Reflections on Genocide in Fairyland

Stephen Alexander (1994) [1]

 

'It is time to speak of the fairies. In order to escape from the intrepid melancholy 

of expectation, it is time to create new worlds.' [2]

 

I. 

 

My friend Jennifer has written a fairy tale about a young woman and an enchanted fish. 

 

Reading it reminded me that, once upon a time, I too wrote a short collection of tales to which I gave the title Genocide in Fairyland ... 

 

 

II. 

 

Motivated by my deep green ecological concerns, my enthusiastic reading of Jack Zipes, and my love for the stories of Angela Carter - not to mention my abiding hatred of Disney - I decided, in the words of Borges, that it was time to speak of the fairies in order not simply to create new worlds of the imagination, but voice support for this world and the creatures that inhabit it. 

 

And so, I set about writing a collection of stories (numbering eight in all) and an introduction that began:

 

"Fairies symbolise the frailty of the flesh as well as the beauty and magic of the natural world. Their plight dramatises the struggle of peoples the world over to retain a traditional way of life when confronted by modernity (i.e., the world of money and machines). 

      Further, the destruction of Fairyland parallels the destruction of our own environment and our ability to dream and envision a different way of relating to one another and to the Earth."  

 

And concluded: 

 

"What I've attempted with this short collection of stories is not new; the fairy tale has long lent itself as a genre to those interested in political issues and philosophical concerns to do with identity, otherness, sexuality, interspecies relations, etc. 

      Unlike realist narratives that attempt to tell it as it is, or didactic moral fables that instruct us how it should be, folk and fairy tales, at their best - which is to say, at their most violent, most anarchic, most crude, and most comical - give a glimpse of how things might have been (once upon a time), or could possibly be (in a time to come that is already now/here)."

 

Genocide in Fairyland, then, was a book of dysfunctional creatures in a disenchanted land. Little people looking, just like the rest of us, to build up new little habitats and have new little hopes (no matter how many skies have fallen) [3].    

       

 

III.       

 

Unfortunately, I don't have copies of the eight stories (nor do I have the rejection letters from the handful of publishers I sent a proposal to) [4]. 

 

However, I do have short outlines of each tale that expose my thinking at the time and which I would like to share here:  

 

 

Come Not with Kisses 

 

A tale set in the land of the Great White Swan concerning a young princess's attempt to preserve an egg entrusted to her by a dying swan and which, she is told, contains the future. 

      Discovered by her swan-hating soon-to-be husband attending to the bird, the princess in a moment of panic hides the egg in the safest place she can think of, inserting it into her vagina. 

      Time passes: her wedding to Prince Renée goes ahead as planned, but all the while she thinks of the swan and his promise that he would one day return to her. Shortly after their honeymoon, she announces her pregnancy and he is delighted with the news. 

      However, he has a surpise awaiting him: 

 

"Won't it be strange, when the nurse brings the new

- born infant 

to the proud father, and shows its little, webbed 

greenish feet 

made to smite the waters behind it?" [5]

 

 

The Tower of Love 

 

We all know that, in the name of love, there was once a king who locked his only daugter in a tower without a door on the day she began to menstruate, so that she would never wed and be lost to him.

      The princess, however, had other ideas and let down her long hair, thereby allowing any passing stranger to climb up to her room in the tower, should he so please. 

      Less well known, however, was that in the fomer Soviet Union tales were told of a group of female inmates in a high security prison who, in order to be transferred to jails with less brutal conditions, would impregnate themselves with sperm obtained from the single male prisoner confined below. 

      Using a long piece of thread, they would lower a condom to him from their cell window and sing a song of encouragement as he jerked off into it. Once he had finished, they would then retrieve the condom and attempt to self-inseminate. 

      As the prison guards were deeply religious - despite years of communism - they regarded any pregnancies that resulted as miraculous events.  

 

Curdled Milk 

 

This is the story of a simple-minded giant accused of inappropriate conduct when playing with a group of children. What concerns here is exactly what concerned Michel Foucault with reference to the 1867 case of Charles Jouy in the village of Lapcourt, France:      

      

"The pettiness of it all; the fact that this everyday occurrence in the life of village sexuality, these inconsequential bucolic pleasures, could become [...] the object not only of collective intolerance but of a judicial action, a medical intervention, a careful clinical examination, and an entire theoretical elaboration." [6]

 

 

Home Sweet Home (Revenge of the Unhappy House-Spirit)

 

A house-spirit is a bit like a hob; very hairy, but fully clothed and a wee bit more human looking. Usually, a house-spirit will live on the top shelf above the stove, where it is nice and warm and he can enjoy the smell of the cooking. 

      In the middle of the night, long after the people of the house have retired to their beds, a house-spirit will clean and tidy up the kitchen and help himself to some milk and cheese. The house-spirit also regards child minding as one of his duties and the thing he likes to do above all else is to rock a baby in its cradle.   

      But where does a house-spirit fit into a fitted kitchen? Into a world of dish-washers and microwaves and baby monitors and disinfectants that kill 99.9% of all known germs? 

      The answer, of course, is that he doesn't. 

      Angry and plunged into depression, the house-spirit in this story decides to extract a terrible revenge upon the modern couple who have robbed his life of purpose and the tale develops into a tragic one involving domestic violence and cot-death.  

 

 

Night of the Moon-Beam Folk

 

This is the story of the moon-beam folk and their revenge upon modern city-dwellers, whom they blame for polluting the clean fresh air that they provide [7]. 

      As the latter sleep in their beds in rooms kept artificially warm in winter and artificially cool in summer, the moon-beam folk visit and weave a web of moon-beams across their faces, covering their mouths and nostrils, and thereby ensuring that they go on breathing the same stale air all night long and wake feeling drowsy and fatigued. 

      Aware of his own increasing lack-lustreness, Jack sets out to discover its cause. Medical science providing no satisfactory answer, he consults a gypsy woman from the old country, and it is she who tells him of the moon-beam folk and how he might appease them.               

 

 

Hob

 

Acculturation refers to the way in which one group of people is obliged by another group of people - usually dominant, but not necessarily superior - to assimilate and surrender their beliefs, habits, customs etc. Often this is done in the name of some grand ideal, such as material and moral progress,

      Loosely based on the story of the Yanomami - the so-called fierce people of the Amazon rainforest bordering Venezuela and Brazil - this is the tale of the Hob; a horrible, ungodly, unwashed, uneducated race of hairy little people living in the last great forest of Fairyland. 

         

     

When Jack Went Back Up the Beanstalk

 

The story of Jack - the poor boy who, with only a handful of beans, makes good by slaying a giant - is the quintessential English folk tale. 

      But surely it's wrong to steal and murder; even if one is stealing from and murdering a being regarded as a cannibalistic monster or ogre ...? And surely there are social consequences of rewarding such a youth as Jack - lazy, dishonest, violent - with wealth and celebrity ...?  

      In this tale, I pick up Jack's story several years after his initial adventure and reimagine what happened atop the beanstalk. 

 

 

Bait 

 

One of the more shameful methods employed by hunters to trap and kill wolves was to tie a female dog in heat to a tree in the forest and then wait for a male wolf to pick up her scent, locate her position, then mount her. Once inside the dog, and having ejaculated, the wolf's penis swells up and is gripped by the contracting muscles of the female dog's vagina (effectively acting as a plug to trap the semen). 

      This results in what is known as a copulatory bond (or breeding tie), locking the the two animals together for a period up to 30 minutes and, during this time, the hunter will come out from his hide and club the defenceless wolf to death.   

      With this in mind, here is my version of La Belle et la Bête, involving a cruel hunter who plans to use his own adolescent daughter as bait in order to trap and kill the Beast. Unfortunately for him, however, Beauty falls in love with the Beast after discovering that she rather enjoys his sexual embrace and so the two of them turn the tables on her father and it is he who falls victim to them.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Proposed design for book cover incorporating a black and white version of William Blake's frontispiece for Songs of Experience (1794).   

 

[2] Jorge Luis Borges with Margarita Guerrero, Book of Imaginary Beings, trans.  Norman Thomas di Giovanni (E.P. Dutton, 1969).

 

[3] The last line borrows from the famous opening passage to D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) - a passage which may well have influenced my thinking more than any other passage in any other novel.    

 

[4] And nor, sadly, do I have the letter from Tony Juniper, then at Friends of the Earth, who agreed to write a foreword to the book, after I had promised that a percentage of any monies that it might make from sales would be donated to FoE and/or other green organisations and causes.  

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Won't it be Strange -?, Pansies (Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1929), p. 23. 

 

[6] Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley (Pengun Books, 1998), p. 31. 

      Probably I would be a little more cautious about writing this tale today, in light of what we now know concerning Foucault and the sexual exploitation of minors. See the post dated 9 January 2021 in which I discuss this problematic issue with reference to Foucault and Gabriel Matzneff: click here. 

      And see the post of 11 June 2021 on child sexual abuse accomodation syndrome with reference to the case of Norman Douglas and Eric Wolton: click here.     

 

[7] A tale inspired by a scene in D. H. Lawrence's novella St. Mawr (1925); see p. 108 of the Cambridge University Press edition - published as St. Mawr and Other Stories - ed. Brian Finney (1983). 

 

 

In Defence of Diary Writing

Messrs. Stevenson and Wobble back in the day

 

 

I recently came across a book review by Jah Wobble which opens with the former PiL bass player expressing his suspicion of - and, indeed, his very evident scorn for - people who keep diaries: 

 

"If one is truly involved in events as they unfold, is there the time or inclination to take notes?" [1]

 

Wobble answers his own question by suggesting that diary keeping is the kind of anal activity that only those who seek to influence the future interpretation of events (often magnifying their own role in said events) engage in.   

 

There may, of course, be an element of truth in this. 

 

But it's not the whole story and as someone who kept a diary throughout the 1980s, I rather resent Wobble's sneering tone and his privileging of lived experience over the recording and retrospective analysis of events. 

 

For some of us - perhaps of a rather more philosophical predisposition than Mr Wobble - there is no distinction between writing and life. 

 

Journal keeping - or, indeed, blogging - is for us a vital form of scripting the self [2] and I prefer those like Nils Stevenson who creatively construct disparate truths about actual events, rather than those who, like Wobble, simply boast they were truly involved, but far too caught up in the excitement of the moment to reflect upon their own experience [3].  

 

Notes

 

[1] Review by Jah Wobble of Vacant: A Diary of the Punk Years 1976-79 by Nils Stevenson, with photos by Ray Stevenson (Thames and Hudson, 1999), in the Independent on Sunday (11th April, 1999). The review is archived on the PiL fansite Fodderstompf: click here.

 

[2] By this term I refer to a reflective and voluntary practice via which individuals are not only able to gain a degree of ethical self-understanding, but also to "change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria". 

      See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin, 1992), pp. 10-11.

 

[3] It might be noted that Wobble did, in fact, publish his memoirs in 2009. A new and  expanded edition of this critically acclaimed work was published under the title Dark Luminosity: Memoirs of a Geezer by Faber & Faber in 2024. So maybe he was taking notes all along ...  

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.