On Georg Simmel's Sociology of Secrecy and Secret Societies

Georg Simmel (1858 - 1918)

 

 

I. 

 

One of the founders of German sociology at the beginning of the 20th-century, Georg Simmel mainly interests today for his concept of purposeful concealment - a concept via which he attempts to revalue the notion of secrecy.

 

According to Simmel, when conceived in a positive and profound sense, secrecy enables life to unfold on an imaginatively far more complex plane than it otherwise would and this makes secrecy one of the "greatest accomplishments of humanity" [1]. 

 

Simmel also argues that what most characteristically defines (and differentiates) human social structures is the degree of mendacity (and ignorance) operating within them. The concealment of truth, therefore, is perhaps more vital than its exposure; secrets and lies are what hold us together (this is true even for married couples who like to believe otherwise).   

 

Anticipating Byung-Chul Han, Simmel recognises that complete transparency between individuals - if such a thing were ever to be possible - would not, therefore, be particularly desirable; it would certainly not be without consequence, radically changing how people relate to one another and live collectively [2].

 

In an essay published in 1906, Simmel also offers some fascinating remarks on the attraction of the Geheimgesellschaft ...  

 

 

II.

 

 

We can define a society as secret when its activities, inner functioning, and membership are all shielded from public scrutiny. Secret societies may even attempt to conceal their very existence, for, as Simmel notes, invisibility is an effective protective strategy. 

 

If readers are wondering why individuals might feel the need to take such measures, it's worth noting that secret societies often emerge "as a correlate of despotism" [3] and one of their key functions is to offer protection against the State for dissidents and heretics of all kind. 

 

As well as teaching how to become-imperceptible, secret societies are also highly effective at instructing members on the art of silence, which is a good thing in my view (indeed, I think it would be an excellent idea if our schools taught children how to sit still, sit straight, and stay silent; i.e., taught self-discipline, rather than encourage self-expression) [4].

 

Having said all this, Simmel is aware that some secret societies that start out as countercultural, ironically end up reproducing the oppressive structures and institutions of the wider society that forced them into the shadows or underground in the first place.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Georg Simmel, 'The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies', in the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Jan. 1906), pp. 441-498. The line quoted from is on p. 446. The essay is available on JSTOR: click here.

 

[2] See my three-part post on Byung-Chul Han's book The Transparency Society (2015): part one can be accessed by clicking here. 

[3] Georg Simmel, 'The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies' ... p. 472. 

 

[4] Three cheers for Katharine Birbalsingh, founder and head teacher of the Michaela Community School, Wembley. 

 

 

Essentially, this post might be seen as a kind of preview to a paper entitled 'In Defence of Isis Veiled and in Praise of Silence, Secrecy, and Shadows', that will be presented at Treadwell's bookshop - 33, Store Street, London, WC1 - on Thurs 7 September. Further details can be found on the Torpedo the Ark events page: click here. 

    

Readers are also reminded of a related post entitled 'In Memory of Anne Dufourmantelle: Risk Taker Extraordinaire and Defender of Secrets' (14 May 2023): click here. 

 

 

In Memory of Anne Dufourmantelle: Risk Taker Extraordinaire and Defender of Secrets

Anne Dufourmantelle (1964-2017)

 

"To become an occult philosopher is to choose the shadows; 

to cross over to a secret world ..."

 

 

I. 

 

For those readers who may be unfamiliar with the name, Anne Dufourmantelle was a French philosopher and psychoanalyst, perhaps best known for her work on the vital importance of living dangerously. 

 

When, in 2017, she drowned attempting to save two young children caught in rough seas, the obituary writers couldn't help (sometimes spitefully) recalling the fact that she had published a book entitled Éloge du risque [1] just a few years prior to this tragic event. 

 

As her English translator - Steven Miller - notes, the implication was that Dufourmantelle was somehow the author of her own fate [2]; that her death served to confirm the ancient idea that to philosophise is to learn how to die and thus only practiced - like occultism - by disturbed individuals. 

 

Even if true, this tends to downplay the fact that Dufourmantelle was a courageous woman who wrote a number of books - including one on hospitality in collaboration with Jacques Derrida [3] - who wished to think risk not as an act of madness or deviant behaviour, but in vital (and ethical) terms.

 

To quote Miller: "the horizon that orients her approach to risk is not death and sacrifice [...] but rather what she calls not dying" [ne pas mourir]" [4] - i.e., having the courage to live whilst at the same time loving fate. 

 

It's a shame, therefore, that unthinking journalistic accounts of her death reproduce "the very paradigm of risk that she explicitly seeks to displace" [5]. But then of course, news editors are never going to let philosophical subtlety get in the way of a good story.   

 

 

II.

 

Dufourmantelle, however, wasn't just a woman who dared her readers to take risks - particularly the risk of opening themselves up to otherness and to intimacy - she was also a defender of secrets and it's this aspect of her work which currently most interests, engaged as I am in writing my own defence of Isis veiled [6].

Originally published in 2015, Défense du secret was translated into English by Lindsay Turner and published by Fordham University Press in 2021. 

 

As with her earlier book - In Praise of Risk - there are bits I like (the philosophical musings) and bits I don't like (the psychoanalytic observations). But that's just me - other readers will love the latter and hate the former.

 

Like Dufourmantelle, I also believe that in an age obsessed with exposing everything to x-ray vision - Byung-Chul Han famously speaks of the transparency society - secrecy might have an important role to play as part of a counter-narrative which also includes terms such as silence, solitude, and stillness. 

 

It's not that the secret is necessarily some kind of hidden truth - it might simply be a forgotten memory, an unspoken thought, or even a lie. But it is something that has a relation to truth and it is something we should revalue, I think, as a term of opposition to the see-all, tell-all, know-all ideology of today.     

 

But the problem, for a writer, is how does one speak of secrecy without giving the game away? The answer, as Dufourmantelle demonstrates, is to speak quietly and enigmatically; to murmur in a voice that is lighter than breath, or to whisper with the lights down low, as it were. 

 

Indeed, we might even dim the lights completely - for isn't darkness the custodian of being and isn't it the case that, ultimately, it is not we who keep secrets safe, but secrets that safeguard us and our right to become other (to be more than we seem) ...?           

Again, like Dufourmantelle, I would place the secret beyond good and evil - that is to say, align it with individual ethics rather than a universal morality. It's up to every one of us to nurture their own secret identity (or alter ego) - just like Superman and the Scarlet Pimpernel; to cultivate the darkness, as it were, so that we in turn might grow and blossom (like flowers).        

 

I don't think that Dufourmantelle's work - or my own forthcoming defence of Isis veiled - amounts to a religious call, as some suggest. Rather, it simply offers an occult perspective on contemporary culture and brings a little mystery into the social order. 

 

And, who knows, it just may lead to a new mode of relating to one another (less transparent, less open, but richer and more intense), which, in turn, might allow us to leave behind the society of transparency and build - for want perhaps of another phrase - a secret society which has what the German sociologist Georg Simmel called purposeful concealment as its structuring element.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Anne Dufourmantelle, Éloge du risque, (Editions Rayot & Rivages, 2011), translated into English by Steven Miller as In Praise of Risk, (Fordham University Press, 2019). 

[2] See Steven Miller's Introduction - 'The Risk to Reading' - to Dufourmantelle's In Praise of Risk. This can be read online (thanks to Amazon) by clicking here.

[3] Of Hospitality, Jacques Derrida and Anne Dufourmantelle, trans. Rachel Bowlby, (Stanford University Press, 2000). 

[4] Steven Miller, 'Translator's Introduction: The Risk to Reading' ... See link above in note 2.  

 

[5] Ibid.

[6] A paper entitled 'In Defence of Isis Veiled and in Praise of Silence, Secrecy, and Shadows' will be given at Treadwell's bookshop - 33, Store Street, London, WC1 - on Thurs 7 September. Further details will be made available on the Torpedo the Ark events page in due course. Essentially, this post might be seen as an (unofficial) preface to the paper, or a kind of preview.   

A Warning from Cinematic History: The Tragic Case of James Xavier - The Man with the X-Ray Eyes

"He stripped souls as bare as bodies!"

 Ray Milland as Dr James Xavier in

The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963)

 

I. 

 

People who subscribe to the myth of Genesis [1] believe that darkness is simply a lack of illumination, or the absence of visible light. 

 

In other words, they think of it as a purely negative quality in binary opposition to divine radiance; that truth, goodness, and wisdom all shine brightly, whilst darkness is the home of secrets, lies, and a shameful form of ignorance that leads to sin. 

 

Such metaphysical dualism is, of course, just a convenient way of ordering the world for simple-minded folk who fear complexity (and, indeed, fear the darkness and those things that go bump in the night).

 

Artists and philosophers, on the other hand, understand that not only is darkness vital - that human life needs a little shadow to add depth and mystery - but light and darkness are coeval. That is to say, they are intimately connected and bring each other forth; not absolutely distinct and separate. 

 

Thus, when I say that I love the darkness, I am not implying I hate the light. 

 

Indeed, my concern, as a philosopher, is not to critique those who wish to see the world clearly by the light of reason, but take issue with those who subscribe to an ideal of total transparency, driven as they are by an insane desire to see through everything in a profoundly dangerous (and nihilistic) manner as if they had x-ray vision like the man who best exemplifies our Transparenzgesellschaft [2], James Xavier. 

II.

 

The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963) is an American science fiction film directed by Roger Corman, from a script by Ray Russell and Robert Dillon, and starring Ray Milland as Dr James Xavier, a scientist who develops eye drops that allow him to see beyond the visible spectrum into the ultraviolet and x-ray wavelengths. 

 

What starts out as fun - seeing through a pretty girl's clothing - soon ends in tragedy. For eventually Xavier can see the world only in forms of light and texture that his brain is unable to fully comprehend and - having lost the darkness - he loses his mind and his life. 

 

The film was a huge hit at the time, but it is only now that it's warning about the dangers of total transparency and of no longer being able to close one's eyes and dream in revitalising darkness, takes on cultural pertinence.

 

As Xavier's self-induced condition worsens, he begins to wear thick protective goggles, that uncannily anticipate the headsets that we are encouraged to put on in order to explore a digital metaverse in which reality is dissolved in an acid of virtual light.     

 

One fears that eventually the only thing that will save us from madness will be to gouge out our own eyes, as Xavier does his.  

 

   

 

If thine eyes offend thee ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring here to the famous opening lines of Genesis 1, which detail how light was created by God and separated off from the primal darkness that was upon the face of the deep when the Earth was without form and void.

 

[2] This concept is explored by Byung-Chul Han in his book The Transparency Society, trans. Erik Butler, (Stanford University Press, 2015). I have discussed this book in a three-part post on Torpedo the Ark: click here for part 1; here for part 2; here for part 3. 

Artificial Intelligence Doesn't Get Goosebumps

Illustration: Victor de Schwanberg 

Science Photo Library / Getty Images

 

 

Just about everyone - from Elon Musk and Geoffrey Hinton to Tim Pendry [1] - is warning these days about the coming AI revolution. 

 

And whilst I certainly don't wish to underestimate the dangers presented by artificial intelligence, I continue to be encouraged by the fact that because machines cannot feel, they cannot really think; that mind is ultimately a product of suffering.

 

Or, as Byung-Chul Han puts it: "The negativity of pain is constitutive of thought. Pain is what distinguishes thinking from calculating, from artificial intelligence." [2]

 

Generative AI may be capable of independent learning and producing the most astonishing results. But it will never give birth to thoughts in the manner that a mother gives birth to a child, invested with "blood, heart, fire, pleasure, passion, agony, conscience, fate, and catastrophe" [3].  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Whilst I take seriously what these three wise men have to say about technology and the future of humanity, I certainly don't wish to hear from King Charles III on the subject: see the post written on 7 September 2018, when he was still the Prince of Wales: I said it then and I'll say it again now: better artificial intelligence than royal stupidity.      

 

[2] Byung-Chul Han, The Palliative Society, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2021), p. 39. 

      See also Han's Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2022), in which he argues: "Artificial intelligence is incapable of thinking, for the very reason that it cannot get goosebumps." Readers who are interested may click here for my post on this book. And this short piece by Mariella Moon on robots designed to sweat and get goosebumps, might also amuse.    

[3] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), Preface for the Second Edition, §3, p. 36. 

Blue Balls (With Reference to the Work of Jeff Koons and D. H. Lawrence)

Jeff Koons with one of his blue gazing balls

Photo by Lucy Young

 

 

Like the American comedian Jena Friedman, I've long admired the artist Jeff Koons and so I would share her sadness at having to write something "even remotely negative about this purveyor of the shiny and provocative" [1] - we can leave this to the philosopher Byung-Chul Han, who loathes the aesthetics of the smooth and famously compared Koons's artwork to Brazilian waxing [2]. 

Fortunately, therefore - and unlike Ms Friedman - I have a rather more positive view of the blue gazing balls [3] that Koons has ingeniously placed on little shelves in front of various reproductions of classical and modern masterpieces, including works by Rembrandt, Manet, and Picasso - he even stuck one in front of his enlarged version of the Mona Lisa (see below).   

According to Koons, these large glass baubles represent the vastness of the universe, whilst also giving us a sense of the intimacy of the here and now [4]. I'm not sure about that - and this isn't why I like the gazing balls. 

 

I like them, because they make me want to smash them; make me want like an excitable child to cup the little globe of magnificent full dark-blue in my hands and then toss it up in the air, allowing it to fall with a little splashing explosion on the floor; make me want to take one of the fragments and examine it closely in all its broken brilliance [5].   

 

More, I feel like taking one of the spheres and bringing it hard down on the head of the viewer who stands before it and admires their own reflection; they who only see themselves in each and every great work of art (their experiences, their desires, their lives); they who only want to know what an image means so they can explain it away.

 

This lust for knowledge is what Rupert Birkin describes as the conceit of consciousness: "'You want it all in that loathsome little skull of yours, that ought to be cracked like a nut'" [6] - isn't that what he says to Hermione the great lover of art and culture?  

   

And yet, ironically, it's she who brings a ball of lapis lazuli crashing down on his head five chapters later, achieving her voluptuous consummation:

 

"Her arms quivered and were strong, immeasurably and irresistibly strong. What delight, what delight in strength, what delirium of pleasure! She was going to have her consummation of voluptuous ecstasy at last. It was coming! In utmost terror and agony, she knew it was upon her now, in extremity of bliss. Her hand closed on a blue, beautiful ball of lapis lazuli that stood on her desk for a paper-weight. She rolled it around in her hand as she rose silently. Her heart was a pure flame in her breast, she was purely unconscious in ecstasy. She moved towards him and stood behind him for a moment in ecstasy. He, closed within the spell, remained motionless and unconscious. 

      Then swiftly, in a flame that drenched down her body like fluid lightning, and gave her a perfect, unutterable consummation, unutterable satisfaction, she brought down the ball of jewel stone with all her force, crash on his head." [7]

As I say, that's what I'd like to do with one of Koons's gazing balls, thereby transforming it from an object of narcissistic self-reflection into a weapon to be used against those who just have to put themselves into every picture.

 

 

Jeff Koons: Gazing Ball (da Vinci Mona Lisa) (2015)

Oil on canvas, glass, and aluminum 

jeffkoons.com 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Jena Friedman, 'Why Jeff Koons's Blue 'Gazing Balls' Give Mona Lisa Something New to Smirk About', Artnet News (22 June 2017): click here. 

[2] See Byung-Chul Han, Saving Beauty, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2018). The opening sentence of the first chapter reads: "The smooth is the signature of the present time. It connects the sculptures of Jeff Koons, i-Phones and Brazilian waxing." 

      For my discussion of the aesthetics (and politics) of smoothness with reference to the above text and the work of Jeff Koons, click here. 

 

[3] Gazing balls - or what Americans rather prosaically call yard globes - are mirrored spheres, ranging in size, and now mostly used as garden ornaments. Traditionally made of glass, they are now often stainless steel, ceramic, or plastic.

      The speheres originated in 13th-century Italy, where they were hand-blown by skilled Venetian craftsmen, but were popularised by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, in the 19th-century and appear in a number of gardens designed in the modern period (particularly in the 1930s). However, they seemed a bit naff by the 1950s - only slightly more sophisticated than garden gnomes. 

 

[4] See the article by Alex Needham - 'Jeff Koons on his Gazing Ball Paintings: "It's not about copying''', The Guardian (9 November, 2015): click here.

 

[5] I'm recalling the scene from chapter I - 'The Blue Ball - of D. H. Lawrence's novel Aaron's Rod (1922) in which a young girl (Millicent) breaks a Christmas ornament and her father (Aaron) then carefully examines one of the pieces. See pp. 10-11 of the Cambridge edition, ed. Mara Kalnins, (1988).   

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 42.

 

[7] Ibid., p. 105. 

 

 

How Things Protect Us From the Void: Some Further Thoughts with Reference to the Work of Michael Landy

Exhibition leaflet produced by Artangel

 

 

I'm still distressed about the material disappearance of my childhood, which I wrote about here. 

 

Someone commented that the above post reveals me to be both superficial and sentimental and suggested that I abandon the world of things and learn to cultivate spiritual peace and happiness; "when you discover inner fulfilment, then you realise just how ridiculous it is to cry over spilt milk or lost teddy bears and school reports".   

Someone else, rather more sympathetic, wrote to remind me of the case of Michael Landy, the Young British Artist who, in February 2001, famously destroyed all of his possessions in a performance piece he entitled Break Down: 

 

"Perhaps, ultimately, we all need to find the courage to destabilise our lives and stand naked, as it were, in the middle of an emptiness or void, so as to feel ourselves 'on the verge of being drawn into its terrible depth'" [1]. 

 

Perhaps ...

 

However, it's interesting to recall when thinking back to the above work by Landy, that he couldn't resist cataloguing the thousands of items he had acquired during his lifetime, thereby essentially reducing them not to nothingness, but to information [2]. 

 

Thus, arguably, he didn't quite let go and stand naked etc. 

 

And, of course, it was his decision to destroy his things, whereas, in my case, I had no say or control over the destruction of those things close to my heart. And nor do I have a detailed inventory of all the toys, games, and other treasures that my mother binned and my sister took and gave to her own children (without my knowledge or consent). 

 

And so, whilst I do kind of admire Landy for gathering together all of his things - including his clothes, stamp collection, artworks, and car - and sytematically smashing, shredding, and pulverising the lot (with the help of several assistants) in a laborious two-week orgy of destruction [3], I don't draw any real solace from his work and still insist that we need things to ground us in being and stop us becoming ghosts. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] My correspondent is quoting Yoko Ogawa, writing in The Memory Police, trans. Stephen Snyder, (Vintage, 2020), p. 14.  

[2] The philosopher Byung-Chul Han would perhaps view this as anticipating precisely what is happening today in the digital age, when things vanish from the actual world only to circulate forever as Undinge in the virtual realm, not as memories, but as data. See his work Non-things, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2022).

[3] This act of artistic potlatch took place at an empty store space on Oxford Street and attracted around 45,000 visitors. It produced nearly six tonnes of waste material, which was either recycled or sent to the rubbish dump. Nothing was exhibited or sold by Landy and he made no money directly from the event, although he did of course gain a huge amount of publicity and establish his name as an artist of note. 

      To watch a 16 minute video documenting the event, posted on YouTube by the London-based arts organisation Artangel, who - along with The Times newspaper - commissioned Break Down, click here. 

 

 

Jeff Koons: Apollo (The Golden Boy of American Art Meets the Golden God of the Greeks)

Jeff Koons: Apollo Kithara (2019-22) [1]  

Jeff Koons on Instagram

I. 

 

Apollo is the golden boy of ancient Greek mythology: the god of sunlight, music, poetry, and healing; the perfect embodiment of the Hellenic ideal of καλοκαγαθίᾱ [kalokagathia], that is to say, of reason, beauty, and virtue. 

 

Almost too good to be true, it's no wonder Nietzsche seemed to hate him and to privilege the more mysterious (and more troubling) son of Zeus, Dionysus; the god of wine and dance, irrationality and chaos, representing the emotional-instinctive forces. 

 

Only, of course, that's not quite true and the Apollonian/Dionsyian distinction is not so black and white, even in The Birth of Tragedy (1872), where Nietzsche develops (but does not invent) these philosophical and literary concepts [2]. 

 

Placing the two gods in dialectical opposition, Nietzsche advances the argument that tragic art is the result of a fusion (or synthesis) of the Apollonian and Dionysian impulses. But he does not wish for one to be valued more than the other (although in his later writings he will proudly declare himself as a disciple of the latter).

 

For Nietzsche, the tragic hero or thinker is one who struggles (ultimately in vain) to impose order and meaning upon a chaotic world of fate. Without the Apollonian, the Dionysian lacks form and structure, and without the Dionysian, the Apollonian lacks the necessary vitality and passion. And thus, for Nietzsche, the attempt to make art and philosophy an optimistic affair of moral reason, i.e., exclusively Apollonian in nature, was profoundly mistaken [3].

 

 

II.

 

But I digress: this post was simply intended to notify readers to the fact that Jeff Koons has a new exhibition on the Greek island of Hydra, honouring Apollo, including the animatronic sculpture shown above, in which the god not only holds a kithara (the seven-stringed version of a lyre), but has to contend with a massive snake flicking its forked-tongue out [4].

 

For those - like me - who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing we like; whereas, on the other hand, for those - like Byung-Chul Han - who hate everything Koons does and represents, then this piece of Apollonian kitsch will just be another reason to damn him. But I think that's a shame. 

 

The fact that Koons has returned to antiquity is no real surprise; all artists, writers, and philosophers look back to the Greeks and Romans at some point. The trick is to find a way to recontextualise ideas and put a contemporary spin on the myths and images from the ancient world, thereby liberating us in a certain sense from the disadvantages identified by Nietzsche in both antiquarian and monumental models of history [5].

 

In a recent interview Koons spoke of trying to play metaphysically with time and in his new show I think we can see what he means by this. Koons gives us a vision of Apollo that is an amusing mix of pagan and postmodern, then, now, never was and might be tomorrow.

 

Inspired by a sculpture from the Hellenistic period that Koons viewed in the British Museum, Apollo Kithara has precisely the smooth, digital look that Byung-Chul Han objects to, though one might have thought he would at least acknowledge the amount of time and care that Koons puts into each of his works. 

         

At any rate, that's what I admire: Koons may, like Keats [6], appear to be a blank idiot when wearing Apollo's famous laurel wreath, but he isn't. 

 

As for all his talk of universal humanity and shared meanings - his insistence that we and the peoples of the past feel the same things and have similar thoughts and values - well, that's the sort of regrettable idealism that many artists like to believe and why, ultimately, as Herbert Grönemeyer, once said: Trust art, but never trust an artist ...

 

Jeff Koons 

Apollo Windspinner (2020-22)     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Koons's Apollo Kithara is an animatronic sculpture featured within the exhibition Jeff Koons: Apollo, at the Slaughterhouse, Hydra, Greece, in association with the DESTE Foundation  (21 June - 31 Oct 2022). For more details, click here. 

 

[2] In his Preface to the 1886 edition of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche makes it clear that he finds the book questionable to say the least; a Romantic work born of an overheated sensibility; "badly written, clumsy and embarrassing, its images frenzied and confused [...] lacking in any desire for logical purity, and even suspicious of the propriety of proof, a book for initates [...] an arrogant and fanatical book that [...] has a strange knack of seeking out its fellow-revellers and enticing them on to new and secret paths and dancing-places." 

      In other words, too much Dionysian frenzy and not enough Apollonian calm. It is, by some margin, my least favourite of Nietzsche's books, although, it is perhaps his best known and most widely read text outside of philosophical circles, with the exception of Zarathustra. 

      See 'Attempt at a Self-Criticism', Preface to The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Shaun Whiteside, (Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 5-6. 

 

[3] Interestingly, someone who advocates for the Apollonian is the American feminist writer Camille Paglia. Whilst she broadly accepts Nietzsche's definition of the Apollonian and Dionysian, she attributes all human progress to the former (associated with masculinity, reason, celibacy and/or homosexuality) in revolt against the Chthonic forces of nature (including womanhood and procreation): "Everything great in western civilization comes from the struggle against our origins."

      See Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, (Vintage Books, 1991). The line quoted is on p. 40.  

 

[4] Those familiar with Greek mythology will recall that Apollo killed a huge serpent, called Python, who, it is said, not only persecuted Apollo's mother during her pregnancy, but wished to prevent Apollo from establishing his own temple and oracle at Delphi.   

 

[5] See Nietzsche's essay 'On the Use and Abuse of History for Life' (1874), in Untimely Meditations. 

 

[6] I'm referring to the poem by Keats entitled 'Hymn to Apollo' (not to be confused with his 'Ode to Apollo', though both works were probably written in 1815). Click here to read on allpoetry.com

 

 

This post is for MLG Maria Thanassa.  

 

A Philosopher's Guide to Home Decorating 1: Always Use a Paintbrush Not a Roller

Deutsche Philosophen malen lieber mit Pinseln 

(SA/2022)

 

 

We all know the advantages of working with a roller rather than a brush; thanks to its porous character, the former holds far more paint and provides a thin, even coat over a larger surface area.

 

Thus it is that rollers are much favoured by those who worry about saving time and money, which is probably the majority of people drifting round Homebase like DIY zombies.   

But even if the roller is a faster and more economical method of painting walls and ceilings, as a philosopher I continue to advocate for the use of a fine set of brushes and decorating slowly with great care taken over every stroke, so as to create a more textured and individual look.   

 

Ultimately, the paintbrush is a genuine hand tool (and thing) in the way that a roller is not. 

 

That is to say, when one paints with a brush, one works in a blind fashion that is determined by the body (its pleasures and fatigues); when one uses a roller, the mind is very much directing things and the eyes remain wide open at all times. 

 

I don't know if Heidegger ever painted his mother's house, as I am now doing, but he certainly knew a thing or two about the vital importance of what he termed handwork (which, rather surprisingly perhaps, also includes thinking) [1].     

 

Just as the typewriter degrades the art of writing, so does the roller degrade the art of painting [2]. Take a brush in your hand and paint with it and you will understand that, in its essence, it is more than merely useful - it is reliable. 

What does that mean? 

 

Well, according to Heidegger, the reliability of things (as things) - be they tools or items of footwear - consists in the fact that they "embed human beings in those relations to the world that make life stable" [3].

 

A roller is reliable only in the most banal sense of the word, exhausting itself in pure functionality. It might allow you to quickly add colour to the walls of a property, but it won't allow you to paint a dwelling place (any more than email allows you to compose a love letter). 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See my post 'You Need Hands' (1 June 2019), for remarks on Heidegger's love of the human hand: click here. 

 

[2] Readers are reminded of my three part series of posts reflecting on the typewriter published in June 2019: click here, for example, to read part one on the case of Martin Heidegger and the Schreibmaschine.   

 

[3] Byung-Chul Han, Non-things, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2022), p. 69. 

 

 

Notes on Byung-Chul Han's 'Non-things' (Part 2)

Byung-Chul Han: author of Non-things,

trans. Daniel Steuer (Polity Press, 2022).

Page references given in the post refer to this work.

 

 

Note: This post is a continuation. To go to part one (sections I - VI), click here. We continue our reflections on Byung-Chul Han's new book by discussing things in their evil and magical aspects ...

 

 

VII.

 

Han argues that things have lost their malevolent or villainous character; that objects, if you like, no longer seek revenge upon subjects - even when those subjects are cartoon mice or silent film stars like Charlie Chaplin. Material reality has become a safe space and offers no resistance or dangers. 

 

Things, in short, are now subordinate to our control and "even Mickey Mouse leads a digital, smart and immaterial life [...] and no longer collides with physical reality" [47]. Now there's an app for everything and a quick solution to all life's problems. Objects behave themselves; even if we build our world upon their backs, they'll no longer attempt to shrug us off. 

 

But, just in case those pesky objects are still up to no good when we're not around to keep an eye on them, we have invented the Internet of Things: "The infosphere puts things in chains. [...] It tames things and turns them into servants catering to our needs." [49]

 

In the past, we accepted the independence of things; the kettle might start whistling before we were ready to make the tea; the door might start creaking or the window begin to rattle in the middle of the night, keeping us awake. 

 

Even Sartre remained familiar "with what it means to be touched by things" [50] and this filled the protagonist of Nausea (1938) with terror. On the other hand, for Rilke things emanated warmth and he fantasised about sleeping with his beloved objects. 

 

But then things cooled down and no longer warmed us, touched us, or seduced us. And now, things are not even frigid: 

 

"They have neither cold nor warmth; they are worn out. All their vitality is waning. They no longer represent a counterpart to humans. They are not opposing bodies. Who, today, feels looked at, or spoken to, by things? [...] Who feels threatened or enchanted by things?" [52].

Perhaps a handful of object-oriented philosophers and a small number of objectum sexuals - but that's about it. It's a bit depressing to realise just how poor in world we have become as we sit staring at screens (and this has nothing to do with the so-called cost of living crisis or rising inflation):

"The digital screen determines our experience of the world and shields us from reality. [...] Things lose their gravity, their independent life and their waywardness" [52], says Han. And he's right. 

 

Right also to argue the impossibility of forming a genuine relation with a world that consists more and more of digital objects (or non-things). People talk about a mental health crisis, but depression is "nothing other than a pathologically intensified poverty in world" [53].   

 

VIII.

Han argues that we perceive the world primarily through (and as) information. Information not only covers the world, but "undermines the thing level of reality" [56] in all its intensity of presence. 

 

One way to counter this would be to establish a magical relationship with the world that is not characterised by representation, but by touch (an idea that will appeal to witches and Lawrentians alike). This is really just a question of greater attentiveness paid to things as things and forgetting of self for a moment or two: "When the ego gets weak, it is able to hear that mute thing language." [57] 

 

This may of course be disturbing, but Han wants human beings to be disturbed by the world; to be "moved by something singular" [58], to be penetrated from behind and below, so that we are thrown into a condition of radical passivity and presence is allowed to burst in. This is what creates epiphanic moments (as well as erotic joy). 

Apart from magic, there's also art ... At its best, art creates things, or material realities that are born of handwork, as Rilke says. 

 

A poem, for example, has a "sensual-physical dimension that eludes its sense" [60]. And it is because a poem exceeds the signifier and isn't exhausted by its meaning, that it constitutes a thing. One doesn't simply read a poem - any more than one simply drinks a glass of fine wine - both invite one to experience and enjoy them (to know their body, as it were).

 

Unfortunately, art is - according to Byung-Chul Han - moving away from this materialist understanding of its own practice. And what is particularly depressing about today's art "is its inclination to communicate a preconceived opinion, a moral or political conviction: that is, its inclination to communicate information" [64].  

 

In brief: "Art is seized by a forgetfulness of things [...] It wants to instruct rather than seduce." [64]  

 

Artworks today lack silence, lack stillness, lack secrecy; instead, they shout and insist that we interact with them. This probably explains why I would now rather sit in my backgarden amongst the daisies, than visit a bookshop, gallery, or theatre.   

 

 

IX.

I'm going to refrain from commenting at length or in detail upon sections in Han's new book dealing with Kakfa's struggle against ghosts and the philosophical importance of the hand in the work of Martin Heidegger (something I have previously discussed in a couple of posts published in June of 2019: click here and here).   

 

However, I very much like Han's observation that, were he alive today, the former would reluctantly resign himself to the fact that "by inventing the internet, email and the smartphone, the ghosts had won their final victory over mankind" [54] [a]. 

 

And it's always good to be reminded how the latter raised his hand (and stomped his foot) in a vain attempt to defend the terrestrial world against the digital order. He was a bit of a Nazi, but it's hard not to admire many aspects of Heidegger's thinking. But, as Han concedes, human beings have long since stopped dwelling between Earth and Sky:

 

"Human beings soar up towards the un-thinged [unbedingtheit], the unconditioned [...] towards a transhuman and post-human age in which human life will be a pure exchange of information. [...] Digitilization is a resolute step along the way towards the abolition of the humanum. The future of humans seems mapped out: humans will abolish themselves in order to posit themselves as the absolute." [72]

 

There will be no things close to our hearts - but that won't matter, for we won't have hearts, nor hands, feet, or genitals in the disembodied time to come. 

 

What was that line from Proverbs again ...? [b]

 

 

X.      

 

Why do so many people have headaches today? (I have one now.)

 

Could it be because the world is so restless and noisy; because no one knows how to keep still and stay silent; because no one can close their eyes or shut their fucking mouths for a moment?

 

As Arthur Fleck says: "Everybody is awful these days. It's enough to make anyone crazy. [...] Everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody's civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it's like to be the other guy." [c] 

 

But you don't have to be a mentally ill loner to recognise this - Byung-Chul Han pretty much tells us the same thing: "Hypercommunication, the noise of communication, desecrates the world, profanes it." [76] 

 

Learning to listen is a crucial skill; as is learning to be still if you wish to know the transcendent joy of the Greater Day and gaze with wonder upon the immensity of blue (this includes the blue of the sky, the blue of the sea, or the blue of a butterfly's wing, for example). 

 

But, paradoxically, learning to gaze also involves learning how to close one's eyes and look away, because gazing has an imaginative component. And that's important, for as Han writes:

 

"Without imagination, there is only pornography. Today, perception itself has something pornographic about it. It has the form of immediate contact, almost of a copulation of image and eye. The erotic takes place when we close our eyes. [...]

      What is so ruinous about digital communication is that it means we no longer have time to close our eyes. The eyes are forced into a 'continuous voracity'. They lose the capacity for stillness, for deep attentiveness." [79]

 

Staring at a screen is not the same as gazing at the sky; if the latter produces wonder, the former results only in eyestrain and a slavish inability not to react to every stimulus (which, as Nietzsche pointed out, is symptomatic of exhaustion and spiritual decline). Noble and healthy souls know that doing nothing is better than being hyperactive; that philosophy, for example, is born from idleness. 

 

Han terms this ability to do nothing negative potentiality:

 

"It is not a negation of positive potential but a potential of its own. It enables spirit to to engage in still, contemplative lingering, that is, deep attentiveness. [...] Stillness can be restored only by a strengthening of negative potentiality." [82] 

And where is all this leading? Towards the loss of identity - the surrender of self - towards happy anonymity: "Only in stillness, in the great silence, do we enter into a relation with the nameless, which exceeds us [...]" [83]

 

 

XI.

Byung-Chul Han closes his book with an excurses which begins with him falling off his bicycle (talk about the villainy of things) and then falling in love with a jukebox (talk about things close to the heart).  

Han likes old jukeboxes from the 1950s; they are erotico-magical things to him which "makes listening to music a highly enjoyable visual, acoustic and tactile experience" [87]. The records played on the jukebox give him "a vague sense that the world back then must have been somehow more romantic and dream-like than it is today" [88].  

Admitting that Heidegger would probably not have been a fan of the jukebox, Han insists nevertheless that apart from playing tunes, it imparts presence and intensifies being, which is something Alexa can never do.

 

This does kind of hint at the fact that Han awards thing status to whatever objects he happens to favour: J’aime, je n’aime pas - Oh, Miss Brodie, you are Barthesian ...

 

  

Notes

 

[a] I keep telling members of the D. H. Lawrence Society that whilst Zoom is extensive it lacks intensity and that being connected is not the same as being in an actual relation. Like it or not, digital communication negates physical presence and "accelerates the disappearance of the other" [55]. 

      Unfortunately, they either do not listen, do not understand, or do not seem to care. To read my post on this subject: click here. 

[b] I'm referring to Proverbs 4:23: "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." According to Byung-Chul Han, this was placed above the front door to Heidegger's house. 

[c] Joaquin Phoenix in the role of Arthur Fleck (Joker) speaking to Robert De Niro's character Murray Franklin (shortly before shooting him) in Joker (dir. Todd Philips, 2019): click here to watch on YouTube. 

 

 

Musical bonus: as Byung-Chul Han loves French singers and jukeboxes so much, here's Serge Gainsbourg on TV in 1965 performing Le claquer de doigts.

 

    

Notes on Byung-Chul Han's 'Non-things' (Part 1)

 

Polity Press (2022) [a]

 

 

I. 

 

Once upon a time, to value material objects - or things - was seen as some kind of moral failure; a sign that one lacked spiritual refinement; that one was greedy, vulgar, and superficial.

 

But times have changed and, today, more and more people are waking up to the fact that if they wish to do more than live their entire lives in a virtual universe, then they had better find a way to reconnect with actual objects which provide a (relatively) stable physical environment in which to dwell and encounter other beings.      

 

Philosopher and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han has been telling us this for some time now and, in his new book, he describes how the terrestrial order is disappearing before our very eyes; that is to say, how the world of things is being rapidly replaced by a digital realm of Undinge. 

 

Not only does digitalisation disembody the world, it abolishes memory, as the Japanese author Yōko Ogawa foresaw in her 1994 novel Hisoyaka na Kesshō [b] - a work that Han nods to in the preface to his new book, although, as he points out, in contrast to her fictional dystopia, "we do not live in a totalitarian regime whose memory police brutally rob us of our things and memories" [viii], it is, rather, "our intoxication by communication and information that makes things disappear" [viii]. 

 

In other words - and this is the main argument of the book - non-things obscure actual objects, including human beings, draining them of physical presence as they effectively become ghosts in the machine: "We no longer dwell on the earth and under the sky but on Google Earth and in the Cloud." [1]          

 

 

II. 

 

The old tree at the bottom of the garden - or that little wooden table which has stood in the corner of the frontroom for as long as you can remember - these things provide a calm centre to the world and stabilise our lives by providing a level of familiarity and continuity that you won't find in the frenzied virtual realm. 

 

Even the so-called internet of things, is really just an attempt to turn things into information terminals. Similarly, 3D printers "devalue the being of things" [3], transforming them into "the material derivatives of information" [3] - simulated objects which you can interact with but never touch or hold tight (not that we still possess hands). 

 

It's impossible to be Heideggerian in the land of non-things: for Dasein dwells in the terrestrial order of things. The smart home is really just a smart prison allowing ever-greater surveillance of our lives; we are being incarcerated, says Han, in the infosphere - and its happening in the name of greater freedom (not the freedom to act, but the freedom to choose; the freedom of the consumer). 

Another thing that is vanishing, is truth - remember that? It seems we don't have time for it any longer: "In our post-factual culture of excitement, communication is dominated by affects and emotions." [6] Spend a few minutes on Twitter and you'll soon find that out. 

 

Not only do we have no memories of the past, we cannot promise the future; as Nietzsche recognised, we are no longer capable of making commitments or being faithful - again, these things require too much discipline, too much hard work and too much time. We're too playful - and too pain averse - to practice even the slightest degree of cruelty towards the self. 

Those who still have hands and feel themselves able to act, have a duty to safeguard those old things in which memories are stored (to resist the urge to sell everything on eBay) - and to self-harm ...

 

III.

 

So: is it better to own a small record collection, or be able to access unlimited music online? How you answer this question tells us a good deal about what sort of human being you are (and not simply what generation you belong to). 

 

Possession, as Han says, "relates to the paradigm of the thing" [13]. 

 

Those like Klaus Schwab who think access rather than possession is the key to happiness, are not, it seems, interested in forming intense libidinal ties to objects. Indeed, some of these people are "no longer able to dwell with things or to imbue them with life" [13]. 

 

Personally, I love objects from the past - particularly from childhood (not that I have many) - even objects which have no value, interest, or meaning to other people (such as an old sea-shell). As Han says, possession is characterised by intimacy and is psychologically charged: "Things in my possession are vessels filled with emotions and recollections." [15]

 

In an interesting passage, he continues:

 

"The history that things acquire in the course of being used for a long time gives them souls and turns them into things close to the heart. Only discreet things, however, can be animated by intensive libidinal ties [...] Today's consumer goods are indiscreet, intrusive and over-expressive. They come loaded with prefabricated ideas and emotions that impose themselves on the consumer. Hardly anything of the consumer's life enters into them." [15]

 

This, sadly, is particularly true of children's toys and games (not that modern parents seem to care or the youngsters know what they are being denied). But it's also true of books, which have also lost their thingliness and their fate: 

 

"An e-book is not a thing, but information; it has an altogether different status of being. Even if we have it at our disposal, it is not a possession. It is something to which we have access. [...] It lacks the auratic distance from which an individual fate could speak to us [...] and it does not allow for the formation of intense ties. [...] E-books are faceless and without history. They may be read without the use of the hands. There is a tactile element in the turning of a book's pages that is constitutive of every relationship. Without bodily touch, no ties can emerge." [16] 

 

 

IV. 

 

Talking about the heavy weight of fate ... We now come to a chapter in Han's book on smartphones; in a nutshell, he doesn't like 'em. Like Walter Benjamin, he prefers the big, heavy phones from back in the day, which had "an aura of fate-like power" [18] about them. 

 

You don't get that with a smartphone - you get something small and light that you can put in your pocket; something that makes you feel in charge and connected to a non-resistant world that is at your fingertips 24/7 (the digital illusion of total availability). 

 

Meanwhile, what passes for and remains of the real world is desecrated as smartphone users retreat into their own self-enclosed space, where all is image and information. We carry the smartphone, but the smartphone enframes us, depriving reality of its presence and human beings of lived experience.

Oh, and don't get him started on the smooth design! Something he has previously compared with the trend for Brazilian waxing and the art of Jeff Koons (as discussed elsewhere on this blog - click here, for example). 

 

Their shiny smoothness shouldn't disguise the fact that smartphones are essentially the "devotional objects of the neoliberal regime" [24]; a regime that is itself smart enough to know that by serving our needs and exploiting our freedom it can exercise complete control.  

 

Whilst they may well function as devotional objects - i.e. a digital form of rosary - they are not transitional objects (i.e. a digital form of teddy bear or security blanket). And that's because they do not represent the other - rather, they are an extension of ourselves and the relationship we have with them is narcissistic. We might better think of smartphones as autistic objects (i.e. hard sources of sensation which ultimately destroy empathy and intensify our loneliness).     

 

 

V.

In a post from October 2013 on selfies, I said this:

 

"I have no wish to add my voice to those who suggest the selfie is evidence of either the empty narcissism of today's youth, or a sign that they have been pornified and suffer from low self-esteem. I understand the arguments put forward by concerned commentators, but fear that they often collapse into precisely the sort of moral hysteria that greets everything to do with technology, sex, and the play of images." [c]

So it's a little awkward - if I wish to appear consistent - to now agree with Byung-Chul Han's critique of selfies: "A selfie is an exhibited face without aura. It lacks 'melancholic' beauty. It it characterized by digital cheerfulness. [...] A selfie is not a thing ..." [33]

 

However, he's right that an old (analogue) photo lovingly kept safe in an album is a thing in a way that a digital image stored on one's phone is not: "Because of its material nature, it is fragile and exposed to the processes of ageing and decay." [29]

 

And he's right also to say: "In digital photography, alchemy gives way to mathematics. It disenchants photography." [31] Worse, it eliminates the referent - i.e., kills the thing it seeks to represent - and instead of capturing something of the real world, it generates a "new, expanded reality that does not exist, a hyper-reality that no longer corresponds to reality" [32]. 

 

If e-books have no history and smartphones have no fate, then digital images have no destiny and selfies have no secrecy. They don't deserve to be printed - only quickly viewed and then deleted. Snapchat is an instrument of what Han calls perfect justice and "represents the culmination of instantaneous digital communication" [34].

 

The problem I have with a lot of what Han says here is related to the question of the human face, something he regards far more positively than I do. Also, he wishes for photography (and human life in general) to be accorded a certain seriousness and depth. 

 

Thus, he hates selfies for "announcing the disappearance of the kind of human being who is burdened by destiny and history" [36] and for giving expression to "a form of life that devotes itself playfully to the moment" [36]. But I think that's why I like them - I don't want to see people - especially young people - looking mournfully into the camera like beasts of burden weighed down by the spirit of gravity.   

 

VI.

 

I like this idea: "Artificial intelligence is incapable of thinking, for the very reason that it cannot get goosebumps." [37] 

 

In other words, AI lacks the "affective-analogue dimension, the capacity to be emotionally affected, which lies beyond the reach of data and information" [37]. 

 

Not only do heartless machines lack passion, but they aren't prone to moods either - i.e., they can't attune themselves to the world in the way human beings can and so cannot access the world (or read the room, as it were). 

 

Oh, and they're also deaf, which is a problem, as genuine thinking requires the ability to listen. 

 

Which is all very reassuring, particularly for Heideggerians keen to reaffirm Dasein's uniqueness. Han will be telling us next that robots lack spirit ... 

 

"Artificial intelligence may compute very quickly, but it lacks spirit." [38] 

 

See - what did I tell you? 

 

Without a pinch of Geist, all AI can do is assemble Big Data which will provide knowledge of a rudimentary kind, but won't reveal unto you the secrets of the universe, or even allow you to understand the results of your own data gathering. 

 

Human thinking may have its limitations, but, at its best - when it has become a form of erotics and seems to some a kind of madness or idiocy - then it is more than mere problem solving: "It brightens and clears the world. It brings forth an altogether other world." [43]

 

And the main danger that arises from AI, "is that human thinking will adapt to it and itself become mechanical" [43].     

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2022). The work was originally published in German as Undinge: Umbrüche der Lebenswelt (Ullstein Verlag, 2021).

 

[b] This novel by Yōko Ogawa has been translated into English by Stephen Snyder and published as The Memory Police, (Vintage, 2020). 

 

[c] To read the post on selfies and the rise of the Look Generation in full, click here.  

This post continues in part two, which can be accessed by clicking here ...