Hyaena

A spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta)

aka the laughing hyaena

 

"I trot, I lope, I slaver, I am a ranger. 

I hunch my shoulders. I eat the dead." [1]

 

 

I. 

 

There are, as a matter of fact, four distinct species of hyaena. But I suspect that when most peope think of them - if and when they think of them at all - they think of the spotted laughing hyaena.

 

I also suspect that most people think of them with a shudder and a curl of the lip, finding them an uncanny mix of the creepy and contemptible; cowardly pack hunters that torment their prey, or scavengers skulking round graveyards and feasting on the bodies of the dead. 

 

 

II. 

 

D. H. Lawrence certainy wasn't a fan. He regarded the hyaena - like the vulture and baboon - as an example of arrested development; an evil creature that obscenely preserves a "fixed form about a voracious seethe of corruption" [2] and which knows no shame.   

 

The howl of the wolf may unsettle him, but it is the laugh of the hyaena that fills Lawrence with fear and horror - that and the "loathsome, cringing, imprisoned loins" [3] that are amost dragged along in the dust and dirt. 

 

The hyaena, says Lawrence, "can scarcely see and hear the living world; it draws back to the stony fixity of its own loins, draws back upon its own nullity, sightless save for carrion" [4].

 

It's surprising, when one considers his animosity against the poor hyaena, that Lawrence didn't refer back to that ancient belief they were hermaphrodites; i.e., intersexual creatures alternating with fluidity between male and female roles. [5].   

 

For as we know, Lawence was a passionate proponent not only of sexual difference, but sexual dualism: 

 

"Sex surely has a specific meaning. Sex means being divided into male and female. [...] Every single living cell is either male or female, and will remain either male or female as long as life lasts. [...] The talk about a third sex, or about the indeterminate sex, is just to pervert the issue." [6]

 

The truth of this is essential for Lawrence, as it is for early Christian writers, such as Clement of Alexandria ...

 

 

III.

 

Despite being a Christian theologian and recognised as a Church Father, Clement of Alexandria was heavily infuenced by Greek philosophy and literature, particularly Plato and the Stoics. Fragments of his more obscure writings suggest he was also deeply familiar with Jewish esotericism.   

 

Although we don't know for certain when he was born or when he died, we do know that the moral lessons that Clement takes from the animal kingdom are invariaby negative; the hyaena, for example, teaches man what mustn't be done. 

 

Not that he takes seriously the legend concerning its hermaphroditism; rejecting it on the grounds that once the logic of nature - or, if you prefer, the stamp of creative reason - has determined what an animal is, it cannot be changed [7]. Thus, the hyaena, cannot switch sexes; nor does it possess two sexes, or a third intermediary sex between male and female.

 

However, Clement is obliged to address the fact that the genitalia of the female hyaena closely resembles that of the male; the enlarged clitoris is not only shaped and positioned like a penis, but is capable of erection. The female also possesses no external vaginal opening, as the labia are fused to form a pseudo-scrotum. Traversing the length of the pseudo-penis is a central canal, through which the female urinates, copulates, and gives birth. [8] 

Interestingly, although Clement describes the female hyaena's peculiar anatomy in exactly the same manner as Aristotle, he comes to his own conclusion: it must be due to the animal's moral shortcomings. In other words, hyaenas have a body that's arranged in such a queer fashion, because of a defective nature and the fact that, like men, they are prone to lasciviousness ... [9]

 

 

IV.

 

Despite the fact that, as a Lawrentian, I'm supposed to despise them, I'm starting to feel a certain admiration for the hyaena, which have limped on the face of the earth for millions of years. 

 

And this is not just because they challenge certain ideas about sexual dimorphism, but because they also curdle the line of distinction between cat and dog. For athough phylogenetically closer to felines, hyaenas are behaviourally and morphologically similar to canids; they hunt like dogs, for example, but they groom, scent mark, and defecate like cats ... 

 

Perhaps they only laugh because they don't know whether to bark or purr ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Edwin Morgan, 'Hyena', in Glasgow to Saturn, (Carcanet, 1973). The verse can also be found in Morgan's Collected Poems, (Carcanet Press, 1990). To read on the Scottish Poetry Library website, click here.

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Crown', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 295.  

[3] Ibid., p. 299.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ovid gives reference to this in Metamorphoses; see 15: 408. 

      Although Aristotle rejected this belief and few naturalists following him gave the idea any credence, still the queerness of the hyaena was taken as a given and its reputation amongst those who, like Lawrence, read everything (including animal behaviour and anatomy) in moral terms, was irretrievably damaged.      

[6] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 66 and 126. 

 

[7] Christian ontology - building on its Platonic origins - insists upon the fixed nature of being; there is no transformation of essential forms; one species cannot become another and nor can one sex transition into the other.    

 

[8] In fact, the hyaena is the only placental mammal where females lack an external vaginal opening and have a pseudo-penis instead. This isn't something that seems advantageous; not only does it make mating difficult, but giving birth isn't a barrel of laughs either, often proving fatal for mother and cub (approximately 15% of females die during their first time giving birth and over 60% of firstborn cubs are dead on arrival).

 

[9] See Michel Foucault, Confessions of the Flesh, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 2021), pp. 19-21. 

     

    

Brief Notes on the History of the Human Flock 2: The Judeo-Christian Era

The Good Shepherd

Bernhard Plockhorst (1825-1907)

 

 

I. 

 

Whilst the ancient Greeks - even Plato - ultimately found the idea of a kindly shepherd inadequate for conceptualising political power, the Jews were still very much smitten with it. And among them the thematic of the pastorate is developed into something far more complex:

"It covers a large part of the relations between the Eternal One and his people. Yahweh governs by leading: he walks at the head of the Hebrews [...] and by his strength, he 'guides them toward the pastures of his holiness'. The Eternal One is the shepherd par excellence." [1]

 

Foucault continues:

 

"The shepherd reference characterizes the monarchy of David, in that his reign was legitimized by having been given responsibility for the flock by God [...] It also marks the messianic promise; the one who is to come will be the new David; as against all the bad shepherds who have scattered the sheep, the one to come will be the unique pastor, designated to bring the flock back to him." [2]

 

Of course, we all know whom those designated as Christians identify as this new David and their Messiah: Jesus; he who styles himself on more than one occasion as the good shepherd - i.e. one who not only knows and cares for his sheep, but is prepared to lay down his life for them [3].

 

This old idea, circulating widely in the Hellenistic and Roman world, was one the early Christians recognised as possessing great power; namley, the power to convert non-believers and corrupt even the noblest soul. 

 

And so they not only latched on to it, but, "for the first time in the history of the West" [4], they gave it an institutional form; i.e. they developed a herd morality upon the human herd instinct [5] and organised themselves into a Church: 

 

"And that Church defines the power that it exercises over the faithful - over each and all of them - as a pastoral power." [6] 

 

This was a decisive move: a vital development in what Nietzsche terms the slave revolt in morality; an ongoing process that originated in Judaism but radically extended under Christianity; a way in which the spirit of ressentiment becomes a driving force in history, negating power in the old sense by turning all active forces reactive [7].

 

 

II. 

 

Foucault offers some very interesting remarks on the figure of the shepherd-lord and the charismatic power he exercises in the name of Love ...

 

Firstly, he exercises his power not over a place, but directly on the people. Whereas others look to build an earthly kingdom or powerful state with solid foundations, he gathers a crowd whom he subjects to his unique will. It is he alone who creates the "unity of the sheep" and forms "the flock out of the multitude" [8].

Secondly, he does not set himself above the flock, so much as at their head; he's the one out in front, the leader whose example they must follow and his power "locates its purpose in an elsewhere and a later" [9]. In other words, his power has the form of a mission.  

Thirdly, the shepherd nourishes his flock. He's not acting in his own self-interest. Rather, his role is to make sure his followers prosper; that they are spiritually enriched. If he ensures the plumpness of his flock, then this justifies his authority. 

   

Fourthly, whilst his attention extends over the flock as a whole, he has a duty to watch over each individual as an individual; not view them as "indifferently subjugated subjects" [10]. Even today, Christians like to believe they have a personal relation with Jesus.  

Finally, the essential task of the shepherd is to ensure the safety of his flock; he is their saviour first and foremost: "The good shepherd must save the whole world, but also the least of the sheep that might be in danger." [11] 

 

Or, indeed, save the soul of even the blackest sheep, who has strayed far from the flock.

 

Thus, it isn't easy to be a shepherd; they have to assume total responsibility for their flock and Christianity in particular "demands of the pastor a form of knowledge which goes well beyond the skill or experience that tradition attributed to the shepherds of men" [12].

 

In conclusion ...

 

Whilst Jesus wasn't the first shepherd of men, he was undoubtedly the most successful in the role and the Church established in his name has brilliantly set in place "institutions and procedures designed to regulate the 'conduct' of men" [13], so as to transform the whole of humanity into one giant flock.

 

How one views this will depend of course on what extent one identifies as homo ovis ...  

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Michel Foucault, Confessions of the Flesh, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 2021), Appendix 2, p. 303. 

      Foucault is referring to Exodus 15:13. The King James Version of this line reads: "Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation."

 

[2] Michel Foucault, Confessions of the Flesh, p. 303.

[3] See John 10:11-15, where Jesus twice calls himself the good shepherd. 

[4] Michel Foucault, Confessions of the Flesh, p. 305.

[5] These terms - herd morality and herd instinct - are Nietzsche's. Obviously, he's not a fan of such and whilst conceding that herd animal morality has triumphed in modern Europe, he hopes to demonstrate that many other forms of higher morality are (or ought to be) possible in a post-Christian era, just as they were prior to such. 

      See Beyond Good and Evil, V. 202. And for Nietzsche's analogy of lambs and eagles, in which he examines how each arrives at its own definition of what constitutes the good, see On the Genealogy of Morality, I. 13.    

 

[6] Michel Foucault, Confessions of the Flesh, p. 310.

 

[7] See sections 10-12 of the first essay in Nietzsche's Genealogy.  

 

[8] Michel Foucault, Confessions of the Flesh, p. 305.

 

[9] Ibid., pp. 305-06.

 

[10] Ibid., p. 307.

 

[11] Ibid., p. 310.   

 

[12] Ibid., p. 313.

 

[13] Ibid., p. 310. 

 

 

To read part one of this post - on the human flock in the pagan era - click here.  

Brief Notes on the History of the Human Flock 1: The Pagan Era

Late Roman marble copy of a Kriophoros

by the ancient Greek sculptor Kalamis 

(5th-century BC)

 

 

Many of us have what might be termed an Animal Farm moment of revelation when we look from A to B, and from B to A, and from A to B again, but are unable to tell which is which [1].

For example, at a certain point it becomes clear that there is no real difference between a punk and a hippie and that you should never trust either. Similarly, the distinction between pagan and Christian is impossible to maintain as soon as one reads a little religious history.

 

Take, for example, the idea of a human flock ... 

 

This is something I believed to be an exclusively Christian concept, referring to the followers of Jesus who styles himself as the good shepherd - i.e., one who not only knows and cares for his sheep, but is prepared to lay down his life for them [2]. 

But, thanks to Michel Foucault, I now discover: 

 

"The idea of a power that would be exercised on men in the same way as the shepherd's authority over his flock appeared long before Christianity. A whole series of very ancient texts and rites make reference to the shepherd and his animals to evoke the power of the gods or the prophets over the peoples they have the task of guiding." [3].

 

In ancient Egypt, for example, pharaohs received the emblems of the shepherd during their coronation ceremony; Babylonian and Assyrian kings were also awarded the title of shepherd, signifying their duty to safeguard the people over whom they ruled on behalf of the gods. 

 

By contrast, the ancient Greeks weren't so keen on thinking of themselves as a flock of sheep (or their rulers as shepherds) and the theme of pastoral power seems to have occupied only a minor place in their cultural imagination - even whilst it was customary amongst sculptors to produce figures known as Kriophoroi [4].

 

Foucault writes:

 

"The Homeric sovereigns were indeed designated as 'shepherds of the peoples', but without there being much more than a trace of ancient titulature. But later the Greeks don't seem to have been inclined to make the relation between the shepherd and his sheep the model of relation that must obtain between the citizens and those who command them." [5]

 

Of course, there were exceptions to this: Plato, for example - whom Nietzsche regards as a proto-Christian, preparing the ground for a slave revolt in morals - discussed pastoral power at some length in the Statesman, when he determines to define what the royal art of commanding consists in. 

 

However, it's important to note that Plato qualifies the idea and argues that, ultimately, the modern political leader must be more weaver than herdsman; i.e., one who who is able to pull together all the complex social elements and different classes of people into a single fabric. 

 

As we will see in part two of this post, it will take "the spread of oriental themes in Hellenistic and Roman culture for the pastorate to appear as the adequate image for representing the highest forms of power" [6]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring here to the famous ending of George Orwell's 1945 novel, in which it becomes impossible to distinguish between pigs and humans around the card table.   

 

[2] See John 10:11-15: click here. 

 

[3] Michel Foucault, Confessions of the Flesh, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 2021), Appendix 2, p. 302. 

 

[4] Often intended as representations of the god Hermes, Kriophoroi were figures bearing a sacrificial ram upon their shoulders. However, the figure of a shepherd carrying a lamb, simply as a pastoral vignette, was also common in ancient Greece and known by the same term. 

      The Christians adopted the image and made it their own; the Good Shepherd being the most common symbolic representation of Christ found in early Christian art in the Catacombs of Rome (before such imagery could be made explicit), and it continued to be used in the centuries after Christianity was legalized in 313. Initially, it was probably not understood to be a portrait of Jesus. However, by the 5th century the figure had taken on the conventional appearance of Christ in Christian art; the robes, the halo, the long flowing hair, etc.

 

[5] Foucault, Confessions of the Flesh, p. 303.

 

[6] Ibid., p. 304.      

    

 

To read part two of this post - on the human flock in the Judeo-Christian era - click here.

 

 

Black Daisies for Lorrie Millington (Or One Flew Over the Duck's Nest)

Image via highroydshospital.com

 

"I remember nights when we were young / They weren't very good they were rubbish   

Running round Highroyds isn't fun / Just teenagers testing their courage" [1] 

 

 

I.

 

Exactly 134 years ago today - the 8th of October, 1888 - High Royds Hospital was opened on the 300-acre estate that had been purchased three years earlier just south of the village of Menston, in West Yorkshire, approximately 11 miles from Leeds. 

 

The large stone complex, designed by J. Vickers Edwards in the High Gothic style that many Victorian architects favoured, was built to house those individuals who had the misfortune to be both poor and insane - as indicated by its original name of the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum. 

 

High Royds was intended to be a self-contained and self-sufficient community; there were in-house butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers and there was also a cobbler's workshop, a dairy, and a farm-cum-market garden. 

 

Patients were expected - if able - to earn their own keep by providing labour, either on the farm, in the kitchens, or in the laundry room. They were also encouraged to learn various handicrafts, such as basket weaving, or make use of the extensive library.

 

In other words, it was the sort of place that Michel Foucault writes of in Madness and Civilization, his classic study of insanity in the Age of Reason [2]. And it was to become the sort of place that depraved sexual predator Jimmy Saville loved to visit [3]. 

 

The administration building, which is now Grade II listed, features a beautiful Italian mosaic floor in the main corridor, intricately decorated with the white Yorkshire Rose and - somewhat macabrely - black daisies [4].  

 

 

II.

 

Some of you might be asking at this point what any of this has to do with me ... 

 

Well, it just so happens, that I spent some time at High Royds in 1984 - not as a patient (fortunately), but as a visitor to my quasi-girlfriend Lorrie Millington [5], who was, unfortunately, confined there for two-and-a-half months.   

 

Anyway, for those who are interested, here are excerpts from several diary entries written at the time:

 

 

Monday 30 January, 1984

 

Received a letter from Lorrie. It turns out the reason I hadn't heard from or seen her around town lately is because she's been banged up in a mental hospital for the past three weeks! Happily, she says she's recovering, but still has to take a lot of pills (for epilepsy and various other things). 

      In the evening, I telephoned the hospital - High Royds - and asked to speak to her. After some initial confusion - it turns out her surname is Gatford, not Millington - they put her on the line. It was great to hear her voice and she sounded well. I think she was happy to hear from me, too; asked if I would visit her tomorrow and I agreed. I do hope she's going to be okay and can get out of the hospital soon. Very much looking forward to seeing her. 

 

Tuesday 31 January, 1984    

 

Having agreed to get to the hospital at 6-ish, I was obliged to skip yet another lecture.

      Bought some tulips for Lorrie en route; no idea if that's appropriate when visiting a patient in an asylum, but surely no one can object to flowers -? They might make you sneeze if you're allergic to pollen, I suppose, but unlikely to trigger a psychotic episode (though, having said that, one thinks of Vincent and his sunflowers). Just to be on the safe side, also got her some chocolates (After Eights). 

      The 731 bus took me straight to High Royds. Forbidding place - it took me ten minutes to find the entrance (and another five minutes to find the courage to pass through it). Couldn't help wondering how easy it would be to escape if ever confined in such an institution. Inside there were patients and staff wandering around - not sure who made me feel the most uneasy. 

      Found Lorrie - and she looked well, though very different with her natural hair colour. She didn't approve of the fact I'd recently dyed my hair orange, but she did appreciate the flowers and chocolates. Drank tea and chatted for three hours. She has such a lovely voice and soft accent; find it very sexy. Funny enough, she was probably more coherent than I've ever known her. Maybe we should all have a stay at a happy house! Kissed her goodbye and agreed to visit again soon.    

        

Thursday 2 February, 1984

 

Back to High Royds. Found Lorrie sitting with Keith, one of the people she shares a house with [6]. He's okay, but a bit quiet and uninspiring; always dressed in all black and likes indie music. Don't think he appreciated my being there, but fuck 'im, as they say; he's not her boyfriend after all ...? 

      Lorrie looked good, but was far more manic this evening. Before leaving, she insisted that I take some photos of her - and made Keith take one of me and her together. As well as the pics, I also took a greatest hits album by Rolf Harris that was lying around the recreation room. When I got home, sat playing that until after midnight ... 'Two Little Boys', 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down', 'Jake the Peg', etc. Not sure these are the kind of songs that assist with mental well being, so convinced myself I had done a good thing by stealing it from the hospital.                

 

Tuesday 7 February, 1984 

 

On an absolutely freezing evening, made my way once more to High Royds. Keith was there again, but soon left. I respect the fact that he visits Lorrie regularly (maybe he is her boyfriend).

      Lorrie was in a bad mood, but insisted on going to a disco event that was being held for patients. That was certainly an experience - literally a lunatics ball! Deeply disturbing, although it made Lorrie laugh when someone came up to me and made violent stabbing gestures in my direction with both fists. A member of staff assured me that he was only doing the monster mash!

      Back on the ward, Lorrie was much more loving. She's desperate to leave the hospital now and I don't blame her. But I'm not confident they'll discharge her at the end of this week as she hopes; experience has taught me to never trust what doctors say. Went home feeling depressed and - as much as I want to continue seeing and supporting Miss Millington - not sure I can face going back to High Royds [7].   

 

High Royds Hospital (2 Feb 1984)

Notes

 

[1] These lines form the first verse of the song 'Highroyds' by the Kaiser Chiefs, an indie rock band from Leeds. The track can be found on the album Yours Truly, Angry Mob, (B-Unique Records, 2007). Three members of the group - Nick Hodgson, Nick Baines and Simon Rix - used to attend a school that was opposite High Royds Hospital. The lyrics, written by Ricky Wilson and Andrew White, are © Universal Music Publishing Group. Click here to play.

 

[2] This work - translated into an abridged English edition by Richard Howard in 1964 - was originally published as Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique in 1961. 

      Foucault traces the rise of the modern asylum in which those designated as crazy are confined under the supervision of medical professionals, so as to be studied and subjected to therapeutic procedures in an attempt to cure them of their illness (whilst also protecting the society from which they were removed).

      Although seemingly more enlightened and compassionate in the clinical treatment of insane people, Foucault shows how the modern mental hospital nevertheless remained as cruel and controlling as any other institution established and run on similar lines - be it a boarding school, a workhouse, or a prison.  

 

[3] The official report into the Saville case reveals that he did in fact commit an act of sexual assault at High Royds Hospital in the 1980s, during a fancy dress fun run. It has also been alleged that he groped patients and members of staff on other occasions.

 

[4] These fleurs du mal provided inspiration for the title of Tony Harrison's 1993 screenplay Black Daisies for the Bride - a beautiful but disturbing work using verse and song to examine the lives of three women coping with Alzheimer's. The work was filmed in High Royds (dir. Peter Symes) and shown on BBC Two in 1994: click here to watch on YouTube via the High Royds Hospital digital archive.       

[5] I have written of Lorraine Millington (aka Lori Gatford) several times on Torpedo the Ark; see here, for example, or, more recently, here. 

 

[6] Keith Gregory went on to become the bass guitarist in The Wedding Present, a band he formed with vocalist and guitarist Dave Gedge in 1985 and who I tried (unsuccessfully) to get signed to Charisma Records (I was informed their jangly guitar sound was passé ... the band, however, went on to have 18 Top 40 hits).    

 

[7] As a matter of fact, I made three more visits to see Lorrie at the hospital - Tuesday 14 February, Thursday 1 March, and Thursday 15 March - before she was finally discharged on Monday 19th of March, 1984. 

 

 

High Royds Hospital 

(as I still see it in my nightmares)

       

 

Afternote: Readers might be interested to know that, following numerous complaints about conditions at the hospital, High Royds was eventually deemed unfit for purpose (i.e., no longer  able to provide proper care); this was acknowledged by the chief executive of Leeds Mental Health in 1999. After services were transferred to other hospitals, High Royds closed in 2003. It has since been converted into a residential development called Chevin Park.

 

 

Reflections on The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han (Part 1: From Neuronal Power to Vita Activa)

Stanford University Press (2015)

 

 

I. 

 

Many years ago, I wrote a short novel that dealt with existential themes of boredom, fatigue, world-weariness, etc. It was called Exhaustion and the first line read:  'Ours is essentially a fagged-out age, so ... Oh fuck it, who cares? I can't be bothered to write any more.' 

 

As a matter of fact, that was also the last line.    

 

Anyway, this is only coincidently relevant to Byung-Chul Han's essay The Burnout Society [a] and it's his work which I would like to discuss here ... 

II.

 

Neuronal Power

 

"Every age has its signature afflictions." [1] 

 

That's a great opening line, I think. Unfortunately, what follows now seems amusingly naive and dated: 

 

"Despite fear of an influenza epidemic, we are not living in a viral age. Thanks to immunological technology, we have already left it behind. From a pathological standpoint, the incipient twenty-first century is determined neither by bacteria nor by viruses, but by neurons." [1]

 

I suppose, writing in 2010, Han wasn't to know what 2019 would bring; although some might say that as a theorist and commentator who draws on literature, philosophy, and both the social and natural sciences, it's his job to anticipate possibilities in the foreseeable future and not just rehash ideas from the past.

 

That seems a bit harsh, however, so let's just overlook the above and concede that neurological conditions - including depression, personality disorder, and burnout syndrome - also play a significant role in life today. 

 

These are not viral infections, but infarctions, says Han, that result from "an excess of positivity" [1]. He continues: "The violence of positivity does not deprive, it saturates; it does not exclude, it exhausts."

 

We have, if you like, been sent mad with fatigue by our own 24/7 lifestyles (lived increasingly online), in which all Otherness is exorcised. And because Otherness is disappearing, "we live in a time that is poor in negativity" [4] - even if rich in difference (the form by which the Same likes to disguise itself).    

Beyond Disciplinary Society

Like Baudrillard, Han wants us to forget Foucault - or, at any rate, agree that today's society is no longer the one that Foucault described fifty-years ago. The prisons, asylums, and workhouses, of old have been replaced by fitness studios, fast-food outlets, and shopping malls:

 

"Twenty-first century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society [Leistungsgesellschaft]. Also its inhabitants are no longer 'obedience-subjects' but 'achievement-subjects'. They are entrepreneurs of themselves." [8]    

Foucault's theory of power simply cannot account for how things are now, says Han. 

 

However, whilst I agree that the world has changed, it's simply mistaken to say that Foucault's cratology is tied to a negative (or repressive) model of power; the power to prohibit and say No. Foucault explicitly rejects this model and challenges traditional representations in which power is characterised in an exclusively restrictive manner; "poor in resources, sparing of its methods, monotonous in the tactics it utilizes, incapable of invention, and seemingly doomed always to repeat itself" [b]. 

 

Contrary to the above, Foucault offers us a gay, energy-based model of power outside of accepted values and beyond the "negative and emaciated form of prohibition" [c]. This model allows power to produce things - including forms of knowledge - as well as induce pleasures. And so, it explains very well why - as Han later notes - despite there being a paradigm shift from disciplinary society to achievement society, there has been a level of continuity and no real break exists between the modal verbs Should and Can. 

 

In other words, achievement society still has the same network of power running through it as disciplinary society. It's just that whereas the latter required our obedience to authority, the former requires us to show some initiative and be self-motivated and self-expressive - and, above all, achieve - to the point of exhaustion and depression [d].   

 

The contemporary subject is voluntarily self-exploitative; the perfect worker, determined to have a nice day and always wear that happy face (until the crack-up and break down comes due to excessive positivity and compulsive freedom).  

 

 

Profound Boredom

 

"Excessive positivity also expresses iself as an excess of stimuli, information, and impulses. It radically changes the structure and economy of attention. Perception becomes fragmented and scattered." [12]

 

Perhaps this is why Han chooses to publish his work in essay form and to favour short sentences; he's making a somewhat patronising assumption about his reader's ability to concentrate and follow complex arguments at length. 

 

Of course, he might have a point: I know that my own ability to think has flattened over recent years, even as it has broadened and, indeed, accelerated. For Han, this shows regression to animality. For wild animals, he says, are "incapable of contemplative immersion" [12]; they are always alert to what's going on around them and easily distracted [e].               

  

For Han, human regression of this nature is a bad thing. Why? Because we owe the cultural achievements of humanity "to deep, contemplative attention" [13]. Scatty individuals may by good at multitasking and playing video games (not things Han approves of), but they'll never produce great works of art or philosophy. Having a low boredom threshold, makes one incapable of "the profound idleness that benefits the creative process" [13].

Unfortunately, this simply sounds like bourgeois snobbery (even when you call upon Walter Benjamin and Nietzsche for support).

And so, whilst I can certainly see the attractions of the vita contemplativa, I'm not going to knock those for whom such a life would be intolerable, nor denigrate the cognitive abilities (and dancing skills) of animals.      

 

 

Vita Activa

 

One philosopher who wasn't prepared to simply dismiss the via activa as mere restless stupidity, was Hannah Arendt [f]. Particularly if action results in the birth of something new. 

 

Unfortunately, Arendt thinks that modern society - as a society of perfected slavery - "nullifies any possibility for action when it degrades the human being into an animal laborans, a beast of burden" [17], subsumed within the herd. 

 

Byung-Chul Han doesn't buy into this argument, however, and doesn't think Arendt has much to tell us about today's world:

"Arendt's descriptions of the modern animal laborans do not correspond to what we can observe in today's achievement society. The late-modern animal laborans does not give up its individuality or ego in order to merge, through the work it performs, with the anonymous life of the species. Rather, contemporary labour society [...] fosters individuality ... The late-modern animal laborans is equipped with an ego just short of bursting. And it is anything but passive [...] It is hyperactive and hyperneurotic." [17-18]  

 

I suppose that's why Frank Costanza's cry of Serenity now! continues to resonate so powerfully; we all desire a little peace and quiet in our lives [g]. And that perhaps requires learning how to live a little more slowly; Han argues that everything seems sped up and transient today:   

 

"The general denarrativization of the world [following the death of God] is reinforcing the feeling of fleetingness. It makes life bare." [18]

 

Indeed, it makes life so bare, that it's even barer "than the life of homo sacer" [18] [h] - which is really bare! Almost unbearable in its bareness: and yet we seek to preserve ourselves and keep going as long as possible. Han says we are like the Muselmänner, "albeit well fed and probably obese" [19]. 

 

An unpleasant remark on which to close the first part of this post, but Byung-Chul said it, not me ...

Notes

 

[a] I'm reading the English translation by Erik Butler, published by Stanford University Press in 2015, and all page numbers given in the text refer to this edition. 

      The original German work, entitled Müdigkeitsgesellschaft, was published in Berlin by Matthes & Seitz Verlag, in 2010. Readers will note that the title literally translates as 'Fatigue Society', but I suppose the term burnout - coined in 1970 by the German-born American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger - has greater contemporary resonance. Freudenberger defined burnout as a state of mental and physical exhaustion caused by overwork amongst professionals. See his book Burn Out: The High Cost of High Achievement (1980). 

 

[b] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998), p. 85.

 

[c] Ibid., p. 86.

 

[d] It should be noted that unlike French sociologist Alain Ehrenberg, Han doesn't think that depression is simply the pathological expression of an individual's failure to become themselves. He also thinks that it also arises from a lack of attachment [Bindungsarmut] to others within an increasingly fragmented and atomised society: 

      "Ehrenberg lends no attention to this aspect of depression. He also overlooks the systemic violence inhabiting achievement society, which provokes psychic infarctions. It is not the imperative only to belong to oneself, but the pressure to achieve that causes exhaustive depression. Seen in this light, burnout syndrome does not express the exhausted self so much as the exhausted, burnt-out soul. According to Ehrenberg, depression spreads when the commandments and prohibitions of disciplinary society yield to self-responsibility and initiative. In reality, it is not the excess of responsibility and initiative that makes one sick, but the imperative to achieve: the new commandment of late-modern labour society." [10]

      To be fair, I've not read Ehrenberg's work, so can't say if Han's criticism is justified. Readers who wish to make up their own minds should see The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age, trans. Enrico Caouette et al, (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010).   

[e] I'm not sure about this. It's true, perhaps, that monkey's don't meditate, but I've watched my cat sit for hours staring at the same spot having heard a sound that suggests to her the presence of a small rodent and it seems to me that this might legitimately be described as a form of contemplative immersion. One suspects that Han is guilty of anthropocentric conceit to suggest otherwise and it's worth noting that later in this chapter he writes: "Only human beings can dance" [14], which seems palpably untrue. However, it's also worth noting that - somewhat paradoxically - in the chapter Vita Activa Han refers to the serenity [Gelassenheit] of animals [18], which, he argues, man has lost. 

[f] See The Human Condition (University of Chicago Press, 1998). This work was first published in 1958, so the fact that parts of its sociological analysis are dated is hardly surprising. 

 

[g] I have written on this desire for serenity in an earlier post on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

[h] Homo sacer, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, refers to an accursed figure, excluded from society because of some trespass, whom any citizen may kill without incurring punishment. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben developed the term within his work, using it to stand for an absolutely expendable life (such as the life of a Jewish inmate in a Nazi concentration camp, for example). See Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, (Stanford University Press, 1998). 

 

 

To read part two of this post on The Burnout Society, click here. 

I Had So Much Rather the Centaur Had Slain Hercules ...

"Man's being is made of such strange stuff as to be partly akin to nature and partly not, 

at once natural and extranatural, a kind of ontological centaur, 

half immersed in nature, half transcending it." - Ortega y Gasset

 

 

On viewing an (unidentified) artistic representation of Hercules slaying Nessus [1], Lawrence writes: 

 

"I had so much rather the Centaur had slain Hercules, and men had never developed souls. Seems to me they're the greatest ailment humanity ever had." [2] 

 

Whilst we might ponder what the link is between the killing of Nessus and the development of the human soul, I love these two short lines in which Lawrence recognises that the soul is a type of affliction and that mankind might have been happier and more beautiful - like flowers - had we never experimented with the internalisation of cruelty and subjected the flesh to psychology.  

 

One could quote Wilde at this point - or Nietzsche - but let's remind ourselves of Foucault's fascinating take on this question in Discipline and Punish which ends with a killer twist:

 

"It would be wrong to say that the soul is an illusion, or an ideological effect. On the contrary, it exists, it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised [...] This is the historical reality of [the] soul, which, unlike the soul represented by Christian theology, is not born in sin and subject to punishment, but is born rather out of methods of punishment, supervision and constraint. This real, non-corporal soul is not a substance; it is the element in which are articulated the effects of a certain type of power and the reference of a certain type of knowledge, the machinery by which the power relations give rise to a possible corpus of knowledge, and knowledge extends and reinforces the effects of this power. On this reality-reference, various concepts have been constructed and domains of analysis carved out: psyche, subjectivity, personality, consciousness, etc.; on it have been built scientific techniques and discourses, and the moral claims of humanism. But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or technical intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of the theologians. The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body." [3]

 

In conclusion - and returning to Lawrence - it's obvious that he reads the slaying of the centaur as a triumph of human idealism over instinctive animality and, like Lou Carrington in St Mawr, he dreams of a time to come when men might untame themselves, regain their animal mystery and become-centaur ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] In Greek mythology, Nessus, son of Centauros, was killed by Heracles with a poisoned arrow, after the latter saw the former attempt to rape his wife, Deianeira, having carried her across the river Evinos. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Paris Letter', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde, (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 143.  

[3] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan, (Vintage Books, 1995), pp. 29-30. 

On Becoming a Vaccine Hero

 

 

One of the big differences between the old school fascism of law and order and our new age fascism of health and safety is that whereas the former terrorised its population into compliance and conformity, the latter unfolds via the insidious infantalisation of its people who become ever-more dependent upon the nanny state (that kindest of all kind monsters).

 

The iron fist has morphed into a helping hand and the boot in the face has become a pat on the head ...

 

Thus, for example, if and when you go to have your coronavirus vaccination - as I did this morning - you'll be subjected to the usual humilations that we've become all-too-accustomed to over the past twelve months. 

 

But, adding insult to injury, just when you think the process has finished and you're free to go, a woman standing by the exit steps forward to place a little sticker on your person featuring a heart and a crown design signifying you've been a brave little boy or girl and that you're a model citizen (or a vaccine hero as I heard someone else say).

 

What is one to do? 

 

Perhaps when I return in a few weeks time for my second jab, I'll wear my Foucault t-shirt and hand out leaflets reading: 

 

Biopower: diverse techniques allowing for the subjugation of individual bodies and the coordination of entire populations by the modern state under the guise of defeating Covid-19; often justified in the UK with the slogan Save Lives and Protect the NHS.    

Pédophilie (with Reference to the Cases of Michel Foucault and Gabriel Matzneff)

 Suffer the little children to come unto us ...

 

Whatever some people choose to believe, children are not angels and even pre-pubescent youngsters possess an immature form of sexuality that they will often seek to playfully explore as a natural part of their development. That, we might say, is simply an established (biological and psychological) fact.  

 

The problem, however, is that this fact of child sexuality is subject to an ever-shifting socio-cultural interpretation by adults, some of whom wish to safeguard the innocence of those deemed to be incapable of giving consent and some of whom wish to share in or exploit the affections of children whom they argue are perfectly capable of expressing their feelings and know very well what they do and do not want to do.         

 

This latter position was pretty much that of everyone who located themselves on the radical wing of French politics in the 1960s and '70s, including, for example, Michel Foucault ... 

 

In 1977, having previously added his name to an open letter published by Le Monde [1] defending three individuals who had been charged over sexual activity with minors (or what is known outside of France as statutory rape), Foucault signed a petition addressed to the French parliament calling for the decriminalisation of all consensual relations between adults and minors under the age of fifteen [2]. He also later took part in a radio discussion of this topic with Guy Hocquenghem and Jean Danet [3].

 

Amongst other things, they expressed their shared concern that the penal system was not merely punishing acts deemed criminal, but in the process of constructing a new type of bogeyman - the paedophile - who was being held up as a danger to society in much the same way that the figure of the homosexual had previously been used.         

 

For Foucault, the suggestion that children - particularly over the age of twelve - were unable to consent to sexual relations (either with one another or with adults) was itself an unacceptable form of abuse, restricting their right to freedom and decision making via the use of contractual law introduced into the amorous realm. Children, he said, should be fully empowered to find pleasure in any way they liked.

 

What this argument ultimately hinges upon is whether one considers child sexuality as fundamentally different from adult sexual behavior and, as such, something that should be preserved as a form of virgin territory "with its own geography that the adult must not enter" [4] under any circumstances or for any reason. 

 

Clearly, Foucault isn't prepared to buy into this idea of children's sexuality as a specific sexuality "with its own forms, its own periods of maturation, its own highpoints, its specific drives, and its own latency periods" [5]. Nor does he think that children are a particularly vulnerable population who need protecting from adults or, indeed, from their own desires.

 

It's precisely this kind of thinking that, over forty years later, has finally landed Gabriel Matzneff in hot water ... [6]

 

Notes

 

[1] Foucault was not the only well-known French intellectual to sign this; his name was just one of over sixty attached to the letter - written by Gabriel Matzneff (see footnote 6 below) - that appeared in Le Monde on 26 January, 1977. For an English translation of the letter and a list of the signatories, click here.

 

[2] Again, it should be noted that the petition was also signed by many other prominent intellectuals, including Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard, and even dear old Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. As I say in the post, pretty much everyone on the radical left at this time was pro-sexual freedom, the extension of civil rights, and the breaking of all taboos (if only to outrage the bourgeoisie). For an interesting article by John Henley writing in The Guardian (24 Feb 2001) on how the call to legalise sex with children rebounded on some of the luminaries of May '68, click here.    

 

[3] The radio discussion was produced by Roger Pillaudin and broadcast by France Culture on 4 April, 1978. A transcript was later published as La Loi de la pudeur in Recherches 37, April 1979. The first full translation in English, by Alan Sheridan, appeared under the title 'Sexual Morality and the Law' in Michel Foucault, Politics, Philosophy, Culture, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman, (Routledge, 1988). This was republished as 'The Danger of Child Sexuality', in Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, (Semiotext(e), 1996).   

 

[4] and [5] Michel Foucault, 'The Danger of Child Sexuality', in Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, trans. Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston, (Semiotext(e), 1996), p. 267.

 

[6] Gabriel Matzneff is a French writer who had long boasted of his penchant for sex with children and openly detailed his activities in his books. Despite this, he escaped criminal prosecution for many decades and enjoyed the support of the French literary establishment. However, at the end of 2019 Vanessa Springora published Le Consentement, describing her illicit relationship with Matzneff in the mid-1980s when she was fourteen and he was fifty. The book ignited a controversy in France and led to prosecutors opening a rape inquiry. Matzneff is also due to appear in court in September of this year charged with being an apologiste for paedophilia in a case brought by the Blue Angel Association.    

Hey Look, It's Me!

Do you see yourself on the T.V. screen?

  

D. H. Lawrence has a real problem with self-seeking in the negative sense identified by St. Paul. He particularly despises those men and women who stare into the eyes of their lovers only for the opportunity to see themselves reflected and who degrade sex (a flow of feeling) into sexuality (a will to sensation):

 

"The true self, in sex, would seek a meeting, would seek to meet the other. [...] But today, [...] sex does not exist, there is only sexuality. And sexuality is merely a greedy, blind self-seeking. Self-seeking is the real motive of sexuality. And therefore, since the thing sought is the same, the self, the mode of seeking is not very important. Heterosexual, homosexual, narcistic [sic], normal or incest, it is all the same thing. It is just sexuality, not sex. It is one of the universal forms of self-seeking. Every man, every woman just seeks his own self, her own self, in the sexual experience." [1]

 

To be honest, this doesn't bother me as much as it does Mr. Lawrence. For unlike the latter, I don't subscribe to the metaphysical notion of sex as some sort of ontological anchorage point residing deep within us and possessing its own intrinsic properties etc. I'm just a bit too Foucauldian for that [2]. 

 

And whilst there may be an element of self-seeking in the various forms of sexual expression, so too are there many other elements. For love is not just one-sided or always rejoicing with truth; sometimes, it does involve falsehood, impatience, cruelty, envy, pride, rudeness, anger, and resentment; sometimes it does delight in evil and is a means of destruction; sometimes, sadly, love fails [3].          

 

What does irritate me, however, is when people self-seek within works of art; i.e., when they look or listen out for themselves in every image, song, or text, identifying either with the subject or the author of the work. It's very depressing. And, surprisingly, even some readers of Lawrence fall into this trap, despite his explicit warnings about the dangers of self-idolatry. 

 

I know people who only really enjoy his works based in or around the East Midlands so that they might better locate themselves and feel an intense sense of belonging. They thrill to imagine characters speaking with accents like their own and walking down streets they themselves have walked along. They turn Sons and Lovers, for example, into a giant mirror reflecting their own history and childhood memories. 

 

It's not so much parochialism, as a mix of narcissism and nostalgia. Either way, the result is the same; artworks which are intended to facilitate a radical becoming-other and deterritorialization, are made self-reassuring and all-too-familiar. If only people bristled like cats when they saw themselves reflected!     

 

    

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Review of The Social Basis of Consciousness, by Trigant Burrow', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 335-36.   

[2] See the post entitled 'Lady Chatterley's Postmodern Lover' (9 Sept 2013) where I discuss Lawrence contra Foucault: click here. 

 

[3] In giving this more negative - yet more rounded and more honest - portrait of love, I am suggesting the opposite of what St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13. Of course, it should be noted that the latter, writing in Greek, used the word agape [ἀγάπη] and that he was not referring to sexual love or érōs [ἔρως].     

 

 

Simply Nietzschean

As Simon Solomon is keen to remind me, any attempt to cloak oneself in the skin of another is to violate Zarathustra's greatest teaching: Lose me and find yourselves. No master worthy of the name wants disciples and, in truth, there was only ever one Christian and he died on the cross.

And so, what then are we to make of Foucault's remark in an interview shortly before his death in 1984: I am simply a Nietzschean ... Doesn't this already betray an essential misunderstanding of Nietzsche and his philosophy?

I don't think so. Foucault wasn't a slavish disciple of Nietzsche's, nor an uncritical reader and so this statement is rather more complex than it first appears. It helps, I think, to read the sentence from which the remark is taken in full:

"I am simply a Nietzschean, and I try as far as possible, on a certain number of issues, to see with the help of Nietzsche’s texts - but also with anti-Nietzschean theses (which are nevertheless Nietzschean!) - what can be done in this or that domain. I attempt nothing else, but that I try to do well." [1]

I suppose what Deleuze says of D. H. Lawrence, we might also say of Foucault: it's not that either writer simply imitated Nietzsche; rather, each picks up the arrow shot into the future by the latter and then shoots it in a new direction.

So it is that, whilst finding new targets of his own, the weapons (i.e. genealogical methods) that Foucault adopts, originate in Nietzsche: "Many things change or are supplemented from one initiative to another, and even what they have in common gains in strength and novelty." [2] 

Ultimately, what enables one to call oneself a Nietzschean without embarrassment (but always with a dash of irony) is the fact that there was no one Nietzsche with whom one might identify.

Thus, what it means, to call oneself a Nietzschean, is that one is loyal only to fluidity of thought and a multiplicity of perspectives; that one likes wearing masks as a philosopher; that in all things, one values style above all else. It doesn't mean you have to have a big letter S tattooed on your chest or grow a walrus-handlebar moustache ... 

Notes

[1] Michel Foucault, 'The Return of Morality', trans John Johnston in Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961-1984), ed. by Sylvère Lotringer (Semiotext(e), 1996), pp. 465-73. The lines quoted are on p. 471. This interview was conducted by Gilles Barbedette and André Scala on 29 May 1984 and was originally published as 'Le Retour de la Morale', in Les Nouvelles littéraires, (Paris, 1984), pp. 36-41. 

[2] Gilles Deleuze, 'Nietzsche and St. Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos', Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco, (Verso, 1998), p. 37.