What Was I Thinking? (13 December)

Torpedo the Ark: images from posts published on 

13 December (2014-2023)

 

 

Apart from 2012, 2013, 2019, 2020, and 2022, I have published a post on this date on Torpedo the Ark in every year since its inception. And sometimes, it can be instructive to look back and see what one was thinking and how things may have changed since ...

 

 

Carry On Facesitting (13 Dec 2014) 

This perfectly innocent post is, I discover, another now placed behind a sensitive content warning by the censor-morons who police things for Blogger (which has been owned and hosted by Google since 2003): is it something I said in the text, is it the accompanying image, or is it both? 

 

I don't know. And Google will not say: they simply refer you to their community guidelines and then invite you to identify your own wrongdoing, rectify the situation, and then republish the post in the hope that, after an official review, you'll be allowed to keep it up and that it will be freely accessible to readers. 

For the record: the post is fine as is and I do not intend to make any changes to it. It does not advocate facesitting, although, even if it did, this is not a criminal activity and harms no one.

 

Rather, the post simply reported on a good-natured and somewhat comical protest outside Parliament by sex workers, freedom-loving perverts, and various interested and/or sympathetic parties against new legislation that prohibits the depiction of certain kinky (but nonetheless perfectly legal) acts between consenting adults.

 

It amazed me then and amazes me now, that the UK government might spend its time opposing activities such as facesitting - or regulating the size of dildos - on the (spurious) grounds of health and safety. As one of the organisers of the protest pointed out, the new laws are not only anti-queer, but also inherently sexist, as many of the activities discriminated against are ones that afford specifically female pleasure and empowerment. 

 

 

On the Truth of Things (13 Dec 2015) 

 

Whilst conceding that questions concerning politics and psychagogy are philosophically interesting and that one must invariably return to them at some point, for me, back in 2015 - in my object-oriented days - I was more enthralled by those entities that make up an inhuman and non-human universe and encourage the posing of questions that do not always posit Man as the central subject or final solution.

 

In other words - and I still think this now - the beauty and the truth of things is precisely that 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.

 

 

Reflections from a Sickbed (13 Dec 2016) 

 

It strikes me that the depressing thing about a long-term health condition, is that it lowers your expectations of what constitutes a good life; one is suddenly pleased merely to experience a pain-free day.  

On the other hand, convalescence is a vital phenomenon and so sometimes one welcomes being sick, so that one can, as Heidegger would say, return home to oneself and one's destiny - which of course is death (as all being is a being-towards death). 

 

That being the case, it's not surprising that when ill in bed back on December 13th, 2016 my thoughts should turn to the question of how best to dispose of that most accursed of all objects, one's own corpse. After considering several of the main methods, including cremation, inhumation, and immurement, I decided that a Tibetan sky burial - in which one is literally fed to the vultures - was the most attractive option.  

 

 

Kissing Hitler 1: Some Like It Hot / Kissing Hitler 2: Notes on the Führer's Love Life (13 Dec 2017) 

 

Not one, but two posts on the theme of kissing Hitler published on the same day back in 2017 - what was I thinking, indeed! Perhaps there's some truth in Godwin's law after all ...

Although, as a matter of fact, the first post - 'Some Like It Hot' - was more about Tony Curtis (and what it was like to share an on-screen smooch with Marilyn Monroe), than about Hitler as a recipient of amorous affection. 

 

The second post, however, did look somewhat deeper into Hitler's love life - something that has long been subject to critical and clinical analysis, as well as sensational speculation and obscene rumour. I arrived at the conclusion that, ultimately, it was a pity that Hitler wasn't more of a libertine and less of a Nazi; it's always better to make love rather than war, no matter how perversely one may choose to do so.      

 

On Poetry and Plagiarism (With Reference to the Case of Ailey O'Toole) (13 Dec 2018) 

 

The case of the young American poet Ailey O'Toole - which caused a bit of fuss in certain literary circles - still interests me and I still feel that Ms. O'Toole has nothing to apologise for or feel ashamed about and that she was treated poorly by moralists defending bourgeois (and untenable) notions of intellectual property.

 

For the fact remains, very few poets invent neologisms; and even fewer have original thoughts or feelings. They essentially rearrange the words of a shared language and play with the ideas and emotions of the culture to which they belong. It's an art - and it can produce amazing results - but poetry is never a personal or private matter, no matter how idiosyncratic one's writing style. 

 

As Roland Barthes would argue, the poem-as-text is neither representative of a non-linguistic reality, nor expressive of an author's unique being. It's explainable only through other words that are also drawn from a pre-given, internalised dictionary. Every poem is, in a sense, already a copy of a copy of a copy whose origin is forever lost and meaning infinitely deferred. 

 

Wherever she is today - and whatever she's doing - I send Ms. O'Toole kind regards and warm wishes.  

 

 

Notes on the Fetishist (And Other Stories) by Michel Tournier (13 Dec 2020)

 

Michel Tournier was the writer I loved reading most in the winter of 2020-21 and I wrote over twenty posts inspired by (or referencing) his work in this period. 

 

This includes the above post, in which I offered a series of notes on a collection of stories originally published in French under the title Le Coq de Bruyère (1978) and which offered a queer and often disconcerting dip into the world of the sordid supernatural (to borrow the author's own description).  

 

Those who enjoy philosophically-informed fiction that explores the porno-mythic imagination and accelerates what Jonathan Dollimore terms the perverse dynamic, will like this book - and like it a lot. Other readers, who don't enjoy such fiction, probably won't like it so much (but then, such people probably aren't spending time on this blog either). 

 

The Day of the Golden Jackal (13 Dec 2021)

 

I love felines: but I'm not so keen on canids. 

 

That said, I was happy to discover back in December 2021 that the number of golden jackals - small wolf-like animals, about three times the size of a red fox - have been rapidly expanding in number and increasing their range in recent decades. 

 

Apparently, you can now find jackals living, hunting, and howling in many parts of Central and Northeastern Europe and it has been estimated by the IUCN that whilst there may be fewer than 17,000 wolves left in Europe, there are around 117,000 jackals - and the more the merrier, I say, although, of course, all the usual suspects - such as farmers - raise their familiar objections. 

 

Sadly, therefore, these intelligent and sociable animals continue to be hunted in many countries; one can only invoke the great jackal-headed god Anubis to bite off the hands and tear out the throats of those who harm them (some think that capital punishment for deliberate cruelty to animals is a bit extreme, but I'm not one of them). 

 

 

On the Haunting Beauty of Sue Lloyd (13 Dec 2023)

 

Finally, on December 13th last year, I discussed how, as I get older, my desire is increasingly tied to nostalgia and has effectively become a type of spectrophilia; i.e., sexual attraction to ghosts, or, as in my case, the haunting images of dead actresses from the 1960s and '70s. 

 

This includes Sue Lloyd, who guest starred in many much loved English TV shows during this period, but is perhaps best remembered today for her long-running role as as Barbara Hunter (née Brady) in the British soap opera Crossroads.

 

A former dancer and model, Miss Lloyd also appeared in a number of films; performing alongside Michael Caine in The Ipcress File (1965) and Joan Collins in The Stud (1978), for example.  

 

But what I like most about Miss Lloyd is not her acting credentials, but the fact she exuded the kind of dazzling beauty and sexual sophistication of the older woman which excited me as an adolescent and continues to work its magic some 50 years later. 

 

 

In Memory of Cat

Cat (June 2024)

 

 

I.

 

Mon chat est mort aujourd'hui. 

 

Unlike Nellie McKay, however, I didn't pour myself some gin; nor ponder whether she died from natural causes or, like Jesus, for my sins [1]. 

 

For whilst I loved her oh so much - and will miss her little kitty touch - such a question seems irrelevant (and a little inappropriate) in this case; her death was very much due to a combination of old age and illness and had nothing to do with substitutionary atonement. 

 

II.

 

Cat had been displaying many of the common signs of feline senescence - loss of appetite, restricted mobility, behavioural changes, etc. - for some time. I'm sure she knew she was getting older, although whether she had a concept of death and could instinctively sense that her own days were numbered, I don't know (and the science isn't certain on this point either).

 

But I think so: and believe she even made an effort to say goodbye. 

 

Her final hours were spent - contentedly I hope - in her favourite corner of the garden, in the sunshine, surrounded by the flowers ...

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring here to the Nellie McKay track 'Ding Dong' found on her brilliant debut album Get Away From Me (Columbia Records, 2004): click here to play.  

Thy Teeth Shall Not Do Him Violence, Nor Thy Bowels Contain His Glorious Body!

 

Juan de Juanes:  

Christ the Saviour with the Eucharist (1545-1550)

 

And after he had given thanks, Jesus broke the bread, and said: 

'Take, eat! This is my body, which is broken for you ...' [1]

I. 

 

Just for the record, I am not now and nor have I ever been a member of the Christian Church and so Holy Communion (or Mass) is not something I have personal experience or knowledge of. Thus, the question surrounding what happens to the sacremental bread (or host) once it has been consecrated and consumed as the body of Christ, is not really a great concern to me. 

 

However, for those who take these matters very seriously indeed and believe the miraculous teaching of transubstantiation - which is central to the Eucharist - to be literally true and not merely a symbolic act, the suggestion that Christ's holy flesh might have an excremental fate is problematic to say the least and has been the topic of fierce theological and philosophical debate going back many centuries.

 

 

II. 

 

Following the widespread religious, cultural, and social upeaval triggered by the Reformation, this really rather odd debate became heated once more and 17th-century English poet John Milton was particulary horrified by the thought that Christ could be eaten and subject to the natural processes of digestion:

 

"The Mass brings down Christ's holy body from its supreme exaltation at the right hand of God. It drags it back to the earth, though it has suffered every pain and hardship already, to a state of humiliation even more wretched and degrading than before: to be broken once more and crushed to the ground, even by the fangs of brutes. Then, when it has been driven through all the stomach's filthy channels, it shoots it out - one shudders even to mention it - into the latrine." [2]  

This passage not only exposes Milton's coprophobia, but makes his opposition to what is known as stercoranism equally clear.

 

For outraged Puritans like Milton, the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation simply could not be true as this would not only mean that Mass is a form of cannibalism and utterly alien to reason - which is bad enough - but that it results in something so repulsive as to be blasphemous: Christ's flesh turned to shit.  

 

 

III. 

 

Whilst early Church theologians were prepared to accept that the sacramental elements of Christ's body were digested and excreted, later Catholic thinkers did what they could to repudiate this idea; declaring, for example, that whilst Christ is indeed present in the consecrated bread and wine, that is only before they are consumed and lose their appearance.   

 

In other words, when  the sacramental forms of bread and wine are changed, the substantial presence of Christ ceases to be. 

Despite this attempt to reassure, however, still the fear of stercoranism persisted, although, for me, it's a positively healthy thing to recognise that the holy spirit returns at last to that from which it arises; i.e., base matter. 

 

For whilst the marrying of shit and divinity may cause horror in the minds of some, there are compelling philosophical reasons eschatology should always include a scatological component and that's why what might otherwise seem to be an arcane (and insane) discussion over the status of the bread and wine used in the mass is still vital.    

 

Ultimately, we all unite in shit even if we do not all cleave together in the body of Christ. And that's what Holy Communion teaches us: paradise is regained in death; a festive return to the actual, as Nietzsche describes it [3].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] First Epistle to the Corinthians 11: 24.

 

[2] John Milton, Complete Poetry and Essential Prose, ed. William Kerrigan, John Peter Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon (Modern Library, 2007), p. 1290. 

      Despite what Milton warns here and elsewhere in his prose writings about worshipping a wafer and cannibalising the body of Christ, communion is given prominence in Paradise Lost (1667) and an astonishing vision of transubstantiation on a cosmic scale is imagined. Push comes to shove, I prefer the playful poet over the angry puritan reformer.

      Readers interested in this topic might like to see the excellent essay by Regina M. Schwartz, 'Real Hunger: Milton's Vision of the Eucharist', in Religion & Literature, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 1-17. The essay is conveniently availble on JSTOR: click here. 

 

[3] See Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe, Volume 9, 11 [70], where, in a note written in 1881, he says that we shouldn't think of our return to the realm of inanimate matter (the 'dead world') as a regression, but, rather, as a joyous form of reconciliation with what is actual. 

 

Reflections on Vita Contemplativa by Byung-Chul Han (Part One)

(Polity Press, 2024)

 

 

I. 

 

The subtitle of Byung-Chul Han's new little book is In Praise of Inactivity [a]. But it's important to understand at the outset that he uses this term in a positive philosophical sense. That is to say, he conceives of inactivity as a negative potentiality; the ability to do nothing.

 

But Han is not merely encouraging us to be idle in the laid-back and whimsical manner of Tom Hodgkinson - although, to be fair to the latter, I feel I was perhaps a little harsh on him back in 2012 [b]. Nor is he encouraging his readers to learn the art of immaculate perception so they can look at life without desire [c].     

 

He wants us, rather, to engage in a form of deep attentiveness that is central to the vita contemplativa [d]. To perform less: to consume less: to be still and silent a little more, so as to radiate in our own starry singularity and not merely keep rolling on and on like a stone subject to mechanical laws.    

 

 

II. 

 

In a line that would delight the witches of Treadwell's, Han writes: "Inactivity has a logic of its own, its own language, temporality, architecture, magnificence - even its own magic." [1] 

 

Inactivity, he goes on to say, is an intensity - an unseen power that is crucial to Dasein's existence (not a weakness, an absence, a lack, or a defect). And philosophical reflection - or thought in the Lawrentian sense of the term [e] - is born of this intensity. 

 

Only machines don't know how to rest or reflect; artificial intelligence is born of activity, not inactivity. They - the machines - may be very good at organising and coordinating chaos, but they don't know how to give style, which is why they may drive society forward, but they'll never give birth to culture:

 

"History and culture are not congruent. Culture is formed by diversion, excess and detour; it is not produced by following the path that leads straight to the goal. The essence at the core of culture is ornamentation. Culture sits beyond functionality and usefulness. The ornamental dimension, emancipated from any goal or use, is how life insists that it is more than survival. Life receives its divine radiance from that absolute decoration that does not adorn anything." [3]   

 

 

III.

 

Han is basically reviving an old set of terms and values, such as festivity and luxury, whilst rejecting those terms and values that define our present (utilitarian) world order: efficiency and functionality. Freedom from purpose and usefulness, he says, is "the essential core of inactivity" [5] and the key to human happiness. 

 

Which is fine - this remains an important teaching - but it's nothing new. And one can't help wondering if Han doesn't spend far more of his time endlessly re-reading those authors whom he privileges rather than contemplating life (and the natural world) directly. 

 

For whilst there are plenty of DWEMs in his book, there are very few live animals; even the hesitant wing of the butterfly is a reference to an elegy by Schiller (via Walter Benjamin) rather than to an actual insect and I miss the sound of bees buzzing and birds calling in his writing. 

 

Unfortunately, when you enter the space of thinking opened up by Han, it feels like one is entering a magnificent library or a cathedral rather than an "unexplored realm of dangerous knowledge" [f], or a jungle with "tigers and palm trees and rattle snakes" [g] and all the other wonders hatched by a hot sun. 

 

I think it was Sartre who once said of Bataille: 'He tells us to laugh, but he does not make us laugh.' And I kind of feel the same about Han: he tells us to dance and to play, but he fails to make us feel either lightfooted or lighthearted. Likewise, when he gathers us round the camp fire - a medium of inactivity - we are not warmed.   

 

 

IV.

 

I suppose the problem I have is that Han is just a bit too much of an ascetic philosopher. 

 

Thus, whilst he wants to revive the notion of the festival, he insists nevertheless that festivals must be "free from the needs of mere life" [7] and tries to convince us that it's better to fast than to feast; that the former is noble in character and helps initiate us into the secrets of food.  

 

What is inactivity, he suggests, other than ultimately a form of spiritual fasting. 

 

I have to admit, I don't like this idea of going to bed hungry and going to bed early; nor, for that matter, do I want to go to bed cold, as I've done that too often in the past and it doesn't make life any more vital or radiant. 

 

Nor does it make it easier to sleep - the latter being  a medium of truth for Han (as for Proust and Freud): "Sleep reveals a true internal world that lies behind the things of the external world, which are mere semblance. The dreamer delves into the deeper layers of being." [9] [h]

 

Again, that's not the kind of idea - or language - that I'm comfortable with. I simply do not believe that sleep and dreams are "privileged places for truth" [9] - even though I love a good nap as much as anyone.    

 

However, I'm a bit more sympathetic to the idea that boredom - as that state of inactivity which allows for mental relaxation - is something we should cherish (even whilst coming from a punk background in which being bored was just about the worst thing that could befall one). 

 

I understand now that boredom isn't half as boring as the distractions invented to relieve us from boredom and that the less able we are to endure boredom, so our ability to enjoy life's real pleasures or do great things decreases. As Han says: 

 

"The seed of the new is not the determination to act but the unconscious event. When we lose the capacity to experience boredom, we also lose access to the activities that rest on it." [17]

 

And so it is that now I admire those who, like David Puddy, can just patiently sit still during a flight without having to flick through a magazine, watch a film, or start a conversation [i].    

 

 

V. 

 

Blanchot, Han reminds us, places inactivity in close relation to death: as the utmost intensification of the latter. 

 

And so too does he suggest that art also requires an "intensive relation to death" [12]. It is death, for example - not the will to knowledge or self-expression - that opens up the space of literature and writers can only write thanks to their inactivity and their proximity to death.

 

And the best writers, as Roland Barthes recognised, are those who dare to be idle and do not continually affirm their authorship of a text, or constantly promote themselves: "They give up their names and become no one. Nameless and intentionless, they succumb to what happens." [15] 

 

In an interview for Le Monde in 1979, Barthes marvelled at the simplicity of a Zen poem which perfectly expresses what it is he dreams about:

 

Sitting peacefully doing nothing

Springtime is coming

and the grass grows all by itself [j]   

 

It's a nice thought that inactivity has a "de-subjectifying, de-individualizing, even disarming effect" [15]. That, in other words, it allows us to disappear and leave nothing behind us but a smile like the Cheshire Cat ...

 

 

John Tenniel's illustration of the Cheshire Cat beginning to 

vanish in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (1865)

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2024). The book was originally published as Vita Contemplativa: Oder von der Untatigkeit (Ullstein Verlag, 2022). All page numbers given in the post refer to the English edition. 

 

[b] See the post entitled 'How to be an Idle Cunt' (29 Dec 2012): click here. 

 

[c] See the post entitled 'The Voyeur' (29 April 2013): click here. 

 

[d] This Latin phrase - popular with Augustine and the scholastics - comes from the ancient Greek concept of βίος θεωρητικός formulated by Aristotle and later developed by the Stoics. In English it is usually translated simply as contemplative life.   

 

[e] "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". See D. H. Lawrence, 'Thought', The Poems, Vol. 1, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 580-81. 

      I discuss Lawrence's philosophy of mind with reference to this poem in a post published on 4 Dec 2015: click here.  

 

[f] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1990), p. 53.

 

[g] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1969), p. 165.  

 

[h] Click here for a post on sleep and dreams published on 6 Feb 2015. 

 

[i] David Puddy is a fictional character on the situation comedy Seinfeld, played by Patrick Warburton. He is the on-and-off boyfriend of the character Elaine Benes. Click here to watch the scene I'm thinking of in the season 9 episode 'The Butter Shave' (dir. Andy Ackerman, 1997).  

 

[j] See Roland Barthes, 'Dare to Be Lazy', in The Grain of the Voice, trans. Linda Coverdale, (University of California Press, 1991), p. 341. Han quotes this haiku on p. 15 of Vita Contemplativa.  

 

 

Further reflections on Byung-Chul Han's Vita Contemplativa can be found in part two of this post - click here and part three: click here.   

On Oblivion

 

I. 

 

I was interested to hear the Chairman of the D. H. Lawrence Society, Mr Alan Wilson, claim in a recent sermon streamed live from St. Mary's Church, Greasley, on the theme of (so-called) Lawrencian Spirituality [1], that Lawrence was searching for something "beyond ultimate oblivion".

 

For although he was right to identify the importance of the term oblivion in Lawrence’s late poetry [2] - and whilst I would agree with Mark Fisher that "awareness of our own Nothingness is [...] a pre-requisite for a feeling of grace" [3] - there is no beyond oblivion; that's the tremendous challenge of the concept and why it is incompatible with the fundamental Christian belief of eternal life.  

 

In other words, if you subscribe to the idea of oblivion, you must accept the final sinking of one's soul into the magnificent dark blue gloom and the total erasure of self. To hope for life beyond oblivion, is as absurd as wishing to be remembered after one has been completely forgotten.     

 

 

II.

 

Whilst there may be some religious adherents who subscribe to the idea of oblivion [4], I tend to think of it more as a philosophical (and neuroscientific) concept, associated with those for whom death means what it says on the tin: the cessation of all consciousness (or subjective experience) and complete non-existence in any personal sense of the term. 

 

Socrates famously considered the question of oblivion when he was sentenced to death. Addressing the court, he first considers the possibility that his soul will migrate from this life and this world to the next life and next world. 

 

Although this idea appeals to him - because then he'll be able to discuss philosophy with all the great thinkers of the past - Socrates is nevertheless prepared to accept that death might, in fact, be terminal. This prospect doesn't frighten him, however, as oblivion essentially means to his mind a dreamless and uninterrupted sleep [5].  

 

Later thinkers, including the great Roman philosophers Cicero and Lucretius, basically came to a similar conclusion; i.e., that death was either a continuation of consciousness or cessation of it, and that if the former, then there is no reason to fear death; while if the latter is true, then there's also no good reason to be deeply troubled (for one will know nothing, feel nothing, be nothing).

 

As Epicurus famously put it in his Letter to Meneoceus: 'When I am, death is not; when death is, I am not.'

 

 

III.

 

Ultimately, oblivion is really just a term for a mind-independent reality; i.e., a reality which, despite the presumptions of human narcissism, "is indifferent to our existence and oblivious to the 'values' and 'meanings' which we would drape over it in order to make it more hospitable" [6].   

 

I don't know if saying that makes me a nihilist, a naturalist, or an extinctionist. But it certainly makes it difficult to subscribe to Lawrence's vitalism which makes oblivion strangely inviting; like a relaxing bath that we pop in and out of, feeling refreshed and reborn into a new body.

 

What such a cosy idea ignores is the fact that, as Ray Brassier reminds us, ultimately there will be no cosmos to be reborn into; that one day - roughly one trillion, trillion, trillion years from now - "the accelerating expansion of the universe will have disintegrated the fabric of matter itself, terminating the possibility of embodiment" [7]. 

 

Brassier continues: 

 

"Every star in the universe will have burnt out, plunging the cosmos into a state of absolute darkness and leaving behind nothing but spent husks of collapsed matter. All free matter, whether on planetary surfaces or in interstellar space, will have decayed, eradicating any remnants of life based in protons and chemistry, and erasing every vestige of sentience - irrespective of its physical basis. Finally, in a state cosmologists call 'asymptopia', the stellar corpses littering the empty universe will evaporate into a brief hailstorm of elementary particles. Atoms themselves will cease to exist. Only the implacable gravitational expansion will continue, driven by the currently inexplicable force called 'dark energy', which will keep pushing the extinguished universe deeper and deeper into an eternal and unfathomable blackness." [8]

 

In other words: oblivion über alles ...

 

I'm sure some believers will mumble about this universal annihilation all being part of God's plan, but, of course, we know that's bullshit - this is the disintegration of God's plan and the return to formless and empty chaos marks the triumph of evil.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Those with an hour and twenty minutes to spare and who are interested, can watch Wilson and two other speakers, Anthony Rice and John Patemen, discuss their understanding of Lawrentian Spirituality on the D. H. Lawrence Society YouTube channel by clicking here. The event took place on Saturday 18 November, 2023, at Greasley Church (Nottinghamshire).

 

[2] See the poems beginning with 'The Ship of Death' and ending with 'Phoenix', in 'The Last Poems Notebook', in D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 630-641. Almost every poem in this sequence contains the word oblivion. The amusing thing is that Lawrence explicitly warns that any one who attempts to ascribe attributes to oblivion is guilty of blasphemy - but that, of course, is precisely what he's doing.   

 

[3] Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, (Zero Books, 2022), p.157. 

 

[4] In Christian theology, for example, there is a notion of annihilationism which opens up the idea of oblivion. In sum, it's the belief that after the Last Judgment, all damned human souls and fallen angels - including Lucifer - will be totally destroyed and their consciousness extinguished. 

      Annihilationism thus stands in contrast to both the belief in eternal torment and the belief that everyone will ultimately be saved and given eternal life. Although the idea has come in and out of vogue throughout the history of the Church, annihilationism has tended to be a minority view. In 1995, the Church of England's Doctrine Commission declared that Hell may, in fact, be a state of total non-being (i.e., oblivion), rather than a place of eternal suffering.

 

[5] One could, if one was tempted to do so, challenge Socrates on this idea of death as a kind of sleep - just as one might challenge Lawrence's poetic descriptions of death as a plunge into darkness, or the idea that we are merely dipped in oblivion so as to be reborn on the other side. 

      In his paper 'Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity', the naturalist philosopher Thomas W. Clark critiqued such flawed descriptions and the temptation (even amongst some atheists) to imagine that we might still - in some miraculous manner - experience or know death. By using the language of darkness, silence, and peaceful oblivion we effectively reify nothingness; i.e., make it into a positive condition or quality, into which the deceased individual can then be conveniently lodged.

      Clark's paper was originally published in 1994 as a lead article for the Humanist. It was reprinted in The Experience of Philosophy, ed. Daniel Kolak and Ray Martin, (Oxford University Press, 2005) and in The Philosophy of Death Reader, ed. Markar Melkonian, (Bloomsbury, 2019). It is also available to read on Clark's website Naturalism.Org: click here.

[6] Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. xi.

 

[7] Ibid., p. 228.

[8] Ibid.

 

 

This post is in memory of David Foster Wallace (1962-2008), whose final collection of short stories was published under the title Oblivion (Little, Brown and Company, 2004). The image at the top of this post is based on artwork by Mario J. Pulice for the cover of the first edition of this work.  

D'notre amour fou n'resterait que des cendres (In Memory of Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg)

Jane Birkin (Dec 1946 - July 2023)

 

 

I'm very sad to note that - 32 years after the death of Serge Gainsbourg - Jane Birkin has died. 

 

Theirs may or may not have been the greatest (or even craziest) love affair of the 20th century, but it was certainly the one that I found most intriguing (and possibly the most touching).

So what, then, remains now that they are both dead? Only ashes, as they themselves anticipated?

 

No.

Jane and Serge leave behind a huge number of beautiful images, beautiful songs - perhaps the most beautiful ever written in French - and beautiful memories. 

 

And, in Jane's case, she even leaves behind a beautiful Hermès bag to which she lent her name. 

 

You can't hope for much more than that ...  

 

 

Note: the title of this post is a line from a track entitled Quoi, found on the 1986 compilation album by Birkin. The song - one of my favourites - was written by Gainsbourg and Cesare De Natale (arr. Guido & Maurizio De Angelis). Click here to play here and watch the video on YouTube.   

 

 

From a Baby in a Basket ... Lines in Memory of My Mother: Doreen Hall (10 July 1926 - 13 Feb 2023)

Me and My Mother (c. 1969)

 

 

I. 

 

I was in two minds about whether to speak or stay silent at my mother's funeral service, which was held this morning at South Essex Crematorium. But in the end I decided that I had to say something and wanted to say something; for if I didn't, then who would? 

 

But I also decided it was important to keep it simple, keep it brief, and keep it honest. And so, for anyone who might be interested, here's what I said ...    

 

II.

 

From a baby in a basket to a corpse in a casket: and in between - a life. 

 

A life defined in terms of duty and by a promise made as a Brownie: I promise to do my best. 

 

I think the one thing that can be said of my mother without fear of contradiction is that she always tried to do her best. 

 

But now, sadly, my mother's life has come to a close and everyday language is somehow inadequate to express one's emotions at this time - which is why we turn to poetry ... 

 

This short verse, written by D. H. Lawrence at the end of his own life, is one that I find particularly touching: 

 

 

All Souls Day 

 

Be careful, then, and be gentle about death. 

For it is hard to die, it is difficult to go through 

the door, even when it opens. 

 

And the poor dead, when they have left the walled 

and silvery city of the now hopeless body 

where are they to go, O where are they to go? 

 

They linger in the shadow of the earth. 

The earth's long conical shadow is full of souls 

that cannot find the way across the sea of change. 

 

Be kind, Oh be kind to your dead 

and give them a little encouragement 

and help them to build their little ship of death. 

 

For the soul has a long, long journey after death 

to the sweet home of pure oblivion. 

Each needs a little ship, a little ship 

and the proper store of meal for the longest journey. 

 

Oh, from out of your heart 

provide for your dead once more, equip them 

like departing mariners, lovingly. 

 

For a related post to this one, please click here.

 

With thanks to Erica Buné and Tina Johnson for all their help and kindness arranging my mother's funeral.

Aujourd'hui, Maman est morte

Last photo of my mother on her 96th birthday 

(10 July 2022)

 

 

My mother died today. Unlike Meursault, however, I'm pretty certain of that. 

 

Because today also happens to be my birthday and I'm accepting her death as a kind of final gift: a chance to live again and re-enter the world from the same woman who bore me sixty years ago. 

 

Funny how, at such a time, one thinks of a short French novel published 80-odd years ago (L'Étranger) and of a fictional character indifferent in the face of death, or, perhaps more precisely, accepting of la tendre indifférence (or absurdity) of the universe in which life unfolds and then quickly closes.    

And funny how one also (rather shamefully) recalls the words written by Schopenhauer following the death of a Putzfrau to whom he had been paying a monthly sum by court order after an altercation in which she was injured: Obit anus, abit onus ('The old woman dies, the burden is lifted').

But mostly I just remember the final lovely smile my mother gave me as she found the strength to say my name one last time.

For a follow up post to this one, please click here. 

We Old Ones, We Are Still Here!

Meine Mutter celebrating her 96th birthday  

 

The old ones say to themselves: We are not going to make way, we are not going to die,

we are going to stay on and on and on and on and make the young look after us 

till they are old. - DHL [1]

 

 

I. 

 

This Sunday, my mother will reach 96 years of age. 

 

Some people say this is a real achievement, though I'm not sure about that; surely the achievement is dying an authentic death - something that requires courage and skill - not simply celebrating birthday after birthday and endlessly adding candles to a cake ...? 

Having said that, surviving to a very old age and becoming a monster of stamina in the process does seem to suggest a powerful expression of will. 

 

For even today, when - thanks to improved living standards and advancements in health care - life expectancy has significantly increased since the year my mother was born (1926), not many women in the UK will make it past 95 [2].

 

II.

 

Back in July 1926, D. H. Lawrence travelled north from Italy to Germany with his wife Frieda, in order to celebrate his mother-in-law's 75th birthday. In a letter to Edward McDonald, an American professor who was preparing a bibilography of his writings, Lawrence is scathing about the old who cling on to life and refuse to die: 

 

"'Wir alten, wir sind noch hier!' she says. And here they mean to stay, having, through long and uninterrupted experience, become adepts at hanging on to their own lives, and letting anybody else who is fool enough cast bread upon the waters. Baden-Baden is a sort of Holbein Totentanz: old people tottering their cautious dance of triumph: 'wir sind noch hier: hupf! hupf! hupf!" [3] 

 

 

III. 

 

Three years later, in July 1929, and Lawrence is again in Baden-Baden for the Baroness's birthday, despite his previous determination not to go. As John Worthen notes, this was a bad move [4]. For whereas his previous visits had mostly been happy ones, and he had always been rather fond of his Schweigermutter, now he found her unbearable. 

In a letter to his sister Ada, Lawrence writes:

 

"[...] Frieda's mother really rather awful now. She's 78, and suddenly is in an awful state, thinking her time to die may be coming on. So she fights in the ugliest fashion, greedy and horrible, to get everything that will keep her alive [...] nothing exists but just for the purpose of giving her a horrible strength to hang on a few more years." [5]

 

Later, in the same letter, he complains how his mother-in-law will not be left alone, even for a short period: 

 

"No, she must have Frieda or me there. It's the most ghastly state of almost insane selfishness I ever saw - and all comes of her hideous terror of having to die. At the age of seventy-eight! May god preserve me from ever sinking so low." [6]

 

 

IV.

 

Now, to be fair to my mother, she doesn't gulp down the air in greedy gulps like the Baroness - doesn't actively fight to stay alive. She just sits quietly in her chair all day, like a black hole at the centre of the universe [7]. 

 

But I understand - and share - Lawrence's sense of horror and humiliation.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'The grudge of the old', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 436.

 

[2] Readers interested in the national statistics estimating the number of people (mostly women) in the UK population aged 90 and over, between the years 2002 and 2020, can click here. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Edward McDonald (16 July 1926), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 495-496. Lines quoted are on p. 496.   

 

[4] John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005), p. 400.

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Ada Clarke (2 August 1929), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 397-398. 

[6] Ibid., p. 398. 

[7] See my poem 'Black Holes' in The Circle of Fragments and Other Verses, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010) - or click here to read it on Torpedo the Ark. 

Reincarnation is Making a Comeback: Notes on Chapter 3 of Metamorphoses by Emanuele Coccia

Cover of the German edition of 

Emanuele Coccia's Métamorphoses (2020) 

 

 

I. 

 

One of the things I like about Coccia's book is that he makes mundane things - like eating - sound strange. Most people having a sandwich for lunch tend not to think of this as "more like an alchemical mystery than a physiological necessity" [a], no matter what the ingredients. 

 

But Emanuele Coccia does, and I admire him for that. It's precisely such a level of craziness which makes him a writer and philosopher. He wants to remind readers of the fact that when they eat a chicken salad they "literally incorporate the bodies of other living things" [87]. And quite right, too!

 

I think he's wrong, however, to believe that the reason many people choose to overlook or forget this fact is due to a powerful sense of guilt:

 

"We feel so guilty about this common, banal, everyday, yet miraculous and incomprehensible act that we tend to reduce it to a simple exchange of energy that can be described in terms of pure thermodynamics" [88] 

 

Or, in the case of vegetarians and vegans: 

 

"We feel so guilty about the fact that our lives involve the death of other living beings that we prefer to establish an arbitrary limit, an artificial boundary between living beings that suffer (animals) and those that do not (plants)." [88]       

 

Actually, most people are simply indifferent; they just don't care that they are obliged as heterotrophic beings to life off the lives of other organisms. 

 

Coccia's presumption of guilt is the sign of a moralist who cannot conceive of the fact that most people have no such feeling and don't view food from an ethical perspective (that's why, for example, informing them about the terrible cruelty involved in factory farming has very little effect on their behaviour). 

 

Although, having said that - and if I read Coccia correctly - then he really doesn't want anyone to feel guilty about stuffing plants and animals in their face. For eating is not all about death and it's "a misrepresentation to see the act of eating only as a form of sacrifice and violence" [88]. Eating is the enigmatic transmission of (indeterminate) life - a kind of vitalistic game of pass the parcel and food is "the contemplation of life in its most terrifying universality" [89].

The chicken eats the worm; we eat the chicken; the worm eats us - it is, as Elton and Tim would say, the circle of life. Coccia puts it this way:

"Life goes from body to body, from species to species, never entirely satisfied with the form in which it is found. And that is all eating is: proof that there is only one life, common to all living beings [...] Proof that no barrier of nature, species, or personality can enclose it eternally in one single form, one single species, one single body." [90]

       

And death? Death is only a metamorphic threshold, so not something we should fear. Nothing really dies, says Coccia, everything is just transformed, recycled, and reincarnated. Like eating, dying is a "universal multispecies encounter" [91] which forms a kind of posthumous community beyond all difference and all borders. (Which is fine, but I don't want to be there when it happens ...)

 

In sum: as a thanatologist, I'm neither unfamiliar with nor averse to Coccia's line of thinking on the deathly reality of life and the necessity to eat. Indeed, in a post written back in December 2016, entitled Reflections from a Sickbed, I expressed a preference for a traditional Tibetan sky burial when I die. 

 

In other words, I'm quite happy to be fed to the vultures and don't feel it is in any way shameful or degrading for a human corpse to become food. In fact, I don't even think being eaten alive by a pride of lions or a pack of wolves, is the worst way to die - though as I'm not a vore fetishist, I don't erotically desire this to happen. 

 

Learning to accept ourselves as prey or a potential meal is, as Val Plumwood, realised, crucial to the development of a truly radical ecosophy that rejects the hyperseparation of humans from the natural world [b].     

 

 

II.

 

One of the things I don't like about Coccia's book is that he makes material processes - like death - sound vitalistic. Carbon atoms, for example, may endlessly pass from one body to another, but carbon atoms are not alive, so it's simply not true to say that "the life that animates our body [...] will migrate elsewhere" [99] when we die, like a little bird flying off [c].  

In a sense, I still tend to side with those thinkers who, like Wittgenstein, insist that death is not an event in life and nor is it lived through [d]. Coccia would reject this as a mistaken positing of death as an absolute event and accuse me of dogmatically making a fetish of temporary forms, but there you go. I would rather be accused of doing this - would rather even be guilty of this - than of writing which (at times) veers toward tautological mysticism.  

 

Ultimately, for Coccia even death is just an everyday aspect of the unstoppable dance that is life; whereas for me, following Nietzsche, life is just a rare and unusual way of being dead. 

 

And so, whilst I have myself written a post on atomic reincarnation [click here] which concluded that the living house and reincarnate the carbon atoms of the departed - and that it is in this way the souls of the dead might be said to re-enter and pervade the souls of the living - I do not see this as a form of spiritual continuity or psychic transmigration. 

 

It is only due to the conservation of mass, that we can legitimately declare ourselves to be all the names in history and Coccia's insistence that the dead think in us, is an ideal misunderstanding of this point. And whilst every self may be multiple, it is not a spiritual reincarnation of the life force and I really don't think it helps matters to borrow the technical terms of theology to discuss this important topic either [e].

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Emanuele Coccia, Metamorphoses, trans. Robin Mackay, (Polity Press, 2021), p. 87. All future page references to this work will be given directly in the main text. 

 

[b] Val Plumwood (1939-2008) was an Australian philosopher and ecofeminist, known for her work deconstructing anthropocentrism. Her posthumously published book The Eye of the Crocodile, ed. Lorraine Shannon, (ANU E-Press, 2012), details her violent and life-changing encounter with a saltwater crocodile in Kakadu National Park, in February 1985. 

      Plumwod first described this incident in the essay 'Human vulnerability and the experience of being prey', in Quadrant, 29 (3), (March, 1995), pp. 29-34. Click here to read online in The Aisling Magazine.       

      Although Coccia mentions Plumwood and the crocodile (pp. 96-98), he informs readers that he primarily developed his idea of reincarnation by way of reflections on the work of the French artist Philippe Parreno. Although he doesn't mention any specific works by the latter, I'm guessing he would have been a big fan of the 2013 exhibition Anywhere, Anywhere Out Of The World. Using sound, image, lights, and the spectral presence of objects, Parreno transformed the monumental space of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris; turning the building itself into a constantly evolving organism.

 

[c] Writing under the influence of Aldo Leopold - whom he describes as "one of the greatest thinkers of the last century" [102] - Coccia seems to believe that atoms are, in a sense, alive and that seeing things from their perspective is philosophically instructive: 

      "Adopting the point of view of the atom [...] is what makes it possible to understand and to demonstrate the absolute continuity, both material and spiritual (subjective), of all life on this planet. [...] Discontinuity is not ontological (death), but purely modal and formal: X and Y - Leopold's atoms - change their mode of being, not their substance." [103]

      See Aldo Leopold, A Sad County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, (Oxford University Press, 1949). 

 

[d] See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), 6.4311.  

        

[e] I know how Coccia would reply to this: he would say I'm one of those who, whilst finding it easy "to imagine the material continuity of the universe", remain "troubled by the idea that this continuity might also apply on a spiritual and speculative level" [104]. 

      That's right: and the reason I find this difficult to accept is because I don't believe in the transmigration of the self and don't believe that "every act of thinking is an exchange of spiritual identity" [107]. Coccia suggests that whenever we utter the phrase cogito, ergo sum we are momentarily allowing "the spirit of Descartes to be reincarnated" [104] in our person. This may be figuratively true, but it's not literally true in the way that the recycling of atoms, or the passing on of genes, is true.

 

 

To read my notes on the Introduction and first chapter of Emanuele Coccia's Metamorphoses, click here. 

 

To read notes on chapter two ... click here. 

 

To read notes on chapter four ... click here. 

 

To read notes on chapter five ... click here. 

 

 

The Obscene Beyond: It is So Lovely Within the Crack

I love you delicious rottenness ...

 

I. 

 

As might be imagined, the concept of the obscene within philosophy is rather more complex than that found within the moral and legal debates surrounding pornography and censorship which simply define the obscene as that which offends or outrages public decency, often involving the graphic representation of sexual acts or bodily organs.   

 

For me, the obscene is more interestingly thought of as the violent intrusion of the material world into an ideal culture which likes to keep hidden or deny all that it cannot assimilate into its all too human system of transcendental meaning based upon the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. 

 

This might include what is commonly thought of as inappropriate content, but, ultimately, I would suggest, there is nothing more obscene than death and it's knowledge of death - not sex - that makes moralists and idealists of all stripes turn away in horror and disgust, even if - as in Sade and Bataille, for example - death is eroticised (and love morbidified). 

 

This notion of the obscene as that which is sooner or later exposed like the inside of a bursten fig, is magnificently illustrated in the poetry of D. H. Lawrence ...

 

 

II.

 

In the first of his fruit series - 'Pomegranate' - Lawrence insists on the importance of the fissure. 

 

For it is via the painful looking split in the skin of the pomegranate that we catch a glimpse of what he terms the obscene beyond - a troubling ontological notion underlying his philosophy which shapes his ideas about the reality of love, life, death, and how we might know and represent these things. 

 

Of course, many people prefer to look at the smooth unbroken skin of the fruit and are disturbed by the fissure and all that lies rosy and glittering within: 

 

Do you mean to tell me there should be no fissure?

No glittering, compact drops of dawn? 

Do you mean it is wrong, the gold-filmed skin, integument, shown ruptured?

For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken.

It is so lovely, dawn-kaeidoscope within the crack. [1]

 

 

In the poem 'Fig', meanwhile, the narrator explicitly - some would say obscenely - relates this scarlet fissure in the skin of a ripe piece of fruit to the female sex organ, to which one might put their mouth and enjoy the moistness and strange smelling sap that curdles milk.    

But what might start out as an ode to cunnilingus, quickly becomes a warning:

That's how the fig dies, showing her crimson through the purple slit

Like a wound, the exposure of her secret, on the open day.

Like a prostitute, the bursten fig, making a show of her secret.

That's how women die too. [2]

In other words, the ideal fantasy of womanhood is dispelled once their obscenity or delicious rottenness bursts forth and we realise - as Bataille wrote - that the vagina is synonymous with a freshly dug grave. 

 

That's a hellish thing to recognise. But it's also a liberating thought, providing one can find the courage to think it through and accept that "wonderful are the hellish experiences" [3]. 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Pomegranate', in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 231. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Fig', in The Poems, Vol. I., pp. 232-35. Lines quoted are on p. 234.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Medlars and Sorb-Apples', in The Poems, Vol. I., pp. 235-37. Line quoted is on p. 234.