From the Archives ... A Brief Style Guide for the Nietzschean Woman

"We are the smart set, a world apart set 

We are the neatest, ergo elitist." [1] 

 

As Derrida pointed out, the question of style and the question of woman almost become one and the same question within Nietzsche's philosophy - particularly when thought in relation to the question of Truth [2].   

Perhaps that's what I was thinking of when, in 2004, I wrote this brief style guide for the Nietzschean woman - anticipating my Philosophy on the Catwalk project ...

 

1. Burn all soft-cotton frocks as these invariably suggest Laura Ashley and her ersatz brand of pseudo-traditional fashion. The key point for the Nietzschean woman of today is to look smart and well-groomed; to demonstrate she has both discipline and breeding. 

2. Always wear a hat and gloves when out of doors. It does not matter if you are wearing the most beautiful Chanel outfit, if you lack these things you will look like a member of the herd. 

3. Stockings should also always be worn. Even during the hottest summer days, the Nietzschean woman does not parade around with bare legs; nor on the coldest of cold winter nights does she ever think of pulling on woolly socks. Tights, of course, are utterly infra dig - a sordid remnant of the 1960s. 

 

4. Make-up is a necessity and should be worn with pride and defiance so that one looks striking and dramatic; clearly defined lips, eyes luxuriantly shadowed, brows pencilled with firm, think curves; cheekbones emphasised with rouge. A face without make up looks offensively bare and contrary to what our idealists believe, Truth does not love to go naked. 

 

There is, of course, much more to Nietzschean style than this. But any woman who sticks to the above will already have gone a long way towards a revaluation of values and protecting herself from viral infections: For has a woman who knows herself to be well dressed ever caught a cold? [3] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm quoting here from an English version of a Berlin cabaret song - Das Gesellschaftlied (1931) - written by Mischa Spoliansky (music) and Marcellus Schiffer (lyrics) and performed by Ute Lemper (Decca, 1996): click here.   

 

[2] See Jacques Derrida, Spurs, trans. Barbara Harlow, (The University of Chicago Press, 1979). And to read my take on this work, click here.  

 

[3] Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 'Maxims and Arrows', 25.

 

 

Eurotophobia and the Case of Yulia Tsvetkova

Yulia Tsvetkova: 'Living Women Have Body Hair - And It's Normal!' 

Drawing from the series A Woman is Not a Doll (2018) 

 

I. 

 

I closed a recent post discussing the case of Caterina Sforza and her provocative act of vulvic defiance in the face of her male enemies by suggesting that the latter is not something that would work today in a porno-epilated culture; i.e., a culture in which the cunt has been rendered null and void, having lost its monstrous beauty and magical power.  

 

For whilst today, there may still be some men with an aversion to or dislike of female genitalia - perhaps on aesthetic grounds, for example - there is no real horror or fear of the cunt in the old sense. Even Freudians have largely abandoned their anxieties around castration and the old folk idea of vagina dentata has become laughable; the contemporary cunt, alas, has lost its teeth as well as hair.    

Having said this ... It seems that I was being somewhat Eurocentric and had failed to consider what the case of Yulia Tsvetkova tells us about eurotophobia in Vladimir Putin's Russia ...

II.

 

Yulia Tsvetkova is a 27-year-old artist and LGBTQ+ activist, currently under house arrest and facing criminal prosecution for creating and circulating homosexual propaganda and pornography; the latter consisting of no more than simple drawings of the female body posted on a feminist website in order to counter unrealistic and stereotypical images of women (an example of which can be seen above).

 

Well, that's not quite true; even the Russian authorities have conceded that these drawings do not in fact constitute pornography. Thus the charges against Tsvetkova relate, rather, to her role as the administrator of an online community who upload explicit (if often abstract) depictions of female genitalia to a page named after Eve Ensler's 1996 play, The Vagina Monologues. 

 

This, it seems, is too much: images of vaginas worked in elaborate embroidery or painted in delicate watercolour, trigger an ancient disturbance in the Russian male psyche; a primitive fear and hatred not so much for the cunt-as-organ, but for the cunt-as-symbol - one which obliges them to consider that most dreadful of suppositions: Supposing truth to be a woman ... [1]

 

It's a supposition that subverts the entire phallocratic order and its values; one that invites us to reconsider the world from a gynocentric perspective in which truth is not something that can be clearly identified and fixed, but something hidden, ever-changing, and prone to leakage. 

 

Ultimately, in thinking truth as woman - and in terms of the cunt - is to think truth not as presence, but, rather, as absence. Thus male anxiety before the gaping vagina is essentially a terror of staring into the void; a site of sheer loss in which everything becomes zero and Man struggles to maintain his hard-on. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] It was Nietzsche, of course, who first raised this supposition concerning the nature of truth; see his Preface to Beyond Good and Evil. See also chapter 3, Vol. 1, of The Treadwell's Papers, by Stephen Alexander, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010), pp. 55-80, wherein I discuss this remark at length, developing a sexual politics of what D. H. Lawrence terms cunt-awareness. 

 

For more information on the case of Yulia Tsvetkova, visit freetsvet.net. 

 

Or to send an email to the Russian authorities demanding that charges against Tsvetkova are dropped, visit her Amnesty International page by clicking here. 

  

Three Great Liars 3: Oscar Wilde

Portrait photo of Oscar Wilde 

by W. and D. Downey (1889)

I.

Ultimately, all studies of lying and great liars lead to Wilde and his observational essay published in Intentions (1891): 'The Decay of Lying' - a work many years ahead of its time ...

The essay is structured in the form of a Socratic dialogue between Vivian and Cyril and serves to promote Wilde's view that Aestheticism is superior to Realism. Vivian informs Cyril of an article he is writing which defends the former and blames the decline of modern literature upon the triumph of the latter, with the subsequent decay of lying as an art, a science, and a social pleasure.

According to Vivian, if the monstrous worship of facts is allowed to continue unabated, then all art is done for - and without art, life will have nothing to imitate. It is vital, therefore, that lying - defined as the telling of beautiful untrue things (and the proper aim of art) - be revived as soon as possible.   



II.

The dialogue opens with Cyril attempting to convince Vivian to leave his library and sit outside in order to enjoy the lovely afternoon. The latter is less than enthusiastic however and reveals himself to be the very opposite of a nature lover. For not only is nature imperfect in its design - "her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition" - but it's also uncomfortable: "Grass is hard and dumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects."  

That's amusing, but the merits and disadvantages of nature are not my concern here: I'm interested, rather, in the fine lie as spoken by the true liar; i.e., a statement that requires no proof of any kind but is its own evidence. Such lies transcend the level of misrepresentation and are more than the base falsehoods and half-truths offered by politicians, lawyers, and journalists. Such lies belong to art - particularly to poetry, which, as Plato recognised, is not unconnected to lying:     

"'As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection. But in modern days while the fashion of writing poetry has become far too common, and should, if possible, be discouraged, the fashion of lying has almost fallen into disrepute."

Today, continues Vivian, the young man who would have once developed into a gifted liar (and perhaps a magnificent novelist), now often falls into careless habits of accuracy or develops "a morbid and unhealthy faculty of truthtelling". Literature requires distinction, charm, beauty, and imaginative power; in other words, it rests upon the ability to tell stories; in a word, to lie.

The modern novel - realistic in form and subject matter - is all too horribly true; true to life and true to nature - but false to art and ultimately such works become not only vulgar, but boring. It was not always thus. But, today, facts are not merely dominant within history, but are "usurping the domain of Fancy, and have invaded the kingdom of Romance".

Fortunately, says Vivian, poets - with the exception of Wordsworth - have remained faithful to their high mission and are still "universally recognized as being absolutely unreliable". But, in every other domain and genre, the obsession with truth is dominant. If things are bad enough within European life and letters, they are even worse in the United States:

"The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man, who according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature."

Vivian, however, is far from despondent. In fact, he is extremely hopeful for the future and, in a crucial passage that ends with a profoundly Nietzschean remark (that I have italicised for emphasis), he says:

"That some change will take place before this century has drawn to its close we have no doubt whatsoever. Bored by the tedious and improving conversation of those who have neither the wit to exaggerate nor the genius to romance, tired of the intelligent person whose reminiscences are always based upon memory, whose statements are invariably limited by probability, and who is at any time liable to be corroborated by the merest Philistine who happens to be present, Society sooner or later must return to its lost leader, the cultured and fascinating liar. [...] Whatever was his name or race, he certainly was the true founder of social intercourse. For the aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society, and without him a dinner party [...] is as dull as a lecture at the Royal Society [...] Nor will he be welcomed by society alone. Art, breaking from the prisonhouse of realism, will run to greet him, and will kiss his false, beautiful lips, knowing that he alone is in possession of the great secret of all her manifestations, the secret that Truth is entirely and absolutely a matter of style [...]" 

Notes

Oscar Wilde, 'The Decay of Lying', Intentions, (1891). Click here to read online, courtesy of Project Gutenberg. This essay was a much revised version of an article that first appeared in a literary periodical in January 1889.

To read the first entry in this series of posts - on Nietzsche - click here.

To read the second entry, on Mark Twain, click here.

When Ancient and Modern Worlds Collide: Notes on the Profane Fate of Plato's Sacred Olive Tree

A preserved section of Plato's olive tree

Agricultural University of Athens

According to legend, the ancient Greeks had the minor deity and culture-hero Aristaeus to thank for teaching them three essential skills: cheese-making, bee-keeping and - most crucially of all - the care and cultivation of olive trees.

For whilst the Greeks liked their feta and honey, they really loved their olive oil ...

Not only was the latter a key ingredient in their cuisine, for example, but they would anoint their kings and champion athletes with it. Indeed, even ordinary citizens, including philosophers, liked to rub olive oil onto their bodies in order to keep the skin supple and healthy.

Thus, it's really no surprise to discover that Plato's Academy was situated next to a sacred olive grove dedicated to the goddess Athena. It's believed that each of the twelve gated entrances to the school had its own tree standing as an evergreen sentinel and symbol of wisdom, fertility, and purity.

But there was also one very special olive tree under which Plato was said to have taught his students. And this tree continued to stand for thousands of years - long after the Academy itself had crumbled into dust - until, on one fateful day in October 1976, a bus was driven into it, breaking the noble trunk in two.

The upper section was taken to the Agricultural University where it has been preserved and displayed ever since. The lower part, however, including the enormous roots, remained at the original site until being dug up in January 2013 to serve as firewood by local people adversely affected by the Greek financial crisis.

Or so the popular story goes, as reported widely at the time by both local and international media ...  

Seeking to clarify the situation, however, the General Directorate of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage issued a (seemingly little-read) statement a few days later explaining that Plato's olive tree had, in fact, been uprooted and killed - not merely damaged - as a result of the accident 37 years earlier.

A new tree, with three trunks, had been planted in its place by the Agricultural University of Athens and it was one of these that was removed, having died, on January 6th, 2013 (the other two trunks remaining intact and in situ).       

Whilst there are amusing aspects to this tale, one can very well imagine what Plato - who esteemed truth above all things - would think of fake news: False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Photo: Olive Oil Times Collection

A Vagina Monologue

Poster for the film Chatterbox starring Candice Rialson 

(dir. Tom DeSimone, 1977)

I.

Many people are familiar with Eve Ensler's critically acclaimed but philosophically problematic play, The Vagina Monologues (1996). But not everyone knows of the artistic tradition to which it belongs and which can be traced back to an ancient folkloric - and phonocentric - origin.      

The vagina loquens is a particularly popular motif in France. When not working on his Encyclopédie, for example, the philosopher Diderot was also writing a novel entitled Les bijoux indiscrets (published anonymously in 1748), whose story concerns an African sultan who possesses a magical ring - given to him by a genie - that when rubbed and pointed in the right direction grants female genitalia the autonomous power of speech.   

This is often awkward for the women concerned, as what shameless cunts most like to speak of when given the opportunity is past amorous experience, including acts of infidelity that their owners might prefer to keep secret and remain silent about.

Now, whilst I quite like this idea of an independently-minded, free-speaking vagina, nobody likes a rat and nobody wants a snatch that snitches. Also, I have problems with the idea of locating a moral-confessional notion of truth in the vagina, thereby simply turning the cunt into another form of soul and reviving traditional ideas of sex and subjectivity.


II.

In effect, this brings us back to some of the philosophical criticisms made of Ensler's play. For example, some feminists, trans activists and genderqueer individuals are far from happy to see women being reduced once more to their biology and are dismissive of the claim that they can be politically empowered via a form of cunt-awareness. 

Critiquing The Vagina Monologues from a very different perspective - but with even more overt hostility - is Camille Paglia, who regards the play as a bourgeois perversion of feminism and a psychological poison that denigrates men and celebrates victimhood.

Whilst I don't quite share Paglia's almost obsessive insistence on discussing female sexuality in terms of elemental mysteries and bloody horror, I do agree with her that Ensler's sentimental and complacent humanism in which the vagina is turned into a user-friendly safe space and given a winning personality is deeply depressing.

Ultimately, of course, it's not for me to suggest what a speaking vagina might have to tell us. But one would hope it might amuse and challenge, rather than bore to tears by merely repeating what it's already heard the mouth blabber on numerous occasions.

Either that, or, preferably, just stay mute with a noiseless soft power of its own that lies beyond all truth (unless it be the truth of zero), all identity, and all metaphysics of presence. In fact, that's precisely what I want the cunt to be; a kind of ontological black hole or site of sheer loss, as silent and as inviting as a freshly dug grave. 

Übernatürlich: Jason DeMarte's Augmented Reality

Jason DeMarte: Invasive Apathy

(Photo Assemblage / Pigmented Ink Print, 2018)

I.

The idea of art as an innocent imitation of nature is, of course, a very old one. Indeed, despite everything that's happened during the last 150 years, there are people who still subscribe to this ancient Greek concept of mimesis.

Personally, however, I tend to agree with Nietzsche on this question and view art more as a metaphysical supplement to the reality of the natural world; one that transforms rather than merely represents the latter.

Art is thus a way of either enhancing or diminishing nature; perfecting or perverting reality. And the most interesting artists - artists like Jason DeMarte - understand the ambiguous character of this game; how nature can paradoxically appear more-than-natural and less-than-natural (even unnatural) at one and the same time.        

It's been said that DeMarte's cleverly composed works combining images of flora and fauna with artificial objects and sugary treats would make Mother Nature blush - though whether that would be with pride, passion, anger, embarrassment or shame, isn't clear. His playful yet sophisticated juxtapositions call into question the relationship of nature and culture and what it might mean for man to be translated back into the former, or to conceive of culture as a form of transfigured physis.  


II.

Unlike many visual artists, DeMarte has a clear conceptual insight into his own project, as can be seen from the following statement found on his website that he has very kindly granted me permission to reproduce here in full:


"I am interested in modern understandings of the natural world and how that compares to the way western society approaches its immediate consumer environment. It’s important for me to compare established idealist utopian ways of representing the landscape to the hyper-perfect way products and modern consumer life are represented in media. I’m particularly interested in the idea of disillusionment through false or misleading representation. I’m interested in creating photographs that merge simulated forms of life and colorful processed foodstuffs with idyllic pop material goods, in an effort to create a dialog of consumption, duplicity and homogenized ecstasy.

I work digitally combining images of fabricated and artificial flora and fauna with commercially produced and processed products. I look at how these seemingly unrelated and absurd groupings or composites begin to address attitudes and understandings of the contemporary experience. I represent the natural world through completely unnatural elements to speak metaphorically and symbolically of our mental separation from what is 'real' and compare and contrast this with the consumer world we surround ourselves with as a consequence. Ultimately this work is an investigation into the manipulation of truth.

My process draws from a long history of constructed narratives in photography, artist like Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Julia Margret Cameron, were early pioneers in manipulating truth with the medium, while later artists like Gregory Crewdson, Jeff Wall and Anthony Goicolea made the ordinary surreal with their highly choreographed stills. My process aims to simultaneously embrace a manipulation of truth by hyper exaggerating the ordinary and to also work within a kind of truth by utilizing the inherent believability of the photographic medium.

Like the early tableau photographers I draw inspiration from painting, specifically naturalist painting from movements like the Hudson River School. I’m interested in rekindling the romantic notions of nature while simultaneously subverting those romantic notions by juxtaposing pop consumption and visual gluttony."


III.

I find all of this fascinating: particularly his confession that at the heart of his project (or process as he calls it) is the question of truth - something which Nietzsche decouples from goodness and beauty and provocatively describes as that from which we would perish were it not for the skilful and deceptive reworking to which it is subjected by the artist.

Only art, says Nietzsche, has the power to make experience bearable by providing us with vital illusions. And for that we should be grateful ...  

Notes

Jason DeMarte's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums, both in the US and abroad, and featured in numerous journals, books, and other publications. He is currently represented by Rule Gallery in Denver Colorado and is part of the Photographers Showcase at Photo-Eye Gallery in Santa Fe. 

He is also an Associate Professor of Photography in the School of Art and Design at Eastern Michigan University and Assistant Professor of Photography in the College of Architecture, Art and design at Mississippi State University. 

Those interested in knowing more can visit his personal website by clicking here.

Nietzsche was preoccupied with the question of truth in relation to art throughout his writings. He does not reject the importance of the former as a will expressed in science, for example, but does question whether such might prove nihilistic and harmful to life. He proposes that the untruth of art might ultimately be more conducive to human wellbeing. The lines to which I refer above are found in The Will to Power, section 822, and The Gay Science, section 107.   

True Lies

For those who adhere to moral-rationalism, truth is the highest virtue. And all forms of deception inherently diabolical. Such sincere souls live in fear of being lied to, or led astray into falsehood; they hate ambiguity, concealment, illusion. 

This may make them good parents, good people, or good policemen. But, unfortunately, it means they'll never be great poets.

For it's not simply the case that deception is an art, but, more radically, all art is deception; a game of creative immorality and evil genius which not only delights in untruth, but regards the truth itself to be metaphorical in character and all too human in origin.

Something, in other words, that has been enhanced, transposed, and embellished; something which after long years of obligatory usage seems firm, fixed, and authentic - the veritable Word of God.    

(It's worth recalling at this point that before Nietzsche finally pronounced him dead, God was brilliantly conceived by Descartes as not only omnipotent but malevolent and mendacious: the Deus deceptor.)  


See:

Nietzsche, 'On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense', essay in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Penguin Books, 1976).

Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. and ed. John Cottingham, (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

It's a Gay Life - But is it also a Good Life?

After recently presenting a paper on the politics and psychopathology of homophobia, somebody emailed to ask if I could provide a more philosophical explanation why gay men and lesbians are often viewed negatively by those who identify as heterosexual and belong to the straight majority.

In order to do this, we need to think back to a much older question - one that is central both to ancient philosophy and Christian spirituality - namely, the question of what constitutes a good life. The answer, of course, is all to do with one’s relationship to the truth (aletheia).

For the good life is also the true life, which means that the respectable citizen is one who not only speaks the truth, but manifests it in their daily existence (in what they do and don’t do). This crucial idea is one that has deeply ingrained itself within Western culture and continues to shape our thinking today. Thus we are obliged to ask - as Pilate famously asked Christ - what is truth?

If I remember correctly, Jesus replied that he was the truth, which doesn’t really answer the question. Michel Foucault, however, rather more helpfully supplies us with four key components: the truth is that which is unconcealed, unalloyed, unchanging, and - most significantly for us here - perfectly straight. The true life is never bent or crooked; never deviates from a direct and narrow path to God in accordance with what is revealed, pure, eternal, and upright.

And so it quickly becomes clear why those men and women who are thought to lead secretive, mixed-up, and irregular lifestyles - who are said to be either inherently queer or wilfully perverse - can never be fully trusted or respected within a heteronormative (and heterosexist) society; for they can never lead a good life or a true life.

Nor, for that matter, can they lead a natural life, in the Classical or Christian-moral sense. For the gay life, having historically been lived on the margins of society and in defiance of certain laws, conventions and agreed customs, is also a life which undermines a value system indexed to Nature. 

Thus, homosexuality is doubly false and doubly threatening to those who, rightly or wrongly, pride themselves on being straight and who see the world in black and white, rather than as rainbow-coloured.