A Sprig of Holly: Notes on Gibbeting (with Reference to the Case of Tom Jenkyn)

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827): A Gibbet (detail) 

Undated watercolor and ink on paper (36 x 27.5 cm)

Yale Center for British Art

 

 

I've discussed the topic of capital punishment in a previous post and mentioned that I live close to a notorious junction known as Gallows Corner, where they used to hang men in the old days [a]. 

 

I believe it was also the preferred practice to leave the bodies of those executed hanging in chains or fastened into an iron frame. And so that the public display might be prolonged, bodies were sometimes coated in tar and left until almost completely decomposed, after which the bones would be scattered. 

 

Known as gibbeting, this common law punishment was designed as a piece of violent theatre and a final humiliation intended to provide an additional deterrence measure, just in case the threat of hanging wasn't enough to prevent the heinous crime of murder. 

 

An ancient practice, gibbeting wasn't enshrined within English law until the Murder Act of 1751; an act which also included the provision that execution would take place two days after sentencing, unless the third day was a Sunday, in which case the condemned - and those who looked forward to seeing him swing - would have to wait until Monday morning [b].

 

The act also gave the judge passing sentence the power to turn the body of the condemned over to the medical profession for dissection and anatomical study, rather than hung in chains, which, I suppose, one might find a less shameful fate (although I suspect that, if given a choice, a hardened highwayman or pirate would reply like James Bond who when asked by a barman following a heavy loss at the poker table whether he wants his martini shaken or stirred says: Do I look like I give a damn? [c]  

 

 

II.

As a sensitive child, I was upset for days if I saw even a dead hedgehog by the roadside. 

 

So I'm fairly certain that the sight of a rotting human corpse on a gibbet might have been similarly distressing. Although, having said that, the reactions of children to scenes of horror can be complex - as Daphen du Maurier illustrates at the opening of her Gothic novel My Cousin Rachel (1951) ...

Reflecting on the time when, as a seven-year-old, he is taken by his much older cousin (and guardian), Ambrose, to view some poor wretch left hanging in chains where the four roads meet, Philip Ashley recalls:

"His face and body were blackened with tar for preservation. He hung there for five weeks before they cut him down, and it was the fourth week that I saw him. 

      He swung between earth and sky upon his gibbet, or, as my cousin Ambrose told me, betwixt heaven and hell. [...] Ambrose prodded at the body with his stick. I can see it now, moving with the wind like a weather-vane on a rusty pivot, a poor scarecrow of what had been a man. The rain had rotted his breeches, if not his body, and strips of worsted drooped from his swollen limbs like pulpy paper." [d]

 

Philip continues: 

 

"It was winter, and some passing joker had placed a sprig of holly in the torn vest for celebration. Somehow, at seven years old, that seemed to me the final outrage, but I said nothing." [1] [e]

Having walked round the gibbet so as to observe the horror from all sides, with Ambrose playfully poking and prodding the corpse with his stick, as if it were a funfair attraction provided for his amusement, Philip's cousin eventually attempts to put things into a philosophical context and provide a moral lesson:

 

"'There you are, Philip,' he said, 'it's what we all come to in the end. Some upon a battlefield, some in bed, others according to their destiny. There's no escape. You can't learn the lesson too young. But this is how a felon dies. A warning to you and me to lead the sober life.'" [2] 

Stopping short of condoning femicide, but cheerfully parading his sexism, Ambrose continues:

 

"'See what a moment of passion can bring upon a fellow [...] Here is Tom Jenkyn, honest and dull, except when he drank too much. It's true his wife was a scold, but that was no excuse to kill her. If we killed women for their tongues all men would be murderers.'" [2] 

Philip is disturbed to discover the dead man's identity and to realise that, in fact, he knew him. He wished Ambrose had not named him:

"Up to that moment the body had been a dead thing, without identity. It would come into my dreams, lifeless and horrible, I knew that very well from the first instant I had set my eyes upon the gibbet. Now it would have connection with reality, and with the man with watery eyes who sold lobsters on the town quay." [2]

When asked by Ambrose what he thinks, Philip attempts to disguise the fact that he felt "sick at heart, and terrified" [2]. And so he answers in an amusing and remarkably precocious manner for a child: "'Tom had a brighter face when I last saw him. [...] Now he isn't fresh enough to become bait for his own lobsters.'" [2] [f]

However, despite such witty bravado, Philip's actual squeamishness causes him to vomit before leaving the scene at Four Turnings: "I felt better afterwards, though my teeth chattered and I was very cold." [3] 

 

Perhaps in anger, Philip throws a stone at the lifeless body of Tom Jenkyn; though, as he ran off in search of Ambrose who had walked ahead, he felt ashamed of his action. So much so, that, eighteen years later, he is planning to seek out poor Tom in the afterlife in order to apologise. 

 

Until then, however, he asks the ghost of Tom Jenkyn to disturb him no more: "Go back into your shadows, Tom, and leave me some measure of peace. That gibbet has long since gone [g] and you with it. I threw a stone at you in ignorance. Forgive me." [3]

 

I don't know about Tom, the lobster salesman and wife killer, but I suspect most readers will almost certainly forgive such a childish indiscretion. 

 

Though whether they will be equally forgiving of Philip's treatment of Rachel - and there is no proof that she was guilty of anything, as Philip finds no concrete evidence to show she had a hand in the death of Ambrose, or that she was slowly poisoning him - is debatable ... [h]

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See the post dated 20 March 2019: click here.

 

[b] The act of 1751 also stipulated that under no circumstances should the body of a murderer be afforded a decent burial. The act was formally repealed in 1834, by which date the use of gibbeting was very much out of favour with both the public and the authorities; the last two men to be gibbeted in England had been executed two years prior. The socio-cultural reason for this move away from such violent and spectacular forms of punishment in favour of more subtle - more humanitarian - techniques is famously examined by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1975).

 

[c] I'm referring to a scene in Casino Royale (dir. Martin Campbell, 2006), starring Daniel Craig in his debut as James Bond. The joke, of course, is that usually Bond is very particular about how he likes his martini served (shaken, not stirred).  

 

[d] Daphne du Maurier, My Cousin Rachel (Virago Press, 2017), p. 1. Future page references to this edition will be given directly in the post.

      Interestingly, with adult hindsight, Philip has decided that Ambrose must have taken him to witness this horrific scene as a test of his character; "to see if I would  run away, or laugh, or cry" (p. 1). 

 

[e] It's arguable that the sprig of holly was not placed in mockery by some passing joker, but, rather, in a spirit of Christian charity and forgiveness; for holly is a sign of the eternal life that is promised to those who repent their sins and accept the love of Christ. 

 

[f] As a matter of fact, although lobsters are scavengers that feed on dead animals, live fish, small molluscs and other marine invertebrates, they are not known for eating human flesh.  

 

[g] Du Maurier doesn't reveal the year in which her novel unfolds, but if, as Philip informs us, the gibbet has long since gone and those accused of murder are now given a fair trial and, if subsequently convicted and sentenced to death, a decent burial, then it would certainly be set after 1834 (see note b above). 

      Roger Michell, the director and screenwriter of the 2017 cinematic adaptation of My Cousin Rachel starring Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin, situates his film "somewhere in the 1840s (between Austen and Dickens: between canals and railways)", as he writes in an introduction to the 2017 Virago edition of du Maurier's book (p. vii).  

[h] Du Maurier is a mistress of ambiguity who loves supplying her books with narrators whose defining characteristic is their unreliability. And so we can never know for certain who's guilty of what and who's the real victim. At one time, I would've found that irritating: Not any more, though.  

A Brief History of Irish/Jewish Relations (With Reference to Current Events)

Larping for Palestine with the students of 

Trinity College Dublin

 

I.

 

I have previously written on the relationship of Irish Republicanism to National Socialism [1].

 

However, in light of the authorities at Trinity College Dublin agreeing to the demands of a hundred or so useful idiots amongst the student body to cut commercial ties with Israel because of the war in Gaza [2] - which, for want a better term, we might describe as a Judenboykott - I thought it might be interesting to take a further (brief) look at the history of Irish/Jewish relations. 

 

 

II. 

 

There have never been many Jews choosing to settle in Ireland. 

 

Nevertheless, the history of Jews on the Emerald Isle can be traced back over a thousand years; the Annals of Inisfallen [3] makes the earliest known reference to them, recording that when, in 1079, five Jews came from overseas bearing gifts they were quickly sent back - so much for the welcoming nature of the Irish (more of a modern than a medieval trait it seems). 

 

Despite this, by the early 13th-century there was a tiny Jewish community in Ireland, based in or near Dublin, though how settled they were (and what rights they had) at this time is uncertain. It's really only in the 16th-century that Jews became accepted into Irish society - though the first synagogue wasn't built until 1660, near Dublin Castle.   

 

During the late 19th-century there was an increase in Jewish immigration to Ireland, but in 1901 they still numbered less than 4,000 (up from around 450 twenty years earler). Again, most of these people resided in the capital where they established schools, shops, and synagogues and became prominent in business, education, and politics.  

 

Officially neutral during the Second World War, the political establishment of Ireland tended to be indifferent to the fate of European Jews, even if overt antisemitism was not widespread in Ireland. The Nazis - always planning ahead - had listed the 4,000 Jews of Ireland for future extermination. 

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, given this indifference - and the fact it had been made very difficult for Jews to gain refugee status in Ireland during and after the War [4] - the native Jewish population saw a significant decrease in numbers in 1948 after the establishment of Israel; many choosing to move there out of ideological and/or religious convictions. 

 

In subsequent decades, more Jews would also emigrate to Israel, the UK, and the US due to the decline of Jewish life in Ireland and for better economic prospects. According to the census of 2022, there are now around 2,200 Jews living in the Irish Republic (over half of whom are in Dublin). 

III.

 

Having said that overt antisemitism isn't (and never has been) a major problem in Ireland, that doesn't mean the Irish are entirely innocent with reference to this ...

 

Indeed, many of  Ireland's key political figures - including the founders of two major parties - were noted for their antisemitic speech and behavior [5] and even now there are delightful political figures including Réada Cronin, Chris Andrews, and Mick Wallace to contend with [6].  

 

And then there's the Church ...

 

Throughout the 20th-century, several leading figures in the Catholic Church have promoted antisemitic beliefs and attitudes, and a number of leading Catholic newspapers and journals carried what the historian Dermot Keogh termed "radical anti-Jewish articles" [7] - and by which he refers to really shocking stuff, that I really don't wish to reprint (or even discuss) here. 

 

 

IV.

 

In sum: it's not surprising that students at TCD seem to be not merely supportive of Palestine, but actively hostile to Israel; for it's a politico-religious prejudice that pre-dates the current war in Gaza [8], which started, let us remind ourselves, on 7 October 2023, when Hamas and several other terrorist groups launched a coordinated attack on southern Israel, killing over 1,100 people and taking some 250 hostages. 

 

I don't think the students are morally retarded, so much as misguided and naive concerning the dangers of what Foucault terms micro-fascism; of just how easy it is to slip from being pro-Palestinian to pro-Hamas and from being anti-Zionist or anti-Israeli to antisemitic. 

 

Foucault asks: "How does one keep from being fascist, even (especially) when one believes oneself to be a revolutionary militant?" [9]    

 

It's a crucial question and one which all activists indulging in the ugly politics of ethno-religious identity and victimhood should ask themselves: "How do we rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and our pleasures, of fascism?" [10] It's not easy. But I would suggest one might begin by refraining from the following three things:

 

(i) mindlessly chanting slogans and waving flags ... 

 

(ii) cosplaying in keffiyehs ... 

 

(iii) making raised fist gestures for the cameras.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post entitled 'The Shamrock and the Swastika' (16 Feb 2020): click here.   

 

[2] In a statement, the university declared that Trinity College Dublin will "complete a divestment from investments in Israeli companies that have activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and [...] endeavour to divest from investments in other Israeli companies". See the report by Rory Carroll in The Guardian (8 May 2024): click here. 

 

[3] The Annals of Inisfallen are a chronicle of the medieval history of Ireland originally compiled c. 1092, but regularly updated by the monks of Inisfallen Abbey after this. It is housed in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 

 

[4] In 1948, a Department of Justice official explained that it was the policy to restrict the admission of Jewish aliens, for the reason that any substantial increase in numbers might give rise to antisemitism. 

 

[5] Arthur Griffith, founder of Sinn Féin, subscribed to all the usual Jewish conspiracy theories, whilst Éamon de Valera, a founder of Fianna Fáil and one of Ireland's most significant statesmen, personally called on the representative of the Nazi German government to express his condolences for Hitler's death.

 

[6] Réada Cronin, a Sinn Féin TD from Kildare North, posted several antisemitic tweets, which included claims that Jews were responsible for European wars and that Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency) was influencing British elections. After she apologised, Sinn Féin took no further action. 

      Chris Andrews, another Sinn Féin TD, liked posts on social media referring to Israelis as "murderous Zionist bastards". 

      Mick Wallace, an MEP, shared links to publications on social media suggesting that Jews control the media and were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. 

 

[7] Dermot Keogh, Jews in twentieth-century Ireland: refugees, anti-semitism and the Holocaust (Cork University Press, 1998), p. 92.

 

[8] See Manfred Gerstenfeld's review of Rory Miller's Ireland and the Palestine Question, 1948-2004, published as 'Ireland: A Country Hostile to Israel', in the Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 19, No. 1/2 (Spring 2007), pp. 188-191. The review can be found on JSTOR: click here. I would suggest relations between Ireland and Israel have not got any better during the last twenty years.

 

[9] Michel Foucault, Preface to Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. xiil. 

 

[10] Ibid. 

 

 

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

 

 

Putting the Hap Back into Happiness: Notes on Sara Ahmed's Killjoy Feminism

saranahmed.com / feministkilljoys.com

 

'My name is Sara Ahmed. I am a feminist killjoy. It is what I do. 

It is how I think. It is my philosophy and my politics.'

 

 

Sara Ahmed has long been interested in feminism and the question of happiness and last year saw publication of The Feminist Killjoy Handbook in which she conveniently brought together many of her ideas and insights gathered over the years on this topic. 

 

In a nutshell, Ahmed wishes for her readers to suspend their belief that happiness is a good thing and to conceive of feminist history as essentially a struggle against happiness; the latter understood as a way in which oppressive social norms are made to seem natural, desirable, and innocent. To paraphrase Nietzsche, in happiness all that is unjust is pronounced joyous and absolved by laughter [1]. 

 

In a society which she regards as sexist, racist, and homophobic, the queer woman of colour - such as herself - has a duty to be unhappy and to defiantly declare herself to be a killjoy, which means, for example, refusing to laugh at unfunny jokes [2] and pointing out the things that systemically divide people; exposing the lies that are said to constitute common sense. 

 

 

II. 

 

On the one hand, I can see the logic of her argument and sympathise with her position. There are very good reasons why we can't all just get along and I've always liked the idea of reclaiming negative stereotypes and epiphets (the humourless feminist; the angry black woman; the unhappy queer). 

 

It's perfectly valid - and probably crucial - to expose the ironic fact that a conventional (and almost compulsory) model of happiness can have very unhappy consequences for some. 

 

On the other hand, however, I fear that Ahmed's joy killing ideology quickly becomes a form of the political asceticism that Foucault warned against in his preface to Anti-Oedipus: "Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable." [3] 

 

I don't know, maybe I'm more under the spell of French theorists than Ahmed; that I still hear, for example, the laugh of the Medusa and still affirm a practice of writing which is above all else joyful and premised upon the idea that revolution begins with a smile and does not necessitate the turning of warm flesh into cold stone, or the hardening of hearts [4]. 

 

Ultimately, when I start reading Ahmed the words of Emma Goldman also come to mind: 'If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution' [5]. 

 

 

III.

 

Having said that, readers are encouraged to make up their own minds and can do so by clicking here and accessing one of the concluding sections of her handbook, entitled 'A Killjoy Manifesto', and which, amongst other things, attempts to show how feminist principles are born of adversity and bumping up against a world that does not live in accordance with feminist principles. 

 

If you are: 

 

(i) unwilling to make happiness your cause ...

 

(ii) willing to cause unhappiness to others ...

 

(iii) keen to support others who are willing to cause unhappiness ... 

 

then you might just be the kind of committed, grumpy, ungrateful, bond-snapping killjoy that Ahmed celebrates and wishes to form a community with. 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Book III, 'The Seven Seals', section 6. 

 

[2] Principle 4 of 'A Killjoy Manifesto' is: I Am Not Willing to Laugh at Jokes Designed to Cause Offense. In it, Ahmed asserts that humour is "a crucial technique for reproducing inequality and injustice". She also admits that the killjoy "exists in close proximity to the figure of the oversensitive subject who is too easily offended". 

      See The Feminist Killjoy Handbook (Allen Lane, 2023), pp. 261-262. I provide a link to this concluding section of Ahmed's book (pp. 251-268) later in the post. 

 

[3] Michel Foucault, Preface to Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. xiil. 

 

[4] I'm referring here to the famous essay by Hélène Cixous. Originally written in French as Le Rire de la Méduse (1975), a revised version was translated into English by Paula Cohen and Keith Cohen as 'The Laugh of the Medusa' the following year. See my short post on this essay published on 24 June 2013: click here. 

 

[5] Although this line is frequently attributed to anarcho-feminist Emma Goldman, it never actually appears in any of her work. It was invented by the American anarchist Jack Frager in 1973 for a series of t-shirts and rather nicely transforms a much longer paragraph from the first volume of Goldman's two-volume autobiography into a memorable slogan: 

      "At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it." 

      - See Emma Goldman, Living My Life, Vol. 1 (Alfred A. Knopf, 1931), Ch. 5, p. 56. 

 

 

Bonus: those who are particularly interested in this topic might like to click here to watch a book launch event for The Feminist Killjoy Handbook at The People's Forum (NYC), with Sara Ahmed & Mona Eltahawy in conversation (3 Oct 2023).

 

 

Where History and Crime Intersect: On the Philosophical Fascination for Murder with Reference to the Case of Prado

Prado (aka Count Linska de Castillon)

L'homme le plus intéressant du monde

"Crime is glorified, because it is one of the fine arts, because it can be the work only of exceptional natures, because it reveals the monstrousness of the strong and powerful, because villainy is yet another mode of privilege."  - MF

 

 

I. 

 

I mentioned in a recent post how the artist Paul Gauguin was fascinated by the trial of the Spanish-born thief and murderer known as Prado, and how he (and 200 other famous faces) witnessed the execution of the latter on 28 December, 1888; an event which - along with Van Gogh's self-mutilation a few days earlier - inspired his brutal ceramic self-portrait in the form of a jughead [1].

 

But what I didn't discuss was why it is so many artists and intellectuals have a fascination with crime and seem to feel a sense of affinity with violent criminals. So I thought I'd do that here, with particular reference to the Prado case, which Nietzsche mentions in his brief correspondence with the prolific Swedish writer August Strindberg, shortly before his collapse in the first week of January 1889.  

 

 

II.

 

Whilst it is known that Prado was (i) born in Spain; (ii) brought up in the large coastal city of Gijón; (iii) had already travelled the world before turning sixteen; and (iv) twice married, history doesn't record his real name - and he chose never to reveal it. 

 

Ending up in France, Prado lived by his wits; which is to say by stealing and poncing off the girls who thought he loved them. 

 

In January 1886, he cut the throat of one of these girls - Marie Aguetant - who was believed to support herself (and him) by working as a prostitute. After being eventually caught and put on trial, Prado was sentenced to to death by guillotine at La Roquette Prison, Paris [2].

 

For some reason, his story captured the imagination of press and public alike, including members of the cultural elite, who regarded him as an intrepid adventurer. He was even said by some to be the most interesting man in the world.       

 

 

III. 

 

As mentioned, even Nietzsche, writing to Strindberg in late 1888, praises Prado and claims that he wrote Ecce Homo in the manner of the latter. It is, he says, in his nature to love such individuals and, as a philosopher, he prides himself on the fact that he has become familiar "with more evil and more questionable worlds of thought than any one else" [3].   

 

Strindberg is clearly a little taken aback by this and is not convinced that there's anything to admire or imitate in those who live outside the law: 

 

"It appears to me that in your liberality of spirit, you have to some degree flattered the criminal types. If you regard the hundreds of photographs which illustrate Lombroso's types of criminal, you will be convinced that the felon is a low sort of animal, a degenerate, a weakling who does not possess the necessary faculties to enable him to evade the more powerful laws which oppose themselves to his will and power. Just observe how stupidly moral most of these brutes really appear!" [4]

 

Nietzsche replies to this in a letter written in Turin, dated 7 December:      

"There is no doubt that the hereditary criminal is decadent, even feeble-minded. But the history of criminal families, for which a vast amount of material has been collected by Galton in his Hereditary Genius, always leads us back to some individual who happened to be too strong for some particular stratum of society. The last great trial of the criminal Prado gives us a classical example. Prado was superior to his judges and his lawyers in self-control, spirit and audacity." [5]

 

This attraction felt by artists and philosophers for criminals is discussed in an excellent essay by Lisa Downing, who examines Michel Foucault's fascination with those who have a penchant for murder; an event of prime interest where, the latter argues, history and crime intersect ...

 

 

IV.

 

Alonside the homosexual and the pervert, the figure of the criminal appears in Foucault's work as one of the quintessential modern subjects produced by the various discourses of the medical and legal professions. 

 

Whilst he seems to have sympathy (and affection) for anyone deemed abnormal, it's the murderer whom he finds particularly attractive, thereby following in a Romantic tradition that associated art and rebellion with evil, and imagined that the writing of literature was itself an act of criminal transgression. 

 

Foucault is an original thinker, but it's difficult to imagine his work in this area without referring back to that of Sade, Nietzsche, and Bataille, all of whom were intrigued by the relationship between words and deeds, the socio-linguistic construction of criminality, and the manner in which truly sovereign individuals might express their sovereignty.      

 

Foucault isn't concerned with the motivations of a murderer, but, rather, "the historical, epistemic conditions - the cultural preoccupations, fantasies, fears, norms, and power struggles for authority - that conditioned the production of the crimes and shape our understanding" [6]. 

 

Which is fair enough. 

 

However, whilst commenting on the aesthetic rewriting of crime which occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries: 

 

"Foucault at times seems to fall prey to the very fascination he describes. The terms in which he discusses the act of murder are often ambiguous and ambivalent: they occupy a place somewhere between describing an attitude and embodying it." [7]

 

As evidence of this, Downing quotes a passage from I, Pierre Rivière ... [8]:

 

'Murder is the supreme event. […] Murder prowls the confines of the law, on one side or the other, above or below it; it frequents power, sometimes against and sometimes with it. The narrative of murder settles into this dangerous area; it provides the communication between interdict and subjection, anonymity and heroism; through it infamy attains immortality.' [9]

 

As Downing rightly asks, wtf is Foucault doing here: is he "mimicking the popular hyperbolic fantasy of the act of murder as rebellious gesture of social contestation, committed by the 'outsider'", or is he (unwittingly or otherwise) "glorifying it, reveling in it?" [10].

 

For Downing, Foucault has the hots for Rivière with his beautiful reddish-brown eyes, and this erotic-aesthetic aspect of his writing on criminals strikes a discordant note to say the least. That said, it should also be noted, of course, that "the pleasure Foucault finds in Pierre Rivière’s confession" [11] is first and foremost of a textual nature. 

 

Downing concludes that what Foucault's (slightly kinky) fascination with criminality suggests most compellingly "is the extent to which, just as none of us can step outside of power, so none of us are entirely separate from the tastes and seductions of our own cultural moment" [12] - even if we are philosophers ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post entitled 'A Tale of Two Toby Jugs' (19 April 2024): click here. 

 

[2] On the morning of his execution, Prado showed no emotion and even laughed at the priest who had come to comfort him for being more nervous than he was. He also requested that the priest didn't waste his breath speaking of God, or walk beside him to the scaffold. All of which is, if true, extremely admirable.  

 

[3] Nietzsche writing to August Strindberg, quoted by Herman Scheffauer in 'A Correspondence between Nietzsche and Strindberg', The North American Review, Vol. 198, No. 693 (August 1913), pp. 197-205. This essay can be read on JSTOR: click here.

 

[4] Letter from August Strindberg to Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted by Herman Scheffauer in the essay cited above.

 

[5] Letter from Nietzsche to Strindberg, quoted by Herman Scheffauer, op. cit.

 

[6] Lisa Downing, 'Foucault and true crime', in Lisa Downing (ed.), After Foucault: Culture, Theory and Criticism in the 21st Century (Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 185-200. I am quoting from the online version of this essay: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316492864.014 

 

[7] Ibid.

 

[8] I, Pierre Riviére, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother: A Case of Parricide in the 19th Century, is a study by Michel Foucault, trans, Frank Jellinek (University of Nebraska Press, 1982). 

 

[9] Lisa Downing, quoting Foucault from I, Pierre Riviére ... in 'Foucault and true crime' (op. cit.)  

 

[10-12] Lisa Downing, 'Foucault and true crime' ...

 

  

Ghost Cats

Ghost Cat (SA/2024)

 

 

You don't need to accept everything that Dusty Rainbolt [1] tells you on the topic to believe it possible that cats possess uncanny powers and haunt the human imagination in a unique manner. 

 

But can they have a posthumous presence; that is to say, should we take the idea of ghost cats seriously? 

 

I would, as a sceptic, instinctively say no to the proposition that a dear departed feline can, as it were, still be heard purring beyond the grave and visit us in the night as a shadowy presence often coming to forewarn of danger.

 

But, having said that, stories of ghostly or demonic shape-shifting cats can be found in a vast number of cultures around the world and, like Foucault [2], I have always been fascinated by the Cheshire Cat who knows how to make himself invisible and thus become a grinning non-presence. 

 

Similarly, I have long been haunted by Dandelo, the white Angora cat who, in The Fly (1958), fails to reintegrate after being disintegrated (at a molecular level) in André Delambre's matter transporter and is lost in atomic space, from where she can still be heard meowing in a pitiful manner [3].   

Finally, there's the photo above to consider ... 

 

It's a picture I took recently of a neighbour's shorthaired ginger cat sitting in my back garden and looking a bit lonely. Apparently, he's pining for his friend who was killed by a car a few months ago and is captured here in spectral form sitting besides him.

 

What are we to make of this: is it just a trick of the light? Is there something wrong with the camera on my phone? Or is this actual photographic evidence of something spooky?

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Dusty Rainbolt, Ghost Cats: Human Encounters with Feline Spirits (The Lyons Press, 2007). 

 

[2] Foucault uses the Cheshire Cat to illustrate his model of ars erotica in which we are free to experience free-floating pleasures without holding on to an abiding essence or fixed identity (i.e., smiles without the cat).

 

[3] The suggestion is given that poor Dandelo is nowhere and everywhere and alive and dead at the same time, à la Schrödinger's famous cat in a box. 

 

   

Reflections on Two Speeches by Emmeline Pankhurst

Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) 

photographed in 1913

'I am by nature a law-abiding person - one hating violence, hating disorder - but from the moment 

we began our militant agitation to this day, I have felt absolutely guiltless. 

For in Great Britain there is no other way ...'

 

 

I. 

 

For some reason, the figure of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst continues to haunt my imagination [1]. 

 

And so I thought I would take a look at a couple of her speeches, both from 1913, and perhaps find a clue as to why I find her so unsympathetic (although, actually, I know precisely what it is that irritates: her self-righteous moral and political idealism; i.e., her fascism with a human face, as BHL might say). 

 

 

II. 

 

Freedom or Death [2]

 

In a famous speech given in the United States in 1913, Emmeline Pankhurst identifies herself as a revolutionary and a soldier on the field of battle, waging civil war on behalf of women.

 

She wishes to make it clear to her American audience that she is not merely a spokesperson or an advocate - that the time for talking has been surpassed by a time for action: Deeds Not Words is the suffragette motto and if her deeds make her a dangerous person in the eyes of the authorities, well, she seems to revel in that.

 

Forced to choose between two evils - either having to "submit indefinitely to an unjust state of affairs" or rise up and adopt violent methods - Pankhurst chose the latter on the grounds that political (and maternal) history shows which option is most effective: 

"You have two babies very hungry and wanting to be fed. One baby is a patient baby, and waits indefinitely until its mother is ready to feed it. The other baby is an impatient baby and cries lustily, screams and kicks [...] until it is fed. Well, we know perfectly well which baby is attended to first."

 

Pankhurst could have refused this binary and opted for neither/nor, but instead she decided that she would make more noise and be more obtrusive - be more of a big baby - than anybody else, throwing her explosive toys out of the pram.

 

Initially, she says, the term militant was was wrongly applied to her and her cohorts. But after brutal ill-treatment at the hands of men simply for asking questions in public, they were now quite willing to accept the description and begin to terrorise the nation. 

 

And if shit happens, and the non-combatants suffer as well as the combatants, well, that's okay with her; "you cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs; you cannot have civil war without damage to something." 

 

Similarly, if suffragettes are killed for the cause (or die whilst on hunger strike in prison), well, that's unfortunate, but might also be viewed as one way of escaping male power; for the dead cannot be enslaved or denied their rights. And whilst human life is sacred, says Pankhurst, the sacrifice of life in the name of Freedom, Justice, and Equality is the greatest thing of all and she would fight for any of these noble ideals. 

 

And so we see how moral idealism turns deadly and collapses into the black hole of fascism ... 

 

 

III.

 

Why We Are Militant [3]

 

The Freedom or Death speech, as it is known, was not the only speech that Pankhurst made whilst on her fund-raising tour of the US in 1913. Why We Are Militant was another speech that is often cited and reproduced by her admirers today.

 

It opens by taking on her critics who argue that human emancipation is an inevitable evolutionary process and that women will therefore be given the vote sooner or later, thus making the violent campaign of the suffragettes unnecessary and unjustifiable. Such critics argue that educating women and preparing them for citizenship would be time better spent than smashing shop windows, burning down churches, and sending letters bombs in the post. 

 

Pankhurst, however, rejects this argument and sees little virtue in patience. Indeed, she sees patience as "something akin to crime when our patience involves continued suffering on the part of the oppressed" and argues that political change has only come at the point of a sword, i.e., via rioting, revolution, and war - not peaceful evolution. She reminds her listeners that the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867 which extended the vote first to middle class men and then the urban male working class, were passed in response to violence and the threat of still greater violence to follow.   

 

Pankhurst thereby defends the arson attacks carried out by her suffragette comrades and suggests that if half of England needs to be burned down in a single night so that she might be able to put her X on a ballot paper, then so be it. Peaceful marches and meetings were having no effect - even if on a large scale - and appeals made fell on deaf ears - violence was unfortunate, but necessary.   

 

And the right to behave in a violent manner was part and parcel of female emancipation and equality; women should be free like men to behave in a non-constitutional and criminal manner - to break heads and destroy property - when the time called for direct action. They had the human right to do so when all other available means to bring about social and political change had failed. 

 

IV.

 

So, I think it becomes clear from these speeches why I don't like Emmeline Pankhurst. 

 

During the years she, her daughters, and the rest of her gang were particularly active on the UK political scene - from the founding of the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903 until the advent of the First World War in 1914 - there was, as Foucault would say, a certain style of political discourse and a certain ethics of the intellectual [4] - a style and an ethics that justified violence in the name of certain high ideals (such as freedom and equality). 

 

This radical moral philosophy appealed to a wide variety of political ascetics, angry militants, and potential terrorists - those who may claim to act in the name of Love, but are actually motivated by hate and resentment and seem to be particularly gripped by the molecular fascism that is in us all (in our speech and our everyday actions; in our thoughts and our desires). 

 

Paraphrasing Foucault once more, I would remind those who continue to admire Pankhurst and still think that revolutionary violence is justified by some greater good, that even if what you are fighting for is noble - and even if those you oppose are base and deplorable - you do not have to terrorise in order to be militant. 

 

And, further, don't think that politics is only and always about (defending or granting) individual rights as defined in liberal humanist philosophy.  

V.

 

It's worth noting, finally, that it was Emmeline's eldest daughter Christabel who was the real black shirt of the family. It was only after she took over leadership of the WSPU that the real violence began and the group resorted to terrorism as a legitimate political tactic - much to the horror of more moderate members who either spoke out against the bombings and arson attacks. 

 

In 1913, when Emmeline gave her speeches in America, several prominent individuals left the WSPU, including Pankhurst's younger daughters, Adela and Sylvia. 

Somewhat ironically, it was only with the outbreak of war the following year that Emmeline and Christabel called an immediate halt to their militant campaign and lent their full support to the British government in the conflict with Germany. Not only that, but they encouraged all women to assist in the war effort and all men to fight for king and country - happily handing out white feathers to those who had no wish to do so.   

 

After the War ended, Emmeline became more concerned with what she perceived as the threat posed by Bolshevism and joined the Conservative Party; her daughter Christabel, along with other more radical one-time suffragettes, chose to support the British Union of Fascists [5].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I have recently published two posts on Pankhurst and the insufferable suffragettes and their far-right political affiliations: click here and here. 

 

[2] This speech was delivered in Hartford, Connecticut on 13 November, 1913. It can easily be found in full online. An edited version was also reproduced in The Guardian (27 April 2007) as part of a series of great speeches of the 20th century: click here.     

 

[3] This speech is also from the US tour of 1913 and can also be found easily enough online: click here, for example. 

[4] See Michel Foucault's preface to Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus, trans Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, (The Athlone Press, 1994), pp. xi-xiv. 

[5] Again, see the post 'On Suffragettes and the British Union of Fascists' (17 Feb 2024): click here. 

Foucauldian Thoughts on Never Mind the Bollocks

Cover design by Jamie Reid for the Sex Pistols' compilation album 

Flogging a Dead Horse (Virgin Records, 1980), featuring the gold 

disc awarded to the band for sales of 500,000 copies of  

Never Mind the Bollocks ... (Virgin Records, 1977)

 

 

I.

 

Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols is the only studio album by English punk rock band the Sex Pistols. 

 

Released on 28 October 1977, by Virgin Records, it entered the UK Album Charts at number one, having achieved advance orders of 125,000 copies. Within weeks, it went gold and it remained a best-seller for most of the following year, spending 48 weeks in the top 75. 

 

In the many years since its original release, NMTB has been reissued on several occasions; most recently in 2017, proving that you can continue to flog a dead horse even when just the bare bones remain.   

 

NMTB has inspired many bands and musicians and is frequently listed by critics not merely as the most seminal punk album, but one of the greatest albums across all genres of popular music. In 2015, the album was officially inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the music industry thereby acknowledging its lasting qualitative and/or historical significance.

 

II. 

 

The idea that NMTB is the Sex Pistols' greatest achievement cannot be allowed to pass without close critical examination. Don't get me wrong - there are lots of things I love about it; the title, for example, and Jamie Reid's artwork for the sleeve. It even contains half-a-dozen or so songs that I still listen to today. 

 

However, rather than being viewed as an ideal reference point to which all later manifestations of what we term punk rock must nod, NMTB might be seen as just some product released, distributed, and promoted by Virgin Records. The belief that it somehow eludes and resists power and possesses radical or revolutionary properties, is simply a romantic fantasy. 

 

Of course, this isn't to deny that the myth of the Sex Pistols as anti-establishment hasn't proved to be commercially useful - or that it will cease to function in the immediate future. God's shadow is still to be seen long after his death and for a great number of fans the band continues to provide them with their most precious form of identity. Indeed, to such people NMTB is a kind of sacred artefact.

 

But it gets tedious, does it not? 

 

One grows tired of having to treat NMTB with reverence and bored of the austere monarchy of the Sex Pistols ruling over our thoughts and actions. Ultimately, one gratefully accepts the escape root from punk fandom and the worship of Saint Johnny offered by The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle ...

 

As Michel Foucault might say, in a postpunk future, many years from now, people will be unable to fathom our fascination with NMTB. And they will smile when they recall that there were once critics, like Robert Christgau, who believed that in the lyrics of the Sex Pistols resided forbidden ideas containing an undeniable truth value ...

 

 

Passion Ends in Fashion: Notes on SEX

 

Malcolm outside his notorious boutique 

at 430 King's Road (1976)

 

 

I. 

 

When it comes to the band's name, there's an argument to be made that the Sex Pistols should have been stylised as the SEX Pistols, thereby emphasising the fact that their origins lay in the shop at 430 King's Road and Malcolm's penchant for the kinkier aspects of sexual activity and experience.

 

For Malcolm, as for Foucault, sex is best understood not as a natural function, nor as something to be scientifically studied in order to discover an essential truth about human identity, but, rather, as a sophisticated ars erotica - i.e., a form of pleasure which needs to be creatively cultivated and via which the subject might, in fact, lose (or reinvent) themselves. 

 

And for Malcolm, sex always needed to be thought in relation to two other terms beginning with the letter S: style and subversion (i.e., fashion and politics). Add these three elements together et voila! you produce a pair of bondage trousers.      

 

 

II.

 

McLaren's store at 430 King's Road - run in collaboration with his partner Vivienne Westwood - underwent a series of radical transformations and name changes during its history. 

 

It originally opened (in 1971) as the Teddy boy hang out Let It Rock, before then briefly becoming Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die (1973-74), selling a range of fashions for rockers who preferred to wear black leather jackets and biker boots, rather than drape jackets and blue suede shoes.   

 

In December 1976, the shop was reinvented as Seditionaries and it continued trading under that name until September 1980. As Seditionaries, the boutique adopted a brutalist aesthetic and attitude and stocked the clothes that are now considered the epitome of punk fashion (and sell for thousands of pounds at auction).  

 

In late 1980, the store was relaunched under the name World's End and resembled - as per Malcolm's design instructions - a cross between an 18th-century galleon and the Olde Curiosity Shoppe; punks had been superseded by pirates, Apaches, and buffalo gals. 

 

Each of these shops has a unique fascination and history and each has secured a place in the pop cultural imagination. But, for me, it is Sex that continues to most excite my interest ...

 

 

III.   

 

Quickly bored even with his own projects and uncomfortable with the idea of commercial success, in the spring of 1974, McLaren radically refurbished 430 King's Road and rebranded the shop as Sex: '"That is the one thing that scares the English. They are all afraid of that word.'" [1]

 

The façade included a 4-foot sign of pink foam rubber letters spelling out the new name in capitals. The walls of the interior of the boutique were also lined with pinkish foam rubber and covered with graffitied lines taken from erotic literature and Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto (1967). Latex curtains, red carpeting, and various sexual paraphernalia used decoratively helped to create the sleazy (somewhat intimidating) look of an authentic sex shop.

 

Sex sold fetish and bondage gear supplied by existing specialist labels, as well as designs by McLaren and Westwood which were intended to be provocative rather than seductive. These included T-shirts printed with images of a nude adolescent smoking a cigarette; homosexual cowboys, bare female breasts; and - perhaps most notoriously - a leather mask of the kind worn by the Cambridge Rapist. 

 

Lines taken from pornographic texts were also often added to the designs, as were various Situationist slogans from May '68 - Sous les pavés, le plage, etc. - and references to some of Malcolm's heroes, such as the playwright Joe Orton.    

 

Pamela Rooke - known as Jordan - was hired as a sales assistant and quickly became the shop's face. 

 

In fact, Jordan embodied the spirit of the store better than anyone; better than the extraordinary clientele (which included members of the Bromley Contingent as well as the newsreader Reggie Bosanquet); better than members of the band; better even than Malcolm and Vivienne (though it can't be denied how great the latter also looked wearing her own designs) [2].  

 

Sex was far removed from the retro-revivalism of Let It Rock - although arguably Too Fast To Live possessed some of the same sense of danger and fetishistic appeal - and the customers who hung out at Sex were not the ageing Teddy boys who had so quickly bored and disappointed McLaren. They were, as mentioned, kids who had come out of glam and liked to dress up to mess up and weren't shy about challenging sexual and social conventions.

 

Paul Gorman provides an excellent summary:

 

"As an environmental installation, Sex was sensational; it literally assaulted the senses. The hectoring tone of the scawls on the 'soft' madhouse walls, the heavy jersey of the T-shirts showing severe images and text in queasy colours, the lack of natural light which produced a dull shine on the clinical black rubber garments and the powdery looking drapes, the clammy atmosphere, the 1960s garage-punk blasting from the BAL-AMi, all combined to make the experience unsettling, commanding commitment - a big Sex word - on the part of the visitor. When the door was closed, one felt less like a customer than a client entering a well-appointed dungeon, particularly when coolly appraised by the stern-faced Westwood." [3]  

 

Sex was, thus, a truly magical space aligned with McLaren's own artistic, sexual, and political obsessions. Whilst a million miles away from being what we now term a safe space inhabited by those who describe themselves as woke, it neverthless demanded that customers one day wake up and realise which side of the bed they were lying on [4].

Photo by David Dagley taken inside Sex in 1976 featuring (from L-R):

Steve Jones, Unknown, Alan Jones, Chrissie Hynde, Jordan, & Vivienne Westwood

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Malcolm McLaren, quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 220.

 

[2] As Paul Gorman notes, in 1975, aged 34, Westwood "cut a stunning figure stalking the streets of west and central London, with her shock of blonde hair complemented by such Sex designs as rubber knickers and stockings and a porn T-shirt or a studded Venus top". See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 251.

 

[3] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 226. 

 

[4] I'm referring here to the famous T-shirt conceived by Bernie Rhodes and known (by its abbreviated title) as 'You're Gonna Wake Up'. See the post published on Torpedo the Ark on 16 Dec 2012 on the political importance of making lists: click here.    

Silence is Violence (Or How Wokeism Restricts Freedom by Compelling Speech)

 

 

I. 

 

I don't know who came up with the slogan Silence is Violence, but it's certainly pithy - as an effective slogan should be.

 

In effect, it's a radical extension of the old idea qui tacet consentire videtur and powerfully conveys the contentious arguement that refusing to speak up against racism, for example, is tantamount not merely to lending one's support to discrimination and oppression, but is an act of violence in and of itself.

 

However, as a reader of Roland Barthes, I have long subscribed to the idea that fascism compels speech [1] and therefore have real concerns with the slogan silence is violence - and with the people who chant it in all seriousness (often having failed to think the idea through).

 

In brief: my worry is that the same kind of people who censor or restrict certain forms of speech on the one hand, now also wish to disallow the right to silence on the other hand; insisting that we must speak - although only in an approved manner [2].

 

 

II.

 

Of course, compelled speech has long troubled civil-liberties campaigners and not just Barthesians like me who would wish to keep the option of strategic non-discourse on the table. 

 

The fact that woke activists fail to recognise the inherent authoritarianism of forcing people to identify themselves, express their views, and confess their feelings - so long as they conform to what now passes for moral and political orthodoxy - is certainly ironic (to say the least).

 

And writers including George Orwell and Michel Foucalt must be spinning in their graves ...  

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Roland Barthes, 'Lecture in Inauguration of the Chair of Literary Semiology, Collège de France, January 7, 1977', trans. Richard Howard, October, Vol. 8 (Spring, 1979), pp. 3-16. Published by the MIT Press. This text can be accessed via JSTOR: click here. 

      I am referring to the paragraph in which Barthes says: "But language - the performance of a language system - is neither reactionary nor progressive; it is quite simply fascist; for fascism does not prevent speech, it compels speech." The reason for this, of course, is that speech acts don't take place in a vacuum; they unfold within the bounds of power (and very often enter into the service of power).       

 

[2] Mick Hume summarises all this as follows:

      "The slogan 'Silence is Violence' does not only mean that you must speak out, but that you must follow the correct script. You are free to say exactly what everybody else is saying, and say it loud. Free speech must always involve the right to offend, to speak what you believe to be true regardless of what others think. The flip side of free speech is that you must have the right to be silent when you choose - particularly when somebody is trying to compel you to speak as instructed."

      See his article 'No, silence is not violence', Spiked (16th June 2020): click here.