30 Jul 2019

On Why Lawrentian Werewolves Are Not Vegans 2: A Reply to Catherine Brown

Benicio del Toro in The Wolfman (2010) 
Does he look like he enjoys lentils?


Interestingly, the attempt to not merely anticipate but invoke and affirm a vegan world in relation to the work of D. H. Lawrence is also now being made by the much admired literary scholar Catherine Brown, herself a recent convert to this militant form of ascetic idealism. 

Brown argues that although Lawrence wasn't a vegan - nor even a mild-mannered vegetarian - his thought contains much that resonates with veganism as it is understood and practiced today. This is perhaps true, but, having said that, I don't think we can simply equate Lawrence's work with veganism, nor allow his thinking to be co-opted by any single cause or crusade. 

For whilst I'm sure Lawrence would have despised factory farming as much as Heidegger - the latter notoriously suggesting metaphysical equivalence between mechanized food production and the Nazi death camps long before Morrissey came up with the slogan meat is murder - he remained, as Brown admits, "comfortable within the omnivorism and speciesism that was dominant in his as in our culture".  

Indeed, whilst the tiger and the wolf present terrible problems to those idealists who want to think life exclusively in terms of the lamb, Lawrence invariably sides with those beasts of prey - including man - that feast on the flesh of other creatures in good conscience. What's more, he makes no secret of his contempt for those domestic farm animals - pigs, sheep, and cattle - that fail to attain purity of being and lapse into nullity:

"They grow fat; their only raison d'être is to provide food for a really living organism. [...] It is given us to devour them." [RDP 41]  

You can try and get around this by adopting the trust the tale, not the teller defence, and find fictional passages in which a character might turn their nose up at a plate of beef, or, like Ursula Brangwen, thoroughly enjoy a tasty vegetarian hot-pot, but, still the stubborn fact remains that Lawrence's carnivorous vitalism ultimately trumps any nascent veganism.    

And if, as we have noted, Lawrence despises those creatures that lack creative impulse, so too does he abhor human beings who have become docile grazing animals, subscribing to what Nietzsche calls a herd morality - cry-bullies forever bleating about rights and bloated on their own sense of righteousness. Such people are, he says, "the enemy and the abomination" and he is grateful for the "tigers and butchers that will free us from the abominable tyranny of sheep" [RDP 42].

Ultimately, Lawrence wants men and women with large mouths, big teeth and sharp claws and we can even locate within his work something that might be termed a werewolf manifesto - cf. the vegan manifesto that Dr. Brown finds within his writing. This werewolf manifesto openly sets itself against the Green Age - i.e., the utopia imagined by cabbage-hearted vegans, environmentalists, cows, Christians, and social justice warriors in which the lion lies down with the lamb and "no mouse shall be caught by a cat" [RDP 275].

Lawrence writes:

"This is the [...] golden age that is to be, when all shall be domesticated, and the lion and the leopard and the hawk shall  come to our door to lap [soy] milk and to peck the crumbs, and no sound shall be heard but the lowing of fat cows and the baa-ing of fat sheep. This is the Green Age that is to be, the age of the perfect cabbage." [RDP 275-76]

Of course, Catherine is perfectly at liberty to read Lawrence however she wishes: as am I. And, as a matter of fact, I'm very sympathetic to her idea that if we conceive of veganism "not as a dogma, identity, or state of putative purity, but as a queer nexus of perceptions and affects, then Lawrence can, at moments, be described as vegan".

Although, of course, we could easily replace the word veganism here with any other -ism - including fascism or feminism - and this sentence would still make perfect sense: that's the beauty (and the danger) of Lawrence's text; it invites anyone and everyone to play within the space that it opens up and to invest it with their own forces.  


See:

Catherine Brown, 'D. H. Lawrence and the Anticipation of a Vegan World'. This paper was originally given at the 33rd annual international D. H. Lawrence conference held at the University of Nanterre, Paris (3-7 April 2019). It can be read on the author's website: click here

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Reality of Peace' and 'The Crown', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988). 

Readers interested in part one of this post - in which I address the comments made by another vegan Lawrentian (David Brock) on an earlier post to do with dental morphology - should click here.


12 comments:

  1. That Wolfman doesn't look capable of enjoying ANYTHING!
    Man is entirely to blame, through selective breeding, for domestic farm animals becoming such a corruption of life and being.
    Notwithstanding that there may be some vegans out there who would like to rehabilitate all carnivors, including lions and tigers, let's get things straight - the 'sheep', the bloated ones who bleat on and on are the carnivors now, as they stage a desperate rearguard action, attempting to defend their untenable Ideal. . .their own 'ism'.
    So much for being 'cabbage-hearted', red-blooded vegans have their claws and teeth in your ideas, Stephen, and you are wriggling in vain.

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  2. Squirming, just as the severed tentacles of the magical, intelligent, unfathomably mysterious octopus do, as they are prepared for your ideal, irrestistible carnivorous dish. . .

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    1. Veganism, far from being a "militant form of ascetic idealism", is an ethics-driven attempt to live a lifestyle that doesn't harm animals. I will never understand what makes people insult it for no good reason - perhaps the guilt that they are themselves involved in the killing of 56 billion animals every single year?

      Veganism isn't about vegans; it's about the animals. If you think that animal cruelty is wrong, you're already vegan in your heart. All that's left now is to bravely act upon this fundamental conviction and live a vegan lifestyle.

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    2. Dear Unknown,

      It's precisely people who act from "fundamental conviction" that worry me.

      And if you're genuinely concerned about minimising animal suffering and promoting systems of sustainable agriculture, then perhaps you might find the following essay of interest:

      http://theconversation.com/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-theres-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands-4659

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  3. Thanks S, and D.

    Dave's right that there's much that's sheep-like about meat-eating, and that the sheep L deplores are those that are farmed (reliably it's tamed animals that L doesn't like; in a vegan world, not many of them).

    Dave's also right to reject the characterisation of veganism as ascetic; I don't believe that many vegans are attracted to it as asceticism, nor that they (willingly or otherwise) experience it as such. For me it's been the beginning of properly enjoying, and being interested in, food.

    I don't think we disagree much on Lawrence, do we? I'd just question your 'ultimately trumps'. In which card game? Ostentatious preachiness multiplied by word count in the non-fiction? Not that the vegan perceptions of all of the 'art', and the defensive (against self, I'd argue) carnivorism all of the bluster; I quote non-fiction too.
    And I don't think either of us are much interested in 'ultimate' 'trumping' are we? I'm just suggesting that his incipient veganism is only coming into focus now, at the time of the vegan turn.

    The Archer article I found to contain much that's questionable, which together creates the absurd unstated implication that whenever one eats a plant one is starving mice babies and that only when chomping on instantaneously-extinguished too is one morally safe.

    But never mind Archer, or Lawrence, what of you? The fact that billions of animals suffer all around us at every moment is a problem? Or no? C xx

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  4. Correction: 'roo' not 'too' in penultimate para!

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    1. Dear Unknown,

      I have to admit, I smiled to see the words 'Dave' and 'right' in conjunction; I would struggle to conceive of the circumstances in which I might write such a sentence.

      Having said that, maybe he is right. Or maybe he's just wise in his own conceit and noisy of opinion ...?

      Not sure to what extent we agree or disagree on Lawrence. But I take your point about it being a bit foolish for one reader to try and trump another's interpretation of the text, or claiming to have identified the true, authentic, genuine Lawrence.

      Your last sentence is really the key to this entire debate ... The thing is, I don't find suffering problematic and don't think that pain constitutes an argument - or, if it does, it's an argument against life itself and thus an extreme form of moral pessimism (or nihilism).

      In a vegan world, as you point out, there will be very few cows or sheep or pigs - thus a huge reduction in systematic cruelty and animal suffering.

      But why stop there? If all sentient beings were to be exterminated (including ourselves) we'd finally arrive at a final solution to the 'problem' of suffering.

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  5. S, the blog system somehow represented me as Unknown (and may do so again now); I tried to comment as 'Catherine Brown' (that's what appears in the 'comment as' box before I press 'publish'. Thanks for your reply. I DO find the avoidable imposition of suffering problematic, and that, for me, is the key - not the word 'suffering', but the word 'avoidable'. You yourself use the word 'systematic'. The thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to are, crucially, neither systematic nor avoidable.

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  6. I think the idea of a "Werewolf Manifesto" in Lawrence is brilliant. The following line from the essay on Benjamin Franklin in SCAL could also form part of it:

    "Oh, but I have a strange and fugitive self shut out and howling like a wolf [...] See his red eyes in the dark? This is the self who is coming into his own."

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    1. That's an excellent reference - thanks for reminding me of it. It further demonstrates that the posthuman subject Lawrence imagines himself becoming is lupine in nature (i.e. a predatory carnivore) and not some kind of herbivore.

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  7. Why must all sentient life perish - as SA's dangerously intellectualised 'final solution' to suffering seems to demand - when we can at least conscientiously tackle the vast scale of unecessary animal suffering - which is what 'the vegan solution' is effectively doing.
    Mice, rats, foxes, weasels and a whole range of other creatures have always been 'controlled' and cruelly killed by the farming/meat/dairy industry.
    It's to be hoped some readers of these posts have seen footage of the horrific manner in which kangaroos are hunted, chased and killed in Australia. Their deaths instantaneous - my foot!
    There's a powerful and profoundly disturbing passage in Lawrence's The Boy in the Bush, of course, where a big male kangaroo is cornered and killed. Like Lawrence's depiction of a Mexican bull fight in The Plumed Serpent, the whole episode is truly 'squalid and degrading'.
    Readers to these posts might care to make their views known about the appalling practise around the Australian coast of using 'shark nets' - intended to protect bathers, but apparently failing to do this. . .these nets are resulting in horrific suffering and death to magnificent marine life.

    We can all howl like wolves - and in wonderful harmony - about all this unnecessary cruelty and death, or each become a lone predator, with anxious red eyes, coming into our own as individual activists, to play our part in ending wickedness towards animals wherever we find it.

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  8. As for right or wrong. . .how does that Lenny Bruce quote go?. . ."There's no such thing as right or wrong - it's just you're right and their wrong"

    It might be added that most AR vegans love wolves and, in some curious, quite intense (Lawrentian?) way, strongly identify with them. And Monbiot is all for their re-introduction in the UK. And the Wildlife Trust is in favour of breeding Golden Eagles in Derbyshire - where they once soared. But, would this not be cruel? - our farmers and gamekeepers would only trap and shoot and somehow kill them. On Sunday 11th Aug at Carsington Water in Derbyshire famous vegan, Chris Packham, Mark Avery and others will gather for Hen Harrier Day (12 -5pm), to celebrate a raptor now virtually vanished from the land - largely due to the 'management' of grouse moors. There will be vegans and vegan birders amongst the throng. Vegans are as fascinated by predators as anyone (lots of them 'keep' carnivorous cats and dogs) - and will watch for hours as owls hunt at evening.

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