Like a Face Drawn in Sand: Anti-Humanism in D. H. Lawrence and Michel Foucault

Detail from the front cover of Foucault Now, 

ed. James D. Faubion, (Polity Press, 2014)

I.

According to Andrew Keese, a faculty member of the English Dept. at Texas Tech University: "Lawrence worried about anything which might force humans to be something other than they were actually born to be." [1]

But this is laughably mistaken in its natal essentialism. For Lawrence, the self was a product of external forces: "I am myself, and I remain myself only by the grace of the powers that enter me, from the unseen, and make me forever newly myself." [2]

He vehemently rejected the idea of an individual as a fixed entity with a predetermined fate and, like Foucault, Lawrence was happy to welcome the incoming tide that would mark the death of man. Not because he was anti-human, but because he was anti-humanist and keen to challenge all forms of anthropocentric thinking, including the conceited idea that man is the necessary end or highpoint of evolution.


II.

For readers unfamiliar with Foucault's notorious (but very beautiful) concluding paragraphs from The Order of Things, here they are in full: 

"One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge. Taking a relatively short chronological sample within a restricted geographical area - European culture since the sixteenth century - one can be certain that man is a recent invention within it. It is not around him and his secrets that knowledge prowled for so long in the darkness. In fact, among all the mutations that have affected the knowledge of things and their order, the knowledge of identities, differences, characters, equivalences, words - in short, in the midst of all the episodes of that profound history of the Same –-only one, that which began a century and a half ago and is now perhaps drawing to a close, has made it possible for the figure of man to appear. And that appearance was not the liberation of an old anxiety, the transition into luminous consciousness of an age-old concern, the entry into objectivity of something that had long remained trapped within beliefs and philosophies: it was the effect of a change in the fundamental arrangements of knowledge. As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.

      If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared, if some event of which we can at the moment do no more than sense the possibility –-without knowing either what its form will be or what it promises - were to cause them to crumble, as the ground of Classical thought did, at the end of the eighteenth century, then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea." [3]

Foucault's argument is actually very straightforward: he is using the term man to refer to a cultural and historical formation - not a biological organism or zoological species. In other words, man is a specific (but contingent) mode of being that has arisen at a particular time due to circumstances that will sooner or later change.

Understanding man in this way allows us to also think about the play of forces (social, economic, technological, etc.) peculiar to each epoch and how these interact with each other and with the forces within the human animal to produce new forms and ways of being. Unlike Rupert Birkin in Women in Love, Foucault is not fantasising about a world without humans, but thinking rather of a future in which the convenient fiction of humanity as presently conceived is no longer tenable.

Further, Foucault is interested in the extent to which man as a conceptual category can be understood as a bourgeois compromise (or as a bridge between ape and Übermensch, as Nietzsche would say) and to what degree man is merely something that obstructs and inhibits vital forces and flows.       

To be honest, the idea is so simple and - I would have thought - uncontroversial, that I cannot see why some people (including those who should know better) have problems understanding or accepting it ... 

Notes

[1] Andrew Keese, 'Engineering Away Humanity: Lawrence on Technology and Mental Consciousness in Lady Chatterley's Lover and Pansies', in D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity, ed. Indrek Männiste, (Bloomsbury, 2019), pp. 127-135. The line quoted is on p. 134. 

I'm afraid that Keese misunderstands both Lawrence and Michel Foucault in this essay; particularly on the subject of power, which neither saw as corrupting (that would be Lord Acton), nor as something merely repressive. Nor is it correct to say that, like Lawrence, Foucault regards humans as being "out of balance between their instinctual and mental selves" [129]. That's more a Freudian schema than Foucauldian and, as far as I recall, Foucault doesn't uphold the Cartesian mind-body division in his corporeal ontology.     

[2] D. H. Lawrence, '...... Love Was Once a Little Boy', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 344.

[3] Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, (Routledge, 1989), pp. 421-22.

Ghost Variations: Notes on the Madness of Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) 

German Romantic composer, critic, and madman

In the season two episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Jacket' [1], George has a catchy tune from Les Misérables stuck in his head which he can't stop singing: Master of the house, doling out the charm / Ready with a handshake and an open palm ...

Jerry warns him that the ninteenth century composer Robert Schumann went mad after just a single note earwormed its way into his mind and he involuntarily heard it playing over and over again. Obviously, George doesn't find this story very reassuring - Oh that I really needed to hear! - but is it true?

The short answer is yes: Schumann did go insane and have to be institutionalised; and he did hear a persistent A-note at the end of his life as well as other increasingly disturbing auditory hallucinations.

Thus it was, for example, that on one cold winter's night in February 1854, the composer leapt from his bed and began feverishly attempting to set down a melody that he believed at first was being dictated by the very angels of heaven. By morning, however, he was convinced that what he actually heard were the hideous cries of demonic beasts.

Whatever the true source of his inspiration [2], the melody became the basis of the six piano variations - known today as the Geistervariationen - that were the last thing he wrote before his final crack-up. They thus occupy a unique (and somewhat disturbing) place in his body of work - as, indeed, in the history of classical music. 

On 27 February, Schumann attempted suicide by throwing himself from a bridge into the Rhine. Rescued by a passing boat and taken home, he requested that he be admitted to an asylum for the insane. Here he remained until his death, aged 46, in the summer of 1856. During his confinement, although his friend Brahms had permission to visit, Schumann wasn't allowed to see his wife, Clara, until two days before his death.

The cause of his death - just like the cause of his madness [3] - is something that has been endlessly discussed ever since; was he schizophrenic or syphilitic? Did he have a bipolar disorder or were his neurological problems the result of a brain tumour of some kind? Was it pneumonia or mercury poisoning - mercury being a common treatment for syphilis at the time - which finally did him in?   

I suppose we'll never really know. But what we might do - and should do - is resist the urge of some commentators to regurgitate the romantic vomit and tired narratives regarding the genius and madness of artists ...

The view that creativity is rooted in or fatefully tied to madness is such bullshit. Artists may well think differently from most other people - that is to say, they may be neurologically divergent and able to experience the world from a wide array of queer perspectives (to delight in paradox, inconsistency, and even chaos), - but it's banal (and mistaken) to reduce this (or their heightened sensitivity) to mental illness.       

Ultimately, I return to Michel Foucault's conclusion in Madness and Civilization: the onset of madness marks the point at which creative work ends; a moment of abolition that dissolves the truth of the work of art [4].  

Notes

[1] Seinfeld, 'The Jacket' [S2/E3], dir. Tom Cherones, written by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, (first broadcast 6 February 1991). Click here to watch a clip from the episode on YouTube.

[2] Sadly, Schumann's mind had deteriorated to such a degree by this point, that he was unable to recognise that - far from being the work of angels, ghosts, or demons - the melody was in fact one of his own, written several months earlier.

[3] I'm taking Schumann's mental health issues - evident from a young age - as a given here, but, interestingly, there are critics such as John Worthen who vigorously challenge this idea. For Worthen the composer's tragic deterioration was rooted in a physical condition (syphilis) and was not a form of madness per se. See: Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician (Yale University Press, 2007).

[4] Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization trans. Richard Howard, (Vintage Books, 1988), p. 287.

Let's Go Outside: Notes on The Horla

Cover of the 1908 edition 

of Guy de Maupassant's Le Horla 

I.

The concept of the Outside is as important to me now as it was twenty-five years ago when I decided to entitle my doctoral project on the work of Nietzsche and Lawrence Outside the Gate, referencing not only one of the little rhyming preludes to The Gay Science, but also the Killing Joke album of that title from 1988. [1]  

I suppose my understanding of the concept has remained fairly consistent over the years; mostly shaped by the occult musings of Richard Somers in Kangaroo (1923) about dark gods and invisible strangers in the night, tapping at the doors of human perception in order to gain admission into our world which we have illuminated with electric light in order to banish the darkness and create the illusion of safety, even though we remain standing on the edge of an invisible abyss. [2] 

That's Foucault I'm paraphrasing and his attempt to think the thought from outside has also been an important influence on my work; a type of thought that stands in contrast to the interiority of most philosophical reflection and the positivity of our scientific knowledge; a type of thought that we find not in mysticism, but in literature - such as in the work of Sade and Hölderlin:

"Can it be said without stretching things that Sade and Hölderlin simultaneously introduced into our thinking, for the coming century, but in some way cryptically, the experience of the outside - the former by laying desire bare in the infinite murmur of discourse, the latter by discovering that the gods had wandered off through a rift in language as it was in the process of losing its bearings?" [3]

I think it probably can - and I think we can say also that Guy de Maupassant is another writer who gives us an experience of the outside in his unsettling short story Le Horla (1886/87) ...

II.

The word Horla is, of course, a neologism coined by Maupassant; an amalgam of the French words hors and là.

Thus, the Horla is literally the one who is out there - always waiting for a chance to enter so that it can steal your milk and water and drive you out of your fucking mind; an alien entity that threatens to overwhelm (and possibly supersede) humanity. Who said the Übermensch couldn't have an extra-terrestrial origin - or come, like a virus, from out of the jungle or Brazilian rainforest?

The 42-year-old victim of the tale has not only been mentally unhinged by his experiences, which started with a strange malaise and a kind of nervous anxiety, but reduced to a pitiful physical state:

"He was extremely thin, cadaverous even, as some madmen look when they are consumed by an obsession. Their bodies seem ravaged by one sick thought which devours them faster than any disease or consumption." [4]

His doctor prescribed cold showers and sedatives and the latter at least helped the man to sleep; unfortunately, sleep turned out to be even more intolerable than the insomnia. He explains why:

"'As soon as my head hit the pillow, my eyes closed and I was out. I mean out completely. I fell into absolute nothingness, a void, a total blank. My self became completely dead until I was suddenly, horribly awoken by the most appalling sensation. An unbearable weight was lying on my chest and another mouth was sucking the life out of me through my own.'" [237]

Obviously, that's not very pleasant and no one would want to experience such a thing. Nor, I suppose, would most people - there are doubtless exceptions - want to see their roses plucked by an invisible hand and sniffed by an invisible nose belonging to an invisible being. I mean, greenfly can be a problem enough as it is.

And to have anyone reading over your shoulder - or absorb your own reflection - is always profoundly irritating, is it not?

The poor man eventually admits himself into the care of an eminent psychiatrist, Dr. Marrande, who overcomes his own professional scepticism and concludes that his patient's experiences with the Horla may well have been all-too-real. He informs his colleagues: "'I cannot tell if this man is mad or whether we both are ... or whether ... man's successor is already in our midst ...'" [244]    

This last idea is one that the man has already developed very eloquently:

"'What is this being, gentlemen?  I believe it is what the earth is waiting for, to supersede humanity, to usurp our throne, to overwhelm and perhaps feed on us as we feed now on cattle and wild boar. We have sensed and dreaded it for centuries. We have heard its approach with terror. Our forefathers have been haunted by the Invisible.
      It has come.'" [243]

Notes

[1] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 'Joke, Cunning, and Revenge: A Prelude in Rhymes', number 57. The original German verse, entitled Wählerischer Geschmack, [Fastidious Taste] reads:   

Wenn man frei mich wählen liesse,
Wählt' ich gern ein Plätzchen mir
Mitten drin im Paradiese:
Gerner noch - vor seiner Tür!

Which we might translate as: When given a free choice, / I'd choose myself a place / in the centre of paradise: / Better still - outside the gates!

To play the title track from the Killing Joke album - digitally remastered in 2007 and provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group in 2015 - click here. 

[2] See D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 285:

"The Lord thy God is the invisible stranger at the gate in the night, knocking. He is the mysterious life-suggestion, tapping for admission. And the wondrous Victorian Age managed to fasten the door so tight, and light up the compound so brilliantly with electric light, there was no outside, it was all in. The Unknown became a joke: is still a joke.
      Yet there it is, outside the gate, getting angry."

[3] Michel Foucault, Maurice Blanchot: The Thought from Outside, trans. Brian Massumi, (Zone Books, 1987), p. 17.

[4] Guy de Maupassant, 'The Horla', in A Parisian Affair and Other Stories, trans. Siân Miles, (Penguin Books, 2004), p. 236. Following page references are given directly in the text. Note that this is the first version of the tale, published in 1886, and not the longer, more developed version of 1887. 

Horrors of the Casting Couch

The only way to become a star is to get under 

a good director and work your way up.

I.

When researching a recent post on the 1959 film Horrors of the Black Museum, I came across this publicity photo featuring one of the female stars, June Cunningham, and writer-producer Herman Cohen getting an eyeful of the former in costume and presumably on set.

Clearly, it was meant at the time to be humorous, in a saucy postcard or Benny Hill-like manner. But today, when so many things are viewed differently, it does seem slightly troubling - and, indeed, will be for some members of the Me Too generation far more shocking and horrifying than anything that appears in the movie itself. 


II.

Of course, games involving the complex interplay of sex and power have a long history in the entertainment industry and the central role of the casting couch - upon which so many promises are made (by mostly male directors and producers) and so many favours granted (by mostly pretty young starlets) - has been an open secret from the beginning (so much so that casting couch has become a well-known euphemism for the sexual politics of showbiz and a popular pornographic trope).   

It would be wrong, however, to always interpret this phenomenon reactively and think only in moral terms of abuse and exploitation, vulnerability and victimhood. For one thing, power isn't something that one party exclusively possesses and the other doesn't; nor does power always express itself in a base or vulgar manner. Further, as Foucault recognised, power doesn't only weigh on us as a form of repressive violence; it also induces pleasures and is a great productive network running through the entire social body.

Looking at the above photograph, we might also recall Baudrillard's work on seduction and the revenge of the object that curdles conventional notions of agency, consent, and truth. If nothing else, it's important to know that appearances are deceptive, situations reversible, and tables can often be turned in the blink of a gouged out eye.

Thus who can really say who is fucking with whom here? Cohen wears the trousers; but Cunningham has the ability to charm the pants off him ...  

Philosophical Reflections on Self-Partnering

Emma Watson
Photo: Action Press / Rex / Shutterstock

As members of the Hollywood set are amongst the most self-absorbed, self-obsessed, and self-indulgent individuals in the world, it came as no surprise to hear Emma Watson speak in an interview with Vogue about self-partnering [click here to read online].

Of course, such a single-positive proposition is really nothing very new: we could trace out a long and fascinating history of self-partnering from Narcissus to Jerry Seinfeld; "Now I know what I've been looking for all these years - myself. I've been waiting for me to come along. And now I've swept myself off my feet!"*

And although some people seem to react with hostility to the idea, there's really nothing to get angry or judgemental about. In fact, I would encourage people to be happy for Ms Watson - particularly as she seems to be so content with the arrangement.

Ultimately, self-partnering is better than sitting around moping like Bridget Jones, or complaining about not having met your soulmate - that special someone who will complete you as a human being (as if Aristophanes's amorous fantasy was anything other than that).**

I also agree with Foucault that care for others shouldn't be put before the care of oneself; that the latter is ethically prior due to the fact that the relationship with oneself is ontologically prior. ***    

The only problem comes when you grow tired of the arrangement and seek a conscious uncoupling; i.e., a releasing of oneself from oneself  - 'cos breaking up is hard to do (comma, comma, down dooby doo down down).  

Notes

*Dialogue from Seinfeld, 'The Invitations', (S7/E22, 1999), written by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, episode dir. Andy Ackerman. Click here to watch a clip on YouTube.

** Plato, The Symposium, ed. M. C. Howatson and Frisbee C. C. Sheffield, trans. M. C. Howatson, (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

*** Michel Foucault, 'The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom', in The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1: Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley and Others, (The New Press, 1997).

Readers who enjoyed this post will probably find an earlier one on sologamy also of interest: click here.

Douglas Murray: The Madness of Crowds

Bloomsbury (2019)

Douglas Murray's new book is conveniently divided into four main sections headed by a single term (dramatically printed in bold even on the contents page): Gay - Women - Race - Trans

Each of these terms plays a foundational role within contemporary culture; they are the four pillars of postmodernity; the terms to which all paths lead and all other signifiers refer. Whilst they provide meaning and allow individuals to forge identities, they are also the true causes of the collective insanity that lies at the root of what is happening today.

That - in brief - is Murray's central argument; one with cultural and socio-political aspects, but which essentially remains a philosophical argument to do with the collapse of old values in an age after God, when even the secular narratives that initially promised to fill the void no longer retain our belief.     

The problem is, Murray is not a philosopher; he's a journalist and public intellectual. And so his analysis tends to be common sensical rather than conceptually challenging and when he does mention philosophers by name, it's only ever in passing and nearly always in a dismissive manner - never once does he engage with their ideas or even think it might be worthwhile to do so.

And that's a real problem for me - even if, broadly speaking, I agree with Murray on many points and share some of his concerns. Perhaps if he did read the work of thinkers such as Foucault and Deleuze with serious critical attention he might understand a little better why we are where we are and avoid the anglophonic arrogance that he and others of his ilk (Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro) are prone to.          


Gay

According to Murray, Foucault's views on homosexuality are deeply confused. I don't think that's true: I think, rather, that Murray dislikes any degree of ambiguity and, in the end, Foucault is a little too radical and a little too queer for his liking. For whereas gays, such as himself, want social acceptance and pride themselves on their respectability, "queers want to be recognized as fundamentally different to everyone else and to use that difference to tear down the kind of order that gays are working to get into" [37]. 

For Murray, irresponsible queers - along with radical feminists, black militants and trans activists - take things too far; instead of seeking liberal consensus and some form of historical resolution, they just keep banging on about power and politics, identity and intersectionality:

"Such rhetoric exacerbates any existing divisions and each time creates a number of new ones. And for what purpose? Rather than showing  how we can all get along better, the lessons of the last decade appear to be exacerbating a sense that in fact we aren't very good at living with each other." [4]

Murray's fear is that this risks a backlash that would threaten some of the advances made in civil rights and sexual freedoms that he supports: "After all it is not clear that majority populations will continue to accept the claims they are being told to accept and continue to be cowed by the names that are thrown at them if they do not." [232]

That's a very reasonable concern, but, ironically, some critics would argue that his moral conservatism is part of that reaction.    


Women

Murray's wish that we might all just get along is developed in his chapter on women and the relations between the sexes. But he seems to think that we'll never get along until everyone acknowledges the innate biological differences between men and women (including aptitude differences) and accepts these as a basis for ordering society, rather than the "political falsehoods pushed by activists in the social sciences" [65]. 

The problem is, of course, that even biological facts are subject to cultural and socio-political interpretation. And even if we could identify biological facts concerning sexual difference in and of themselves, Murray doesn't provide any reason why they should be inscribed within society and its institutions as natural law; why biology should become not only a determining factor but a destiny.  

Murray also worries far too much about silly slogans, hashtags, and memes on social media that betray an apparent war on men being fought by man-hating fourth-wave feminists: things such as 'men are trash', 'kill all men', and references to 'toxic masculinity', etc.

I'm surprised Mr. Murray has the the time or patience to read the latest tweets from Laurie Penny et al and would suggest he spend less time on social media (which, in an interlude following this chapter, he describes as a massively disruptive force that dissolves the public/private distinction and ultimately leads to group think and mass hysteria).*     

Race

It's not only queers, feminists, and the tech giants of Silicon Valley who are foisting us off with "things [we] didn't ask for, in line with a project [we] didn't sign up for, in pursuit of a goal [we] may not want" [120], it's also those anti-racists who "turn race from one of many important issues into something which is more important than anything else" [122], writes Murray.  

Just when black and white people were learning to live together in the same perfect harmony as the keys on Paul and Stevie's piano, along came critical race theory and black studies to fuck things up with "a newly fervent rhetoric and set of ideas" [122] that don't simply celebrate blackness, but problematise (and even demonise) whiteness.

Why, it's almost as if race were a political issue to do with power and privilege ... things which, as we have noted, Murray wishes to turn a blind eye to; just as he wants us all to be colour-blind: "the idea of which Martin Luther King was dreaming in 1963" [126]. To get beyond race is such a beautiful thought, says Murray. But, obviously, it's not going to happen: not least of all because race isn't simply a question of skin colour, as Murray acknowledges; it's a time bomb.  
 

Trans

Murray writes:

"Among all the subjects in this book and all the complex issues of our age, none is so radical in the confusion and assumptions it elicits, and so virulent in the demands it makes, as the subject of trans [...] trans has become something close to a dogma in record time." [186]

That, unfortunately, seems to be the case: and whilst I have no problem with trans individuals, dogma and/or doxa, should always be challenged - even genderqueer dogma.

Anyway, moving on ... I was fascinated to discover that:

"One of the most striking trends as the trans debate has picked up in recent years is that autogynephilia has come to be severely out of favour. Or to put it another way, the suggestion that people who identify as trans are in actual fact merely going through the ultimate extreme of sexual kink has become so hateful to many trans individuals that it is one of a number of things now decried as hate speech." [196]

This surprised (and disappointed) me as someone who has written positively about autogynephilia and eonism in the past on Torpedo the Ark: click here, for example. Why must everything - even changing sex - be presented as a spiritual journey and an issue to do with human rights?**

Call me old-fashioned, but I'd rather think in terms of desire and seduction, perversion and pathology. And if I were a transwoman, the last thing I'd want to be is some kind of sexless figure like a nun whose newly constructed vagina is a sign of sacrifice and suffering rather than a site of potential pleasure.    

To conclude: The Madness of Crowds is an informative and interesting book, rather than an important and inspired one; a piece of intelligent journalism, rather than a work of philosophy. A book that ends with a call to love, as if it weren't precisely such idealism that got us into the mess we're in today.

Notes

* Murray will later go on to say: "The arrival of the age of social media has done things we still have barely begun to understand and presented problems with which we have hardly started to grapple. The collapse of the barrier between private and public language is one. But bigger even than that [...] is the deepest problem of all: that we have allowed ourselves no mechanisms for getting out of the situation technology has landed us in. It appears able to cause catastrophes but not to heal them, to wound but not to remedy." [174]

One suggests Murray read (or re-read) Heidegger's classic 1954 essay The Question Concerning Technology, which might deepen his thinking on this point and also provide him with a wider perspective. I suspect, however, that Heidegger would be another of those philosophers that he'd dismiss for lacking clarity (though he could hardly accuse the latter of being a crypto-Marxist).  

** Murray provides the answer to this question:

"If people have a particular sexual kink then [...] it is hard to persuade society that it should change nearly all of its social and linguistic norms in order to accommodate those sexual kinks.  [...]
      If trans were largely, mainly or solely about erotc stimulation then it should no more be a cause to change any societal fundamentals than it would be to change them for people who get a sexual thrill from wearing rubber. Autogynephilia risks presenting trans as a softwear [i.e. non-biological] issue. And that is the cause of the turn against it. For - as with homosexuals - there is a drive to prove that trans people are 'born this way'." [198-99] 

Readers might be interested in a post on Douglas Murray's previous book, The Strange Death of Europe (2017): click here.        

On D. H. Lawrence's Objection to Pirated Books and Counterfeit Emotions

I. 

As Michael Squires reminds us, A Propos of "Lady Chatterley's Lover" originally consisted of a brief expository essay in which Lawrence takes on the pirates who had moved quickly to produce various counterfeit editions of his controversial novel, which had been published privately, in July 1928.   

Later, Lawrence radically expanded the essay in order to defend the work from critics and censors - whom he despised more than the pirates - and offer a "final, eloquent statement of his belief" [1] in an authentic model of sexuality and the importance of what he termed phallic marriage.

I'll comment on these ideas shortly, but I'd like to begin by discussing Lawrence's skirmish with Jolly Roger ... 

II. 

Towards the end of 1928, Lawrence became aware that Lady C. had been pirated, as unauthorised versions of the work began appearing in New York, London, and Paris, much to his irritation. 

He decided the best thing to do as a countermeasure would be to bring out a new, inexpensive paperbound edition of his own. This French edition, which came with the original short introduction mentioned above ('My Skirmish with Jolly Roger') - appeared in May 1929 and quickly sold out. 

But what, we might ask - apart from the loss of royalties (and Lawrence wasn't indifferent to this issue) - was his problem with the pirate books? 

 

In A Propos, he objects at first purely on aesthetic grounds; they are either cheap and inferior or gloomy and depressing looking. But that's rather unconvincing coming from someone who, just five years earlier, had written of his contempt for the "actual corpus and substance" of the book as an actual object; i.e., as a published volume that is marketed and put on sale:

"Books to me are incorporate things [...] What do I care for first or last editions? I have never read one of my own published works. To me, no book has a date, no book has a binding.

      What do I care if 'e' is somewhere upside down, or 'g' comes from the wrong fount? I really don't." [2]  

So there's obviously something else going on ... And that something else is to do with the question of authenticity: In brief, Lawrence hates the pirate books because they're forgeries and facsimiles. In other words, they're not the real deal as authorised (and signed) by him; they're counterfeit copies, or replicas as he calls them. 

And that's what troubles him: just as, later in A Propos, it becomes clear what troubles him most of all about modern expressions of sexuality and human emotion is that they are, in his view, fake and fraudulent. Lawrence contrasts emotions as (false) mental representations with real feelings that belong to the body: 

"Today, many people live and die without having had any real feelings - though they have had a 'rich emotional life' apparently, having showed strong mental feeling. But it is all counterfeit." [3]

Above all else, it's love that is a counterfeit feeling today and reduced to a stereotyped set of behaviours. Which means, says Lawrence, that there is no real sex - it's been killed, or, at the very least, perverted into a thing that is cold and bloodless. And that's a catastrophe because, for Lawrence, sex is an impersonal, cosmic principle that not only keeps men and women in balance, but holds the very heavens in place.    

III.

What, as readers in 2019, are we to make of this?

Personally, I can only echo Michel Foucault who ends the first volume of his History of Sexuality with a quotation from Lawrence's A Propos calling for the "full conscious realisation of sex" (i.e. sex thought completely, honestly and cleanly). [3]

Foucault responds to this passage, in which Lawrence would have us believe our ontological future is at stake, with amused irony:

"Perhaps one day people will wonder at this. They will not be able to understand how a civilization [...] found the time and the infinite patience to inquire so anxiously concerning the actual state of sex; people will smile perhaps when they recall that here were men - meaning ourselves - who believed that therein resided a truth every bit as precious as the one they had already demanded from the earth, the stars, and the pure forms of their thought ..." [4]

Notes

[1] Michael Squires, Introduction to A Propos of "Lady Chatterley's Lover", in Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press,1993), p. lv.

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Bad Side of Books', Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 75-6.

[3] D. H. Lawrence, A Propos of "Lady Chatterley's Lover", in Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 311 and 308.

[4] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley, (Pantheon Books, 1978), pp. 157-58. 

Readers interested in this topic might like to read an earlier post on Lady Chatterley's postmodern lover: click here.

See also: Chris Forster, 'Skirmishing with Jolly Roger: D. H. Lawrence, Obscenity, and Book Piracy', Ch. 3 of Filthy Material: Modernism and the Media of Obscenity, (Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 61-88. Forster cleverly - and, in my view, rightly - argues that Lawrence "frames his critique of piracy as one more expression of the corrupt state of [inauthentic] modernity" [71]

Musical bonus: Adam and the Ants, 'Jolly Roger', from the album Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS, 1980): click here.  

Aces High: Reflections on Asexuality

Asexual flag 

I. 

One of the reasons that Nietzsche has a difficult time accepting the idea of aesthetic detachment - he derides the idea as immaculate perception - is because sex is such a crucial aspect of his Dionysian philosophy and the lover, he says, is not only a stronger but more valuable type of human being:

"His whole economy is richer than before, more powerful, more complete than in those who do not love. The lover becomes a squanderer: he is rich enough for it. Now he dares, becomes an adventurer, becomes an ass in magnanimity and innocence [...] this happy idiot grows wings and new capabilities."    

Nietzsche insists that our sexuality reaches into the uppermost summit of our spirit and that beneath all our purest thoughts and high ideals lie unconscious libidinal investments that attest to the fact we are first and foremost creatures of desire. This is not to say that an erotic motive is to be attributed to all human activities, but that an element of sex is never far away.

For Nietzsche, as for so many nineteeth century thinkers, sex is the great clue to being and the truth of ourselves. I suspect he would refuse to conceive of asexuality except in purely negative terms - as evidence of retarded puberty, for example, or a form of degeneracy.


II.

Unfortunately, there are still people today who regard asexual individuals either with suspicion, contempt, or a mixture of both; believing them to be unfeeling and unnatural, almost inhuman in their apparent indifference to sexual pleasure.

Personally, however, I rather admire those individuals who have refused - inasmuch as asexuality does involve behavioural choice - to be amorous subjects and stepped beyond LGBT whilst remaining happily within the uncanny order of Q (much to the annoyance of some within the allosexual community).

What's more, I sometimes think that the reason individuals who pride themselves on their sexual identity and orientation sometimes feel threatened by and hostile towards asexuals is due to the fact that the latter (a) do not find them attractive and (b) refuse to make themselves available for fucking.       


III.

Before going any further with this defence-cum-celebration of asexuality, let's just be clear on a few important points ...

Firstly, asexuality is distinct from abstention and celibacy; i.e., it's not merely an expression of ascetic idealism. Indeed, some religious writers openly condemn asexuality as delusional and immoral. The Jesuit priests David Nantais and Scott Opperman write:

"Asexual people do not exist. Sexuality is a gift from God and thus a fundamental part of our human identity. Those who repress their sexuality are not living as God created them to be: fully alive and well. As such, they're most likely unhappy."

This characterisation amuses me and I have to admit that I'm quite happy to think of asexuality as a form of blasphemous living that refuses consummation. Better that, than attempts to portray it as a medical disorder, a form of sexual dysfunction, or the result of bad conscience concerning the body. 

Finally, it should be noted that some asexuals may in fact engage in erotic activity despite lacking any real desire to do so - perhaps as a matter of courtesy or curiosity - although most prefer romantic relationships that involve non-physical activity (apart from hand-holding and the odd cuddle), friend-focused non-romantic relationships, and/or queer-platonic relationships that invent new ways of associating.

There are, thankfully, no hard and fast rules governing the so-called ace community and there are also plenty of grey areas (of ambiguity) to explore.     


IV.

For me, then, asexuality holds a good deal of interest as something that (potentially) challenges sexual normativity and offers (passive) resistance to the coital imperative to fuck over and over and over again; what one critic refers to as the tyranny of orgasmic pleasure. 

The socially cherished myth that sex is the most basic and universal of instincts - often repressed and thus in need of liberating so that men and women can lead happy, fulfilled lives - is one that Michel Foucault and Judith Butler began to deconstruct decades ago, but it seems that more work still needs to be done convincing people that sexuality is not a natural given, but a historical construct. Essentialism, alas, continues to exert itself - not least in the idiocy of identity politics.

Notes

The black stripe in the asexual pride flag is for those individuals who identify as asexual; the grey stripe represents those who are demi- or semi-sexual; the white stripe is for those who subscribe to or manifest some full form of sexuality; and, finally, the purple stripe is to display solidarity with members of the wider queer community. 

For more information on asexuality visit the website of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), founded in 2001 by David Jay. I don't necessarily share or endorse the views expressed here; particularly the reactive attempt to make of asexuality an intrinsic identity or orientation and to present asexuals as people with 'the same emotional needs as everybody else'. How dreary and disappointing if that's the case! I'm hoping, like Ela Przybylo, that asexuality might prove to be a bit more provocative and create spaces of complication. See her essay, 'Crisis and safety: the asexual in sexusociety', in Sexualities, (SAGE, 2011), 14 (4), pp. 444-461. Click here to read online via Academia.edu

Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, (Vintage Books, 1968), 808, pp. 426-27.

David Nantais and Scott Opperman, 'Eight myths about religious life', Vision (Vocation Network, 2002): click here to read online. 

Gallows Corner (Reflections on Capital Punishment and Lessons in Paganism)

I.

Living as I do just north of the notorious road junction known as Gallows Corner - a large roundabout with five exits, a flyover, a nearby retail park, and an above average number of collisions -  mean my thoughts often turn to the subject of capital punishment; particularly in the wake of some ghastly local crime, such as the murder of Jodie Chesney ... 

I'm not suggesting that they should demolish the drive-thru KFC and re-erect the gallows as a place of public execution, but it has to be asked what should be done with violent felons who have placed themselves outside of the law and society and what role cruelty, punishment and death (as a form of truth) should play within the socio-legal space.


II.

Historically, as Foucault notes, public executions were always about more than justice; they were a theatrical display of force within a system founded upon a notion of sovereignty. But we, of course, no longer live in such a world; as citizens and as subjects, we are are constituted by a very different regime of power - one that has given itself the task (and the right) to administer life, rather than take it.

Such a regime - let's call it liberal humanism - prides itself on its ability to sustain and coordinate life within a system of law and order: "For such a power, execution was at the same time a limit, a scandal, and a contradiction." It's because this is the case - because having to execute a prisoner is an embarrassing sign of failure - that most Western democracies have abolished capital punishment (and why those states that still carry out executions do so behind closed doors as a joyless, bureacratic procedure witnessed only by officials and a few selected individuals). 

It's not that they - we - have become more humanitarian or more squeamish; death isn't carefully evaded or hidden away within our culture due to a heightened moral sense or some peculiar form of modern anxiety, but due to the fact that death is that which frustrates (bio-)power's desire to micro-manage every aspect of an individual's life. 

III.

Again, I'm not saying that we should attempt to turn the clock back and resurrect violent spectacles or what Nietzsche would term festivals of cruelty, though one suspects that here in Essex - home of the witch trials - there would be an enthusiastic audience for such.

I'm just reminding readers that, as Foucault suggests, public executions were once an occasion also for the exercise of popular power; a chance for citizens to directly vent their anger and make their views known; to not only rejoice in the execution of a criminal, but to mock those who act with pretensions of higher (universal) authority.   

Perhaps there is still something important to learn from Lyotard's lessons in paganism after all ...


IV.

By the term paganism Lyotard refers to a style of thinking which affirms the idea of incommensurable differences founded upon an ontology of singular events. For Lyotard, all things - including crimes - should be considered on their own terms, without attempting to arrive at a universal law of judgement that can make sense of (or do justice to) each and every unique happening.       

In other words, paganism is a kind of godless politics; one that abandons One Truth and One Law in favour of a multiplicity of specific judgements that have no pre-existing (ideal) criteria to refer back to. This would, arguably, allow us to develop a kind of post-Nietzschean legal sytem wherein judgement becomes an expression of an active and affirmative will to power.   

I have to admit that I find it difficult to see how this plurality of judgements would work in practice, but that might simply be because I lack the constitutive imagination to do so (a Kantian notion that Lyotard also invokes in his work on paganism).

See:

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998); see Part Five: 'Right of Death and Power Over Life'.

Jean-François Lyotard, 'Lessons in Paganism', The Lyotard Reader, ed. Andrew Benjamin, (Blackwell, 1998). 

Oikophobia

Home is made for comin' from, for dreams of going to

Which with any luck will never come true.

I. Confessions of an Oikophobe

Oikophobia - from the Greek, oikos, which refers to the three distinct but related concepts of home, household, and family, and phobia, meaning fear and loathing - is a term used within psychiatry, literary studies, and political philosophy.    

In the first of these fields, psychiatry, it identifies a deep-seated aversion to the vita domestica as it unfolds within a physical space, including the everyday objects and household appliances that are commonly found in the home: including, for example, cookers, carpets, and curtains.

Whether such a phobia is irrational, is debatable; to my mind it seems perfectly reasonable. I don't think disliking the saccharine stupidity and bourgeois vulgarity of home, sweet home is symptomatic of mental illness - it's surely a sign rather of cultural nobility (that is to say, artistic and intellectual superiority).

Thus it is that many poets have a romantic and nomadic desire to wander in far away lands and escape the ever so 'umble confines of home; including married life, regular employment, and onerous social duties (such as putting the rubbish in the correct recycling bins). To long to flee along the open road or roam outside the gate, is so closely tied to the creative impulse, that one is almost tempted to describe modern art and literature as inherently oikophobic.   

II. On the Politics of Oikophobia

Thanks to conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, however, the term oikophobia has recently taken on a new and negative meaning within reactionary political circles; now oikophobes are regarded as self-hating, left-leaning liberals who despise or feel ashamed of their own culture, history, and society.

Scruton argues:   

"This repudiation of the national idea is the result of a peculiar frame of mind that has arisen throughout the Western world since the Second World War, and which is particularly prevalent among the intellectual and political elites. No adequate word exists for this attitude, though its symptoms are instantly recognized: namely, the disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours'. I call the attitude oikophobia - the aversion to home - by way of emphasizing its deep relation to xenophobia, of which it is the mirror image. Oikophobia is a stage through which the adolescent mind normally passes. But it is a stage in which intellectuals tend to become arrested."*

Scruton's weaponised and anti-intellectual political usage has been taken up by other commentators with an alt-right axe to grind. They argue, for example, that oikophobia is particularly prevalent on university campuses and is a chronic symptom of political correctness, informed by the work of such thinkers as Foucault and Derrida, who express contempt for ideals of love, loyalty and longing for Ithaca, preferring instead, say their critics, to affirm a kind of rootless nihilism.        

I'm not saying there's no truth in this - only that it's often spoken by the kind of ugly, flag-flying individuals that I'm never going to feel at home with. 

* Roger Scruton, speaking in Antwerp, on 23 June 2006: the text of this speech appears in The Brussels Journal (24 June 2006) and can be read by clicking here.  

For a related post on D. H. Lawrence's experience of oikophobia in terms of devouring nostalgia and infinite repulsion for his hometown of Eastwood and for England in general, click here. 

Mindfuck: Lawrence, Foucault, and Sapiosexuality

Sex isn't sin, says D. H. Lawrence, not until the conscious mind creeps in and sheer physical intensity is exchanged for pornographic representation. In other words, for Lawrence, the fall of man is always a fall into idealism; an ontological crisis that prevents sex from ebbing and flowing according to its own natural rhythm within the mysterious depths of the body and results in the mental exploitation of Dasein's mortal reserves of being.  

Thus, I'm pretty sure that Lawrence wouldn't be very amused by the idea of sapiosexuality - a term increasingly popular on social networking sites - although it's interesting to recall that in his late work he did call for the full conscious realisation of sex, claiming that this was, today, even more important than fucking itself.

This wasn't, however, a dramatic and surprising U-turn on his part. Rather, it indicates how, in the Chatterley writings, Lawrence came to the conclusion that in order to save sex from the rape of the itching mind we had first to discover the vital truth that there are some things it's best not to know; that too much knowledge can in fact be fatal.     

But, of course, what does any of this matter to anyone who isn't a Lawrentian?

I very much doubt that the writings of a poet and novelist who died 88 years ago today have much hold over the thinking of non-binary millennials, keen to explore and proliferate models of queer sexuality and challenge the dualism inherent in out-dated thinking on the mind/body question, as if these two things were categorically separate and, indeed, forever locked in metaphysical opposition.

I can perfectly understand why some people might find grey matter sexy and be aroused by the intelligence of others. Having said that, I'm extremely wary of nymphobrainiacs who claim to have no concern with looks and puritanically dismiss those who still maintain a fondness for aesthetically pleasing gendered bodies as superficial heterosexist meat lovers.

Why is it that so many people who subscribe to alternative lifestyles and/or neo-sexualities act so smug and morally superior?

So what if some people are attracted to the appearance of intelligence, rather than individuals who genuinely possess high IQs and Ph.Ds? Are those turned on by models or actors posing as geeks in glasses, for example, in someway inferior to those who get excited discussing real books and complex ideas with actual librarians, teachers, or science graduates?  

Ultimately, as a philosopher, I suspect that sapiosexuality is just another form of ascetic idealism and just another ruse that keeps us subject to what Foucault terms the austere monarchy of sex, so that we spend our lives constructing identities and various rights upon a ridiculous (and nostalgic) fiction.

The dispersion of sexualities and implantation of perversions that began in the 19th century, ran throughout the 20th, continues still, today, in the 21st. Soon, sapiosexuals will be as familiar and as acceptable as homosexuals, for example, and sapiosexuality will be conceived not in Lawrentian terms as a form of sinful sex-in-the-head - nor simply as a slightly unusual basis on which to select a partner - but expressive of a singular nature or essential self.

Perhaps one day, as Foucault says, when we live within a different economy of bodies and pleasures, people will wonder at such stupidity and smile at our belief that in this most sacred of all things - sex - lay a truth every bit as precious as those we have already extracted from the material universe and the purest forms of our thought.

We're a long way from Wuthering Heights  - but we still have a long way to go ...

See:

D. H. Lawrence, 'Sex Isn't Sin', The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

D. H. Lawrence, A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' and Other Essays, (Penguin Books, 1962).

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998). 

Thanks to Kiranjit Kaur for inspiring this post.

On the Aesthetico-Perverse Appropriation of Objects (With Reference to the Work of Christoph Niemann)

Two Sunday Sketches by the brilliant German illustrator

 and graphic designer Christoph Niemann

Members of the kinky community pride themselves on their ability to re-imagine the world around them and see things from a queer perspective. They take giggly pleasure, as Steven Connor says, in the idea of so-called pervertibles; common household items that can be put to a sexual use of some kind.

At first, this sounds philosophically intriguing; a creative attempt to appropriate objects and further the pornification of the everyday.

Sadly, however, necessity is more often than not the mother of invention and the rationale behind pervertibles is usually financial in character; an attempt to become a sadomasochist on a budget, or masturbate on the cheap as well as on the sly. Why purchase expensive lubes and sex toys when you can just use cooking oil, clothes pegs, and a toilet brush?

To the outrage of genuine objectophiles, the majority of those who enjoy playing with pervertibles possess no affection for (or concern with) things as actual entities existing outside of any erotico-utilitarian function. For most perverts, things interest only when they are on hand to stimulate a variety of sensations and help facilitate orgasm; they have little or no time for ontological reflection. 

And that's why - as I've said before and will doubtless have occasion to say again - even perverts disappoint.

They're so intent on finding everything sexy and turning the world into their own private toybox, that they miss entirely the wider allure and fascination of objects. It's a failure of sensitivity and it demonstrates the limits of a pornographic imagination which remains tied to what Foucault termed the austere monarchy of sex (that most ideal form of modern agency).   

And it's why being an artist is more than being a pervert. For when an artist looks at an object, he or she sees an infinite number of possibilities and not just something that might possibly substitute for a dildo, butt plug, or nipple clamp.

Thus it is that, for Duchamp, a urinal can become a fountain; for Dalí, a lobster can become a telephone; for Picasso a shovel, a tap, and a pair of forks bound together with wire can become a magnificent bird; and for the genius of Christoph Niemann, pretty much anything can become the inspiration for one of his Sunday Sketches ...     

See: Christoph Niemann, Sunday Sketching, (Abrams, 2016).

Zettai Ryouiki: On the Zen and the Art of Entering the Absolute Territory

絶対領域 4:1:2.5

I: On the Erotics of Intermittance

Zettai ryouiki refers to the area of bare skin in the gap between overknee socks or stockings and the hemline of a miniskirt; what is known by worshippers as the absolute territory and regarded as a kind of sacred space that no one can intrude upon without permission. Zettai Ryouiki can also describe the erotico-aesthetic combination and charm of these three elements: skirt, thigh and stocking top.

Originally, the term derived from otaku slang as one of the attributes of moe characters in anime and manga, but it is now used widely in Japan and by those in the know outside of Japan with a penchant or fetish for this kind of thing.

Whilst to non-aficianados debate concerning what is and is not a true example of zettai ryouiki and what the perfect ratio between the length of the skirt, the exposed portion of thigh and the height of the stocking should be might seem trivial, for the devotee the devil is precisely in the detail.

Ideally, whilst the skirt should be short, the socks should be long and held properly in place; if too much leg is exposed, then expect to be downgraded.* For as Roland Barthes points out, what excites is not the flesh itself, but the gap between two edges; "it is intermittance ... which is erotic: the intermittance of skin flashing between two articles of clothing ... it is this flash itself which seduces, or rather: the staging of an appearance-as-disappearance".       

Thus whilst zettai ryouiki is not quite a science, it's certainly an art and a discipline of philosophical interest ...

 

II: On Zettai Ryouiki as Part of an Ars Erotica

In his History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault famously examines how ancient non-Western cultures, such as that found within Japan, developed a non-scientific discourse around sex as an object of knowledge; what he terms an ars erotica.

The truth that this esoteric way of knowing concerns itself with is the truth of sensual pleasure and how it can be experienced and intensified; there is no moral concern with what pleasures are permitted and what ones should be forbidden and neither is there an attempt to arrive at an objective-factual account of the body as organism.

The ars erotica, we might say, is a form of libidinal materialism that concerns itself directly with bodies and their pleasures; the model of scientia sexualis developed in the modern West is, in contrast, the pleasure of analysis and of exchanging lived experience for representation (of getting sex-in-the-head, as D. H. Lawrence would say). 

But - and this is important - the latter is still a pleasure and still belongs to an economy of desire. It's profoundly mistaken to divide the two things off in an absolute sense in order to construct a binary opposition. For man lives just as richly in the mind and the imagination as in the body. 

Ultimately, ideas - like erections - are seminal expressions of joy and there's nothing wrong with preferring to perv over images of zettai ryouiki, rather than physically interact with actual objects which, ironically, often object to their sexual objectification ...              

*Note that there are six grades of zettai ryouiki ranging from A-F. For purists, grades C-F - where socks are of knee-height or below - are sub-standard and ultimately forms of failure. To help secure socks and achieve the perfect look, it's acceptable to use a special glue. Readers interested in knowing more about zettai ryouiki might care to visit the page about such on Know Your Meme: click here. And for an animated treat, click here.

Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller, (Hill and Wang, 1975), pp. 9-10.

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998).

On Ecosexuality

Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle

Here Come the Ecosexuals

For those of you who don't know, Elizabeth Stephens is an interdisciplinary artist, activist and academic whose work explores themes of sexuality, gender, and politics.

Former prostitute and porn star Annie Sprinkle, meanwhile, played an important role in the sex positive feminist movement during the 1980s and has since built up over thirty-five years of experience in erotically charged entertainment, education, and performance art. 

Today, Sprinkle and her partner Stephens are committed to queering the environmental movement and to this end have declared themselves to be ecosexuals. They have also written an ecosex manifesto and established a new field of research and aesthetic practice called sex ecology.

Central to their philosophy is the notion of replacing the metaphor of Earth Mother with that of Earth Lover, in the hope that this might "entice people to develop a more mutual, pleasurable, sustainable, and less destructive relationship with the environment". This means not only treating the Earth with kindness and respect, but also engaging in libidinal relationships with the material world; hugging trees, caressing rocks, being pleasured by waterfalls, etc.

Now, you might be thinking at this point that, as someone who has written enthusiastically on floraphilia, I would happily and unconditionally offer my support to Stephens and Sprinkle - but you'd be mistaken. Unfortunately, I have a number of problems with their project, but these might, for the sake of convenience, be boiled down to just two: firstly, I don't share their idealism and, secondly, I don't like the way they attempt to impose a unified and recognisable sexual identity upon a diverse range of paraphilias and polymorphously perverse practices.

Let's examine each of these points in a bit more detail ...   

1. Like many others before them, including nature worshipping Romantics and blood and soil loving Nazis, Stephens and Sprinkle quickly fall into idealism and, related to this, anthropocentric conceit as they project their own egos (their own politics, their own prejudices, their own peccadilloes) into everything; not just the Earth, but the Sun, the Moon and the Stars to boot. Their ecosexuality is thoroughly - and disappointingly - allzumenschliche.

They would do well, in my view, to learn from Lawrence on this, who, with reference to the case of Thomas Hardy, warns that to try and subject the earth to your own idealism always ends badly - not least of all for you as an idealist. He writes:

"What happens when you idealize the soil, the mother-earth, and really go back to it? Then with overwhelming conviction it is borne in upon you ... that the whole scheme of things is against you. The whole massive rolling of natural fate is coming down on you like a slow glacier, to crush you to extinction. As an idealist.
      Thomas Hardy's pessimism is an absolutely true finding. It is the absolutely true statement of the idealist's last realization, as he wrestles with the bitter soil of beloved mother-earth. He loves her, loves her, loves her. And she just entangles and crushes him like a slow Laocoön snake. The idealist must perish, says mother-earth. ...
      You can't idealize mother-earth. You can try. You can even succeed. But succeeding, you succumb. She will have no pure idealist sons [or, in this case, daughters]. None.
      If you are a child of mother-earth, you must learn to discard your ideal self ... as you discard your clothes at night."

Put simply, the Earth doesn't want to nourish you like a child nor accept you as a lover or spouse; it is massively and monstrously indifferent to your existence and your longings.

2. One of the joys of floraphilia is that it's a paraphilia and not a legitimised form of love; the prefix para implying not only that it exists alongside the latter, but that it's abnormal. And that's how I like it and want it to remain. To be pollen-amorous is to allow one's desire to free float on the passing breeze; it is to become-flower, which is to say, beautiful and soulless. It's not about constructing some new form of sexual identity and of tethering the latter to an essential truth.

Foucault, of course, brilliantly analysed the dangers and disadvantages of this with reference to the birth of the modern homosexual, arguing that homosexuality only "appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species" subject to an entirely new discursive regime.

I'm sure Stephens and Sprinkle are aware of all this and so it surprises me to say the least that they insist on positing ecosexuality as a primary drive and identity, or some sort of ontological category into which all other sexual positionings - GLBTQI - can ultimately be collapsed (because we are all natural beings and all sex is ecosex).

I wish them well, but I also wish they'd exercise a little more philosophical caution and nuance ...       


Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Dana's "Two Years before the Mast"', Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998). 

Readers interested in knowing more about the work of Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle and reading their ecosex manifesto can visit: sexecology.org

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On the Question of Ensoulment

Soul entering human embryo at point of conception 

Holygraphic quantum-semantic electron microscopy imaging by pixwit.com

D. H. Lawrence wasn't a biologist, but that didn't deter him from sharing his metaphysical speculations on human fertilization and the development of the embryo. And, being primarily a religious thinker, the vital question for him concerned ensoulment; i.e., the moment at which a newly formed human being is animated by the Holy Spirit.
 

For Lawrence, as for the Pope, just as coition is the essential clue to sex, conception is the crucial act here: the instant that the father-quick fuses with the mother-germ is when a new unit of individuality is born, nine months prior to the birth of the actual baby.

However, we might note that - unlike the Pope - Lawrence also believes in a form of reincarnation via which the souls of the dead re-enter and pervade the souls of the living, breeding thoughts and feelings and ensuring that each person is composed of a multiplicity of forces and so isn't absolutely unique or entirely self-contained.

As interesting as the latter belief is, it's the former notion of ensoulment that I wish to discuss here, examining the view that it occurs at conception and not, for example, at the formation of the nervous system, or when there is measurable brain activity; nor when a tiny heartbeat can be heard, or fetal viability is attained; nor when the newborn is rudely slapped on the bottom and draws its first breath.

It's a view, however, that isn't shared universally. Aristotle, for example, subscribed to a model of epigenesis and believed that ensoulment - in a human sense - only occurred forty days after conception in the case of the male embryo and ninety days after conception in the case of the female fetus, when movement is experienced within the womb. Before this time he held that an embryo had the soul of a vegetable, followed by that of an animal and so couldn't be regarded as a fully human individual.     

Aristotle's views on this question influenced many of the great Christian thinkers, including Thomas Aquinas, who, even whilst conceding that the early embryo did not contain a human soul (one capable of rationality and distinguishing between good and evil), still maintained that aborting it constituted a grave sin (a position which, rightly or wrongly, the Catholic Church has been remarkably consistent on over the years).

It's worth recalling, however, that the ancient Greeks and early Christians knew nothing of fertilization; it wasn't until 1876 that Oscar Hertwig conclusively demonstrated that it involved fusion of two parental gametes and resulted in a genetically distinct zygote. Aristotle believed that the embryo arose exclusively from semen and that the female body merely provided a safe space for the embryo to develop.

Compared to this view, the notion of ensoulment at conception doesn't seem so outlandish; provided of course that one is willing to accept the idea of a non-corporeal and immortal essence animating the human being like some kind of divine breath or spark. Personally, I'm not.

I tend, rather, to share Foucault's more negative, more material view of the soul; as a virtual and historical reality that is produced as an effect of power continually shaping and disciplining the body and which ultimately serves to imprison the flesh. And, like Wilde, I hope that if ever I am to live again it can be as a little flower - no soul, but perfectly beautiful.