upon fancy packaging. As an ad from 1924 put it: Chanel is proud to offer its precious teardrops of perfume - unique in composition and of incomparable quality - in bottles that reveal the personality of their designer and not the customary art of the traditional glass-maker.    

Over the many decades since its release, Chanel No. 5 has managed to retain its magic and its allure, establishing itself as an immediately identifiable cultural artifact, worn by many beautiful women the world over; this despite the fact that the reputation of its creator has been somewhat tarnished by ugly revelations concerning her conduct during the German occupation of Paris ...

A girl, Chanel once said, has to keep her heels, head, and standards high; always remaining classy and fabulous. Quite how that squares with Nazi collaboration is debatable. For as a friend of mine once said, even the finest perfume in the world doesn't mask the malodorous smell of fascism.          

Torpedo the Ark Xmas Message 2015

Actually, as a philosopher, I try to avoid dealing in opinions - particularly personal opinions - and I can't stand opinionated persons who pride themselves on the strength of their conviction; as if something is true simply because they feel it to be so and/or sincerely wish it to be so. 

Nietzsche's often quoted but little understood remark about there being no facts, only interpretations, has had the unfortunate result of providing cheap philosophical comfort to such cocksure individuals, allowing them to assert beliefs about the world without making any reference to objective reality, or provide any verifiable evidence for their arguments. 

In other words, perspectivism - which was intended to make us think more carefully to what extent axioms of logic are adequate to reality and how truth-claims may or may not reflect a healthy will to power - now serves as a sop to those who think they are just as entitled to their views as anybody else and that all views are of equal status and validity within a relativistic universe.

It is, as I say, unfortunate. And it's certainly not my position; I might like a certain degree of pluralism, but I'm not an idiot: some ideas are mistaken or badly thought out; some views are restricted by prejudice; some opinions are simply not worth considering.

Ultimately, I share the Socratic position and think it crucial to discriminate between opinions, always remaining alert to the fact that just because something is popular or persuasive, this doesn't make it true or mean that it serves in the best interests of life.

In accepting the opinions of those who have big mouths and large financial resources with which to control the media - demagogues, such as would-be Presidential candidate Donald Trump, who either do not know the difference between the true and the false, the just and unjust, or simply do not care about the difference - we run the risk of damaging that part of ourselves (whatever we may call it) to which these things are vitally connected.

So, the conclusion of this Xmas message is this: you shouldn't worry about the opinion of everybody and anybody, but only about the well-informed analyses which enable you to decide what is right and wrong. By concerning yourself with the latter and by always asking for the evidence, you'll avoid that corruption of the soul caused by doxa. 

Torpedo the Ark!

Dandelion: D. H. Lawrence and the Question of Care

Dandelion: photo by Greg Hume (2006)

As much as Lawrence may wish to sit like a dandelion on his own stem and concern himself exclusively with those objects existing within his immediate physical environment - refusing to care about abstract issues, faraway places, or unknown peoples - he’s conscious of the fact that such insouciance can lead to parochialism and might easily be mistaken for indifference on his part; something he’d very much regret.

For Lawrence is very keen to sharply differentiate between insouciance and indifference. The former, he says, is a refusal to be made anxious by abstractions, or swept off to into the empty desert spaces inhabited by idealists gripped by a compulsion to care about everything under the sun. The latter, however, Lawrence defines as an inability to care resulting from a certain instinctive-intuitive numbness or nihilism, which, like Nietzsche, he posits as the great malady of the modern age; a consequence of having cared too much about the wrong thing in the immediate past.

The apathetic or indifferent individual, the nihilist, is essentially an exhausted idealist; they have none of the carefree gayness of the insouciant man or woman and do not know how to live on the spot and in the nowness of the actual moment.

That said - and as indicated - insouciance can itself become problematic and serve to isolate the individual, cutting them off from the wider world and from history. We can’t be entirely self-sufficient and concerned only with our own musings and sense impressions. Nor can we only be concerned only about those with whom we have a direct relationship; our immediate family and friends, or kith and kin.

Ultimately, as Lawrence was reluctantly obliged to concede, feeling a sense of solidarity with all mankind isn’t entirely fraudulent and the love of humanity stands for something real and vital; "that feeling of being at one with the struggling soul, or spirit or whatever it is, of our fellow men". Lawrence continues:

"This caring about the wrongs of unseen people has been rather undone. Nevertheless ... still, away in some depth of us, we know that we are connected vitally, if remotely ... [and] we dimly realise that mankind is one, almost one flesh. It is an abstraction, but it is also a physical fact. In some way or other, the cotton workers of Carolina, or the rice-growers of China are connected with me and, to a faint yet real degree, part of me. The vibration of life which they give off reaches me, touches me, and affects me unknown to me. For we are all more or less connected, all more or less in touch: all humanity."

What’s interesting about this passage is that not only does it demonstrate that Lawrence was not an individualist as many critics mistakenly believe, but it also shows that his love of humanity was born not of some transcendental attempt to develop a conceited cosmic consciousness, but out of a sense of class consciousness; it’s the workers and the peasants of the world that Lawrence primarily feels connected to and sympathetic with.

Those who cultivate indifference to the point that they lose any compassion for others are mistaken. Lawrence understands their frank egoism, but refuses to share it - worried by the effect it has on the individual who refuses to care. Their intellectual honesty is fine and it’s good to cast off all spurious sympathy and false emotion, but not if this entails the death of all feeling and one becomes empty inside (believing in nothing, standing for nothing, caring for nobody).

Lawrence admits, however, that some can find perverse pleasure in precisely this becoming-void and take "real pride and satisfaction in pure negation". These he calls the perfect nihilists: those whose shallowness is mistaken for depth; whose false calm is mistaken for strength; whose indifference is mistaken for insouciance. Nietzsche termed them the last men; those who sit grinning furtively in the triumph of their own emptiness.

See: D. H. Lawrence, ‘Insouciance’, and ‘Nobody Loves Me’, in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004). The lines quoted are from the latter text.

Making Love to Music

Etruscan dancers in a tomb near Tarquinia, Italy (c 470 BC) 

Provocative dance moves, such as grinding and twerking, are obviously obscene in an everyday sense of the term, but that's not what makes them tiresome and strangely offensive. I really don't care if idiots want to aggressively thrust their hips, wiggle their bottoms, and dry hump in public.

However, far from being sexual, it seems to me these moves are distinctly anti-sexual and obscene also in the very specific manner that Baudrillard uses the term. That is to say, they lack any metaphorical dimension or any stylish, carefully choreographed component.

In grinding and in twerking, as in pornography, "the body, the sex organs, the sex act are brutally no longer mis en scène, but immediately proffered for view" - and for consumption. It's a total acting out of things that have previously been kept off-stage and regarded as part of a seductive game usually played in private between partners.        

Although his concern is with the sublimation of sex, rather than its exorcising through obscenity, Lawrence was also concerned with the relationship between Eros and Terpsichore. In a short article written in 1927, entitled 'Making Love to Music', he identifies the tango and Charleston as modern dances that are secretly averse both to actual copulation and to the ancient magic of dance.

In contrast to the young men and women of the Jazz Age, Lawrence writes of the dancers painted on the walls of Etruscan tombs at Tarquinia:

"There the painted women dance, in their transparent linen ... opposite the naked-limbed men, in a splendour and an abandon which is not at all abandoned. There is a great beauty in them ... They are wild with a dance that is heavy and light at the same time, and not a bit anti-copulative, yet not bouncingly copulative either."

Although free from clothes and moral inhibition, these Etruscan figures are not grotesquely acting out sex in a crude and callous fashion, like Miley Cyrus: they are simply dancing a dance that is full of joy and a delight in movement; dancing their very souls into existence as it were.

It is, alas, we moderns who have "narrowed the dance down to two movements: either bouncing towards copulation, or sliding and shaking and waggling, to elude it", or make of it something vulgar and obscene.

   
Notes: 

Jean Baudrillard, 'The Obscene', Passwords, trans. Chris Turner, (Verso, 2003). The line quoted from is on p. 27.  

D. H. Lawrence, 'Making Love to Music', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 41-8. Lines quoted can be found on pp. 46-7.

D. H. Lawrence's Philosophy of Mind

The Thinker - Rodin Stylized Pop Art Poster 

By Kim Wang

fineartamerica.com 

On Human Destiny is an interesting short piece written by D. H. Lawrence in which he addresses the question of mind. Lawrence argues that whilst most people don't have original thoughts, we all of us nevertheless have minds that are constantly active, even in sleep, grinding ideas over and over until they turn to dust. 

Whatever else he may be, man is first and foremost a thinking animal and even though we moderns like to assert our spontaneity of feeling and action, our very spontaneity is just another idea, born in the mind having been "gestated in self-consciousness".

Rather surprisingly, Lawrence also claims that this has always been the case: that man has never been a wild, instinctive creature; "even the most prognathous cave-man was an ideal beast ... no more like the wild deer or jaguar among the mountains, than we are". No matter how wild or primitive a man may appear to be, "you may be sure he is grinding upon his own fixed, peculiar ideas, and he's no more spontaneous than a London bus-conductor: probably not as much". 

Thus, it's unfair to claim, as some critics do, that Lawrence subscribes to the Romantic fantasy of a noble savage, beautiful and innocent in his mindlessness and free animality. And it's therefore also mistaken to suggest that Lawrence simply advocates some kind of return to Nature. He knows our becoming-animal is a question of culture and futurity, not regression, and that it certainly doesn't involve the surrendering of human intelligence: "You may, like Yeats, admire the simpleton, and call him God's Fool. But for me the village idiot is outside the pale."

Essentially, then, for Lawrence, mind is what characterizes man as a species and determines human destiny and it's "just puerile to sigh for innocence and naive spontaneity". But, the mind can become a sterile thing without some form of emotional inspiration. That's the key: our adventure further and further into consciousness mustn't become a journey into pure abstraction; we have to think, but we also need to feel and ensure our ideas remain fresh with creative vitality, not fixed and fatal and turned into dogma.

As Lawrence puts it in a poem: "Thought is the welling up of unknown life into consciousness ... a man in his wholeness wholly attending" and not the "jiggling and twisting of already existent ideas".


Notes:

D. H. Lawrence, 'On Human Destiny', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 203-04. 

D. H. Lawrence, 'Thought', The Poems, Volume 1, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 580-81.

At the Gym with D. H. Lawrence

Natural born pedagogue and former Croydon school teacher, D. H. Lawrence, was keenly interested in the subject of education and spilt a great deal of ink addressing the question of what its purpose is and how it might be reformed upon non-idealistic lines. That is to say, turned from an intellectual pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, into an activity that awakens the primary affective centres.

Perhaps not surprisingly therefore, Lawrence was a passionate advocate of games and physical instruction and valued the sports hall or gym as a place of vital learning as much as the science lab or art class: "Let us have a gymnasium as the Greeks had it, and for the same purpose: the purpose of pure, perilous delight in contest, and profound, mystic delight in unified motion." [158]

Lawrence wants boys to learn how to fight - "like young bantam cocks"- with fists and with foils: "Teach fencing, teach wrestling, teach jiu-jitsu, every form of fierce hand to hand contest." [159] Football, however, would be taken off the curriculum - as would self-conscious body building or any wilful attempt to keep fit. Lawrence loathes the thought of someone sweating and grunting in the gym merely to develop muscles and perversely flaunt their healthy physique. He writes:

"The modern athlete parading the self-conscious mechanism of his body, reeking with a degraded physical, muscular self-consciousness ... is one of the most stupid phenomena mankind has ever witnessed. The physique is alright in itself. But to have your physique in your head, like having sex in the head, is unspeakably repulsive. To have your own physique on your mind all the time: why, it is a semi-pathological state, the exact counterpoise to the querulous peevish invalid." [157-58]

Clearly, for Lawrence, who subscribes to a system of dualism in which mind and body are forever distinct in polarised opposition, the problem is that modern athletes and keep-fit fanatics mix the two modes of consciousness; they prostitute the primary self to the secondary idea (which, of course, is Lawrence’s definition of masturbation).

What, then, are we to make of this? I suppose, in reply, I would wish to make three points:

Firstly, not all invalids are querulous or peevish and most do not wish for others to define, categorise, or stereotype them by their disability or illness, let alone allow it to obsessively dominate their own thoughts and behaviour. Lawrence, who spent a good deal of time in bed either ill or recovering from illness, may be speaking for himself and from his own experience here, but he shouldn’t generalise in such a manner.

Secondly, I’m sensitive also to Lawrence’s problematic gender politics and the fact that he only considers the physical education of boys in the above. The girls, presumably, will be too busy making their own dresses "and delicately unfolding the skirts and bodices, or the loose Turkish trousers and little vests, or whatever else they like to wear" [152-53]. They needn’t concern themselves with contest and naked wrestling, because, according to Lawrence, the soul of woman resides in fashion not fighting: "She puts on her clothes as a flower unfolds its petals, as an utterance from her own nature, instinctive and individual." [153]

Finally, despite referring his own model of a physical training facility back to ancient Greece, I’m not sure Lawrence fully appreciates to what extent the γυμνάσιον also functioned as a place for socializing, communal bathing and, crucially, engaging in intellectual pursuits. The nakedness of the athletes encouraged an aesthetic appreciation of the male body glistening with oil, and lectures and discussions on philosophy and the arts were frequently held at the gymnasia.

The Greeks certainly didn’t suspend all moralizing and put off all idea when they stripped for exercise as Lawrence likes to imagine; provisions were made not only for physical training, but ethical instruction. Plato’s Academy was, first and foremost, a gymnasium. As was the Lyceum, at which Aristotle established his school.

In sum: agon is a wider, more complex, and more ideal concept than Lawrence seems to realise ...

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 85-166.

War Post

Statue of Ares, God of War 

(Roman Copy of a Greek original at Hadrian's Villa) 

Today, in Parliament, a government motion to extend the British military campaign against the Islamic State - to bomb targets in Syria as well as Iraq - is very likely to be passed with a majority assembled from both sides of the House. For some MPs, in the wake of Paris and other recent atrocities, there clearly exists a strong argument for doing so. For others, including the leader of the Opposition, a convincing case for further military intervention in the Middle East hasn’t been made. In fact, for Jeremy Corbyn, British bombs dropped over Syria would only serve to make a grave and ghastly situation far worse.

If I’m honest, I have no idea who’s right and who’s wrong. But I do know that Lawrence vehemently opposed modern warfare and regarded murderous weapons of mass destruction, which bring death to anonymous victims, as refinements of evil. Not that Lawrence was a pacifist or opposed to violence. In fact, he fetishized the male as essentially a fighter and tied his own philosophy of power to notions of conflict and combat. But he also hated the idea of turning a primary physical activity, such as war, into an abstract and ideal process.

Real war, writes Lawrence, is a type of passionate relationship between men and to die in battle is a type of blissful consummation or great crisis of being. Unfortunately, it's become "a ghastly and blasphemous translation of ideas into engines" [159] and men have been turned into cannon-fodder. To be blown to smithereens by a bomb from the blue, dropped by an invisible enemy while you are eating your supper or sitting on the toilet, is a horrible and monstrous state of affairs.

So, on the one hand, Lawrence celebrates mortal combat and wants to see fierce naked men fighting face-to-face; able to exercise what he terms the choice of war. But, on the other hand, they must not be given the chance to use automatic rifles, grenades and poison gases - the deadly fruits of our own moral idealism and will to universal love.

In a manner far more radical than anything advocated by the CND crowd, Lawrence calls on the British people to make a unilateral destruction of all guns, explosives and chemical weapons - as well as the means of their production. Were we to do this, he says, we’d be able to breathe a collective sigh of relief and come to our senses once more as a nation. It would constitute an act of "reckless defiant sanity" [162].

Then, when all the mechanical weapons were destroyed, we could arm our soldiers with swords once more and "introduce a proper system of martial training in the schools" [161], ensuring every boy is turned into a fighter; as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp’s steel as another lover of struggle and fearless youth once put it.

Of course, for ardent supporters of Lawrence, the use of this famous line from a speech made by Hitler, might be seen as something of a cheap shot, or a low blow aimed at their hero. They would angrily object to the implication that Lawrence was a fascist. And, to be fair, they’d be right to do so. For, in historical terms, Lawrence certainly wasn’t a fascist, or a fascist sympathizer.

Nevertheless, there are clearly what might be termed molecular elements of fascism within his thinking which allow for the construction of a highly dubious cratology and a rather less-than-liberal education policy. And the job of a critic who cares is to counter these elements; to refuse to become enamoured of power and resist the urge to glorify war, heroism, strong leadership and all the other militant-militaristic bullshit that - post-Serpent - Lawrence himself decisively rejected in favour of tenderness.

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 85-166.

Petite Meller

Petite Meller in the video for her song Baby Love (2015).

Click here to watch on YouTube.

Peitite Meller: she's French, she's fashionable, she's thin, she's pale, she's doll-like, she's studying for an MA in philosophy and she sings catchy nouveau-jazz pop ditties. I'm pretty sure, were he still alive, Serge Gainsbourg would already have written half-a-dozen songs for her. 

In short: what's not to love about this object of perverse fascination and delight, now resident in London?

Well, there's her rather tiresome references to Freud and the unconscious and the slightly irritating elements of surrealism. For a young woman who cites Mille Plateaux as her favourite book one might have hoped not to end up back in the world of the nursery and the kind of lame sexual fantasies that are often described as forbidden, but which are actually familiar components of the pornographic imagination long circulated and sustained within our culture.

One might also object to the use of Africans, animals, and the elderly residents of a care home as extras (or little more than animated props) in her videos; exploiting their physical otherness in order to contrast and showcase her own ethereal beauty combining purity and privilege.          

If I wanted to be cruel, I might suggest she over does the blusher in order to disguise the embarrassment she must feel at her knowing collaboration with (one suspects mostly male) designers, photographers, and filmmakers who subscribe to an aesthetic that looks to Lolita, Leni Riefenstahl, and Lady Gaga for inspiration.

But, I don't want to be cruel: rather, I want to give this intelligent and talented woman every opportunity to develop as an artist. In the meantime, I suppose I'll just have to make do with an occasional flash of her knickers and sing along like everyone else to Baby Love.        

Swimming Lessons

Photo by Phil Shaw / Barcroft Media 

londonbabyswim.co.uk 

Sometimes, one pulls oneself up short, and asks: What am I doing this for? Three years of blogging, over 540 posts published, and then : What on earth am I doing it for? 

Some bloggers, of course, are writing to earn an income and establish an online reputation. I wouldn't mind a little fame and fortune myself, if I'm honest. Nevertheless, if I were writing for money and a large following of readers I should doubtless write differently, and with far more success.

What, then, am I writing for? There must be some imperative. Is it for the sake of humanity? Hardly. Like Lawrence, the very thought of such makes ones sick: for the sake of humanity as such, I wouldn't lift a little finger, much less write a blog.

But Torpedo the Ark isn't written either just for fun or personal amusement (nor even for spite). So what then?

I suppose I see it as a space of philosophical adventure and an escape from all forms of idealism that promise safety from the elements and end by becoming prisons. I don't want to be part of Noah's menagerie; just another coordinated specimen preserved thanks to the grace of God. I'd rather take my chances swirling about in the flood waters and in the midst of chaos.

Again, to paraphrase Lawrence, the elderly and the cowardly can stay aboard the boat if they wish, or sit tight on heavy posteriors in some crevice upon Pisgah, babbling about salvation and hoping to view the Promised Land. But I encourage my readers to climb down the mountain or abandon ship and ask themselves the critical question that remains at the heart of modern and contemporary philosophy: the question of Aufklärung.

Actually, this is a series of questions concerning not just past experience, but present reality and future possibility. What's at stake is not merely an analysis of the truth, but what Foucault describes as an ontology of ourselves and of the world not as something divinely ordered and full of love and reason, but as a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; "a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back ..."

Ultimately, Torpedo the Ark is an invitation to go swimming ...  


Notes:

See D. H. Lawrence's essay 'Climbing Down Pisgah', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 223-229, which partly inspired this post and which I paraphrase throughout.   

The lines quoted from Nietzsche are from section 1067 of The Will to Power, ed. Walter Kaufmann, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, (Vintage Books, 1968), pp. 549-50. 

A Philosophical Postscript on the Paris Attacks

Diesel the police dog who displayed many of 

the virtues associated with nobility of soul

In the wake of the Paris attacks, political leaders in France and elsewhere wrapped themselves in the tricolore and affirmed a predictable set of values, including Egalité, a revolutionary concept which, as Nietzsche points out, has penetrated deeply into the tissue of modernity, providing the prototype for all our moral theories regarding the universality of so-called human rights.

What these politicians cannot see is that, in practice, this false and fatal idea of equality of all souls has allowed the base and resentment-ridden to challenge every order of rank and thereby effectively undermine the very notion of society. It has thus provided our enemies - including the Islamists - with an explosive weapon against which we have no defense.

But then our Christian idealism has of course rendered the very notion of enmity impossible; we are encouraged to not only regard those who hate us and wish to do us harm as brothers and as equals in the sight of God, but love them and forgive them for their crimes committed against us.

Thus, when asked about those killed in Paris, one commentator and cryptotheologian shamefully masquerading as a philosopher, said we should mourn all those who had died - presumably this includes the bombers and gunmen - as the loss of any life is a tragedy and that no one life is of a greater value than any other.

Thankfully, no one in their right mind really believes this. Indeed, sane people everywhere were more upset by the death of Diesel the police dog than of Abdelhamid Abaaoud and his accomplices in mass murder. What’s more, they recognise something that Christopher Hitchens repeatedly pointed out; namely, that it is not only perverse (and suicidal) to love such people, but ultimately immoral inasmuch as it implies an unwillingness to actively confront and engage with the evil they embody and make manifest.

In sum:

Firstly, there is no equality between souls; not because, as D. H. Lawrence argues, each soul is uniquely different and thus incomparable, but, on the contrary, because each soul is perfectly comparable within an ethical context and some lives clearly lack beauty, lack integrity and lack style in comparison to others.

Secondly, it is our duty - as citizens and as men and women who are interested in the care of the self - to combat and destroy the enemies of civilization and of parrhesia.

Aparigraha and Adoxia (Notes on Yoga and Cynicism)

My confidante and muse, Zena, has newly qualified as a yoga teacher after an intensive period of study in the foothills of the Himalayas. She enjoys yoga as a physical and mental practice, but is also excited by it as a philosophy or system of spiritual beliefs, about which I’m naturally curious.

Thus I listened with interest when she told me about the Hindu virtue of aparigraha - an ethical concept that encourages non-attachment to material things, thereby countering the will-to-possess that can so often result in the vulgarity and the violence of greed.

Of course, what we in the West might term temperance is a crucial component of various religious traditions, not just Hinduism. For many people, the true life is not merely a simple life, but one in which poverty is believed to be a good thing and wealth something of a disadvantage for those who hope to enter the kingdom of heaven.

But - as far as I understand it - that's not quite the idea being advanced by the teachers of aparigraha.

Rather, as with the Stoics, the crucial issue is not so much having or not having money, but adopting an indifferent attitude towards riches, so that one does not become fixated by all the trappings of wealth, greedy for all the goods and services that money can buy, or overly worried by the prospect of one day losing one's power and status within society.

In other words, it remains perfectly possible to lead a virtuous and humble life and still have millions stashed in a secret bank account. All that matters is that these millions don’t really matter to you; that you remain morally aloof, so to speak, from your own wealth and unafraid of any reversal of fortune. By liberating the spirit and letting go in the mind, one needn't be deprived per se or physically destitute (which is certainly convenient for those religious leaders and gurus who like to wear Gucci loafers with their robes).

Now compare and contrast this with the real and radical poverty that the ancient Cynics actively sought out. Diogenes and his followers didn't just offer an effectively virtual moral teaching based upon a simple detachment of the soul; rather, they stripped existence of even the basic material components upon which it is usually thought to depend (including clothes and shelter). Thus, as Foucault notes:

"The dramaturgy of Cynic poverty is far from that indifference which is unconcerned about wealth ... it is an elaboration of oneself in the form of visible poverty. It is not an acceptance of poverty; it is a real conduct of poverty ... unlimited ... in the sense that it does not halt at a stage which is thought to be satisfying because one thinks one is ... free from everything superfluous. It continues and is always looking for possible further destitution."

- Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 258. 

In fact, the Cynics push their scandalous practice of poverty to the point that they end up leading lives full of dirt, dependency, and disgrace; they become the one thing worse than being a slave in Greek eyes - and that's being a beggar. For the Cynics, the key is not aparigraha - it's adoxia - the seeking out of a bad reputation and the systematic practice of dishonour.  

Now - just to be clear - I'm not saying that I approve of or advocate Cynicism; not encouraging those who have taken up yoga in order to find a certain degree of inner peace and wisdom to suddenly abandon their practices and start leading a naked, bestial life of shameless destitution - I'd hate it if Zena suddenly started barking like a dog and committing indecent acts in public.

Nevertheless, I am saying something and I suppose what I'm saying is that I find the core principles of yoga (the so called yamas, of which aparigraha is a key element) platitudinous; they lack any philosophical bite, or critical edge. Further, I worry that they can lead not only to good karma for the individual (whatever that is), but to a socially conservative politics that reinforces convention and the order of things.

In sum: I don't want to masturbate in the market place, but neither do I want to meditate cross-legged on a mountain top, surrendering myself to the higher power of the universe ...            

Dog Bites: On the Question of Man and Animal (and the Becoming-Animal of Man)

Photo by Eija-Liisa Ahtila from the eight part series 

of images entitled Dog Bites (1992-97)

Like Lou Carrington, I’ve always believed there must be something else to marvel at in humanity besides a clever mind and a nice, clean face and that we might term this something else animality.

And like Lou, I’ve always hoped that were we to conduct what Nietzsche terms a reverse experiment and resurrect the wild beast within us, then we might produce a type of man who would be “as lovely as a deer or a leopard, burning like a flame fed straight from underneath”.

But now I’m not so sure about the desirability of this: for clearly there are dangers involved in the process of man’s becoming-animal and no one really wants to see werewolves prowling the streets.

Nor, for that matter, do I think it an attractive prospect to live like a dog, as Diogenes liked to live and as was central to the ancient philosophical practice of Cynicism. I don’t want to shit in the street or copulate in full view of others; don’t want to drink rainwater, growl at strangers, or eat raw meat. Like incest, these provocative acts might be perfectly natural and constitute secret pleasures, but they should only be indulged in with extreme caution.

In other words, unlike the ancient Cynics - and unlike some of the more militant of the animal rights activists and environmentalists campaigning in our own time - I don’t wish to tie the principle of the true life exclusively to the domain of Nature and thus reject all social convention and civilized restraint.

Our humanity may well be something that needs to be reformulated and eventually overcome, but it remains nevertheless a magnificent accomplishment; one that was achieved only after a huge amount of suffering over an immense period of time.

Thus, to adopt a model of behaviour based upon that of our own animality (or, rather, what we imagine the latter to be) simply so we might lick our own balls in public and thereby scandalise those who pride themselves on all that distinguishes them as human beings, seems to me profoundly mistaken.


Notes

Lou Carrington is a character in D. H. Lawrence’s short novel St. Mawr. See St. Mawr and Other Stories, ed. Brian Finney, (Cambridge University Press, 2003). The line quoted is on p. 61.

For an interesting interpretation of the bios kunikos and why the Cynics prided themselves on living such see Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 242-43.

Chaturbate and the Question of Cynicism

Georg Viktor: Diogenes in der Tonne (Raku ceramic figure) 

www.viktor-ge.org

For those of you who don’t know, Chaturbate is a popular pornographic website where individuals live-stream themselves engaged in sexual activity, either solo or with a partner or partners. Performers can earn money in the form of tips from viewers, but they are essentially amateurs in the pure sense of the term; i.e. they do it because they love to live an unconcealed and shameless life; a life that is constantly under the watchful eyes of others and before the virtual gaze of the camera.

Some critics argue that such behaviour is unnatural and immoral and I’ll come to this philosophically naive charge shortly. Others suggest it constitutes a way of being that is unique to the age in which we live; one that can only be understood in terms of the technology that facilitates it. But, of course, despite what the posthumanists think, there’s nothing new under the sun, and even so-called cybersex might be seen as nothing more than a digital restaging of life in its libidinally material reality.

As such, Chaturbate constitutes a novel revival of an obscene and scandalous ancient practice - Cynicism. Diogenes masturbated in the market place and his disciple Crates liked to fuck his wife in public; our twenty-first century cynics do these things online. But far from being corrupt or perverse, it’s actually a form of the good life; a type of true love taken to the logical extreme. For as even Plato knew, true love never hides itself away; it’s that which is always happy to reveal itself before witnesses.

Now, this is not to say that Plato would have approved of Chaturbate. He may have taught that truth loves to go naked, but he also subscribed to traditional rules of Greek propriety. There were limits and it was best to exercise caution and moderation. For Plato, Diogenes was beyond the pale; he was a Socrates gone mad. And Plato knew that if you push ideals to their extreme, then you effect a kind of transvaluation.

What Michel Foucault writes of the Cynic dramatization of the unconcealed life, is precisely what we might say of Chaturbate’s interactive community of cam-girls and cam-boys and their attempt to love with complete openness: chaturbating is “the strict, simple, and, in a sense, crudest possible application of the principle that one should live without having to blush at what one does”.

But, as a result of this, all the rules, habits, and conventions of behaviour which this principle initially accepted and reinforced, are now overturned. Cynicism explodes the code of propriety and offers the possibility of a radically different (more brazen, perhaps more brutal) form of life: one that is watched over by the goddess Anaideia.

See: Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), The line quoted is on p. 255 of this paperback edition. 

On Queerness, Cynicism, and the Question of True Love

The notion of true love is central within Western culture. It's a concept founded upon the four values identified by Foucault as belonging to aletheia:

“True love is first, love which does not conceal ... because it has nothing to hide ... it is always willing to show itself in front of witnesses ... Second, true love is an unalloyed love ... in which sensual pleasure and the friendship of souls do not intermingle. Third, true love is love in line with what is right, with what is correct ... It has nothing contrary to the rule or custom. And finally, true love is love which is never subject to change or becoming. It is an incorruptible love which remains always the same.” [220-21]

You can find this ideal model of love developed in both Plato and what Nietzsche derided as Platonism for the people (Christianity). It’s a straight and straightforward form of love without subterfuge, disguise, or even curiosity; love that prides itself on its sincerity and its naturalness, rather than a sense of playfulness or sophistication. There’s simply nothing queer about it. It’s what normal, healthy, men and women share and upon which the sanctity of marriage is based.

Homosexuality, on the other hand, is, at its best - that is to say, at its most defiantly queer - the love that refuses to speak its name; the love that likes to stick to the shadows and hide in closets; the love that finds pride in its perverse, plural, and promiscuous character; an ironic, gender-bending, form of love that delights in artifice and in camp; a love that doesn’t conform to the heteronormative rule, or give a fig either about the judgement of God or what Nature dictates.

One might describe this queer radical style of homosexuality, as separatist. It certainly doesn’t want to fit into straight society and doesn’t keep banging on about equal rights; doesn’t long for a lifestyle involving monogamous marriage and the prospect of breeding. It isn't even particularly gay ...

In fact, we might best characterize it as Cynical in the ancient philosophical sense. That is to say, a type of practice which has a very militant idea of what constitutes the truth (of love and of life) and which has been “stamped by a scandal which has constantly accompanied it, a disapproval which surrounds it, a mixture of mockery, repulsion, and apprehension in reaction to its presence and manifestations” [231].

If Cynicism was the disgrace of ancient philosophy, then queer-cynical homosexuality is the travesty of true love; holding up a funfair mirror before Eros so that the latter can recognise himself, whilst, crucially, at the same time see himself outrageously distorted and made multiple.

See: Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Page numbers given refer to this paperback edition.

It's a Gay Life - But is it also a Good Life?

After recently presenting a paper on the politics and psychopathology of homophobia, somebody emailed to ask if I could provide a more philosophical explanation why gay men and lesbians are often viewed negatively by those who identify as heterosexual and belong to the straight majority.

In order to do this, we need to think back to a much older question - one that is central both to ancient philosophy and Christian spirituality - namely, the question of what constitutes a good life. The answer, of course, is all to do with one’s relationship to the truth (aletheia).

For the good life is also the true life, which means that the respectable citizen is one who not only speaks the truth, but manifests it in their daily existence (in what they do and don’t do). This crucial idea is one that has deeply ingrained itself within Western culture and continues to shape our thinking today. Thus we are obliged to ask - as Pilate famously asked Christ - what is truth?

If I remember correctly, Jesus replied that he was the truth, which doesn’t really answer the question. Michel Foucault, however, rather more helpfully supplies us with four key components: the truth is that which is unconcealed, unalloyed, unchanging, and - most significantly for us here - perfectly straight. The true life is never bent or crooked; never deviates from a direct and narrow path to God in accordance with what is revealed, pure, eternal, and upright.

And so it quickly becomes clear why those men and women who are thought to lead secretive, mixed-up, and irregular lifestyles - who are said to be either inherently queer or wilfully perverse - can never be fully trusted or respected within a heteronormative (and heterosexist) society; for they can never lead a good life or a true life.

Nor, for that matter, can they lead a natural life, in the Classical or Christian-moral sense. For the gay life, having historically been lived on the margins of society and in defiance of certain laws, conventions and agreed customs, is also a life which undermines a value system indexed to Nature. 

Thus, homosexuality is doubly false and doubly threatening to those who, rightly or wrongly, pride themselves on being straight and who see the world in black and white, rather than as rainbow-coloured. 

Happy Birthday to the Hai Karate Girl

Valerie Leon as Paula Perkins in Carry On Girls (1973)

Valerie Leon is an actress who imposed her curvaceous figure onto British popular culture and the pornographic imagination throughout the sixties and seventies. 

Appearing in Bond films, Carry On comedies, Hammer horror movies and numerous classic TV shows of the period, she is perhaps best remembered - and much loved - for her role as the girl in the ads for Hai Karate aftershave (be careful how you use it).  

Born on November 12, 1943, Miss Leon worked as a trainee fashion buyer at Harrods after leaving school, before becoming a chorus girl and eventually making her West End debut alongside Barbara Streisand in Funny Girl at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1966. She then, as indicated, went on to become a regular and alluring screen presence.

Never quite a star - although she memorably took the lead role in Blood from the Mummy's Tomb as a reincarnated Egyptian queen - Miss Leon is something rarer and, in a way, far more interesting; what is often described as a cult figure; a fetishistic icon amongst those in the know and fully deserving of the many fan letters she receives from around the world.

I wish this glamourous and intelligent woman a very happy birthday.


Note: those readers interested in knowing more about Miss Leon and finding out about her present activities should visit www.valerieleon.com