On the Politics of Disgust

Disgust makes her revulsion clear in Disney Pixar's 

Inside Out (dir. Pete Docter, 2015)

 

'Nothing is more important than for us to recognise that we are bound

and sworn to what provokes our most intense disgust.' - Georges Bataille

 

 

I. 

 

Arguably, disgust - as an expression of taste - betrays a high level of sensitivity and culture; an African dung beetle, for example, may be able to navigate by the stars, but it knows nothing of disgust. 

 

But then neither does a Sadean libertine, who has vanquished all emotional responses that might be regarded as all too human and all forms of pleasure rooted in the senses over which they lack control. Sade terms this form of asceticism or Stoic indifference to the natural passions, apathy and it is central to his philosophy in the bedroom. 

 

However, most of us are not Sadean libertines and do not posit apathy as an erotic ideal, nor strive to overcome our disgust for shit-eating (coprophagy) and corpse-fucking (necrophilia), for example, as signs of our superiority. We might even view apathy, in the end, as the way in which a madman seeks to justify his lack of remorse or compassion for others.    

 

 

II. 

 

Disgust, as Tina Kendall rightly says, "has long been a subject of anxious speculation" [1]. 

 

And as she also reminds us: 

 

"Recently, there has been a revitalisation of debates pertaining to disgust from across a range of disciplines, as witnessed by publications in the fields of philosophical aesthetics, phenomenology, cognitive and moral psychology, literary theory, and feminist and queer theory." [2] 

 

Continuing: 

 

"What unites much of this interdisciplinary work on disgust is a shared concern with thinking through the relations between bodily sensation, emotion, and cognition [...] and with probing the political, moral, and ethical implications that arise from those particular conditions of embodiment." [3]

 

That's true, I think, though I also agree with Martha Nussbaum, who suggests that what is most interesting about disgust is that it often acts as an intensifier of other negative emotions, such as anger or hatred. 

 

But what is the origin of disgust: is it rooted in evolutionary biology, or is it primarily an emotional phenomenon - with an added moral dimension - that is determined culturally?

 

Darwin famously wrote on the subject and seemed to believe that disgust is an evolved response to potential dangers, such as rotten meat, or body products that can spread disease (such as excrement). This identifies disgust - mostly associated with our sense of smell and taste - as an important defensive mechanism, protecting us from pathogens, etc. It's not, therefore, the wholly irrational reaction that some people imagine.   

 

But, of course, we can experience disgust for things we don't like the look or feel of too - and some people with particularly sensitive ears can even find certain noises disgusting (readers can provide their own examples, many of which will doubtless involve bodily functions).

 

There's extensive research evidence that women experience greater levels of disgust - including self-disgust and sexual disgust - than men. Again, there may well be physiological reasons for this, but it's surely something that has been socially reinforced.

There's also evidence that forms of visceral prejudice, such as racism and homophobia, are rooted in disgust and not just in ignorance, as many idealists like to believe - which is why education isn't the solution they hope it will be. In some cases, disgust for others is so overwhelming that it prevents individuals from self-examination or ever learning to love their neighbour. 

 

Ultimately, the greater one's level of disgust, the greater one's level of hate for those who inspire such and the greater one's desire to do away with them; we recall once more the case of Gregor Samsa. Fascism is the collective political expression of disgust which denies not only the rights of other citizens, but their humanity, and this results (ironically) in the most disgusting acts and scenes imaginable. 

 

And yet, disgust may also be the strong vital sensation that Kant said it was; one that prevents us from committing acts of atrocity or vile crimes. 

 

Besides, as Walter Benjamin concluded, no one is ever completely free from disgust; not even the Sadean libertine, who never really overcomes their instinct of revulsion, merely redirects it, so that, for example, they feel disgust for conventional forms of love and moral behaviour. 

 

In sum, and to quote Tina Kendall once more, disgust's complex and "distinctly polymorphic nature" [4] as both a visceral reflex and a leared emotional response, makes it a "uniquely privileged concept" [5] and critical tool for thinking through a number of important issues. 

 

The philosopher, therefore, can never just say eww! and look away from that which (rightly perhaps) revolts the non-philosopher living in Tunbridge Wells.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Tina Kendall, 'Tarrying with Disgust', an Introduction to Volume 15, Issue 2 of the journal Film-Philosophy, ed. Tina Kendall, (Edinburgh University Press, Oct 2011), p. 1. 

      Click here to read Kendall's Introduction; or click here to read the entire issue on academia.edu 

[2] Ibid.  

[3-5] Ibid., p. 2. 

The Broken Heart Knows No Country

A short guide to D. H. Lawrence country

by Bridget Pugh (Nottinghamshire 

Local History Council, 1972)

I. The View from Walker Street

In a letter to Rolf Gardiner written in December 1926, Lawrence provides a fairly detailed description of the East Midlands landscape in which he grew up; the so-called country of his heart - a phrase much loved by those who would forever tie Lawrence to Eastwood and fix his work within a literary tradition of English Romanticism.  

It is, for me - as for all those who prefer to think of Lawrence as a perverse European modernist, writing after Darwin, Nietzsche and Freud rather than Byron, Shelley and Keats - another of those deeply unfortunate expressions.

Like his self-description as a priest of love, I really wish he'd never said it. But, say it he did. And so let's examine this phrase and see if we can interepret it in a manner that doesn't serve a depressingly provincial purpose - as if the view from Walker Street was the only one that shaped Lawrence's perspective upon the world.

II. The Savage Pilgrimage

As is clear from much of his writing - particularly his letters - one of Lawrence's driving obsessions was to stage an angry engagement with England, whilst also making good his escape from the place of his birth in all its perceived dullness. 

His savage pilgrimage is usually said to begin after the War and refer to a period of voluntary exile. And whilst it's true and important to recall the fact that Lawrence left Britain at the earliest practical opportunity - only returning for brief visits, the last of which was in 1926 - I think we find this schizonomadic desire to flee from the suffocating familiarity of home from the start.

The fact is, Lawrence always hated Eastwood and couldn't wait to get away - first to Nottingham, then to London and to Cornwall, before drifting with Frieda around Europe, America and Australia. In 1913, he once confessed as much to his sister Ada, telling her that he should be glad if the town were one day blown off the face of the earth. 

We shouldn't forget that nostalgia is a type of disease - not a sign of health - and that if Lawrence occasionally displayed symptoms of homesickness he was essentially sick of home: 

"It always depresses me to come to my native district. Now I am turned forty, and have been more or less a wanderer for nearly twenty years, I feel more alien, perhaps, in my home place than anywhere else in the world. I can feel at ease in ... Rome or Paris or Munich or even London. But in Nottingham Road, [Eastwood], I feel at once a devouring nostalgia and an infinite repulsion."

That's the Lawrence I admire: refusing to belong to any community or region; a singular individual who is no longer their Bert - and probably never was.

And as for the heart to which memories of childhood landscapes are said to belong, well, like Lawrence, I would prefer for it to be broken rather than preserved in formaldehyde; for it's wonderfully liberating to abandon the past and to find new things to treasure, new people and places to love, within the dawn-kaleidoscopic loveliness of the crack.

See: 

D. H. Lawrence, letter to Rolf Gardiner, 3 Dec. 1926, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V. March 1924 - March 1927, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989).

D. H. Lawrence, [Return to Bestwood], Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 15. 

Punk bonus: Stiff Little Fingers: Gotta Gettaway (Rough Trade, 1979): I'm sure this is how the young Lawrence felt (it's certainly how I felt at 16): click here to play on YouTube.

Love Devalued (A Post for Valentine's)

When love becomes an ideal - when it becomes caught up in a system of values - then love becomes a problem. 

Not that you would know this to hear most people speak. For the majority, love remains a final solution, not something troublesome or in any way ambiguous; not even something particularly complex. Love is simply synonymous with the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. 

I know this having attended a public debate on the subject last night at Richmond Adult Community College, chaired by Filiz Peach. Not only did members of the audience seem to agree that Eros should be forever bound by the altruistic values of Christian moral culture, but, shamefully, so did the panel of speakers (even if they referred us not only to Jesus, but to Plato, Darwin and Freud). 

Half-hearted attempts to suggest a biological or psychological basis for love, didn't disguise the fact that essentially they remained believers in and advocates of a non-narcissistic love of self and a non-exploitative love of the other; i.e. a pure love that is all-embracing, ontologically-rooted, and prepared to sacrifice anything (or anyone) to ensure its triumph. A love to live for, a love to die for, and, ultimately, a love to kill for.

This might appear to be a rather extreme interpretation of what was said by the speakers, but it is precisely because love as an ideal knows no limits that it ends by becoming suicidal and homocidal. The murderer, says Lawrence, is all too often a lover acting on the recoil. 

This is lethal enough at an individual level, but it becomes far more fatal on a collective level when love as an ideal is allowed to infect our social and political life. Fascism, communism, and liberal humanism all act in the name of love and all bring death in their wake.

We need, then, to rethink this question of love. To free Eros from his ideal chains and forced complicity within a system of moral values. To make of love a game and an art; a way of playfully giving style to our lives, not of discovering some profound meaning. When we resist the urge to make love definitive of the truth of our being, we might even find we can enjoy it again ...

  

Notes on the Conflict Thesis

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

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

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