Clothes Maketh the Woman (With Reference to the Queer Case of Nellie March)

Anne Heywood as Ellen (Nellie) March in The Fox (dir. Mark Rydell, 1967)

Image from Twenty Four Frames: Notes on Film by John Greco: click here

I.

Nellie March is an interesting character: I'm not sure it's accurate to describe her as a dyke, but she's definitely a bit more robust and mannish than her intimate friend Miss Banford, who was a "small, thin, delicate thing with spectacles" [7] and tiny iron breasts.  

Unsuprisingly, therefore, it's March who does most of the physical work on the small farm where she and Banford live. And when she hammered away at her carpenter's bench or was "out and about, in her puttees and breeches, her belted coat and her loose cap, she looked almost like some graceful, loose-balanced young man" [8].

It's interesting to consider this: that outward appearance plays such an important role in the construction of gender; that clothes maketh the man, even when that man happens to be a woman.


II.

For all his essentialism, Lawrence is acutely aware of this. Which helps explain why he frequently gives detailed descriptions of what his characters are wearing and seems to have an almost fetishistic fascination with both male and female fashion. In the Lawrentian universe, looks matter and the question of style is crucial.

It also explains why later in the story, when March has decided to affirm a heterosexual identity and give her hand in marriage to a foxy young Cornishman named Henry, she undergoes a radical change of image. All of a sudden the heavy work boots and trousers are off and she's slipping into something a little more comfortable, a little more feminine, and she literally lets down her thick, black hair.

Henry, who has been dreaming of her soft woman's breasts beneath her tunic and big-belted coat, is astonished by her transformation:

"To his amazement March was dressed in a dress of dull, green silk crape [...] He sat down [...] unable to take his eyes off her. Her dress was a perfectly simple slip of bluey-green crape, with a line of gold stitching round the top and round the sleeves, which came to the elbow. It was cut just plain, and round at the top, and showed her white soft throat. [...] But he looked her up and down, up and down." [48]       

By his own admission, he's never known anything make such a difference, and as March takes the teapot to the fire his erotic delight is taken to another level:

"As she crouched on the hearth with her green slip about her, the boy stared more wide-eyed than ever. Through the crape her woman's form seemed soft and womanly. And when she stood up and walked he saw her legs move soft within her moderately short skirt. She had on black silk stockings and small, patent shoes with little gold buckles.
      She was another being. She was something quite different. Seeing her always in the hard-cloth breeches, wide on the hips, buttoned on the knee, srong as armour, and in the brown puttees and thick boots, it had never occurred to him that she had a woman's legs and feet." [49]

Not only is March born as a woman thanks to putting on a pair of black silk stockings and a (moderately) short skirt, but Henry too feels himself reinforced in his phallic masculinity:

"Now it came upon him. She had a woman's soft, skirted legs, and she was accessible. He blushed to the roots of his hair [...] and strangely, suddenly felt a man, no longer a youth. He felt a man, with all a man's grave weight of responsibility. A curious quietness and gravity came over his soul. He felt a man, quiet, with a little heaviness of male destiny upon him." [49]

It's writing like this that sets Lawrence apart, I think; writing that will seem pervy and sexist to some, but full of queer insight to others. Writing that, in a sense, undermines his own essentialism by showing the importance of costume and perfomativity when it comes to gender roles, sexual identity, and sexual attraction.     

III.

And does it end well once they are married, Henry and Nellie? A 20-year old youth and a 30-year old woman used to living an independent life (and sharing a bed with another woman)? Not really: something was missing. 

The problem is, he wants her submission: "Then he would have all his own life as a young man and a male, and she would have all her own life as a woman and a female. [...] She would not be a man any more, an independent woman [...]" [70]

But March, of course, doesn't want to submit; she wants to stay awake, and to know, and decide, and remain an independent woman to the last.

So it's hard to believe they're going to find happiness. But then, as Lawrence writes:

"The more you reach after the fatal flower of happiness, which trembles so blue and lovely in a crevice just beyond your grasp, the more fearfully you become aware of the ghastly and awful gulf of the precipice below you, into which you will inevitably plunge, as into the bottomless pit [...]
      That is the whole history of the search for happiness, whether it be your own or somebody else's [...] It ends, and it always ends, in the ghastly sense of the bottomless nothingness into which you will inevitably fall [...]" [69]

And on that note, Happy New Year to all torpedophiles ...

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Fox', in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1992). All page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.

Self-Enjoyment and Concern Part 2: The Aesthetico-Ethical Case For Masturbation

No wanker wanks twice

  

In his final book, Modes of Thought (1938), Whitehead argues that life implies immediate and absolute self-enjoyment. What I'd like to do here, is perversely interpret this theory of auto-affection and show how it might relate to the question of masturbation in a manner that allows us to conceive of wanking as a vital pleasure, rather than an unnatural vice; a pleasure which enables solosexuals to experience life directly by taking it in hand.

Further, Whitehead's philosophy enables us to think of pleasure as immanent to the act of masturbating; non-dependent upon the achievement of any goal or static result, including orgasm. A wank, as it were, unfolds entirely in and for itself, without conditions and without reference to any other living moment.          

So far of course, this merely reinforces the case that D. H. Lawrence and Rae Langton have against masturbation. But Whitehead goes further and affords us the opportunity to construct a novel defence of self-enjoyment; to argue that each occasion one jerks off is an activity of concern. Concern, that is to say - in feeling and in aim - with things and bodies that lie beyond it. This, insists Whitehead, is concern understood in the Quaker sense of that term.

Steven Shaviro - upon whose excellent reading of Whitehead I'm reliant here - provides a convenient explanation of this latter point:

"For the Quakers, concern implies a weight on the spirit. When something concerns me, I cannot ignore it or walk away from it. It presses on my being and compels me to respond. Concern, therefore, is an involuntary experience of being affected by others. It opens me, in spite of myself, to the outside. It compromises my autonomy, leading me toward something beyond myself." [14-5]

In other words - and contrary to what Lawrence and Langton believe - we masturbate from out of a concern with (and a desire for) others; it's a relational activity, even if the enjoyment is purely private and personal. Ultimately, masturbation is a way of reaching out and coming into touch with others and not just touching ourselves in an inappropriate manner.

Unfortunately, Lawrence and Langton confuse the fundamental difference between these two closely bound but contrasting conditions of self-enjoyment and concern; or, rather, they see the first but are blind to the latter. But as Shaviro points out, you can't have one without the other; for concern is itself a kind of enjoyment and both are "movements, or pulsations, of emotion" [16].    

Thus, whilst masturbation may not directly involve others, it always keeps them in mind. It's also, crucially, not an atemporal phenomenon; we may wank in the present, but we do so with fond memories of past experience and projected towards the hope and the promise of sexual contacts still to come. In other words, masturbation is "deeply involved with the antecedent occasions from which it has inherited and with the succeeding occasions to which it makes itself available" [15].

It's because we come in a way that unites and affirms our life not just in the living moment, but across time, that wanking is transformed from simple self-enjoyment into concern: "Conversely, concern or other-directedness is itself a necessary precondition for even the most intransitive self-enjoyment ..." [15]. For no wank is ideal, or ever entirely without object.

And, what's more, no masturbating subject ever experiences the same wank twice; each and every wank is selected from a boundless wealth of alternatives, thus ensuring that masturbation, as a philosophical practice, "has to do with the multiplicity and mutability of our ways of enjoyment, as these are manifested even in the course of what an essentialist thinker would regard as the 'same' situation" [18].

In sum - and to reiterate - the joy and the excitement felt by a happy masturbator, is always derived from the past and aimed at the future. As Whitehead says: "'It issues from, and it issues towards ...'" [16] someone, something, or somewhere else. But it's important to note that it doesn't really matter who, what or where; what matters is the activity of wanking itself as an event that explores modes of thought, styles of being, and contingent interactions.  

I don't know whether masturbation can be said to be beautiful - though it certainly belongs to any ars erotica worthy of the name. But it can, I think, be said to be ethical (if in a somewhat illicit sense) and, as such, part and parcel of a good life conceived as something physically embodied. Indeed, what Whitehead offers us, says Shaviro, is an "aestheticized account of ethics" [24] in contrast to any categorical imperative.

And what I've attempted here is to illustrate how such an ethic might result from masturbation - i.e. concern is the consequence of wanking, rather than the basis of its value or its moral justification; something which "cannot be separated from self-enjoyment, much less elevated above it" [25].

See: Steven Shaviro, The Universe of Things, (University of Minnesota Press, 2014). All lines quoted and all page numbers given above refer to the first chapter of this book: 'Self-Enjoyment and Concern'. 

To read part 1 of this post - The Moral Case Against Masturbation - click here. 

The Most Beautiful Streets of Paris (Notes on Surrealist Mannequin Fetish)

André Masson: Mannequin (1938)

Photo by Raoul Ubac (gelatin silver print)

The Cleveland Museum of Art

 

If you love Love, you'll love Surrealism ...

Unfortunately, however, I don't love Love - certainly not as some kind of moral absolute - and so have never really much cared for Surrealism as conceived by André Breton, whom, despite his admirable anti-theism ("Everything that is doddering, squint-eyed, vile, polluted and grotesque is summoned up for me in that one word: God!") remained an idealist and a dogmatist at heart.

However, there are some aspects - the darker, pervier aspects - of Surrealism that do excite my interest. And one of these aspects is the erotic fetishization of mannequins; agalmatophilia being a major component of the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, held in Paris at the beginning of 1938.

The exhibition, organised by Breton and the poet Paul Éluard, pretty much involved everyone who was anyone in the world of Surrealism at the time, including Duchamp, Dalí, Max Ernst, and Man Ray. It was staged in two main sections and a lobby area, displaying paintings and objects as well as unusually decorated rooms which had been redesigned so as to create what would today be called an immersive environment or experience.

It was the first section - Les plus belles rues de Paris - in which a parade of surrealist mannequins was located, including, most dramatically, the one by André Masson pictured above.

The mannequin, or lay figure, has a long if relatively humble history within the world of art; as a tool it's pretty much on a par with an easel, a brush, or a palette knife, even though it served several purposes; from helping fix perspective and understand the fall of light and shadow, to acting as a support for drapery and costume.

Perhaps, in their loneliest moments, some artists looked affectionately - even longingly - at their mannequins as silent companions. But it was only from the 19th century, however, that the latter became the subject of the painting and, ultimately, an objet d'art in its own right. For the Surrealists, however, the mannequin became something else too: a sex object.

Upon entering the most beautiful streets of Paris, visitors encountered sixteen artificial female figures provocatively designed, dressed and posed by Masson and friends. These kinky mannequins were deliberately intended to disturb and to arouse strange (often illicit) desires.

Duchamp, for example, dressed the upper-half of his model in male clothing, but left the lower-half naked, thereby playing with notions of androgyny and obscene exposure. Max Ernst, meanwhile, had intended to place a glowing red light bulb in the underwear of his 'Black Widow' mannequin (revealed by looking up her conveniently raised skirt), but - ever the prude and policeman - André Breton prevented this. 

It was, as indicated, Masson's mannequin that attracted the greatest attention, however,  with its pretty head squeezed into a bird cage covered with red celluloid fish. The mannequin was gagged with a velvet ribbon and had a pansy placed in its mouth.

What this all means, I'm not entirely certain. But it surely isn't just about female objectification and misogyny masquerading as art, or the pornographic violence inherent in male sexuality. Those critics and commentators who exclusively discuss these works in such reductive terms are mistaken and being intellectually lazy, I think. 

This isn't to say that these things aren't realities or worthy of serious discussion. But simply that there are other considerations here; for example, the way in which objects became central within consumer culture - the mannequin in particular being the very embodiment of urban modernity, as Hans Richter pointed out. Or the manner in which fetishization can elevate an object from base utility, transforming it into something magical and seductive, with its own strange allure.         

For me, as a perverse materialist, mannequins, statues and sex-dolls need to be considered as things in themselves and not as mere substitutes for real women. And the men who choose to erotically privilege such over biological entities are deserving neither of ridicule nor condemnation.

The adult imperative to grow-up, stop touching yourself and get a steady girlfriend (i.e. one who is actual, rather than imaginary; human, rather than synthetic; alive, rather than dead) is one that at least some of the Surrealists dared to challenge and for that I admire and respect them.  

Besides, maybe Proust is right to argue that we are all forever isolate at some level; that reciprocity is an illusion and the objects of our affection - whatever their ontological status - simply allow for the projection of our own ideas, fantasies and feelings ... 


Note: those interested in knowing more about the role and rise of the mannequin in Western art should see Jane Munro, Silent Partners: Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish, (Yale University Press, 2014). 

Ecosexuality Contra Necrofloraphilia (How Best to Love the Earth)

Black and Pink Floral Skull design 

sugarskullbedding.com

I greatly admire Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle for endeavouring to think ecosexuality and questions concerning broader human culture within a nonhuman and inhuman framework. And I fully approve of their attempt to encourage people to form connections with not only other life forms, but also inanimate objects, be they real or virtual, natural or artificial. 

But this isn't as easy as perhaps they imagine. For it's not just a question of sharing space and sharing affection with the things that you love, it's also a question of establishing a zone of proximity and entering into some kind of strange becoming. And it means abandoning all anthropocentric conceit and all traces of vitalism which posit life as something more than a very rare and unusual way of being dead.      

What I'm suggesting is that ecosexuality must shed itself of its moral idealism and become a more daringly speculative and perverse form of materialism. For the fact is, the earth, however you wish to metaphorically think it - as mother, as lover, or both - simply doesn’t care about the life that it sustains. Rather, it is massively and monstrously indifferent; just like the rest of the universe.  

In attempting to make an eroticised return to the actual, ecosexuality is ultimately fated to discover that it’s not an affirmation of life, but a form of romancing the dead; i.e., necrophilia. Thus it's really not a question of how to make the environmental movement sexier and full of fun, as Stephens and Sprinkle suggest, but queer-macabre in a deliciously morbid manner. And if you genuinely want to indicate the ecological entanglements of human sexuality then you must sooner or later discuss death as that towards which all beings move and find blissful unity in an orgiastic exchange of molecules and energy. It's death - not sex - that is radically (and promiscuously) inclusive.   

As for the 'twenty-five ways to make love to the earth' listed by Stephens and Sprinkle, which include dirty talk, nude dancing, skinny dipping, recycling, and working for global peace, if this is the best they can do at constructing a green lover’s discourse or an ars erotica then, to be honest, I’m deeply disappointed; all the multiple pronouns in the world don’t lift this above banality. 

One might - provocatively - suggest that there are other, more explicit, more obscene, ways of loving the earth; that our ecosexual relationship is actually a violent, mutually destructive type of amor fou in which the earth displays her passion with volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and earthquakes and we, in turn, display our virility through displays of power; mining for coal and drilling for oil, deforestation, dredging the seas, the erection of hydro-electric damns and nuclear plants, accelerated species extinction, etc. 

Perhaps it’s these things that turn the earth on – mightn’t global warming be a sign of arousal?

See: Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, ‘Ecosexuality’, essay in Gender: Nature, (MIHS), ed. Iris van Der Tuin, (Schirmer Books, 2016).

Note: This text is taken from a much longer commentary and critique of the above essay by Stephens and Sprinkle (emailed to the authors on 23 Nov 2016). 

Perversion Makes Happy

Someone recently asked me why I no longer characterize my work as a form of libidinal materialism, preferring instead to now label it as a perverse materialism. Well, firstly, I wanted to move away from the whole politics of desire shtick, particularly as associated with Deleuze and Guattari. 

Secondly, the concept and practice of perversion, understood as a quest to find joyful thoughts and feelings not made profitable by any social end and which deviate from the straight and narrow, is something that has always appealed. Even as a young child, I hated any kind of norm or convention and would often wear my clothes inside-out.

I think Barthes is right when he argues that the pleasure potential of perversion is always greatly underestimated by moralists who fail to understand that it does not corrupt or make sinful, but, quite simply, makes happy.