Reflections on Nietzsche and the Dark Triad

 

First proposed by Delroy L. Paulhus and Kevin M. Williams in 2002, the dark triad is a psychological theory of personality that collates (sub-clinical) narcissism and psychopathy with Machiavellianism [1].

 

Whilst these three things are conceptually distinct, they clearly intersect with one another and each is associated with often callous and manipulative interpersonal conduct [2]. Narcissim, for example, is characterised by self-obsession; psychopathy by anti-social behaviour; and  Machiavellianism by moral indifference to others. 

 

An individual located within the dark triad might not be prone to committing criminal acts, but they're almost certainly a cold fish at best, or a really nasty piece of work at worst.

 

Interestingly, however, although each of these personality traits are regarded as being problematic by psychologists, Nietzsche seemed to think they are vital to human well-being: man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him, as Zarathustra famously says [3]. 

 

Nietzsche argues that a certain level of self-love is essential, for example - certainly preferable to self-loathing and shame; that narcissism has its place as an active joyful force within an economy of desire. Indeed, Zarathustra suggests that it is from out of such that a new type of virtue may develop [4].

 

As for Machiavellianism, well, whilst Christian moralists might react with horror at the thought of any one acting in their own interest rather than loving their neighbour, or indulging in self-sacrifice, Nietzsche thought highly of the arguments set out in The Prince, Machiavelli's seminal essay, published posthumously in 1532, and acknowledged as one of the founding texts of modern political philosophy [5].    

 

Does this mean, therefore, that the Übermensch is some kind of psychopath? 

 

Hardly. 

 

It might, however, indicate that there remains something troubling in Nietzsche's political philosophy (particularly in its grand phase) and it's interesting to note how individuals with dark triad personalities - and I would number my younger self amongst them - are often attracted to extremist ideologies and prone to authoritarianism (often at odds with the radicalism they dream of) [6].      

 

However, we must note in closing, this is true for romantic idealists on the far left of the political spectrum, as well as young fascists. Indeed, today, it is often the wokest amongst us who are the most darkly triadic and who, whilst masquerading as the compassionate, leap into the black hole of fundamentalism [7].      

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm aware that a fourth trait - sadism (defined as the enjoyment of cruelty) - has now been added to this theory of personality, creating a so-called dark tetrad, but here I'm discussing the original concept in relation to Nietzsche's philosophy as  proposed by Paulhus and Williams in 'The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy', Journal of Research in Personality, 36 (6): 556–563, (Dec. 2002).   

[2] In 1998, John W. McHoskey, William Worzel, and Christopher Szyarto provoked a controversy by claiming that narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism are more or less interchangeable. See their 1998 paper, 'Machiavellianism and psychopathy', in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74 (1): pp. 192–210. Readers interested in having access to this text should click here.

 

[3] See the section entitled 'The Convalescent' in Book III of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I am quoting here from Walter Kaufmann's translation in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann, (Penguin Books, 1994), p. 331. 

[4] See also Herbert Marcuse writing in Eros and Civilization (1955) where he argues that narcissistic joy passes beyond immature autoeroticism and may possibly contain the germ of a different reality principle.

[5] Readers interested in the relationship between the two writers might like to see Don Dombowsky's 2004 work, Nietzsche's Machiavellian Politics (Palgrave Macmillan), particularly chapter 4 (pp. 131-167). In brief, Dombowsky argues that the foundation of Nietzsche's political thought is a radical aristocratic critique of democratic society, heavily influenced by his reading of The Prince:

"Nietzsche did not read Machiavelli as Spinoza or Rousseau did, as someone who revives republicanism and defends democratic freedoms [...] but adheres to what has been called the 'vulgar' conception of Machiavellianism. Rousseau would have considered Nietzsche to be a 'superficial and corrupt' reader of Machiavelli. What Nietzsche adapts from Machiavelli are his conceptions of virtù (at the operational basis of his ethics) and immoralism (at the operational basis of his political conception) based primarily on a reading of The Prince." (131-32)

[6] I discuss all this at length in Outside the Gate (Blind Cupid Press, 2010).

[7] Jordan Peterson is very alert to this and often warns about the zen fascism of those on the woke left who claim to act in the name of Love and social justice (or diversity, equity, and inclusion). So too is the writer, broadcaster, and satirist Andrew Doyle, and readers might find a recent discussion between these two figures on the political puritanism of our age interesting: click here.  

 

 

Interactive bonus: readers who wish to know if they perhaps have a dark triad personality might like to take a short online test: click here.

On Following the Science

Follow The Science Art Print 

Designed and sold by halibutgoatramb

redbubble.com

 

 

When politicians says they will follow the science it means they are abdicating their duty to think and their responsibility to lead; they are hiding behind experts in order to justify their decisions and excuse their inevitable mistakes; Chris Whitty is basically a human shield employed to protect Boris Johnson. 

We repeatedly heard this phrase from UK government ministers during the Covid-19 pandemic - and I'm sure we'll hear it again this winter, if and when they decide to bring back social distancing, reintroduce mandatory mask wearing, and impose a new lockdown.

 

It is, as I indicate, a form of political cowardice and dishonesty, as well as a (perhaps wilful) misunderstanding of how science works; one that relies upon a rather slippery notion of consensus, when, in fact, there is no scientific agreement about how best to deal with a viral pandemic. 

 

Epidemiological models, based on what we have so far discovered about Covid-19, can vary greatly depending on the assumptions made by the modellers and how the data produced is interpreted and then implemented as actual policy. As one commentator has noted, government ministers "can trawl for evidence that suits their purposes or invest selectively in the types of research that are likely to show them in a favourable light" [1].  

 

Ultimately, the public are being misled whenever a politician claims to be simply following the science, even if political choices are (to a greater or lesser degree) informed by scientific findings. This is not because all politicians are liars or inherently corrupt; they may well be sincere in their belief that they are following the best scientific advice. Unfortunately, however, that doesn't guarantee "that this advice reflects an unbiased, unambiguous picture of how different policy options will work out in practice" [2].       

 

It's a shame that members of the mainstream media haven't done more in pointing this out. Too often during the pandemic, journalists simply followed the government's line in the naive belief that they were thereby also following the science. How refreshing it would have been if Laura Kuennsberg, for example, had stood up at a press briefing and reminded the PM that science does not think ... [3]

 

     

Notes

 

[1] Alex Stevens,  'Governments cannot just "follow the science" on COVID-19', Nature Human Behaviour, vol. 4, (June 2020), p. 560.  Click here to read online.  

 

[2] Ibid.  

[3] I'm borrowing the provocative claim made by Heidegger in Was Heisst Denken? (1954): "Die Wissenschaft denkt nicht." See the English translation - What Is Called Thinking? - by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray, (Harper & Row, 1968), p. 8.

 

 

Radical Chic: On Puncturing the Fourth Wall of Excess and Spectacle with AOC

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her 

Tax the Rich dress (Met Gala 2021)  

 

 

One of the results of the conjunction between politics and fashion is the sloganised garment. 

 

That is to say, an item of clothing printed or painted with an ideological statement in the (magical) belief that the right few words can help bring about social and cultural change (or, at the very least, piss a few people off).  

Hugely influenced by the designs of McLaren and Westwood - and members of the Clash on the sleeve of White Riot - I used to buy into this belief myself and would regularly paint punk-situationist slogans on the clothes I wore: click here.

 

But when Katharine Hamnett started producing her line of oversized politically-correct t-shirts - Save the World, Choose Life, etc. - it was clear that a once genuinely provocative practice had become purely an exercise in virtue signalling.   

 

And here in 2021, at the 75th annual Met Gala, things reached a depressing new low when Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez appeared in a couture white gown designed by Aurora James (creative director and founder of luxury brand ​​Brother Vellies) emblazoned with the words Tax the Rich in large red letters. 

 

For this wasn't a political use of fashion, but a fashionable use of politics and it doesn't make AOC an anti-capitalist icon bravely confronting the wealthy at their own event - minimum ticket price $30,000 - it makes her a clown invited for their amusement. Whilst she posed for pictures, protestors from Black Lives Matter were (literally) being arrested in the streets outside.  

 

Defending her decision to attend the Gala and wear the dress, AOC claimed on Instagram that she had not only started a conversation about taxing the rich, but 'punctured the fourth wall of excess and spectacle', which is a rather lovely sentence, albeit one that reveals the depth of her pomposity and self-delusion. 

 

One thinks back, in closing, to that marvellous term coined by Tom Wolfe in an essay from fifty years ago - radical chic - to describe the adoption and promotion of trendy left-wing political causes made by numerous celebrities, socialites, and intellectuals ... [1]

 

Unlike actual militants and real-life revolutionaries, those parading their radical chic are mostly interested in advancing their own position and being seen to be what we now describe as woke. It is, ultimately, a form of decadence - and insulting to the very people on whose behalf they claim to speak [2].      

 

 

Notes

[1] See Tom Wolfe, 'Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's', New York (June 8, 1970): click here to read online. 

      The above essay can also be found in Wolfe's Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970) and/or The Purple Decades, (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1982). 

    

[2] Just to be clear: as much as the hypocrisy of someone like OAC can be galling, I'm not writing here in support of actual militants and/or real-life revolutionaries - i.e., the kind of political ascetics and terrorists of ideology who resort to violence in order to achieve their aims and impose their beliefs.

 

For a sister post to this one on whether we should tax the rich, eat the rich, or kill the poor, click here.     

Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair: Notes on the Vinok

A Ukranian beauty wearing traditional clothes

and a spectacular floral headdress

The penchant for wearing flowers in one's hair was not, of course, something that originated in San Francisco during the Summer of Love; peoples all around the world have been adorning themselves in this fashion for millennia. However, I'm particularly fascinated (at the moment) by the Ukranian floral headdress known in English as the vinok.

Traditionally worn by girls and unmarried women, the vinok has its origins in fertility rites that pre-date Christianity. Signifying virginity, the vinok was also believed to offer protection against evil spirits and followers of Slavic neopaganism - known as Rodnovery - continue to attach magical significance to the vinok.

Whilst mostly worn on festive occasions and holy days, since the 2014 Ukranian revolution the vinok has been increasingly worn in daily life as an expression of national pride and völkisch identity. This might cause concern amongst those suspicious of reactionary populism in Europe. However, it might be noted that the vinok is also often worn by the topless activists of Femen, for whom it signifies a new, insubordinate and heroic model of femininity.*

It might also be noted, finally, that the vinok has influenced the world of fashion and featured in several recent catwalk collections, including the Comme des Garçons Homme Plus Spring 2016 menswear collection, where models wore botanical crowns in a show entitled Armour of Peace:

* Note: it's not coincidental, of course, that although now based in Paris, Femen was founded in the Ukraine and is still led by a Ukranian woman, Inna Shevchenko. Readers might like to know that the Femen Flower Crown - handmade by activists - is available to buy for €35.00 on the Femen website: click here.

Diversity: What Would Nietzsche Think?

Image: Scotty Hendricks (2018)  

bigthink.com

I.

The word diversity is frequently used today, particularly by those who regard it as a value and like to signal their politico-moral correctness even if that means denigrating or disprivileging their own people, culture and history.

In order to illustrate this latter point, one might refer to the recent case of students at the University of Manchester who painted over a mural of a poem by Rudyard Kipling and replaced it with a verse by the African-American poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou.

This was done in the name of anti-racism - for Kipling, a well-known British imperialist, was said to dehumanise people of colour - and in order to celebrate the diversity of a student body looking to reclaim history by - quite literally - whitewashing it.            

I don't here wish to discuss the merits (or otherwise) of either Kipling's or Maya Angelou's work; nor do I want to express my concerns about historical revisionism and literary censorship. But I would like to say something further about diversity and the idea of multiculturalism, from a post-Nietzschean perspective ...


II.

If confronted with a world in which everyone was retreating to their own safe space from which to assert an identity (on the basis, for example, of sex, gender, race or religion) whilst, at the same time, speaking about the benefits of ever-greater diversity within society and culture, I suspect that Nietzsche would feel himself compelled as a philosopher to argue that greatness belongs only to the individual or the people who find a way to stylise chaos and give birth to a dancing star - the latter being a sign of unity within diversity.

Nietzsche loves words like difference, plurality and multiplicity; he thinks of the will to power as composed of a large number of competing forces, flows, and desires. But - and this is important to understand - he doesn't affirm diversity as a good in itself nor as a goal to be aimed at.

On the contrary, Nietzsche insists that culture, for example, has to be unified; that the only alternative to such is a civilization based upon a barbarism of styles and tastes and incapable of ever producing art or sovereign individuals. Nietzsche opposes the systematic anarchy, the aggressive philistinism, and the Volkerchaos that characterise European modernity and are the symptoms of culture's extermination.

Thus, whilst he may have announced the death of God and thereby decentered and demoralised the world, he still believes in shared ethical bonds between people. His nihilism is not the same as the nihilism of those who devote themselves to free markets and money-making, or to the neo-Platonic fantasies of science and technology; those who lack the ability to act under the constraint of a single taste or - as Heidegger would say - to dwell poetically upon the earth.


III.

Deleuze is right to say that, for Nietzsche, history can be read as the process by which "reactive forces take possession of culture or divert its course in their favour". That the will to diversity can therefore be understood as part of an ongoing slave revolt in morals and the overcoding of active forces by the modern State - that coldest of all cold monsters that thrives at the expense of culture and sucks the life out of people in the name of human rights and globalism.

Nietzsche is aggressively opposed to all this and when faced with the ways in which societies become decodified and unregulated, makes no attempt at recodification. But, again, we must be careful here. For whilst Nietzsche makes no attempt to recodify along old lines or patch the holes ripped in the great social umbrella, he very much wants to bring together newly liberated forces onto what Deleuze terms a plane of consistency and regain mastery over the chaos that has been released.

Why? Because for Nietzsche culture is above all unity of style in all the expressions of a people and this requires harmonious manifoldness - not fake diversity built upon idiotic identity politics and an ugly jumble of all styles and peoples. Multiculturalism is not just a failed experiment, it's an absurd fallacy.

Of course Nietzsche's thinking has anti-democratic and illiberal implications - and he wasn't shy about saying so. But I would suggest we need to urgently think about these questions and not simply attempt to close down conversation by calling anyone who does so a fascist or a supporter of the alt-right. 


Notes

Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson, (The Athlone Press, 1992), p. 139.

Reflections on an Art Controversy (With Simon Solomon)

John William Waterhouse: Hylas and the Nymphs (1896) 
Oil on canvas (132 x 197.5 cm)
Manchester City Art Gallery

I.

The controversial decision by Manchester City Art Gallery working in collaboration with Black British artist Sonia Boyce to temporarily remove the well known and - so it would seem - still much-loved painting by J. W. Waterhouse depicting the story of a handsome Greek youth, Hylas, being seduced by a group of water nymphs in that slightly pervy but rather pedestrian pre-Raphaelite manner, caused a predictable shitstorm of reaction.    

And that, apparently, was the aim; to incite discussion and challenge the contemporary relevance of a Victorian fantasy belonging to the male porno-mythic imagination.

It certainly seems to be the line that Clare Gannaway, the gallery's curator of contemporary art, is holding fast to now that Waterhouse's masterpiece is hanging back on the wall. She insists that there was never any intention to censor or permanently remove a work that some today consider offensive and even obscene; suggesting as it does that the pubescent female body exists to serve a decorative and titilating function.

I have to admit, I'm slightly skeptical about this. One can't help feeling that Gannaway and Boyce were rather hoping to test public opinion and see how far they could go, or what they could get away with. Having said that, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the arguments advanced by both women and certainly don't think that any artwork is above critical contestation (though this is probably not best served by simply removing it from view and then inviting visitors to leave post-it notes in the empty space).    

My friend, the Dublin-based poet and scholar Simon Solomon, feels rather more strongly on this issue, however, and has posted a series of remarks on the gallery's website voicing his anger and making clear his contempt for Gannaway and Boyce. Generously, he's consented to my reposting below his latest piece on this ludicrous (though vitally important) affair, written in response to Boyce's article in The Guardian defending the takedown of Waterhouse's work as part of a performance piece of her own.


II.

"In Boyce's pursed-lipped piece of historical revisionism, the Waterhouse painting depicts 'seven long-haired, topless nymphs (pubescent girls)'. Is she really this offensively reactionary or is she being paid by Manchester Art Gallery to be? They are NYMPHS! As in alluring mythic/inhuman feminine entities in mortal garb. The Victorians didn't share our paranoiac, paedo-coated modern concept of pubescent in this domain, with all of its moralistic cultural anxiety. Boyce also seems suspiciously preoccupied with their exposed breasts for reasons best known to herself (of which more below) - presumably, she would feel better if they had been depicted in bathing suits, bloomers and caps. (Or just not depicted at all.)

Boyce then attempts to make the ridiculous case that, because other galleries do not display and/or store certain artworks at certain times for different reasons, the accusations of 'censorship' in this case against Manchester Art Gallery are ill-conceived - and even tries to imply we, as mere 'visitors', are extraordinarily lucky to have been invited into the discussion at all. We are then advised that the 'dialogue' that has been engendered (a dialogue she clearly feels she must resist) is composed by hate-filled simpletons looking for 'easy soundbites', driven by 'bigotry', and is misguidedly 'polarising'. (Even though the hundreds of posts I have read on the gallery blog have been, for the most part, stirring, educated and highly articulate, as well as, yes, angry and justifiably indignant.)

She asserts, as if it were self-evident, that 'judgment is at the heart of art'. The problem is this authoritarian statement is far from obvious. One could say - I would say - that being moved or disturbed, being ravished or silenced, is the alpha and omega of aesthetic feeling. Or falling in love with an image so hard one cannot forget it. [...] Unfortunately, for the likes of Boyce and Gannaway, classicism, monumentality, genius and mythic beauty are 'out', because art must fit modern demands for contemporary relevance, cultural inoffensiveness and whatever the #metoo generation is twittering about this week. Apparently, she also knows much more about these things than the Ancients, myth-makers and visionaries of our Western past.

There’s an ill-advised reference to Mengin's 1877 painting Sappho, in regard to which the first adjective she can tellingly find is that the subject is, once again, 'topless'. Apparently, this Sappho is not lesbian enough, among other things, for her retrospective/revisonist needs [...] and/or not evocative enough of Sappho’s cultural achievements. (The lyre that the subject is holding has apparently been overlooked by Boyce.)

What Boyce claims to celebrate is the contestability of art and its meanings. But she exposes her true agenda by telling us that the removal of the Waterhouse painting 'can' (read should) be seen in the 'context' (an hilarious irony, given her peerless deafness and blindness to Victorian context) of visitor-centred curatorial initiatives in Eindhoven and Middlesborough, in addition to conveying the spiteful and embittered reactions above that suggest people just aren’t sophisticated enough to attune themselves to her ideologically motivated cultural programme. The boot is so clearly on the other foot it’s embarrassing: a self-selecting elite - organised by fatuous/simplistic notions of binary gender, seduction and resentment of myth and history, topped off with puritanical outrage over bare-breasted images of femininity - hijacking art for politically driven ends. Against which hundreds of people, as invited, have now spoken eloquently, incisively and emphatically - not that, to read Boyce’s snookered, self-serving and bitter piece, you’d have realised this fact.

I do not wish art to be preserved in aspic and love the kind of baroque, life-loving and darkness-affirming criticism of feminist commentators such as Camille Paglia. I will also concede that Boyce makes a decent point about the modern hypocrisy of sometimes treating, say, myth differently from photography. But one reasonable claim hardly gets her off the dozens of hooks upon which she is rightly snagged.

The painting is back up ... and the egg is all over these imposters’ faces!"

Note: Simon Solomon can be contacted via simonsolomon.ink

On Operational Whitewash

Mark Tansey 

Robbe-Grillet Cleansing Every Object in Sight (1981)

Oil on canvas with crayon

(182.9 x 183.4 cm)

Like many of his pictures, Mark Tansey's Robbe-Grillet Cleansing Every Object in Sight (1981), is a lot more interesting than it first appears and certainly shouldn't be mistaken for a work of banal realism or straightforward representation, even if it utilizes certain conventions and structures of figurative painting. To fully appreciate its philosophical importance requires an awareness of how art is essentially a symbolic medium; i.e., a space in which different meanings interact.

The first thing one notices upon closer inspection of the canvas is that the human figure is not simply a madman scrubbing any old objects lying about randomly in the desert. They are, rather, the ruins of the Sphinx and Stonehenge; the remains of formerly great civilizations and long-dead peoples, the spirits of whom still haunt the present.    

Robbe-Grillet isn't attempting to remove the dust and the dirt from these fragments of the past in the naive and vain hope of one day reassembling them, driven by ideals of Unity and Wholeness. He is, rather, trying to cleanse them of significance, of their markings and metaphors, to remove every trace of meaning from them.

It's the ultimate act of iconoclasm and forms part of what Jean Baudrillard referred to as the operational whitewashing of human history. Everything is cleansed of evil until nothing remains that might possibly upset or offend or trouble anyone of a liberal-snowflake disposition; it's political correctness gone retroviral - guaranteeing a more inclusive tomorrow by destroying the past and all memory of the past and its divisions.

Baudrillard also described this form of self-inflicted social leukemia as the perfect crime; the murder not only of the real, but also of the imaginary until all that remains is a kind of aseptic whiteness (free of all shadow and every dark glimmer of fate and negativity).

I thought of all this - of Baudrillard's operational whitewash and of Mark Tansey's 1981 painting - when reading about those activists, anti-fascists, and assorted social justice warriors in America intent on smashing statues, tearing down monuments, burning books, and censoring images that don't correspond with how they want the world to be and to have been.

Not that this is limited to the US: the writer, broadcaster and Oxford graduate, Afua Hirsch, has recently called for Nelson's column to be pulled down on the grounds that Nelson was "what you would now call, without hesitation, a white supremacist", who used his power and influence to vigorously defend slavery and thus "perpetuate the tyranny, serial rape and exploitation" of black people.  

Ms Hirsch continues:

"It is figures like Nelson who immediately spring to mind when I hear the latest news of confederate statues being pulled down in the US. These memorials - more than 700 of which still stand in states including Virginia, Georgia and Texas - have always been the subject of offence and trauma for many African Americans, who rightly see them as glorifying the slavery and then segregation of their not so distant past."

Just to be clear: (i) I'm not entirely unsympathetic to those who advance this line of argument; (ii) I really don't give a shit about those historical figures who are immortalised as the great and the good; (iii) I think a lot of the vile abuse directed at Ms Hirsch for simply expressing her view is absolutely shameful.

However, the concern remains - as Heine recognised almost 200 years ago - that where cultural and historical artefacts are destroyed one day, human beings will be murdered the next ... For if you really want to wipe out all trace of European colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade, then it follows with a certain genocidal logic that you have to get rid of the descendants of the slave owners too; every white face becomes a provocation.

Indeed, even that might not do the trick. Because the descendants of the peoples who were enslaved also carry this history within them; they are, if you like, in their rage and resentment and inability to forget, living monuments to a terrible past. Thus they would ultimately have to abolish themselves.

And this is why peace on earth isn't accomplished until the last man kills the last but one and then tops himself, leaving behind a smiling corpse ...  


Notes 

Jean Baudrillard, 'Operational Whitewash', The Transparency of Evil, trans. James Benedict, (Verso, 1993), pp. 44-50. 

Afua Hirsch, 'Toppling statues? Here's why Nelson's column should be next', The Guardian (22 Aug 2017): click here. 

This post is for Thomas Bonneville.

On Non-Referential Aesthetics and the Politics of Silence

Lawrence writes that, as a novelist, it's his primary task to conduct a molecular exploration of the feelings and not comment on molar politics and the great social issues of the day. Besides, other people understand these things much better than him. 

In other words, like Richard Somers, the apolitical protagonist of his novel Kangaroo, Lawrence wants to fight out something with mankind in order to make an opening into the future, but he doesn't want to become hopelessly entangled in history and great events.

Thus Lawrence comes to an understanding that - as a man of letters - his alienation from public life is something he has no choice but to actively sustain; particularly if he wishes to secure a degree of intellectual freedom and transmit in his thinking something that does not and will not allow itself to be codified within conventional political discourse.

Of course, Lawrence is not the only author to display ironic indifference (or insouciance as he calls it) to the world at large. Jane Austen is another novelist whom I admire precisely because she chose to write about the micropolitics of daily life and affairs of the heart whilst staying wonderfully silent on the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, or the massive upheaval caused by industrialization. 

Push comes to shove, I'd rather re-read Pride and Prejudice than War and Peace. And hopefully this explains why I've not written a post on the EU referendum being held in the UK today ...       

On the Politics of Knitting

Matthew Dyck and Ayame Ulrich 

The Uniter (Volume 67, Number 13)

In an interview in which he discusses the delights (and importance) of idleness, Roland Barthes interestingly touches upon the question of knitting.

Knitting, says Barthes, is like amateur painting; "an absolutely gratuitous activity, corporal, aesthetic ... and truly restful at the same time". It's an authentic and affirmative form of laziness, "because there's no pride or narcissism involved".

In fact, knitting might be thought of as the epitome of euphoric idleness (unless of course one is gripped by utilitarian desire to actually finish a piece of work); a perfect example of a manual activity that opens up a simple yet successful form of freedom.

Unfortunately, knitting has been increasingly marginalized within our society. Something that is acceptable only if done by elderly women. Thus, as Barthes goes on to suggest (without too much irony), perhaps one of the most unconventional and, therefore, most scandalous things would be for a young person, particularly a young man, to pull out some needles in a public space and openly begin to knit.

Strangely enough, three decades after Barthes playfully imagined this revolt into handicraft, it came to pass as young punks, goths, and bearded hipsters suddenly became more interested in cross-stitch patterns and yarn bombing, than those more traditional activities associated with alternative lifestyles. (When they weren't busy baking, of course ...!)

Unsurprisingly, not everyone was amused or impressed by this development. The late Steven Wells, for example, wrote in a piece for The Guardian that the very idea of radical knitting is "as absurd as radical dusting or radical toilet cleaning" and that it signals the death not only of youth culture, but of feminism.

However, whilst it's true that Germaine Greer "didn't articulate her disgust with women's oppression by knitting a lavender and yellow toilet-roll holder" and that "Jimi Hendrix didn't take to the stage at Woodstock wearing a nice orange and puce cardigan", I think it just as ludicrous to propose sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll as being the revolutionary solutions to all life's problematic aspects - surely no one really believes this any longer, do they?

Ultimately, I don't care how people choose to articulate their lives and express their politics; it's all good, providing it's done with style, with humour, and without any trace of ascetic militancy. What I don't have time for is the attempt to establish hierarchies in which certain acts, arts, or pleasures are privileged and others denigrated and despised.


Notes

Roland Barthes, 'Dare to Be Lazy', from an interview conducted by Christine Eff, in The Grain of the Voice, trans. Linda Coverdale, (University of California Press, 1991), pp. 338-45. The lines quoted are on pp. 340-41.

Those interested in reading the Steven Wells Guardian article (14 June, 2008) should click here. 

This year's World Wide Knit in Public Day is on Saturday 18 June, 2016. Click here for details.  

This post is dedicated to CheyOnna Sewell and the women of The Yarn Mission.    

D. H. Lawrence's Kangaroo and Some Transpolitical Musings

Garry Shead, Lawrence and Kangaroo, (1992)

Although I'm interested in politics and regard my work as politically informed, I am not one of those individuals who could ever belong to a political party or follow a party line.

I suppose, primarily, this has something to do with wishing to safeguard my reputation as a nomadic thinker; i.e. one who cares for those ideas that don't allow themselves to easily be codified or coordinated by an ideology, or made subject to authority. For this reason, I'm very sympathetic to Richard Somers, protagonist of Lawrence's novel Kangaroo (1923).

For Somers too is something of a Nietzschean free spirit, struggling to rid himself from all forms of dogma and doxa, desperately trying to reinvent each gesture and finally find a way in which to say something in his own name without asking permission (albeit a name which designates no ego whatsoever).

Thus, although he writes essays on social questions - and although he flirts with parties on both the far-left and far-right of the political spectrum, fantasizing about being a revolutionary man of action - Somers ultimately chooses to stand aside and stand alone, remaining loyal to his own demon (no matter how wilfully perverse this makes him look in the eyes of others) and exercising what Foucault describes as a decisive will not to be governed.

He very early on in the novel makes his transpositional position clear when he states that politics isn't his real concern and that he'd rather wander in a homeless fashion without a friend in the world than belong to any nation, church, or cause. Somers knows and comes to accept that he is fated to be one of those who must remain silent, lonely, and resolute - individuals content to engage in invisible activities outside the gate.

Heidegger talks about the need for such people engaged in reverent contemplativeness which might keep open the slim hope of a new revealing for man; a form of transcendence that has been purged not only of its conventional ties to morality and metaphysics, but also to the very possibility of direct action.

Ultimately, despite what militant political fanatics and religious terrorists believe, the greatest events are not our loudest or bloodiest but our stillest hours and "The world revolves not around the inventors of new noises, but around the inventors of new values; it revolves inaudibly."

Like Zarathustra, Richard Somers knows in his heart that change takes time and begins with a new feeling. Thus whilst the commentator Mac Daly is right to suggest that Kangaroo unfolds within a nihilistic universe, he is mistaken to argue that Somers's problem is that he cannot summon up sufficient faith in any cause that might give his life meaning. This, in fact, is Somers's strength and saving grace; it is what prevents him from deteriorating into something dreary and political like a communist or a fascist. It is his lack of faith and his inability to believe in anything or anyone that, paradoxically, is a sign of his spiritual superiority.

For Somers knows that whilst life can be made to march in step with the limited movements of the body politic and mouth empty slogans, it at the same time exceeds these and goes far beyond them: for life makes no absolute statement and sensitive, intelligent men and women don't need metanarratives and remain incredulous before them. If they do think their way into a political party or a faith, so too do they think their way through and out the other side, back into the open, like worms through a rotten apple. 

Kangaroo is a great novel precisely because it encourages us not to belong; to keep moving and abandon all attachments; to understand that it's merely Christian to love your enemies, whilst the really crucial but difficult thing is learning how to hate your friends and betray your masters.      


Notes:

D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, edited by Bruce Steele with an Introduction and Notes by Macdonald Daly, (Penguin Books, 1997).  

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1969). The line quoted is from the section in part two entitled 'Of Great Events', pp. 153-54.  

See also Stephen Alexander, Outside the Gate, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010), II. 6, pp. 127-45, for a further discussion of this topic with reference to Kangaroo and Aaron's Rod.