On Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (Another Post in Response to Simon Solomon)

Image: Marian S. Carson Collection 

at the Library of Congress

 

 

I. 

A common form of corporal punishment for boys and junior officers in the British navy was being bent over the breech of a cannon in order to be caned or whipped on their exposed buttocks. This practice - painful, but not disabling - was euphemistically known as kissing (or marrying) the gunner's daughter and Adam Ant once wrote a song alluding to it [1].

 

II. 

I thought of this when Simon Solomon recently admonished me for providing an 'unsourced reference taken from the heavily doctored Will to Power and as such non-canonical' [2]. 

It wasn't so much that I felt I was about to receive a light beating, but I did feel I was being tied to Nietzsche's canon - i.e., those works which were written and published by him in his lifetime [3] - and forced to pledge love and loyalty only to his authorised books.

And I have to confess that, just like Captain Renault, I was shocked - shocked I tells ya! - to be reprimanded by Herr Solomon of all people; an independent scholar whose reading of Hölderlin in terms of schizopoetics and things that go bump in the night [4] is unorthodox to say the least. 

Indeed, some - including those of a more Swalesian mindset - might even describe it as heterodox, i.e., a work that not only deviates from older, more conventional readings, but wilfully perverts them. By his own confession, Solomon's passionate appreciation (and translation) of the German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin involved fucking the latter up the arse in order to produce some kind of monstrous offspring [5].      

 

So, for Simon to invoke the canon and insist that I play by the academic rules and show my obedience to (and conformity with) the law that governs what is and is not an acceptable text, is, I think, a bit rich.  

III. 

Having said that, I accept that there are seminal texts - i.e., works which are highly influential and possibly lay the foundation for future study - but I'd not even call these texts canonical (and what is seminal work for me - such as Sade's La philosophie dans le boudoir (1795), is merely a white stain on the history of French literature for others).  

 

Ultimately, to invoke the canon and wish to uphold it, is to give support to those texts which, as Barthes would say, come from culture and do not break with it; texts which are linked to "a comfortable practice of reading" [6]; texts which have authority and have achieved the status of timeless classics; texts which are meant to contain eternal truths.

As a white European heterosexual male, I'm not obsessed with deconstructing, decolonising, expanding, or queering the canon; I simply don't wish to be strapped to it and thrashed by those who think I should show a little more respect to the Political Father.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Adam Ant, 'Marrying the Gunner's Daughter', from the album Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner's Daughter (Blueblack Hussar Records, 2013). Not one of his best songs, but click here if you fancy giving it a listen.  

 

[2] See Solomon's comment dated 27 November 2025 and posted at 17:14:00 on Torpedo the Ark in response to a post titled 'On (Not) Taking a Stand' - click here. And see note 3 below for why Solomon is right to be wary of material extracted from The Will to Power.  

 

[3] Ecce Homo can also be included as part of Nietzsche's canon; for whilst it was published posthumously in 1908, he had completed writing it in 1888. 

      However, the book of notes assembled from Nietzsche's Nachlaß (i.e., literary remains) by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche working in editorial collaboration with his friend Peter Gast and titled Der Wille zur Macht (1901) is an entirely different kettle of fish and references to this work should be treated with a certain amount of caution. 

      His sister's claims that this was the magnum opus Nietzsche had hoped and planned to write can certainly be dismissed and some Nietzsche scholars have gone as far as to describe it as essentially a philosophical forgery. Nevertheless, the significantly expanded second edition containing 1,067 sections (1906) has been translated into English - most famously by Anthony M. Ludovici in 1910 for the edition of Nietzsche's works edited by Oscar Levy and by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale in 1968 - and the book remains one often consulted by readers of Nietzsche (albeit a non-canonical text as Solomon says).

      Readers who would like to know more about the publication history of Nietzsche's work might like to see William H. Schaberg, The Nietzsche Canon: A Publication History and Bibliography (University of Chicago Press, 1996). 

 

[4] See Solomon's 2020 book Hölderlin's Poltergeists: A Drama for Voices, published under the Irish spelling of his name as Síomón Solomon (Peter Lang, 2020). I have written extensively on this book on Torpedo the Ark: click here.   

 

[5] In the book cited above, Solomon writes enthusiastically of what he describes as Deleuze's bum banditry, a reference to the way in which the latter liked to approach certain other thinkers from behind and below. See Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations 1972-1990, trans. Martin Joughin (Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 6.  

[6] See Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller (Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 14.

      Like Barthes, I prefer texts that discomfort and impose a state of loss; texts which unsettle "the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories" and bring to a crisis our relation with language itself (texts a bit like Nietzsche's, in fact - including his non-canonical writings).   

 

 

On (Not) Taking a Stand: Placing Alexander Hamilton's Aphorism Under Erasure

 

I. 

 

Those who stand for nothing, fall for anything.

 

This line, often attributed to Alexander Hamilton - one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the protagonist of Lin-Manuel Miranda's smash hit musical [1] - is precisely the sort of simplistic cliché posited as an undeniably wise truth that I despise. 

 

Not only does it discourage critical thinking and debate, but it equates those who lack conviction and, like me, prefer to remain transpositional, with being credulous and gullible.

 

 

II. 

 

The kind of men [2] who take a stand, are often the same kind of men who have a point to prove and a case to rest. 

 

And they are often the same kind of men who like to stand to attention (feet together, arms by side, spine straight, shoulders back, chin up, eyes front), which is certainly one way to discipline the body, but not my way [3]. 

 

For the kind of men who are willing to discipline the body in this manner and who insist on standing for something are also the same kind of men willing to march and to die and to kill for their ideological principles, moral values, core beliefs, etc. 

 

For in taking a stand, they find themselves with a position to defend; and in finding themselves with a position to defend they all too quickly declare it legitimate to do so by any means necessary [4]. 

 

Personally, I don't like such men: men who stand for something. I prefer men who, like rebellious angels, have the courage to fall - in love, for example (or into sin) - even at the risk of seeming foolish, or weak and indecisive, or lacking manly virtue.

        

 

Notes

 

[1] Hamilton: An American Musical (2015) is a biographical musical with music, lyrics, and a book by Lin-Manuel Miranda (based on the 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow). From its (off-Broadway) opening, Hamilton received near-universal acclaim and it has since won multiple awards and continued to be box office gold. 

      A West End production opened at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London on 21 December, 2017, and picked up seven Olivier Awards in 2018, including Best New Musical. 

      I have not seen it: and do not want to see it. I suspect, if someone were to drag me along, I would either leave at the interval (and, when getting home, immediately have to watch Heat on DVD), or I'd fall asleep quicker than Larry David in the season 9 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm entitled 'The Shucker' (dir. Jeff Schaffer, 2017): click here. 

 

[2] I find it necessary to genderise the discussion at this point, for, as will become clear, it seems to me that this issue of taking a stand etc. is one tied to a certain model of masculinity (one seen as as virtuous and virile in the Victoran era, but which is now viewed as toxic).

 

[3] Being upright and able to stand to attention was a core component of the Victorian ideal of (heterosexual) masculinity. Symbolising strength and self-control, an erect posture was a physical manifestation of a man's character and moral standing. Men who slouched were weaklings unlikely to succeed in society; those who were prone to lying around and being idle or licentious were viewed as unmanly degenerates (homosexuals, drug addicts, dandies, or bohemian artists). 

 

[4] This supposedly radical phrase is thought to be an English translation either of a line written by Sartre in his 1948 play Les mains sales - en usant de tous les moyens - or of phrase spoken by Frantz Fanon in his 1960 address to the Positive Action Conference in Accra, Ghana; par n'importe quel moyen. 

      It is most famously assocated with Malcolm X, however, who used it repeatedly during a rally in NYC, in June 1964 (i.e., a few months before his assassination in February 1965): We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary. The argument of course, is twofold: firstly, that you you have to fight fire with fire (and meet violence with violence); secondly, that the ends justify the means. 

 

 

This post grew out of remarks made by and to Simon Solomon following a post dated 21 November 2025: click here. 

 

 

Behold the Sausage (Or Incipit Parodia): A Foolish Response to Simon Solomon

The Three Jokers (SA/2025)

 

'I have a terrible fear I shall one day be pronounced holy ... 

I do not want to be a saint, rather even a buffoon ... Perhaps I am a buffoon ...' [1]

 

  

I. 

 

According to Simon Solomon, Nietzsche's final book, Ecce Homo (1908) [2], is an embarrassing catastrophe resulting from his tragic inability to reconcile free-spirited sincerity with his desire to consummate nihilism. As a consequence, says Solomon, he falls into the abyss and we are left with a work which is "rightly regarded as the catastrophic car-crash of his philosophical career" [3]. 

 

This last line makes one think of Ballard's famous 1973 novel and imagine Nietzsche as the nightmare angel of the philosophical highway, looking to develop not so much a new and perverse sexuality, but a Dionysian philosophy [4]. 

 

Only, of course, Ecce Homo is not a car crash and nor should it be read as a cautionary tale of psychopathology. And Nietzsche doesn't fall into the abyss so much as voluntarily leap into the absurd, becoming the clown or comedian he always wanted to be. 

 

In this respect, Nietzsche is more like Arthur Fleck than he is Robert Vaughan and whilst the subtitle of Ecce Homo is apt and memorable - Wie man wird, was man ist - it could also have been: I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realise it's a fucking comedy [5]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, whilst Nietzsche is more Fleck than Vaughan, he is also far more of a silly sausage than the mentally ill clown played by Joaquin Phoenix. And by that I mean he has more in common with Hans Wurst [6] than Joker ...  

 

A popular comic character in Germany with a complex, multifaceted personality, Hans Wurst often featured in rural carnival celebrations during the 16th and 17th centuries. His humour was often coarse - lots of sexual innuendo and scatalogical references - and it certainly wasn't popular with everyone. Indeed, in the 1730s there were attempts to banish Hans from the German stage in order to improve the quality of comedy writing and protect public morality.  

 

This was initially met with resistance, however, German theatre gradually moved away from popular, improvised performances to the modern bourgeois artform we know today. And Hans Wurst morphed into the far more respectable stock character of the Harlequin; or, if he did appear, it was in puppet form as a German equivalent of Mr Punch.  

 

By the close of the 18th century, Emperor Joseph II had banned all buffoonery and burlesque and instructed theatre producers to concentrate on staging shows suitable for all to enjoy. However, Wurst's name lived on and he retained his place in the cultural imagination.     

 

 

III. 

 

So what has all this to do with Nietzsche? 

 

Well, in Ecce Homo Nietzsche says it's preferable to be thought of as Hans Wurst than as any kind of guru or holy figure: see the line quoted at the top of this post. 

 

Christine Battersby writes: 

 

"In his so-called 'late' period, Nietzsche denies that there is any underlying or sublime 'truth' that is covered over - and healed - by art. Instead, we are left with a play of surfaces, and with the affirmation of life as the new ideal. Indeed, in Ecce Homo Nietzsche takes an additional step as he aligns himself with the Hanswurst: with a mode of the ridiculous, the crude and the all-too-human - with that which is, above all, not elevated, self-denying or sublime in the Schopenhauerian sense." [7]

 

In sum: for Nietzsche, playfulness - not sincerity or systematicity - is the essential precondition of greatness. And so whilst other philosophers sing in praise of wisdom or mature reason, he sings in praise of childlike innocence and pure folly. 

 

But he also sings in praise of human baseness: for in adopting the persona of Hans Wurst in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche is "aligning himself not only with a mode of the ridiculous that is cut off from the sublime, but also with that which is morally repellent" [8].  

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1979), p. 126. 

 

[2] Although written in 1888, Ecce Homo was not published until eight years after Nietzsche's death in 1908. The subtitle of the work reveals its autobiographical aspect: How One Becomes What One Is.  

      As well as assessing his own life and contribution to philosophy, Nietzsche attempts to give us a new image of the philosopher; one who mocks the ascetic ideal that has hitherto dominated philosophy (i.e., a set of values that are a fundamental denial of life and which teach that meaning is to be found not in joy, but in suffering).

 

[3] See the comments left by Solomon on the posts 'Waxing Philosophical on Insincerity' (9 July 2018) - click here - and 'Haddaway, Man! An Open Letter to Peter Wolfendale' (22 November 2025): click here. 

      I fear that Solomon has a rather old-fashioned view of Ecce Homo; one that buys into the idea that it is the product "of a mind no longer master of its fantasies" and that it should be regarded as a work of insanity. The line quoted is from the Introduction to R. J. Hollingdale's translation (Penguin Books, 1979), p. 7. 

      Far from being the car crash he says it is, I see it as Nietzsche's most fun book and, as Hollingdale concedes, despite its "obvious failings and shortcomings", when "considered purely as an essay in the art of writing, it is among the most beautiful books in German" (ibid., p. 8). 

      See my post of 15 October 2013: 'Ecce Homo: How One Becomes as Queer as One Is' - click here. And see also my essay of this title (also known as Carry On Nietzsche) in Visions of Excess and Other Essays (Blind Cupid Press, 2009), pp. 255-280.   

 

[4] I'm referring here to J. G. Ballard's Crash (Jonathan Cape, 1973).  

 

[5] This is a line spoken by the protagonist of the film Joker (dir. Todd Phillips, 2019), Arthur Fleck, played (brilliantly) by Joquin Phoenix. Click here to watch the scene in which this line is delivered.

 

[6] The name Hans Wurst literally translates into English as John (or Jack, if you prefer the diminutive) Sausage. 

 

[7] Christine Battersby, '"Behold the Buffoon": Dada, Nietzsche's Ecce Homo and the Sublime', Tate Papers, No. 13 (Spring, 2010): click here.

      As Battersby reminds us, Schopenhauer was interested in how the ridiculous [lächerlich] relates to the sublime and claims that the genuinely humorous is not in conflict with the latter, but is complementary, and that the most serious people often laugh easily. 

      However, Schopenhauer draws a sharp distinction between true humour and that which is merey komisch - such as the bawdy rubbish given us by Hans Wurst and which amuses only the lower classes who lack the ability to appreciate the sublime with any intensity. Nietzsche, however, sides with the ordinary people who know, like D. H. Lawrence, that a little bawdiness keeps life sane and wholesome; see his poem 'What's sane and what isn't', in The Poems Vol. III, ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 1614. 

[8] Christine Battersby, as cited above. 

      In other words, whilst Schopenhauer ties the humorous to the sublime, Nietzsche ties the comic to the monstrous and criminal and to the fact that man has physical needs and limitations (this is evidenced by other references to Hans Wurst in Nietzsche's late notebooks). 

      Essentially, this is the Nietzsche embraced by Bataille in his idiosyncratic reading of the latter. Obviously the French author was influenced by other thinkers, but, as he once confessed: "A peu d'exceptions près, ma compagnie sur terre est celle de Nietzsche ..." See 'On Nietzsche', (Continuum, 2004), p. 3, where the line is translated by Bruce Boone as: "Except for a few exceptions, my company on earth is mostly Nietzsche ..."         

 

 

For a related post to this one - 'Don't You Know Jesus Christ Is a Sausage?' (18 April, 2020) - which also references this essay by Battersby - please click here.

 

Musical bonus: Serge Gainsbourg, 'Ecce homo', taken from the album Mauvaises nouvelles des étoiles (Mercury Records / Universal Music Group, 1981): click here.  

      I'm not sure what Nietzsche would have made of this track, but I like to think the title if nothing else would make him smile.   

 

 

Who Is Stephen Alexander? A Guest Post by Sasha Thanassa

Stephen Alexander 

A Non-Selfie Selfie (2025) 

 

And how do you see yourself when looking in the bathroom mirror 

through someone else's eyes? 

 

 

I. 

 

Who (or what) is Stephen Alexander, the shadowy figure who blogs at Torpedo the Ark?

 

The multiple possibilities that he himself has playfully suggested in the past include: artist, anarchist, and antichrist; punk, pirate, poet, pagan ... More recently, he has declared himself to be a darkly enlightened philosopher-provocateur whose concerns are no longer with sex, style, and subversion, but more with silence, secrecy, and seduction. 

 

Using these and other terms that arise from within his own writings - as well as from the work of other figures to whom he often refers - I will attempt here to give a brief impressionistic sketch of someone who, like Foucault, neither wishes to self-identify as a unified subject nor feels obliged to remain forever the same [1].       

 

 

II.

 

Again, by his own admission, there are two names that have shaped Alexander's thinking above all others: Nietzsche and D. H. Lawrence; neither of whom he entirely embraces, but both of whom provide him with the critical weapons and crucial conceptual tools for the fight against moral idealism (i.e., the belief that the Good, the True, and the Beautiful are the highest of values and fundamentally connected) and modern humanism (i.e., the belief that behind everything sits the kind and reasonable figure of Man).    

 

Working in the entrails of Nietzsche and Lawrence more like a postmodern haruspex than a forensic pathologist, Alexander has managed on Torpedo the Ark to produce an idiosyncratic (and intertextual) brand of fiction-theory that suspends the genre distinction between philosophy and literature [2]. 

 

Arguably, it is this mode of language and thought that has enabled him to move across other established categories and freely discuss an almost infinite variety of ideas, experiences, and events in a creative and profoundly superficial manner that is always alert to the play (and permissiveness) of language.  

 

III. 

Another name we might mention is that of Simon Solomon; more than a mere commentator on posts or a sometimes contributor, Solomon is a very real (often hostile) presence on Torpedo the Ark and a vital interlocutor. 

It's sometimes hard to tell whether Solomon is Alexander's shadow or vice versa; who's the Jekyll, who's the Hyde (or are they equally monstrous)? In queer ontological alliance - if there is such a thing -  Alexander and Solomon seem fated to remain the best of frenemies [3], each presumably drawing some benefit from their relationship, despite the mutual antagonism [4]. 

IV.

But isn't Alexander just another in a long line of reversed Platonists? 

Perhaps - but what's wrong with that? We need more not less such people. A reversed Plato may still be, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, a reversed Plato [5], but that's better than an unreversed Plato.

 

And besides, as Derrida indicated, the first task of deconstruction has to be reversal (i.e., the locating and overturning of oppositions within a text). That may not be enough in itself - a reversal is not the same as a revaluation - but it's a start on the road toward a new way of thinking.

 

And so, like Lawrence, Alexander encourages his reader to think in terms of immanence rather than transcendence and to climb down Pisgah [6]; to affirm appearances and the natural world of scarlet poppies rather than fantasise about a world above (and/or beyond) this one in which there are eternal white flowers and other Ideal Forms.   

And like Deleuze - another thinker whom Alexander often refers to - he perverts Plato by siding with the Sophists, the Cynics, the Stoics "and the fluttering chimeras of Epicurus" [7].  

 

 

V.

So, have I answered the question with which I opened this post? 

 

Probably not. 

 

Perhaps all I've done is refer to a number of proper names to whom Alexander himself often refers. But then, these proper names serve a crucial textual purpose and contain within them a series of associations (and connotations) that allow us to see how Torpedo the Ark unfolds within a much wider philosophical and literary history and an intertextual space. 

 

When Alexander refers to himself as a Lawrentian, for example, he's not identifying with Lawrence as an extratextual being, but evoking a certain style of thinking and writing.  

 

Using proper names is also, of course, a way of dispersing and disguising the self; like Nietzsche, Alexander wants to be able to declare himself all the names in history [8] - onymic ambiguity rather than unified authorial presence is his aim.  

 

Notes

 

[1] In his introduction to The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault famously writes: "I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order." 

      See The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (Pantheon Books, 1972), p. 17.

 -

[2] This has been a long time goal for Alexander; see the introduction to his PhD thesis Outside the Gate (University of Warwick, 2000): click here. 

      Admittedly, he problematically writes here about dissolving lines of distinction, whereas in his later writings, influenced by Derrida, he speaks more about troubling (or curdling) these lines and concedes that the deconstructive objective is not the dissolving or permanent suspension of all oppositions, because, ultimately, they are structurally necessary to produce meaning.  

      

[3] The term frenemy - a portmanteau of 'friend' and 'enemy' - could have been invented for Alexander and Solomon, although Jessica Mitford claimed that it had been coined by one of her sisters when they were children for a particularly dull acquaintance; see her article 'The Best of Frenemies' in the Daily Mail (August 1977). It can also be found in her book, Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (NYRB Classics, 2010), or read online by simply clicking here.       

      

[4] Interestingly, Freud recognised that a close friend and a worthy enemy are equally indispensble to psychological wellbeing and have not infrequently been one and the same person. See Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (Pelican / Penguin Books, 1964) p. 37.

 

[5] See Hannah Arendt, 'Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture', in Social Research, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 417-446, (The John Hopkins University Press, Autumn 1971), where she writes: 

      "The quest for meaning, which relentlessly dissolves and examines anew all accepted doctrines and rules, can at every moment turn against itself, as it were, produce a reversal of the old values, and declare these as 'new values'. This, to an extent, is what Nietzsche did when he reversed Platonism, forgetting that a reversed Plato is still Plato ..." (435)

      A revised version of this can also be found in Thinking, the first volume of her two-volume posthumously published work The Life of the Mind, ed. Mary Mccarthy (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977-78). 

 

[6] See the essay by D. H. Lawrence 'Climbing Down Pisgah', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 223-229.

 

[7] Michel Foucault, 'Theatrum Philosophicum', in the Essential Works 2: Aesthetics, ed. James D. Faubion (Penguin Books, 2000), p. 346.

[8] In a letter to Jakob Burckhardt dated 6 January, 1889 (although postmarked January 5th), Nietzsche claims that by becoming every name in history, he (paradoxically) fights the reduction to anonymity and generality. 

      See his Selected Letters, ed. and trans. Christopher Middleton (University of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 346.

 

 

An Open Letter to Simon Solomon from Stephen Alexander

 

Stephen Alexander / Simon Solomon

Dear Simon,

Thank you for your remarks on a recent post entitled 'Yabba Dabba Doo!' (28 Feb 2025). 

As I think you deserve a somewhat longer (and more considered) response than the comments section allows - and as the Little Greek suggested the following remarks may interest a wider audience - I've decided to publish them here in the form of an open letter ...    

Firstly, to answer your question regarding Barthes and nihilism, I suggest you read Shane Weller's essay entitled 'Active Philology: Barthes and Nietzsche', in French Studies, Vol. 73, Issue 2 (April, 2019), pp. 217-233. You can find a revised version of the essay on Kent University's Academic Repository:

https://kar.kent.ac.uk/71559/1/Barthes%20and%20Nietzsche%20%20THIRD%20REVISED%20VERSION%20-%20Clean%20version.pdf 

As some readers may not have the time or inclination to read the above text in full, here's the abstract which, I trust, will allow them to see why Barthes might indeed be considered a nihilist in the Nietzschean sense:  

"While the importance of Nietzsche to Barthes has long been recognized, with Barthes himself being the first to acknowledge it, this essay argues that Nietzsche's influence lies behind almost all of the major aspects of Barthes's mode of reading and writing in the 1970s, a mode that Barthes describes as 'active philology'. At the heart of this active philology is a cancellation of meaning that makes of Barthes's later critical practice a form of active nihilism in the Nietzschean sense. Exploring the various facets of this active philology in order to highlight the ways in which Barthes both follows and deviates from Nietzsche, this essay proposes an understanding of Barthes the active philologist as the incarnation of what Nietzsche terms the 'last nihilist' - and, crucially, one for whom any kind of Nietzschean overcoming of nihilism is anathema."

Even without reading Weller's essay, I would've thought, Simon, that the phrase La mort de l'auteur - title of a famous essay written by Barthes in 1967 - provides a huge clue as to what drives his critical approach ...

Secondly, you're right, Nietzsche does say in The Anti-Christ that the word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding and that in reality "there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross" [1]. But if you were to continue reading the same section of the above work (39), you would find the following important lines:  

"It is false to the point of absurdity to see in a belief [...] the distinguishing characteristic of the Christian: only Christian practice, a life such as he who died on the Cross lived, is Christian. ... Even today such a life is possible, for certain men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will be possible at all times. ... Not a belief, but a doing, above all a not-doing of many things, a different being." [2]

As ever with Nietzsche, there are lots of subtle twists and turns and one has to be wary about taking a line, a paragraph, or even an entire section as providing his definitive position. He puts it this way; he puts it that way; then he puts it another way entirely. The point is one can be a Christian, providing you don't turn a practice into a doctrine; i.e., it's about imitating Christ not following the teachings of the Church.     

As for De Profundis and other matters ... I don't see why I should accept this tear-stained text as more valuable than Wilde's earlier writings; you may find what you describe as his repudiation of aestheticism magnificent and moving, but I see it as a loss of style. 

And as for his ludicrous self-identification with Christ (with the latter conceived as a Romantic hero and artist), well, what is that if not simply another pose? I'm surprised you're taken in by this mix of self-pity, resentment, and bloated rhetoric. 

I'm also surprised that you don't seem to see the irony in quoting the part of Wilde's letter in which he takes a pop at those whose "thoughts are someone else's opinions [...] their passions a quotation" [3].

And not only do you quote from Wilde, but from Nietzsche and Jung too - even as you seem to object to my referencing authors; or perhaps your remark about being an 'anyone-ian' betrays a misunderstanding of how proper names function within a text.

In brief, the proper name contains within it a series of associations (and connotations) that I’m calling upon in order show how 'my' text unfolds within a much wider philosophical and literary history and an intertextual space. When I say 'as a Barthesian', for example, I’m not identifying with Barthes as an extratextual being, but evoking a certain style of thinking and writing.

Using proper names is also, of course, a way of dispersing and disguising the self; like Nietzsche, I want to be able to declare myself 'all the names in history' - onymic ambiguity rather than unified authorial presence is the aim. 

Anyway, hope these remarks answer your questions and address your concerns. 

SA  

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1990), p. 161. 

[2] Ibid. 

 

[3] Oscar Wilde, De Profundis. Written in 1897, the complete and corrected text wasn't published until 1962 when it was included in The Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (Harcourt, Brace & World). The line quoted can be found on p. 479. Note that a scholarly edition, ed. by Ian Small, was published as De Profundis; Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis, by Oxford University Press in 2005 (Vol. II of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde). 

What Was I Thinking? (28 December)

 

Torpedo the Ark: images from posts published on 

28 December (2013-2021)

 

Sometimes, it's interesting to look back and see what one was thinking on the same date in years gone by - and sometimes it's simply embarrassing ...

 

Our God is Woman: Our Mission is Protest! 

On this date in 2013, for example, I was keen to express my support for a twenty-year old philosophy student and Femen activist, Josephine Witt, who staged a one-woman protest at St. Peter's Cathedral in Cologne, briefly disrupting a televised Christmas mass by getting her tits out and declaring herself to be God, before half-a-dozen horrified clerics wearing an assortment of robes pulled her from the altar, bundled her out of the building, and handed her over to the secular forces of law and order. 

 

I'm not sure I would now be quite so sympathetic to such an action. 

 

 

In Praise of an Unnatural Death 

 

Skip forward three years and on this date in 2016 I was keen to challenge the judgement of God by refusing to accept what medical professionals describe as death by natural causes; i.e., the all-too-predictable kind of death that results from illness, old age, or an internal malfunction of the body and its organs. 

 

As a philosopher, I argued, one should always desire and seek out the opposite of this; i.e., the joy of an unnatural death, be it by accident, misadventure, homicide, suicide, or that mysterious non-category that is undetermined and which, for those enigmatic individuals who pride themselves on their ambiguity, must surely be the way to go.

 

I then confessed my own preference to be executed, like William Palmer, the notorious nineteenth-century murderer known as the Prince of Poisoners, who is said to have climbed the gallows and placed a foot tentatively on the trapdoor before enquiring of the hangman: Is it safe? 

 

I would like, in other words, to go to my death with the cool courage and stoicism of the dandy and a ready quip on my lips that might cause even my executioner to smile (and serve also to annoy the po-faced authorities who demand seriousness and expect contrition in such circumstances).

 

 

To See More Clearly Than Ever Before 

 

In December 2018, meanwhile, I was entering my Daphne Du Maurier phase - a phase that never really passed and became a long-lasting love for the author and her astonishing body of work. On the 28th of this month I wrote a series of notes on one of her near-perfect short stories - suggested to me by the poet Simon Solomon - 'The Blue Lenses' (1959).

 

The premise of the post and story was the same: what if everyone were to suddenly lose their human features and be seen with the head of the creature that best expresses their inhuman qualities; not so much their true nature, as what might be termed their molecular animality - would we still find this gently amusing? I suspect not: in all likelihood, initial astonishment would quickly give way to horror. 

 

However we choose to describe it, du Maurier's tale is not simply an imaginative fantasy and she, like D. H. Lawrence, is "another of the writers who leave us troubled and filled with admiration" precisely because she was able to tie her work to "real and unheard of becomings". Hers is a genuinely black art, as Deleuze and Guattari would say.   

 

Judenstern

 

Making particular reference to the case of Serge Gainsbourg, back on 28 December, 2019 I was concerned with the history of the badge that Jews were often obliged to wear for purposes of public identification (i.e., in order to clearly mark them as religious and ethnic outsiders). 

 

Although we tend to think of this practice in the context of Hitler's Germany, the Nazis were actually drawing upon an extensive (anti-Semitic) history when they revived the practice of forcing Jews to wear a distinctive sign upon their clothing, including, most famously, the yellow Star of David with the word Jude inscribed in letters meant to resemble Hebrew script.  

 

Gainsbourg was required to wear such as a young boy in wartime Paris; an experience he made bearable by pretending that it was a sherrif's badge, or a prize that he'd been awarded, and which he eventually wrote a song about: click here. 

 

 

Piquerism and Notes on Knife Play

 

On 28 December of the following year, 2020, I expressed my fascination with piquerism; i.e., the practice of penetrating the skin of another person with sharp objects, including pins, razors, and knives - something that I traced back to young childhood and the time I placed a drawing pin on a fat girl's chair in order to see if she would explode like a balloon with a loud bang.

 

Following this, I then explored episodes of knife play in the work of D. H. Lawrence, of which there are several, including the notorious scene in chapter XXIII of The Plumed Serpent (1926) in which Cipriano publicly executes a group of stripped and blindfolded prisoners with a bright, thin dagger, plunging the latter into their chests with swift, heavy stabs. 

 

I think even at the time I was uncomfortable with this and not able to dismiss it with the same ease as Kate Leslie who, if shocked and appalled at first by the killings, eventually concludes that her new husband's penchant for a little ritualised murder is fine if carried out in good conscience.

 

 

Jane Ciracylides: the Girl with Insect Eyes

 

If over the Xmas period in 2018 I was reading Daphne du Maurier, in 2021 I was enjoying the work of J. G. Ballard, including a short story entitled 'Prima Belladonna' which was included in the collection Vermilion Sands (1971) - a collection which celebrates the neglected virtues of the lurid and bizarre within a surreal sci-fi setting described by Ballard as the visionary present or inner space; the former referring to the future already contained within the present and the latter referring to the place where unconscious dreams, fears, and fantasies meet external reality. 

 

The alien female figure of Jane Ciracylides, with her rich patina-golden skin and insects for eyes, has continued to fascinate me to this day. Who knows, perhaps I'll get to play i-Go with her one day (even if she always cheats).  

 

On Dis/Obedience

Portrait of le poète maudit Síomón Solomon

Stephen Alexander (2023) [1]

 

 

According to the Satanist Simon Solomon, at the root of all human sin lies a refusal to listen to the Word of God. This, essentially, is the meaning of disobedience; the turning of a deaf ear to the Holy Spirit. 

 

And, of course, as a natural born anarchist and self-styled anti-Christ, I'm instinctively disobedient; neither wishing to comply with nor conform to any external authority. Like Nietzsche, I fear that those who are too weak to command themselves and lay down their own law, will ultimately submit to tyranny and come to desire their own oppression (i.e., that a culture of obedience breeds fascism).

 

However, Nietzsche also says that the only thing which makes life worth living is the giving of obedience for a prolonged period in a single direction; that obedience is the essential thing in heaven and earth and the rebellious refusal to obey is merely the sign of a slave. 

 

And, as the cultural commentator James Walker reminds us, D. H. Lawrence also encourages his readers to obey the promptings of their own souls - not so much the voice of God within, but their own genius or demon: "Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice ..." [2], not living in frictional opposition to such. 

 

This passage from his 1923 novel Kangaroo is perhaps the most memorable statement Lawrence makes on the joy of obedience

 

"If a man loves life, and feels the sacredness and mystery of life, then he knows that life is full of strange and subtle and even conflicting imperatives. And a wise man learns to recognize the imperatives as they arise [...] and to obey. But most men bruise themselves to death trying to fight and overcome their own, new, life-born needs, life's ever strange imperatives. The secret of all life is obedience: obedience to the urge that arises in the soul, the urge that is life itself, urging us to new gestures, new embraces, new emotions, new combinations, new creations." [3]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This portrait - the first in the Simon Solomon Says ... series - is, in part, inspired by Shepard Fairey's phenomenal - and, apparently, phenomenological - Obey Giant project, which transformed from a sticker campaign to a successful clothing line. Click here to visit the official website.  

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 17.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 112.  

 

 

In the Bullring With Simon & Simone

André Masson: Bullfighting (1937)

 

 

I. 

 

In response to a recent post [1], the Irish poet and playwright Síomón Solomon asks:

 

"I wonder how you square your squeamishness and selective sentimentality when it comes to bursten bowels and the suffering of animals, with your professed admiration for Bataille's Histoire de l'Oeil - a work which powerfully illustrates the (Nietzschean) idea that, in saying Yes to life in all circumstances and under any conditions, one must ultimately give even the most terrible aspects of existence one's blessing?"

 

 

II. 

 

It's a fair question. And I'm grateful to Solomon for raising it - and also for reminding me of the following passage from Bataille's short novel:

 

"There were actually three things about bullfights that fascinated [Simone]: the first, when the bull comes hurtling out  of the bullpen like a big rat; the second, when its horns plunge all the way into the flank of a mare; the third, when that ludicrous, raw-boned mare gallops across the arena [...] dragging a huge, vile bundle of bowels between her thighs in the most dreadful wan colours [...] Simone's heart throbbed fastest when the exploding bladder dropped its mass of mare's urine on the sand in one quick plop." [2]

 

Sixteen-year-old Simone, then, is the literary antithesis of forty-year-old Kate Leslie, the protagonist of Lawence's Plumed Serpent, who is utterly ashamed and nauseated by what she witnesses at the bullring. Having expected a display of bravery and a gallant show, Kate is shocked by the human cowardice and beastliness - not to mention the sight of blood and smell of bursten bowels [3].

 

But Simone loves everything about the bullfight; the heat, the noise, the cruelty, and not least the possibility of seeing a toreador injured by a monstrously lunging bull. 

 

When her wealthy English patron, Sir Edmund, informs her that at one time it was customary to serve the roasted testicles of the slaughtered bulls to guests seated in the front row of the arena, she begs him to obtain for her the balls of the first beast killed - only she insists they be served raw on a white plate, so that she might lift her dress and sit on them.

 

Unfortunately, this last part proves tricky to accomplish unobserved in a crowded arena. And so Simone simply holds the dish containing the two peeled testicles on her lap, until the opportunity arises to bite into one of them and then slowly and surely insert the other into her cunt - a lewd act which coincides with a handsome young bullfighter having an eye gauged out by a bull "with the same force as a bundle of innards from a belly" [4].                  

 

 

III.

 

What, then, are we to make of this - and how, then, are we to answer Síomón Solomon's question?

 

Firstly, I concede that it takes an almost inhuman effort to affirm even a single moment or joy, when it's in the knowledge that by so doing we affirm also every pain, every sadness, every cruelty, and every obscenity. But that's precisely what we are challenged to do by authors, like Bataille, who subscribe to the idea that all things are tied together beneath the same dark sun. 

 

However, affirming the fact that all things are part of a general economy of the whole, does not, as far as I can see make one morally complicit with evil, nor does it oblige one to participate in wrongdoing. 

 

I can affirm, for example, the pride of the peacock and the lust of the goat, without being a preening narcissist or a licentious libertine; I can affirm the vital cruelty of the natural world, without wanting to watch or make animals suffer in the bullring; and I can even read works of transgressive literature without wanting to act out ... 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post entitled 'I Don't Know as I Get What D. H. Lawrence is Driving at When He Writes of Bursten Bowels ...' (6 June 2023): click here.   

[2] Georges Bataille, Story of the Eye, trans. Joachim Neugroschal, (Penguin Books, 1982), p. 47.

      For readers unfamiliar with this classic work of the porno-philosophical imagination (originally published in 1928), Simone is a sixteen-year-old erotomaniac with a perverse penchant for inserting soft globular objects - be they eyes, testicles, or boiled eggs - into her vagina or between her arse cheeks. Half-way through the novel, she and her lover - a distant cousin who is the tale's anonymous narrator - run away to Spain in order to escape a police investigation in their native France. Here, they are supported by a fabulously rich (and depraved) Englishman, Sir Edmund, who enthusiastically lays on obscene entertainments for the young couple.  

[3] See Chapter 1 of D. H. Lawrence's novel The Plumed Serpent (1926), 'Beginnings of a Bull-Fight'. 

[4] Bataille, Story of the Eye ... p. 54.

Nephophilia (A Reply to Simon Solomon)

Dark Clouds (2013) photo by Audrey Skoglund

fineartamerica.com

  

You say it's dark. And, in truth, I did place a cloud before your sun.

                                                                                - Nietzsche

 

 

I. 

 

As Al Murray's Pub Landlord never tires of informing audiences, the British are a sensible, down-to-earth people. They're never going to put a man on the moon, or take the musings of philosophers - particularly in the Continental tradition of France and Germany - seriously. No, of course not: they're a sensible, down-to-earth people. 

 

So I'm never particularly surprised when an Englishman tells me that my thinking is fanciful, impractical, or unrealistic. 

 

But when an Irishman, who identifies as a pataphysical poet and playwright with an interest in all things paranormal and supernatural - including Jungian archetypes - describes my ideas as so preposterous that I might as well be living in the clouds, then I am surprised (to say the least) [1]. 

 

Well, with storm clouds gathering over Eastern Europe, maybe this is a good time to consider what it might mean to inhabit the troposphere ...     

 

 

II.

 

Simon Solomon isn't, of course, the first poet and playwright to ridicule philosophers for their way of thinking. We might recall, for example, the ancient Greek dramatist Aristophanes, the so-called πατέρας της κωμωδίας, whose satrirical play The Clouds (423 BC) contributed to the death of Socrates two decades later [2].

 

And do I resent being portrayed as a graduate of The Thinkery? Not at all. 

 

In fact, I rather like the idea of my thoughts originating among the clouds; not so much those white, fluffy, happy-looking ones - cumulus clouds, as they are known - but the dark, heavy, menacing storm clouds (cumulonimbus) which roll into view "from out of the eastern heavens" [3], bringing thunder and lightning our way and blotting out the sun. 

 

For whilst idealists with their sunny disposition speak in favour of blue-sky thinking and are confident and hopeful about the future, insisting that every cloud has a silver lining, etc., I subscribe to a more pessimistic (some might even say nihilistic) philosophy. 

 

And if this clouds my judgement, then so be it. At least my clouds "come from great distances, arriving from the deeps of the sky" [4].       

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the comment made by Simon Solomon at the end of a recent post entitled 'Is Anything Really Worth Fighting For?' (4 Mar 2022): click here.

 

[2] Plato considered The Clouds a contributing factor in Socrates's trial and execution in 399 BC and he mentions the play in his defence of the latter, known as the Apology, which was written shortly afterwards. 

      Aristophanes portrays Socrates as a petty thief, a fraud, and a sophist with an interest in atmospheric phenomena (or what would come to be known as meterology - a Greek term meaning the study of things high up in the sky). Whilst some critics think that Aristophanes's caricature of Socrates is just a bit of fun, others regard it as evidence of the long rivalry between poetic and philosophical modes of thinking.  

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Clouds', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 56. 

 

[4] Ibid., p. 60. 

 

 

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.

Don't It Make Your Blue Eyes Weep - A Guest Post by Simon Solomon

Police breach social gathering legislation to pollute lagoon at Harpur Hill, Buxton 

Photos: Sky News

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. - Albert Camus

In the febrile air of 1967/68 Paris, the Situationist International group planned a beautifully macabre stunt to protest the Vietnam war and épater les bourgeois by staining the Seine blood-red and depositing in it the corpses of a couple of hundred Asiatics to drift downstream to Notre Dame.

Reportedly, obtaining the cadavers was the easy part, courtesy of an enterprising plan to hijack a refrigerated truck en route to one of the city's medical schools that was said to do a brisk trade in Chinese dead bodies. However, the industrial dye proved a sticking point since the quantities were prohibitive. Thus, the plan sadly foundered, and the river herself remained artistically unperturbed. [1]

Fast forward to the viral madness of 2020 Blighty this week, when it has been depressing beyond belief to read of Derbyshire's Police's serial overreaches of the government's already draconian guidelines in locking down the entire nation - bar the odd permitted sortie to buy a pint of milk, stretch your legs or go to your job if you feel you must (and still have one) in order to, say, stay alive.

Taking as its departure point a spokesman's confidently philistine assertion that 'driving to beauty spots in the Peak District cannot be considered an essential journey', the constabulary has recently been keeping us safe by means of a catalogue of reassuring innovations - culminating in the reassuring use of drone surveillance to trace the car number plates of drivers back to Sheffield and subsequently name and shame on social media tweed-jacketed ramblers and old ladies with dogs. As Plod now extends its Orwellian arm to issue its wisdom concerning the dispensability of beauty for psychic health, God's green earth (beyond your own garden fence) is now - in its Cyclopian gaze - officially off limits. [2]

And so, building upon its blatant contempt for the necessity of beauty for anyone with half a soul or a breath of joy in their Covid 19-squeezed heart - and in a supremely dumb gesture strangely redolent of the French situationists (but without a soupçon of the spirit, wit and intelligence ) - the same force's recent desecration of a Buxton lagoon with a cheery black pigment at public expense has made good on its claim that communing with nature is to be outlawed, since the area (and doubtless any others it so decrees) is intrinsically 'dangerous'.

With this in mind, a surprisingly literate Facebook post on Buxton Police SNT reads, 'we have attended the location this morning and used water dye to make the water look less appealing.'

Difficult as it might seem for the rest of us to make this up, news reports state that the force has form in this domain, since the same tactic has been used in the past to reduce anti-social behaviour - such as children wading in the water or young people (whose risk of death from Corona virus is close to nil) admiring its turquoise tones in short sleeves. [3]

The former Supreme Court Justice Lord Sumption has lambasted the overreach in an extended public statement, the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch has dubbed the force's behaviour 'sinister' and 'counter-productive', and even the former Justice Secretary David Gauke has called matters 'badly misjudged', while local residents have themselves taken to social media, with one commenting: 'If only they were this authoritarian to people carrying zombie knives, stealing your car or grooming kids in Rotherham' - an item of customer feedback one wouldn't be surprised in the current climate to see earn its writer a court summons all by itself.

How best to respond to people who seemingly think aesthetics are a species of foreign head lice?

Clearly, the aforesaid pushback is pointless against those who clearly don't even have enough shame themselves to admit they are wrong (while seeking to shame others for such dangerous behaviour as going for a spin and a scenic stroll). We are ourselves at a loss, but would suggest that any remaining poets, anarchists and libertarians not yet criminalised in the Buxton area should band together under cover of nightfall, create a kindly cordon sanitare around the local cop shop, and throw a bucket of some suitably irremovable industrial dye of their own choosing over a few local officers. (In this venture, we suggest scarlet might be a colour of choice to leave the recipients suitably red-faced.)

As for the Blue Lagoon itself, by some accounts the water is barely more chemically benign than ammonia, contains dead animals, turds and needles, and is so cold it might (literally) drag you under at a stroke. There are a few sensible signs up, we gather, so that people can assess the risks for themselves like adults. Such excremental details, however, only make us love it all the more for its clearly Baudelairean allure to the local populace, and we look forward to looking in when time permits. 

Notes

[1] On the Situationist movement and fun and games on the Seine, see Christopher Gray (ed. and trans.), Leaving The 20th Century: The Incomplete Work of the Situationist International (Rebel Press, 1998). Thanks to Stephen Alexander for reminding me of this.

[2] Except it isn't! To see a summary of the correct and updated government/police powers (which allow one to drive and hike in the country with loved ones to one's heart's content), see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-52106843.

[3] This is of course in no way to diminish the deaths of a small number of 'non-vulnerable' young and middle-aged people from Covid-19 in the UK in recent weeks.

Símón Solomon is a poet, translator, and critic. He is a professional member of the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin and currently serves as managing editor with the academic journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He can be contacted via simonsolomon.ink

Surprise musical bonus: click here. 

For a follow-up post to this one, click here.