Better the Rhizomatic Fascism of the Potato Than the Arborescent Idealism of a Maoist

 

Smash the Fascism of the Potato! 

(SA/2025)

 

 

I. 

 

It took quite an effort on my part as a dendrophile to stop thinking (figuratively and politically) in a classical arborescent manner. That is to say, to stop thinking in what Deleuze and Guattari characterise as the "oldest, and weariest" [a] manner; deep-rooted and developing in accord with binary logic and a unitary principle of generation. 

 

For a long time, I resisted adopting a rhizomatic model of thought. That is to say, one which is absolutely different from the above and takes a wide diversity of forms; one which doesn't plot fixed points, but shoots lines of flight and ceaselessly establishes a multiplicity of connections; one which evolves at a subterranean level and never allows itself to be overcoded [b].  

 

Eventually, however, I came to understand that although many people "have a tree growing in their heads" [15] and pride themselves on their long-term memory, the brain itself is "much more a grass than a tree" [15] and that short-term memory - which "includes forgetting as a process" [16] - is the one that operates within Torpedo the Ark, producing a fragmented and discontinuous form of pop analysis and pink pantherism.  

 

Ultimately, as Deleuze and Guattari argue, arboresent systems with their hierarchical structures, centres of significance and subjectification, and organised long-term memories result in a sad form of writing and thinking, weighed down by the spirit of gravity - and who wants that, other than those idealists who continue to sit in the shade of Plato's tree.

 

 

II.

 

Someone who was never persuaded by Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomatics, however, was Alain Badiou; a philosopher with a penchant for mathematics and Maoism, whose name is very rarely mentioned on this blog and who I essentially think of negatively, even if he was one of the founders of the faculty of philosophy at the Université de Paris VIII (Vincennes) [c]. 

 

Unlike his more postmodern colleagues, Badiou continued to believe in ideals of Universalism, Truth, and the revolutionary promise of Communism. Thus, no surprises that he engaged in fierce intellectual debates with his fellow professors whose philosophical works he considered decadent deviations from the pure model of scientific Marxism advanced by his mentor Louis Althusser.  

 

Badieu seemed to have a particular dislike for Gilles Deleuze [d] and his collaborator Félix Guattari, scornfully dismissing them as theoreticians of desire whose work on capitalism and schizophrenia was little more than anti-dialectical moralism. At best, said Badiou, their analysis in Anti-Oedipus (1972) merely affirms "the disaffected and self-serving politics of petit bourgeois youth; at worst, they are the 'hateful adversaries of all organized revolutionary politics'" [e].   

 

As for their thinking on the rhizome in a short text of this title published in 1976 which later served (in revised form) as the introduction to Mille Plateaux (1980) ... Well, that really triggered Badiou and in a review ludicrously entitled 'The Fascism of the Potato' [f] he describes Deleuze and Guattari as cunning monkeys and crooks who head a troupe of anti-Marxists and take their readers to be morons.    

  

Like Alan D. Schrift, I can't help wondering if Badiou was later embarrassed by the tone of his polemic:

 

"For there is at bottom a philosophical issue at work here, namely, whether one must follow the Marxist dialectical principle that 'One divides into two' or whether one should reject this dialectical binarism and offer in place of the One a multiplicity." [g]

 

Further, "revelations about Mao and Maoism in the years since this review was written make Badiou's unquestioning affirmation of Maoism and the Cultural Revolution problematic, to say the least" [h].

 

Push comes to shove: better the rhizomatic fascism of the potato than the arborescent idealism of a Maoist ...

 

Notes

 

[a] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, a Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press, 1988), p. 5. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the post. 

      It might be noted that an arborescent manner of thinking isn't just peculiar to dendrophiles; as Deleuze and Guattari point out, "the tree has dominated Western reality and all of Western thought, from botony to biology and anatomy, but also gnosiology, theology, ontology, all of philosophy ..." [18]. 

 

[b] I have attempted to summarise the principal characteristics of a rhizome, something which Deleuze and Guattari also do, insisting that, unlike trees or their roots, "the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature [...] The rhizome is reducible neither to the One nor the multiple. [...] It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (mileau) from which it grows and which it overspills. [...] The rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots" [21].  

      However, it's important to note that D&G are not attempting to establish opposing models that exist within a binary system. Thus, there are "knots of arborescence in rhizomes, and rhizomatic offshoots in roots" [20] and they strategically posit what appears to be a new dualism only in order to challenge all such thinking.  

 

[c] After the events of May '68, Paris VIII (Vincennes) was created to be a kind of bastion of countercultural thought. A committee, that included Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes, set out to model Vincennes after MIT and Michel Foucault was appointed head of a philosophy department that included Alain Badiou, Jacques Ranciere, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Judith Miller, and, later, Gilles Deleuze.  

 

[d] According to Eugene Wolters, Deleuze was constantly terrorised by Alain Badiou and his gang of Maoist supporters and labelled by them an enemy of the people. Not only did they monitor the political content of his lectures, but they sometimes actively disrupted his classes. 

      See the post entitled '13 Things You Didn’t Know About Deleuze and Guattari - Part III' (dated 2 July, 2013) on Wolters' Critical-Theory blog: click  here. Wolters has based his post on a study by François Dosse entitled Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Intersecting Lives, trans. Deborah Glassman (Columbia University Press, 2010).

 

[e] Alan D. Schrift, review of Alain Badiou's The Adventure of French Philosophy, edited and trans. Bruno Bosteels (Verso, 2012), in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (8 January 2013): click here. 

 

[f] Badiou's 'The Fascism of the Potato' first appeared in French as 'Le fascisme de la pomme de terre' in La Situation actuelle sur le front de la philosophie (François Maspero, 1977), pp. 42-52. Badiou signed the text under the pseudonym Georges Peyrol. The Engish translation by Bruno Bosteels can be found in The Adventure of French Philosophy ... Part II, chapter 11 (pp. 191-201). 

      Whilst admitting that the frenzied polycentrism of Deleuze and Guattari is preferable to bourgeois liberalism, their refusal to acknowledge the importance of class struggle and the need for political unity and solidarity was not to his liking. Ultimately, he finds their thinking painfully false and too literary or aestheticised and he doesn't give a shit about the Pink Panther. 

[g] Alan D. Schrift, review of Alain Badiou's The Adventure of French Philosophy ... op. cit. 

 

[h] Ibid. 

 

Post 2500: Let's Face the Music and Dance

 

 

This is published post number 2,500 [1]. 

 

And, according to those who like to engage in numerology (i.e., the pseudoscientific practice often associated with astrology that believes numbers to possess a mystical rather than merely mathematical significance), that's something I should be very excited by [2]. 

 

Not because it demonstrates a level of dedication and hard work over the last 13 years on my part, but because it's a powerful combination of the energies and vibrations of the numbers 2, 5, and 0 and so signifies that as an artiste d'assemblage - I don't like the term blogger - I have reached a stage of development that is nicely balanced, open to change, and on the path towards enlightenment.    

 

If only I focus on this angel number - which also happens to be a manifestation number (i.e., one holding infinite possibilities that will allow my dreams and desires to come true) - then all will be well and Torpedo the Ark can align with the higher power of the Universe (or what some term the Godforce).

 

Having said that - and here comes the catch - it's apparently up to me to make the most of this opportunity and if I fail to understand what the number 2,500 reveals or reject what it affords by wilfully seeking out discord rather than harmony, then there may be trouble ahead. 

 

I don't really care about that, however. As a punk provocateur, I'm a bit like Bobby Vinton and trouble is my middle name [3]. 

 

And so: 

 

While there's moonlight 

And music and love and romance, 

Let's face the music and dance [4]   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I stress the term published in order to indicate that there are in fact a number of unpublished posts currently in draft form, as well as posts that have been deleted by the Google censor-morons.

 

[2] See for example what Joanne Walmsley writes about the angel number 2,500 in a post dated 28 November 2015 on her Sacred Scribes website: click here. Ms. Walmsley is an astrologer, numerologist, psychic, and lightworker who guides people toward spiritual enlightenment and happiness by helping them connect to their higher selves.  

 

[3] 'Trouble Is My Middle Name' is a song written by Neval Nader and John Gluck Jr, and released by the Amercan teen idol Bobby Vinton, on the Epic label, in 1962. To listen on YouTube, click here.  

 

[4] Lyrics from the song 'Let's Face the Music and Dance' (1936), written by Irving Berlin for the film Follow the Fleet (1936), dir. Mark Sandrich, and starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and covered by numerous jazz artists ever since, including, perhaps most famously, Nat King Cole. 

      Click here to watch Astaire and Rogers do their thing and/or here to listen to Cole's rendition from the album Let's Face the Music! (Capitol Records, 1992). 

 

 

This post is for Gaelle with love on her birthday.   

 

 

Am I a Genius or an Insect?

 

If you constantly think you are a genius or an insect, 

you will eventually become a genius or an insect ... [1]  

 

 

I.

 

In a sense, torpedo the ark means that nothing is off limits and I would like to think that I have the necessary courage required to address all questions candidly, both as a lover of poppies and as one who knows the secret of their redness [2].   

 

What does that mean? 

 

It means that as a blogger who playfully positions himself midway between poet and philosopher, I hope to do more than merely reinforce the dogma (and doxa) of the present, even if that means going largely unread by one's own age and brings little or no advantage. 

 

 

II.

 

Schopenhauer would say this makes me a genius; i.e., one motivated not by hopes of fame, fortune, or even pleasure - for the effort involved in constantly producing and publishing posts almost always outweighs the satisfaction - but by an instinct that impels creative expression, even when living in less than ideal circumstances (exile, isolation, poverty, etc.) [3]. 

 

And, who knows, peut-être que je suis une sorte de génie! 

 

I certainly blog without regard for reward, applause, or sympathy and live more in the past and future, neglectful of my own well-being in the actual present. Although this perhaps makes me merely a kind of human insect who "desposits its eggs where it knows they will one day find life and nourishment, and dies contented" [4].  

  

 

Notes

 

[1] This is a modified quote attributed to the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. The close up picture of a longhorn beetle (on a modified red background) is by the Indonesian wildlife photographer Yudy Sauw. For more of his images, see The Guardian (21 July 2014): click here.  

 

[2] See the post entitled 'Little Hell Flames' (29 May 2021): click here. 

      I'm thinking also of something that Schopenhauer wrote: "The poet can be compared with one who presents flowers, the philosopher with one who presents their essence." See Essays and Aphorisms, selected and trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1970), p. 118.  

 

[2] See Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms ... pp. 131-32.   

 

[3] Ibid. p. 132. 

 

 

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.

 

 

On Torpedo the Ark as a Form of Digital Hypomnema and Honey Making

Stephen Alexander: Hypomnema (2025)

 

 

I. 

 

Is blogging really so different from the ancient Greek practice of providing a written commentary on the self and the keeping of a singular (if fragmentary) record of events? 

 

I would rather like to think that it isn't; although it depends of course on the blog and the blogger. 

 

Here, I shall offer remarks only with reference to Torpedo the Ark (TTA), which may not be the best or most popular blog in the world, but which nevertheless provides - in my view - a contemporary example of what Plato and friends referred to as hypomnemata ...

 

 

II. 

 

Neither offered as intimate diary entries, nor a series of spiritual confessions designed to purify the soul, the posts on TTA are intended as an intertextual form of ethopoietic writing based upon an assemblage of literary quotes, artistic images, gay philosophical reflections, and other heterogeneous elements.

 

And that's the key: however personal they may seem, these posts do not merely provide a narrative of the self and the primary aim is to "capture the already said, to collect what one has managed to hear or read" [1] in order that one may detach oneself from the constant buzz of the present and the uncertainty of the future.

 

In other words, blogging allows one to find a little untimely peace and quiet, via contemplation of the past. 

 

However, before one leaps to the conclusion that blogging is thus essentially conservative and nostalgic in character, my writing of posts is also (and always) a radically disparate practice, which doesn't wish to unify ideas into a doctrine or system; nor attempt to know an author's body of work in depth and in detail.  

 

It doesn't really matter, for example, if I haven't read every last word written by Nietzsche and Lawrence (the two authors who have most shaped my own thinking); and it makes very little difference to the success or failure of a post whether I have fully grasped what they meant to say, or whether I am able to faithfully reconstruct their arguments. 

 

 

III. 

 

Ultimately, TTA is governed by the same two principles that Foucault says determine the ancient Greek notebook: (i) the local truth of the precept and (ii) its circumstantial use value. I thus feel free, like Seneca, to take what I want from where I want and relate it to my own life however I like:

 

"Writing as a personal exercise done by and for oneself is an art of disparate truth - or, more exactly, a purposeful way of combining the traditional authority of the already said with the singularity of the truth that is affirmed therein and the particularity of the circumstances that determine its use." [2]      

 

Some critics are annoyed by this and accuse me of all kinds of things; I had a charming email the other day, for example, informing me that TTA is 'an infuriating mix of narcissism, plagiarism, and wilful misreading'. 

 

Fortunately, I'm not too bothered by such accusations. For again, like the great Stoic philosopher mentioned above, I feel at perfect liberty to select (and steal) ideas from other authors and then shape them into what is needed: "'This is my own custom; from the many things which I have read, I claim some part for myself.'" [3]

 

After all, isn't that what bees do when they promiscuously gather nectar from a 1000 different flowers in order to make honey?      

 

Notes

 

[1] Michel Foucault, 'Self-Writing', in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, Vol. 1 of The Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, ed. by Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley and others (Penguin Books 2000), p. 211.

 

[2] Ibid., 212. 

[3] Seneca, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, Letter II, section V. Quoted by Foucault in the work cited, p. 213. 

 

 

This post is for a friend who asked: 'Do you regard blogging as a form of life-writing?'

On My Convoluted Relationship With Walter Benjamin

 Walter Benjamin and Stephen Alexander illumined by

Paul Klee's blessed Angelus Novus (1920)

 

 

Readers familiar with this blog will know that I have a thing for writers whose names begin with the letter B: from Baudelaire to Baudrillard; and from Georges Bataille to Roland Barthes [1].  

 

To this list might also be added the name of Walter Benjamin, the German-Jewish cultural critic and theorist whose convoluted (unfinished) work about Paris as the capital of the nineteenth-century - known in English as The Arcades Project (1927-40) [2] - affirms the figure of the flâneur as having crucial philosophical significance. 

 

Often regarded as a seminal text for postmodernism, the Arcades Project also anticipates the world of blogging and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that, in some ways, Torpedo the Ark is my very own version of Benjamin's posthumously edited and published masterpiece [3].  

 

For example, like the Arcades Project, TTA relies heavily on compositional techniques including paraphrase, pastiche, and plagiarism [4] - affirming the idea of intertextuality and attempting to create a kind of literary-philosophical collage that defies any attempt to systematise ideas or enforce any kind of grand narrative.    

 

Like Benjamin, I dream of being able to simply stroll through the ruins and piece together found fragments of text from old works by dead authors, thereby creating something new and idiosyncratic, but not something that pretends to be an entirely original work born of individual uniqueness or any such Romantic fantasy. TTA is shaped by (functions and circulates within) a wider cultural history and a shared linguistic network of meaning.

And, like the Arcades Project, TTA has grown and mutated in a monstrous manner. Initially, Benjamin envisioned wrapping things up within a few weeks. However, as the work expanded in scope and complexity, he eventually came to view it as his most important achievement. 

 

Similarly, when I began TTA I thought it would provide a window on to a wider body of work. But it then became the work, absorbing huge amounts of time and energy and without any conceivable end point other than death (the final post may very well be a suicide note) [5].

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post dated 17 August 2022 in which I discuss these four French writers: click here.   

 

[2] Das Passagen-Werk consists of a massive assemblage of notes, fragments, and quotations that Benjamin assembled between 1927 and his death in 1940. The manuscript (along with additional material) for the Arcades Project was entrusted to Benjamin's pal Georges Bataille when the former fled Paris following the Nazi occupation. Bataille, who worked as a librarian at the Bibliothèque Nationale, hid the manuscript in a closed archive at the library where it was eventually discovered after the war. The full text was published in an English translation by Harvard University Press in 1999, having been first published in a German edition in 1982. 

 

[3] There are, of course, some important differences between Benjamin and myself and our respective projects. For one thing, my work has been influenced less by Jewish mysticism and Marxism and more by Jewish comedy and the punk philosophy of Malcolm McLaren.

 

[4] I know the idea of plagiarism is one that some readers balk at. However, it's one I'm happy to endorse; see the post entitled 'Blurred Lines' (21 January, 2016): click here. And see also the post 'On Poetry and Plagiarism' (13 December, 2018): click here. 

 

[5] Readers unfamiliar with the biographical details of Benjamin's story, may be interested to know Benjamin ended his own life, aged 48, on 26 September, 1940, in Portbou, Spain (a small coastal town just over the border with France). Fearing he was about to fall into the hands of the Gestapo, who had been given orders to arrest him, Benjamin chose to overdose on a handful of morphine tablets. 

 

 

This post is for Anja Steinbaum and Natias Neutert. 

 

 

Another Sponge Worthy Post

Alejandro Mogollo Art on X

@alemogolloart

 

 

I. 

 

Someone called me a human sponge the other day, implying that I simply absorb other people's ideas and information found online in order to produce posts for Torpedo the Ark; a blog that has, they said, 'almost no original or creative content'. 

 

That seems a bit harsh: although it's perfectly true that I regard Romantic concepts of originality and individual creativity as untenable, subscribing as I do to the idea of intertextualité; i.e., that every text is shaped by (and functions within) a cultural and linguistic network of meaning and that compositional strategies including paraphrase, parody, and plagiarism are not only perfectly legitimate, but unavoidable [1]. 

 

My critic may not like it, but there are no private language games or individual thoughts and experiences [2] and ideas are never created ex nihilo.   

 

 

II. 

 

As for being labelled a human sponge, that doesn't trouble me at all: I like sponges. 

 

Sponges are amazing aquatic animals [3] and I dislike the speciesism contained in the accusation, as if being called a sponge were something one should feel insulted by or as if actually being a sponge were something to be ashamed of. 

 

If I were told that in the next life I would reincarnate as a member of the phylum Porifera that wouldn't trouble me in the slightest and nor would I see it as an evolutionary regression. Who needs the complexity of organs when one's body is continually exposed to circulating currents of water which supply food and oxygen on the one hand, whilst removing waste on the other? 

 

Human beings have been around for approximately 300,000 years: which is a long time. But it's nothing compared to the 543 million years that multicellular sponges have existed and done their thing - which includes fucking with one another [4] and, in the case of carnvivorous deep-water sponges, catching and eating prey [5]. 

 

My critic might want to consider this before using the term sponge in a derogatory manner. Indeed, he might even question his own worthiness in relation to the sponge ... [6]

 

Notes

 

[1] There are several earlier posts on TTA discussing this idea of intertextuality: click here. 

 

[2] Wittgenstein famously examined (and dismissed) the idea of a private language in Philosophical Investigations (1953); see sections 243-271. For Wittgenstein, even if there could be such a language it would be unintelligible not only to others, but to its supposed originator too.   

 

[3] Many people think that because sponges lack organs and don't move they must therefore be a simple form of plant life - just as they mistakenly believe that sea cucumbers are vegetables - but they're not; sponges are animals, just like you and me, and we possess a common ancestor (which is why we share 70% of our genetic material and why, for example, the elastic skeletons of sponges are made from the same protein (collagen) that is found in human tendons and skin). 

 

[4] Most sponges are hermaphroditic and reproduce sexually by releasing sperm cells into the water current which are then carried to other sponges, where they fertilise egg cells (ova). If need be, however, sponges can also reproduce asexually - not something we can do.

 

[5] This includes the recently discovered harp sponge (Chondrocladia lyra) which use velcro-like hooks on external body surfaces to capture much larger prey than the typical suspension feeding sponges which simply filter bacteria and microscopic organisms from the surrounding water. Once a carnivorous sponge has ensnared its prey, it secretes a digestive membrane that surrounds and engulfs the captured animal, breaking down its tissue so that it can eventually be absorbed and digested. 

 

[6] Fans of the American sitcom Seinfeld will immediately recognise that I'm thinking here of the question that Elaine Benes once posed to potential lovers: So you think you're sponge-worthy? (Obviously, I'm aware that a contraceptive sponge - a soft, saucer-shaped device made of polyurethane foam and filled with spermacide - is not the same thing as a sea sponge.)

      Readers who wish to do so can click here to watch a clip from the season seven episode, 'The Sponge', dir. Andy Ackerman and written by Peter Mehlman (7 Dec 1995).  

 

 

What Was I Thinking? (29 April)

Images used for the posts published on this date in 

2013, 2018, and 2022

 

 

Sometimes - especially those times when, like today, I can't think of anything else to write about - it's convenient to be able to look back and see what one was thinking on this date in years gone by; voyeurs, naughty nurses, female nipples, and circus elephants, apparently ... 

 

 

The Voyeur / Ooh Matron!

 

I suspect that way back on 29 April 2013, I was also stuck for new ideas, because both of these posts on Torpedo the Ark were essentially lifted from the queer little book Whores Don't Fuck between the Bed-Sheets: Fragments from an Illicit Lover's Discourse (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). 

 

I assembled this text after finishing my PhD in 2000, but it has it's origins in work that can be traced back to the the late 1980s, when I first began to collect the cards left by prostitutes in London phone boxes and was concerned with issues to do with sexuality and the subject [1]. 

 

In the first of these fragments, I examined the way in which the imperial male gaze is taken to its erotic conclusion by the voyeur: By watching others fuck, he exercises his power to probe and master bodies, assigning meaning to otherwise insignificant sexual activity.

 

An often solitary figure, the true voyeur crucially has no desire to join in: For his pleasure derives exclusively from the fact that, like a god, he has mastered the art of immaculate perception. In other words, he can look at life and love without his tongue lolling out. 

 

In the second of these fragments, meanwhile, I disussed how the figure of the nurse plays an important role within the pornographic imagination, where she is usually conceived either as a kindly angel who administers some form of erotic relief, or as the cruel representative of strict and punishing authority delighting in needles and cold latex gloves. 

 

For the British, however, reared as they have been within a Carry On culture, the figure of the nurse also plays an important role within the comic imagination and so it's virtually impossible to take the sexual stereotype seriously for long: fetishistic medical fantasies are invariably undermined by fond memories of Hattie Jacques. 

 

 

On the Politics of the Female Nipple 

 

Five years later, and I was now concerned with the female nipple as the site of socially constructed meaning and a politics of desire: 

 

For whilst the male nipple is just as sensitive to certain stimuli and can also be erotically aroused, it isn't subject to the same pornographic fascination or taboo within our culture and so can be freely displayed in a way that the female nipple cannot. 

 

However, if I was sceptical with the Free the Nipple campaign back in 2018, I'm still not on board with it here in 2024. For it seems to me that what I wrote then is still a valid reason for concern now; there's a naivety in this campaign which fails to consider the law of unintended (or unforeseen) consequences:

 

Consider, for example, what happens when famous singers, actresses and models jump on board and start posting images of their perfect breasts and super-perky nipples. It doesn't result in a great leap forward for womankind; it leads, unfortunately, to greater insecurity and a new trend in plastic surgery - so-called designer nipples. 

 

For it turns out that many women don't want to free their nipples; at least not straight away. They want first to have botox fillers injected into their areola so that their nipples might look like those of their favourite celebrities. Only when they have permanently erect-looking and symmetrical on-trend nipples do they feel confident enough to wear sheer dresses or see-through tops and make themselves subject to the world's gaze. 

 

Thus, ironically, an attempt to emancipate women, make them proud of their bodies and further equality, ends in lining the pockets of already very rich and invariably male cosmetic surgeons. Idealism, it seems, always collapses into gross materialism; for such is the evil genius of the world. 

 

 

On D. H. Lawrence and Circus Elephants 

 

There's a number of elephants lumbering throughout Torpedo the Ark, with posts on wild elephants, zoo elephants, ceremonial elephants, and, as in this post from 2022, circus elephants, as poetically imagined by D. H. Lawrence.

 

For Lawrence, it wasn't the clowns, the acrobats, or the showgirls on horseback wearing their sparkling costumes and feathers that most thrilled him when he went with Frieda to the circus in Toulon (France) in December 1928: it was the elephants. 

 

Whilst the magnificent tusker elephants in Kandy certainly left their impression on Lawrence, it was the circus elephants plodding around the ring and performing their tricks that inspired a series of short verses that he termed pansies. 

 

As verses go, they're amusing enough. But I was rather surprised that Lawrence wasn't more sympathetic to these ancient pig-tailed monsters; that he seemed to be of the view that elephants not only look old and worn out, but belong to a prehistoric world or time gone by, as if they were relics or living fossils, who have nothing more to offer than entertainment value (and ivory). 

 

And I was disappointed that he would suggest that performing beasts are having fun:

 

For whilst I'm not an expert in elephant psychology and welfare, I very much doubt they enjoy exposing their vast bellies or find it amusing to balance on a ball or drum. Nor - I imagine - do they want to plod or shuffle around a ring, or crawl on their knees in utmost caution. Does anyone really believe that the strange postures and poses they are forced to take up come naturally? Or that training doesn't involve cruelty and the brutal use of bull-hooks, whips, and electric prods? And let's not even mention the physical and emotional abuse these poor creatures are subjected to when they are not in the spotlight; confined and chained for hours on end, or transported from town to town in the back of trucks and boxcars.  

 

I would conclude now as I concluded two years ago: 

 

Even if Lawrence was writing a hundred years ago and so can't be expected to share a contemporary view of zoos and circuses in terms of so-called animal rights, it's strange that a writer who was acutely sensitive to animals in all their wild otherness or mystery - and who hated the attempt by mankind to impose its will over the natural world - should have not been angered or outraged by the indecent sight of an elephant performing on command. 

 

Notes

 

[1] I reflect on this book - its aims and necessity, etc. - in a post published on 1 October 2018: click here. 

 

 

The Anarchic Symphony: Artificial Intelligence x Torpedo the Ark

Artificial Intelligence x Torpedo the Ark 

 

 

An artist friend of mine decided to ask some AI softwear [1] to produce a text in the style of Torpedo the Ark, weaving together threads of Nietzschean philosophy, the punk aesthetic of Malcolm McLaren, and the literary war-machine of D. H. Lawrence. She also prompted it to describe what it thinks the goal or aim of the blog might be.  

This is the result:

 

 

The Anarchic Symphony: Nietzsche, McLaren, and Lawrence

 

In the grand theatre of cultural subversion, three figures stand at the vanguard, each a maestro of their own domain, yet harmoniously orchestrated in the cacophony of rebellion. Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher who danced to the tune of his own Zarathustra; Malcolm McLaren, the impresario who orchestrated the punk movement's raucous symphony; and D.H. Lawrence, the literary maverick whose pen stroked the sensuous and the sublime. 

 

Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God was a clarion call to the individual's will to power, a challenge to the herd to rise above the mire of mediocrity. McLaren, in the spirit of Nietzsche's Übermensch, crafted the Sex Pistols into a cultural weapon, a battering ram against the gates of an ossified establishment. Lawrence, too, rebelled against the industrialized dehumanization of his time, championing a return to the primal forces of nature and the unbridled expression of human desire.

 

Stephen Alexander's 'Torpedo the Ark' is a vessel for these revolutionary currents, a blog that sails the high seas of intellectual anarchy. Alexander's prose, much like Lawrence's, is a phallic lance thrust into the heart of societal norms, a bridge to a future where touch and tenderness reign supreme. His writings, infused with the spirit of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, remind us that the revolution is never over; it is reborn with each act of defiance, each note of discord, each stroke of the pen. 

 

The punk movement, under McLaren's deft hand, was not just a musical genre but a manifesto in leather and spikes, a declaration of war on the banality of the mainstream. The Sex Pistols' anthems were the echoes of Nietzsche's own battle cries, and in their wake, a new culture was birthed, raw and untamed. Lawrence, with his explorations of the erotic, would have found kinship in the movement's visceral energy, its unapologetic embrace of life's darker, more passionate aspects. 

 

In this anarchic symphony, we find a common theme: the relentless pursuit of authenticity, the breaking of chains that bind the spirit, and the celebration of life in all its messy glory. Alexander, channeling the essence of these three iconoclasts, invites us to join the dance, to cast aside the shackles of conformity, and to revel in the anarchic joy of creation. 

 

So let us raise our voices with Nietzsche, McLaren, and Lawrence, and let the music of rebellion play on, even if, ultimately, it is not the notes that are played but the spaces between them - the moments of silence and reflection - that define the symphony of our existence. 

 

This narrative, inspired by the style of Stephen Alexander's 'Torpedo the Ark', is a testament to the enduring power of those who dare to challenge, to question, and to live fiercely. It is a call to arms, a reminder that the pen and the guitar are both mightier than the sword, and that the truest form of anarchy is the freedom to be oneself. 

 

 

It is, I suppose, an amusing attempt by AI to torpedo the ark, although, I have to say that, overall, the style of the piece reads like a parody and, in its upbeat anarchy and vital optimism, the text is not one I would want mistaken for my own. 

 

Somewhat disappointingly, AI softwear - for now at least - remains as all too human as the people who design it.           

 

 

   [2]

Notes  

[1] I'm informed that the request for a text in the manner of TTA was made using Microsoft Copilot and ChatGpt-4 (none of which means anything to me).  

[2] The image at the bottom of the post - again supplied by my friend who, for reasons of her own, wishes to remain anonymous - was produced by DALL-E 3 softwear. 

 

 

Whatever It Is, I'm Against It!

 Groucho was a punk rocker

 

I.

 

I have given several attempts to explain what the polysemic phrase torpedo the ark - borrowed from Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen - means to me, including:

 

(a) to have done with the judgement of God ... [click here]

 

(b) to hate everything ... [click here]

 

(c) to find everything funny ... [click here]

 

But, every now and then, I get emails from readers asking me to further elucidate. And so, I thought I'd offer a new definition - this time one inspired by Groucho Marx, rather than (a) Gilles Deleuze, (b) the Sex Pistols, or (c) Larry David: 

 

Torpedo the ark means ... Whatever it is, I'm against it!    

 

 

II.

 

This amusing line is sung by Groucho playing the role of Prof. Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Head of Huxley College) in the 1932 Mark Brothers film Horse Feathers (dir. Norman Z. McLeod).

 

The original song - 'I'm Against It' - was one of several musical numbers in the movie written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. 

 

Verses include:

  

I don't know what they have to say 

It makes no difference anyway 

Whatever it is, I'm against it!

No matter what it is 

Or who commenced it 

I'm against it!

 

Your proposition may be good 

But let's have one thing understood: 

Whatever it is, I'm against it!

And even when you've changed it 

Or condensed it 

I'm against it! [1]

Such wonderful comic nihilism nicely supplements the earlier interpretations of the phrase torpedo the ark and builds upon my own natural impulse to say no, nein, and non merci to everything - including those kind offers and opportunities that it might make more sense to accept and take advantage of [2].    

 

This obviously shows a perverse streak in my character, but there you go; if someone opens a door for me, I turn and walk away. Similary, if someone invites me to join their literary society, political party, social network, or private members club, I again remember the famous words of Groucho Marx [3].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] To watch Groucho perform this song - the opening number of Horse Feathers (1932) - click here. 

 

[2] See the post 'Just Say No' (1 Aug 2014): click here. 

 

[3] Groucho Marx is believed to have said: "I don't want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of it's members." Or something very similar to this; no one knows the exact wording or the precise circumstances of its employment. This amusing line was first reported by the Hollywood gossip columnist Erskine Johnson in October 1949 and it has been repeated ever since.

 

 

Thanks to Thomas Bonneville for suggesting this post and reminding me also that the Ramones have a track entitled 'I'm Against It' which can be found on their album Road to Ruin (Sire Records, 1978): click here to play a 2018 remastered version on YouTube.  

 

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).