All Change: Notes on Chapter 5 of Metamorphoses by Emanuele Coccia

 

Throughout this post, and at this very moment, 

I am thinking in you ...

 

 

I. 

 

Although Emanuele Coccia thinks every living being is already biodiverse, he favours extending this inner diversity outwards and amplifying the metamorphic force that animates us. He also supports creating spaces of metamorphic conspiracy, so that forms can combine and become-other, etc. 

 

And I'm with him in this, although I'd sooner slit my wrists than speak of imparting "a more intense and richer life" [a] to Gaia. The more animals and plants there are, the better as far as I'm concerned.

In fact, I wouldn't even object to large predators prowling the streets and gobbling up a few fat children; for what is this ultimately but an exchange of solar energy; "every act of feeding is nothing other than a secret and invisible exchange of extra-terrestrial light" [149].

 

Tyger tyger, burning bright / In the cities of the night ... [b]

 

 

II.

 

Coccia's argument in this fifth and final chapter is, simply, we need one another. That is to say, all beings - be they plant, animal, or human - fundamentally rely on (and live off the lives of) other beings in an interspecies community. Interdependence is the name of the game and this interdependence is, for Coccia, primarily "of a cognitive and speculative order" [157]. 

 

Intellect - or mind - is not a property of the individual; it's a relation between species. Thus, the intelligence of the wolf, for example, has developed due to (and within) the relationship large predators have with those animals they prey upon. And in some cases, the intellect of one species is actually embodied in another:

 

"With the flower, the plant [...] entrusts another species belonging to another kingdom with the task of making a decision on the genetic and biological destiny of its own species. It entrusts them with the task of directing the metamorphosis of its species. In a certain sense, the flower transfers the plant's species-mind into the body of the bee." [158]

 

Coccia continues: 

 

"It is not simply a collaboration, it is the constitution of a cognitive and speculative interspecific organ. This means not only that all evolutionary development is co-evolution [...] but also that [...] co-evolution is what we normally call agriculture or husbandry. Each species decides, in its own way, the evolutionary fate of others. What we call evolution is nothing more than a kind of generalized interspecies agriculture, a cosmic crossbreeding - which is not necessarily designed for the benefit of one or the other. The world as a whole thus becomes a kind of purely relational reality [...]" [158]         

 

As a reader of Lawrence, one would be tempted to call this a democracy of touch ... [c]

 

 

III.

For Coccia, the form taken by each species is neither a destiny nor something that has necessarily arisen through chance or the mechanism of natural selection obliging them to adapt to their environment. 

 

For Coccia, there is a will of some kind at work:

 

"The shapes of living bodies - their colours, decorative patterns, etc. - are not only expressions of the individual's adaptation to the world around them. They are also and above all the expression of a taste, of a sort of artistic will that drives the individual of a species to prefer one form over the other." [162]

 

Darwin described this in terms of sexual selection, but I suspect Coccia has also been influenced in his thinking here by Nietzsche, who wrote of art as an organic function of the the will to power and as the "great means of making life possible, the great seduction to life, the greatest stimulant of life" [d]. 

 

And this is true in both man and animal, between whom there is no cardinal distinction. 

 

Indeed, art, says Nietzsche, is ultimately a form of animal vigour; "an excess and overflow of blooming physicality into the world of images and desires" [e]. We see this for ourselves each spring, when animals produce "new weapons, pigments, colours, and forms; above all, new movements, new rhythms, new love calls and seductions" [f]. 

 

Ultimately, for Coccia, species are "nothing more than expressions of  a 'biotic art', a sort of aesthetic performance conducted on an anatomical level" [163], and ecology should reinvent itself in terms of art rather than good housekeeping, accepting that nothing is natural and there are no areas of wilderness to conserve; that all is cultivated and artificial. 

 

Anthropologists and ethnologists long ago stopped talking about primitive peoples and noble savages. Now, ecologists and environmentalists should stop pretending there are primitive species and savage beasts, who are somehow more authentic - more natural - than us. As Coccia writes: 

 

"Everything that constitutes us derives from the non-human and has the same nature, but the reverse is also true: everything that defines humanity, beginning with error, art, artifice, and moral arbitration, also defines the totality of living species." [167]    

 

 

IV.

 

In the final section of Chapter 5, Coccia continues to make some striking claims, including for example, that evolution should be considered as "the production of [...] contemporary nature" [168]. Fortunately, he explains what he means by this:

 

"From the beginning of the twentieth century, when art established itself as avant-garde, it ceased to fulfil an aesthetic function. It freed itself from the task of producing beauty, or decorating what already exists and bringing it into harmony. In claiming to be contemporary [...] art became a collective practice of the divination of the future [...] an attempt [by society] to reproduce itself differently from what it is [...] Art embodies a society's desire for and project of metamorphosis." [168-69]     

 

Thus evolution - as Coccia understands it - is the mode of life "that corresponds to what contemporary art is for culture" [169]. He continues:

"Nature is not only the immemorial prehistory of culture, but its unrealized future; its surrealistic anticipation. Contemporary nature is the scene where life enters into the avant-garde of its future. It is life as natural avant-garde. It is the surrealistic reproduction of forms of life." [169]

Thus, cities shouldn't just become eco-friendly and sustainable, but contemporary nature galleries in which the future is reimagined and engineered: 

 

"Bringing together artists, scientists, designers, architects, and farmers, it will be a matter of building multispecies associations somewhere between city, garden, plantation, and stable, where each living being produces works for others and for themselves." [170] [g]

 

To be honest, I don't know how seriously to take this virtuous exercise of the imagination - or whether I find it appealing or appalling. 

 

It's certainly a more sophisticated proposal than my suggestion made earlier to simply release the wolves, but it's also - like all utopian fantasies of the ideal society - inherently fascistic. It's as if Coccia wishes to build a multispecies labour camp overseen by (presumably human) artists and scientists who will, as it were, attempt to take control of evolution. 

 

It seems an odd note on which to finish - one that essentially defeats the whole point and purpose (and central argument) of the book: that metamorphosis is the essential, unstoppable, and inhuman law of life; one that is unfolding all of the time and everwhere, including in our cities, without any need for human direction (as if it were even possible for man to stand outside, as it were, and control events).

 

I know that Coccia knows this: knows that the future cannot be determined, because it's "the pure force of metamorphosis" [180]; knows that life is not something that belongs to any of us, "either as individuals, as a nation, or as a species" [180] - so I don't know quite why he ends his work where and how he does. 

 

Maybe he's been hanging around with artists for too long ...   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Emanuele Coccia, Metamorphoses, trans. Robin MacKay, (Polity Press, 2021), p. 147. Future page references to this book will be given directly in the main text. 

 

[b] This is not quite Coccia's hope for cities of the future; for his far-grander and more utopian vision see pp. 169-70 of Metamorphoses (which I discuss in section IV of this post).

 

[c] I very much regret the fact that Coccia chooses to conclude his work on interspecies relationship in terms of a cosmic mind produced by "an infinite series of arbitrary and rational encounters and decisions taken by different species at different times, according to the strangest of intentions" [161]. 

      For me, what's crucial about this relationship is that the encounters are libidinal rather than rational, involving a politics of desire: "The touch of the feet on the earth, the touch of the fingers on a tree, on a creature, the touch of hands and breasts, the touch of the whole body to body, and the interpenetration of passionate love: it is life itself, and in the touch, we are all alive."

      See D. H. Lawrence, The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 323. This line is from the second version of the novel.

      I have written several posts on Lawrence's notion of a democracy of touch here on Torpedo the Ark and readers who are interested can go to labels and click on the term. 

 

[d] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, ed. Walter Kaufmann, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, (Vintage Books, 1968), note 853 (II), p. 452. 

      I would encourage readers to familiarise themselves with all of Nietzsche's notes on the will to power as art; see Book III, Part IV, notes 794-853, pp. 419-453. And for a fascinating philosophical discussion of Nietzsche's thinking on animality, art, and will to power (in relation to Darwin), see Keith Ansell-Pearson's essay, 'Nietzsche contra Darwin', in Viroid Life, (Routledge 1997), pp. 85-122.      

[e] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, note 802, p. 422. 

[f] Ibid., note 808, p. 426. 

[g] Apparently, this vision of a museum for contemporary nature is inspired by Stefano Boeri's Vertical Forest project (2007-14), in Milan. Visit Boeri's website for more information on this and on his latest work involving trees: click here. 

 

 

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 three ... click here. 

 

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

D. H. Lawrence on Humanism, Human Exceptionalism and Common Ancestry

A model of Lucy at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Texas 
(Dave Einsel / Getty Images)

I. The Greatest of all Illusions is the Infinite of the Spirit

Despite saying that the very words human, humanity, and humanism make him sick, it's pretty clear that there is, in fact, a model of what might be termed libidinal humanism present within Lawrence's work ...

In the 'Epilogue' to his Movements in European History, for example, Lawrence writes of a single human blood-stream and argues that people are also very much alike at some primordial level of culture:

"All men, black, white, yellow, cover their nakedness and build themselves shelters, make fires and cook food, have laws of marriage and of family [...] and have stores of wisdom and ancient lore, rules of morality and behaviour."  

In other words, according to Lawrence, we all belong to one great race and live fundamentally similar lives. However, it's important to note that Lawrence goes on to argue that the human family tree, whilst undivided at its root, nevertheless branches out into very different directions and each branch develops in its own unique manner.

"For each branch is, as it were, differently grafted by a different spirit and idea ... My manhood is the same as the manhood of a Chinaman. But in spirit and idea we are different and shall be different forever, as apple-blossom will forever be different from irises."   

Lawrence, therefore, has an understanding of Geist in opposition to that of many idealists: for whilst the latter acknowledge ethno-cultural difference, they believe in perfect spiritual unity. Lawrence reverses this and insists on physical oneness and spiritual distinction, rejecting any kind of Universal Mind or Oversoul.


II. Menschliches, Allzumenschliches

Somewhat ironically, Lawrence's thinking on this subject is in accord with modern evolutionary science, which has assembled much interdisciplinary evidence to support the idea that all human life descends from a common ancestor. Where he breaks with the Darwinians, however, is when - more radically - they suggest that this common ancestor is ultimately non-human: this, for Lawrence is going too far:

"The gulf that divides man from the animals is so great, that we can see no connection. We can no longer believe that man has descended from monkeys.* Man has descended from man.  [...] Man and monkey look at one another across a great and silent gulf, never to be crossed. [...] We cannot really meet in touch."

This - from an author widely celebrated for his ability to intuitively and poetically touch on the very essence of inhuman and non-human forms of life - is really quite shocking; for Lawrence is defending here an idea of human exceptionalism - who'd a thunk it? 

Alas, it seems there's no place for Lucy in Lawrence's democracy of touch ...

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Epilogue', Movements in European History, ed. Philip Crumpton, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 255, 256.  

*Note: Lawrence is perpetuating a common misunderstanding here; no one wants him to believe that man has descended from monkeys; what the evolutionary evidence demonstrates is that man and other apes have a common ancestor. Monkeys are a contemporary species - not an earlier, more primitive, or inferior species.   

For a related post to this one on Lawrence's libidinal humanism, click here.

On Living a Solitary Life: the Case of Elsie Eiler

Elsie Eiler and the Monowi town sign 

Photo: Reuters (2011)

I.  No Man is an Island

For Lawrence, who passionately believed in generating new forms of relationship and the establishment of an immanent utopia that he termed the democracy of touch, the idea of an individual living a solitary life was anathema and invariably ended badly (see the case of the man who loved islands, for example).  

As Aaron tells Lilly: you've got to be alone at times - and know how to be alone - but to just go on being alone is not only pointless, but impossible; sooner or later you begin to look around for other people with whom to form living connections.* Even Birkin, for all his talk of starry singularity and a posthuman world, knows that he ultimately needs to be part of a wider society. **

And Mellors, too, accepts that he can't stay alone forever in his forest hut; that he has to be broken open again and accept the pain as well as the pleasure that comes with a new set of social and sexual entanglements: 'There's no keeping clear', he tells Connie, 'And if you do keep clear, you might almost as well die'.***        

Yet the rather touching story of Elsie Eiler seems to demonstrate that, actually, isolation can be a splendid thing ...


II. The Case of Elsie Eiler

84-year-old Elsie Eiler is the sole resident of America's smallest town: Monowi, Nebraska, est. 1902. Everyone else, including her two children, has either moved away or, like her husband, Rudy, passed away (a fate that befell many other small communities in the Great Plains as the big cities exerted their pull).

But Elsie, a life-long resident of Monowi, can see no good reason to leave: it's her home, she likes it, and she intends to stay. And - contrary to what Lawrence might think - she's doing just fine and is perfectly happy.  

She still opens up the little tavern that she and her husband bought in 1971 - around the same time that the local grocery store and the post office closed - and passing truckers and travelling salesmen will frequently stop by for coffee and a chat. So, admittedly, whilst leading a solitary life, she's not entirely devoid of all human contact, like some kind of hermit.    

Elsie is also very conscious of her civic duties as Monowi's only resident. In her capacity as town mayor, for example, she is required to collect taxes and produce a municipal road plan every year in order to secure state funding for the town's four street lamps.

Elsie also maintains the 5000-volume library founded in memory of her husband, so she has plenty to read - and who's to say our relationship with dead authors isn't as vital as that with living beings? As a homotextual, I know I'd sooner live alone with a few good books, than in the company of most people ...

See:

* D. H. Lawrence, Aaron's Rod, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1988).

** D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey, and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 1987).

*** D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983). 

'Population of one: the smallest town in the US', a 3 minute BBC film about Elsie Eiler and her life in Monowi: click here.


Thanks to Simon Solomon who kindly suggested this post and sent me a link to the above film.

On the Inspiration of Touch

Michelangelo: Detail from Creazione di Adamo (c. 1512) 

What Tommy Dukes refers to as the inspiration of touch is an idea that continues to fascinate and intrigue. For if we must still think of the soul, then let us think of it not as some kind of immortal essence located in a mysterious region of the body, but, rather, as something that exists momentarily in the contacts formed between a body and its external environment.

In other words, the soul is a flash of interchange between objects and not an an intrinsic quality belonging to either. This is illustrated, for example, in Michelangelo's famous fresco, The Creation of Adam (c. 1512) - at least as I interpret it.

For rather than conceive of Adam as a useless lump of clay just waiting to be animated by the all-powerful index finger of God's paternal right hand, I prefer to imagine inspiration is born between the two as entities who unfold into being within a democracy of touch. Unequal as objects perhaps, but equally objects nevertheless upon a flat ontological playing field.

It's often pointed out that, as a matter of fact, the two hands don't actually touch. But that's ok. What counts is the active reaching out of fingertips and that magical space and spark created between them that we might think of as the shimmer of possibility that lies betwixt things and forever beyond the grasp of any single entity.   

And what also counts, as Steven Connor rightly indicates, is the delicacy of the shared touch; it has to have a certain lightness and softeness. People with greedy, heavy hands who believe they must grab life by the throat and tear open the flower bud are essentially soulless. Connor writes:

"Delicate and subtle things have a life of their own, and call, not for grasping or prodding or palpation, but for caress [...] for in the caress, there is an approach or address to another skin capable of sensation, capable of its own experience of the borderline between thought and feeling. To caress an object in the world is to treat it as though it possessed such a sensitive skin."

Arguably, another word for this sensuous, subtle form of touch is tenderness - a term privileged by D. H. Lawrence in his late works and elaborated into a provocative ethic that encapsulates his ideal of blissful bodily interaction that is free from any will to dominance or exploitation. One might hold the other, but, at the same time, one must hold back from holding the other too tightly. 

It is interesting to note how the French philosopher Michel Serres develops this notion of reserve in his work, suggesting that humanity - in the best sense of the word - is defined not by its power to manipulate and destroy, but by its ability to show self-restraint and recognise limits. To exceed limits and to seek to exercise control over others - to refuse either to let them go or let them be - is to fall into a fatal form of ego imperialism (à la Clifford Chatterley).      

See:

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983).

D. H. Lawrence, The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Steven Connor, The Book of Skin, (Cornell University Press, 2004). Lines quoted are on pp. 262-63. 

 
Michel Serres, The Troubador of Knowledge, trans. Sheila Farier Glaser and William Paulson, (University of Michigan Press, 1997). 

Michel Serres, The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies, trans. Margaret Sankey and Peter Cowley, (Continuum, 2008). 

Note: to read an afterword to this post that develops the idea of delicacy and problematises Lawrence's notions of touch and tenderness, please click here.

On the Art of Fondling (Towards a Democracy of Touch)

Milo Moiré: Selfie with Mirror Box taken shortly before 

her performance and subsequent arrest in London 

Image posted on Twitter (24 June 2016)

When Swiss conceptual performance artist Milo Moiré was arrested in London last summer for outraging public decency by strapping a so-called Mirror Box about her waist and then inviting onlookers and passers-by to have a 30-second feel of her cunt, I was vaguely aware that she was attempting to make a point about sexual consent and what does and does not constitute appropriate touching in the wake of events in Cologne and elsewhere in Europe; events that she has protested before and which I have written about elsewhere on this blog [click here]. 

What I didn't realise, however, was that her Mirror Box performance was inspired by Valie Export and her (at the time) revolutionary work Tapp und Tastkino (1968) - known in English as 'Tap and Touch Cinema' - a work that has rightly attained iconic status within (feminist) art history:

VALIE EXPORT: Tapp und Tastkino (1968)

Tap and Touch Cinema was performed by Export in ten European cities during the period 1968-71 (seven more than Moiré has so far managed with her Mirror Box). She wore a tiny 'movie theatre' strapped round her naked upper body, covering the latter from view, but exposing it to the touch of anyone - man, woman, or child - who cared to reach through the curtained front and touch her tits.

(Moiré's X-rated event, in contrast, was for over-18s only - but then she was offering rather more than the chance to cop hold of a breast.)  

Predictably, the media responded to Export's provocative work with moral hysteria and horror; one paper even branding her a witch. They seemed to imply that whilst viewing and aesthetically appreciating representations of female nudity on canvas or screen is perfectly legitimate, placing hands on to real bodies and enjoying a sensual-tactile interaction with the naked flesh is not.

In other words, sex must be a visual-mental thing; you can look and you can fantasise in private, but don't physically touch one another with tenderness or make public displays of affection: No Kissing No Cuddling No Kindness - these are the unspoken rules of pornified contemporary culture.

Export's work may be an ironic transgression, but it matters, I think; in the same way and for the same reasons that D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover still matters. For both works are brave and bold attempts to resurrect the body and contribute towards an immanent utopia that Lawrence terms a democracy of touch; a new socio-political order and new cultural arrangement that affirms and celebrates:

"The touch of the feet on the earth, the touch of the fingers on a tree, on a creature, the touch of hands and breasts, the touch of the whole body to body, and the interpenetration of passionate love."

Notes

Milo Moiré has performed Mirror Box in Düsseldorf and Amsterdam, as well as London. Charged in the latter with outraging public decency and spreading Genitalpanik, she spent 24-hours in jail before a judge sentenced her to pay a fine of €1300 and ordered her release. Although she has her critics - not least in the art world - I like Ms Moiré and regard her work as an interesting development and re-enactment of Export's. I'm only sorry I didn't get the chance to meet her last summer ... 

Readers interested in knowing more can visit her website by clicking here. 

To watch a video (censored version) of the Mirror Box performance uploaded to YouTube by the artist, click here. 

Readers interested in knowing more about Valie Export can visit her website by clicking here. 

To watch film of the Tapp und Tastkino performance uploaded to YouTube, click here.   

Finally, to read more about the democracy of touch, see: D. H. Lawrence, The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1999). The lines quoted are on p. 323.

Reflections on the Vacuum-Sealed Nature of Objects 2: Ethico-Political Considerations

Hiromi and Lisa by Photographer Hal

# 24 from the series Zatsuran (2013)

I illustrated in part one of this post how D. H. Lawrence's little read (and undervalued) 1922 novel Aaron's Rod anticipates the work of philosopher Graham Harman on the vacuum-sealed nature of objects. Here, I'd like to critically examine the latter's controversial and challenging notion in more detail ...

In a nutshell, Harman wants us to acknowledge something very obvious but not so easy to explain; namely, the fact that discernible, individual objects exist and that being isn't some shapeless, unified totality. Further, whilst these objects have relations with other objects, they aren't defined, determined, or exhausted by such. They always keep something of themselves withdrawn and in reserve; something hidden and untouchable, as Harman says, in the basement of being.

Ultimately, then, what gives to things their absolute distinctness is the fact that they are vacuum-sealed in perfect isolation and only ever have indirect (metaphorical) contact with one another; i.e., they only ever relate by translating one another (and in so doing generate difference).

This - if true - has interesting if not, indeed, crucially important ethical and political consequences; not least of all for any Lawrentians still hoping to establish a democracy of touch based on the interpenetration of bodies, the glad recognition of souls, and the re-establishment of the vital relations between objects which, according to Lawrence, were destroyed by the grand idealists.

Having said that, there is a positive aspect to Harman's thesis of withdrawal and isolation; namely, it allows objects to retain their volcanic integrity and thus to resist all attempts by external forces to control, coordinate, and exploit them. In other words, at some level, despite increasingly extended networks of power and surveillance, objects are essentially autonomous and ontological Gleichschaltung is an impossibility.

As Levi Bryant notes, nothing, for Harman, "is ever so defined, reduced, or dominated that it can't break free and be otherwise ... People, animals, minerals, technologies, and microbes are always threatening to erupt ..." In other words, all objects carry the potential for surprise, which is, of course, a revolutionary potential.

It's also a reason why we should treat them with caution and respect and attempt to see things from their perspective (Ian Bogost refers to this as alien phenomenology). This is more than simply a  question of exercising our human curiosity; it's about acknowledging that the world exists - and doesn't simply exist for us. Again, to quote Bryant here: "We live in a universe teaming with actants where we are actants among actants, not sovereigns organizing all the rest as the old Biblical narrative from Genesis would have it."

In conclusion: some commentators, I know, have little time for Harman and his object-oriented ontology; they aren't seduced by the speculative nature of his realism, nor charmed by the weirdness of his arguments. But, like Bryant, I still think that, at it's best, his work is original and engaging and does what all good philosophical writing should - i.e., encourage us to think outside the gate, even at the risk of losing our way or, perhaps, ending up on yet another foolish quest for that mysterious thing called the soul ...

See:

Levi Bryant, 'Harman, Withdrawal, and Vacuum Packed Objects: My Gratitude', posted on Larval Subjects (May 30, 2012): click here. 

Graham Harman, Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects (Open Court Publishing Company, 2002).

To read part one of this post - Egoism a Deux - click here. 

Towards a Democracy of Touch

The very lovely Bethany Leach: a young advocate of the 

democracy of touch; see her blog 

 democracyoftouch.tumblr.com

Amused by Tim Pendry's recent posts on the notion of touch in relation to tantric practices and teachings on his Position Reserved blog, I thought it might be a good time to remind ourselves once more of Lawrence's thoughts on this subject.

According to Lawrence, when our industrial-scientific civilization falls - as fall it must - the only bridge into the future will be the phallus. The phallus will lead us towards a new type of humanity and a new form of society based upon the mystery and inspiration of touch. He calls this the democracy of touch. 

It is, I suppose, an intriguing idea which cries out to be developed and given flesh. As a form of libidinal materialism, it involves actual physical contact born of passion and not merely a new idealism. It also calls for the proliferation of touch not just between men and women, but people and animals, people and plants: 

"The touch of the feet on the earth, the touch of the fingers on a tree, on a creature, the touch of hands and breasts, the touch of the whole body to body, and the interpenetration of passionate love."

This sounds to some ears suspiciously like mysticism, but in attempting to articulate and substantiate the mystery of touch Lawrence is actually trying to climb down Pisgah, not seek out spiritual or transcendent truths. The democracy of touch may be a form of fourth dimensional bliss, but it's very much a heaven on earth involving bodies and their pleasures. 

In other words, the democracy of touch, as Lawrence envisions it, is a kind of natural paradise; one where men and women learn to live like animals in accomplished innocence, walking naked and light upon the open road in a Whitmanesque manner: 

"Exposed to full contact. On two slow feet. In company with those that drift in the same measure along the same way. Towards no goal. Having no direction even. Only the soul remaining true to herself in her going."

All of which sounds very nice - even comforting (as meaningless things may do).

Note: See D. H. Lawrence, The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 323 and Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (CUP, 2003),  p. 156.

  

The Big Rock Candy Mountains

 

I have always been strongly attracted to what we might refer to as the hobo ethic, most beautifully set out in the songs of Harry McClintock or, as he was popularly known, Haywire Mac.

The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1928) is primarily a bum's vision of an earthly paradise, but its appeal is wide and extensive. For what it offers is not simply a glimpse of a far away and imaginary land full of wonders, but what Deleuze terms an immanent utopia. That is to say, one that exists now/here, rather than nowhere; constituted in the bonds of love and laughter that tie us to other people.

The song thus affirms a radically fraternal politics that Whitman also sings of in his Leaves of Grass and which Lawrence calls a 'democracy of touch'. Such a model exists beyond liberalism, tied as it is to capital and the ownership of property, and it involves more than a sugar-topped apple pie humanism - even if it does have something distinctly American about it. 

It is also very much a queer model of democracy: one that is not, as I have indicated, anticipated as some kind of future historical development won through revolutionary struggle or social reform. The democracy of touch is, rather, fucked into existence between comrades and lovers - just as the flower is fucked into being between earth and sky; born, that is to say, of a new economy of bodies and their pleasures.

Anyway, I'll see you all this coming fall in the Big Rock Candy Mountains ...