15 Feb 2013

A Birthday Post on Becoming-Child

Inner Child Doll, by Beth Costello

Deleuze and Guattari are right: knowing how to age well does not mean attempting to remain young; it means extracting the molecular elements, the forces and flows, that constitute the youth of whatever age one happens to be.

In other words, it's not about diets, skin care, exercise regimes, or cosmetic surgery, but producing within oneself that child of innocence and forgetfulness, whom Zarathustra spoke of.  

Such a metamorphosis of the spirit is not easy and it has nothing to do with regression, imitation or identification. As Picasso once confessed, it took him four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child. 

All this on the occasion of yet another birthday ...

9 Feb 2013

Revenge of the Flowers

  The triumph of vegetation is total


The revenge of the flowers is an idea that has long fascinated me. I like the thought that plant life continuously conspires to challenge the supposed superiority of animals and defeat attempts on behalf of humanity to create a full idealized and mechanized world; that one day, the weed will conquer.

It is certainly worth remembering that not only do plants have ancestral reality, but we remain absolutely dependent upon them to provide the air we breathe and the food we eat. Man might dream of one day paving over the entire world with concrete and tarmac, but it's grass - that most unassuming of all plants - that provides the foundation for our continued survival and success.

Indeed, once we abandon our anthropocentric conceit, it becomes arguable that not only is our life dependent upon plants, but is in a very real sense determined by them. Like the birds and the bees and other insects, we exist - as far as the plants are concerned - to disseminate their DNA. At best, we have entered into a mutually beneficial co-evolutionary relationship with flora which renders conventional and convenient distinctions between subject and object meaningless: we shape their unfolding and they shape ours.

If you're a humanist, this is a little disconcerting and hard to admit. For it means acknowledging the fact that plants are just as complex, just as cruel, and just as exploitative as us and that in comparison to the daisy, the greatest monuments of mankind are transitory and insignificant. Plants have been evolving for millions of years and have in that time been endlessly inventing new strategies for survival and perfecting their designs. Thus, to say that we are a more advanced form of life is more than a little presumptuous. We can walk and talk and think, but, in the absence of chlorophyll, we can't photosynthesize nutrients directly from water, soil, and sunlight.

All this being said, it's surely important not to simply fall back into one of the three traditional narratives about man and nature with which we are all too familiar: (i) the heroic narrative, in which humanity is depicted as struggling against nature; (ii) the romantic narrative, in which paradise is regained and man emerges into some kind of spiritual unity with nature; (iii) the eco-apocalyptic narrative, characterized by Michael Pollan as an "environmental morality tale, in which Nature pays man back for his transgressions".

Contrary to these tired mythological storylines, I propose a speculative and realist narrative in which all forms of flora and fauna are regarded primarily as objects - not necessarily equal objects, but equally objects nevertheless, caught up in the same orgy of sex, violence, and random mutation that we like to call life.

6 Feb 2013

Two Formulas for Happiness


Nietzsche once gave us his formula for happiness: A Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal. It's simple: but also a little surprising and disappointing. 

For whilst we might share his need for something to love and affirm and share too his delight in having something (or someone) to oppose and negate, there's something functional and all too German about this metaphysical ideal of the straight line and the positing of a fixed goal at the end of such. It has the unfortunate effect of transforming a formula for happiness into a sort of business plan, or recipe for success. 

Such linear thinking is certainly at odds with the picaro's idea of wandering aimlessly but joyfully in a kind of schizonomadic manner; or the flâneur's love of strolling through city streets and arcades; or the pervert's desire for deviation, aberration, and waywardness. 

None of these happy souls stick to the straight and narrow; none of them have aims, objectives, or plans of accomplishing anything. Neither, in truth, do they affirm or deny anything. At a push, they might want what Earl Butz believed to be the three things that the coloureds looked for in life - tight pussy, loose shoes, and a warm place to shit - and even then they might sneer at the bourgeois notion of comfort implied by the last of these things. 

Still, as competing formulas for happiness go, this latter, for all its sexism, racism, and vulgarity, just might have the beating of Maxim 44.

4 Feb 2013

Thank Heaven for Little Girls


What are little girls made of: sugar and spice and all things nice?

Whilst it's possible that these are their material elements, according to Deleuze and Guattari's reading of Proust, their individuation, be it collective or singular, doesn't proceed via subjectivity, but by pure haecceity. Which means, I think, that they shouldn't be understood as molar forms, or defined by the functions they fulfil. Rather, we should think of girls in terms of their movements and the intensive affects of which they are capable. 

Little girls, in other words, are not just young female human beings that grow up into women (although, obviously, this is true in a banal organic sense); they are something other than this and something more than this. At their best - which is to say at their most phenomenal - they are extraordinary events and so do not belong to any age group or sex.

Joan of Arc, Anne Frank, and here, with us, right now, recovering from her surgery, Malala Yousafzai, are singular beings via whom molecular politics unfolds. For these girls teach us something vital about life understood in terms of immanence, virtue and virtuality. We should be grateful to the heavens that send them our way. 

2 Feb 2013

Theme Tunes in a Man's Life



In an essay written towards the end of his life, Lawrence reflected on the fact that certain hymns he heard and sang as a child continued to resonate more potently within him than many of the finest poems he had since become familiar with. It didn't matter that, lyrically and musically, these hymns were often banal and rather horrible on the ear; what counted was that they had delighted and inspired his childish imagination and so retained for him a more lasting value. 

Geoff Dyer feels the same about the Marvel comic books he read as a child and this is something he and I share, in addition to our love of Lawrence. But I also feel the same about all of those TV theme tunes that I would tape on my primitive - but precious - cassette player and then listen to over and over again.

For some reason, I was particularly fond of American detective shows and must have recorded the openings to all of them, including Kojak, Cannon, McCloud, Ironside, Starsky and Hutch, Hill Street Blues, Police Woman, Police Story, Hawaii Five-O, Harry O, The Streets of San Francisco, and, my favourite, The Rockford Files

These tunes suggested and still suggest a whole world of action and adventure; there has been "no dwindling into actuality, no hardening into the common place" - they excite the same feelings of joy and excitement now as then. In a sense, my childhood was as much a Quinn Martin production, as it was the result of a comprehensive school education and growing up in Essex.

But I also loved American sit-coms, such as Rhoda, and still to this day know the words to the opening song from Laverne and Shirley better than I do the lyrics to either the Lord's Prayer or the national anthem (this as a matter of pride, not shame):  

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight!
Schlemiel! Schlemazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!  
We're gonna do it!

1 Feb 2013

Ikizukuri



Cruelty, writes Nietzsche, is one of the oldest festive joys of mankind. Indeed, to practise cruelty - to refine it into an art form and a virtue - is the mark of human culture; a means by which we express our power over life and our divine indifference to suffering, be it that of animals, slaves, or those regarded as enemies of the state.

For it is not only beasts that are tortured and butchered, or sea-creatures that are turned into sashimi. And so as my companion's plate of ikizukuri was prepared and served with all the delicate knife-work that a Japanese chef is capable of, I thought once more of Fu Chou Li, who was executed in 1905 by being cut into a hundred pieces. 

The public dismemberment of this poor wretch - guilty of murdering a prince - was something that obsessed Bataille, who kept a photograph of the event which played a decisive role in his thinking. For he saw in the picture not only great horror, but also a look on the victim's face of ecstatic joy that seemed to transcend his torment. And it was this that lent the picture an almost unbearable beauty and fascination:

"The young and seductive Chinese man ... I loved him with a love in which the sadistic instinct played no part: he communicated his pain to me or perhaps the excessive nature of his pain, and it was precisely that which I was seeking, not so as to take pleasure in it, but in order to ruin in me that which is opposed to ruin."

- Inner Experience, trans. Leslie Anne Boldt, Albany State University Press, 1988, p. 120.

I understand, I think, where Bataille is coming from - and why he finds the anguished eroticism of human sacrifice and sadism so rich in meaning. But as I looked down at my friend's plate and saw the still-living but semi-sliced fish attempt to take one last gasp of air, I was glad I had chosen the noodles.

31 Jan 2013

I Would Prefer Not To



"He does not resist, he does not defend his rights, he takes no steps to avert the worst that can happen to him - more, he provokes it ..."

This happens to be Nietzsche writing of Jesus, but it could well be someone commenting on Bartleby the scrivener. Both figures belong to the same type: that of the enigmatic redeemer who sets himself apart from his fellow man and makes himself untouchable and unknowable. 

Bartleby is one of the most discussed figures in American literature, but I find it hard to believe that he is also one of the best loved. For my part, I hate him. I would prefer not to have to explain this dislike or make any further critical analysis of this monstrous and motionless character, but, for the record ...

I hate Bartleby for much the same reason as Judas came to resent Jesus; the former felt in some sense let down by the latter and recognised the denial and subterfuge inherent in the latter's teaching. And so, despite his feelings of love and loyalty, he betrayed him: with a kiss. Bartleby too is ultimately a fraud and a moral fanatic who leads us not towards new life or greater health and happiness, but to suffering, misery and death.

Thus, like Bartleby's employer (and the narrator of his tale), I can't help feeling a  profound repulsion for the scrivener, who, clearly, is a decadent, suffering from some form of incurable disorder. His very presence is a curse and he sucks the joy out of life, just as he casts a general air of gloom over the office premises he refuses to leave. 

Bartleby's ideal is stasis: he is driven by a will to inertia, or what Freud terms a death drive. Thus he seeks to reduce all tension and avoid all conflict; to return, ultimately, to a state of inorganic objecthood: unthinking, unfeeling, uncaring, uneating, unliving. Surprisingly, Deleuze of all people finds this admirable and amusing. Not only does he think of Melville's book as a comical text, but he describes Bartleby as an anti-hero who, with his five-word formula, manages to suspend all operational logic and indicate the very limits of our world.

Deleuze seems to regard Bartleby as that first perfect nihilist whom Nietzsche spoke of and anticipated. But surely Nietzsche's thought of affirmative destruction and an active negation of the negative, is something very different to Bartleby's passive-aggressive 'negativism beyond all negation' ...? 

Deleuze is not wrong to describe Bartleby as Christ-like - "stricken with a constitutive weakness but also with a strange beauty" - the question is whether we think that's a good thing or not. Is it desirable - or even possible - to collectively imitate Bartleby and live as he lives, die as he dies? He surely provides at best a practice for the individual, but not a politics. Thus Deleuze is mistaken to locate a new model of fraternal alliance and immanent utopia in the story of Bartleby the scrivener. He has been seduced by the latter's suffering and martyrdom, but as Nietzsche points out, we should never confuse pain and showmanship with philosophical profundity.

And so, to conclude, Bartleby is not the physician of culture or the "doctor of a sick America" that Deleuze believes him to be. He's just another pale-faced case of retarded puberty and an apolitical idiot, with an instinctive hatred of reality and a morbid fear of being touched. What we need is someone who can teach us how to live in physical relation to one another; not just curl up and die in a corner, or hang naked on a cross.

30 Jan 2013

On the Love of Boys



Despite his keen philosophical interest in their sexual ethics and techniques of the self, Foucault always maintained that the ancient Greeks do not in fact offer an attractive or plausible model for us today. No people, he says, can ever find the answer to their own social problems in the solutions found by another people at another time.

However, without wishing to necessarily advocate pederasty as a vital moral and educational institution, I can't help feeling a degree of sympathy with the following speech by Phaedrus:

"I would maintain that there can be no greater blessing for a boy than to have a worthy lover from his earliest youth; nor for a lover than to have an object worthy of his affection. Life's guiding principle for those who intend to live virtuously cannot be instilled either by family or by class or by wealth or by anything else so effectively as by love. 'What principle is that?' you ask. I mean the principle which inspires shame at what is contemptible and desire for what is noble; without these feelings neither a state nor an individual can accomplish greatness or anything fine.  
                                                                                         - Plato, The Symposium, trans. Maria Thanassa, 2013.

So, whilst it's not for me to argue that it might be advantageous for adolescent youths to have mature male lovers overseeing their physical and intellectual development in the gymnasium, surely this is preferable to teenage gangs roaming the streets stabbing and shooting one another, or mugging their fellow citizens ...?

Of course, even to suggest this is controversial in an age that lacks social and sexual etiquette and the confidence to act with authority; not to mention a time which is as terrified by the thought of paedophilia as the ancient Greek world was of immoderate behaviour. Ultimately, there's no point fantasising the recreation of Classical culture, for we are, as Nietzsche says, no longer made of the right material

29 Jan 2013

Too Old to Live, Too Slow to Die



Adam Ant has a new album out. It's his first in a very long time and it has a very long title. I wish him all the best with it, as I retain a lot of fraternal affection for Adam.

However, he's being slightly disingenuous when he pretends that rock 'n' roll is all about sex, style, and subversion, with a dash of humour for good measure. Because it is also about youth, speed, and untimely death. 

I'm not saying that's a good thing. But that's what rock 'n' roll is: a romantic and rebellious suicide cult in which spectacular failure is valued above benign success and dangerous excess is the rule, rather than a code of health and safety. An aged rock star - to paraphrase Nick Land writing about philosophers - is either a monster of stamina, or a charlatan.  

As it's you Adam, in all your punk-pirate splendour and your madness, I'm prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt ... You don't embarrass yourself and those who loved you in the manner that Rotten does.
  

26 Jan 2013

The Boy Looked at Johnny ...



Some of the sweetest lines written about Rotten were penned by Sebastian Horsley in his 2007 memoir, Dandy in the Underworld:

"Johnny Rotten was Rimbaud reborn in Finsbury Park. He had all the unmistakable signs - the charismatic aura, the dandy's narcissism, the canny look of the holy tramp ... he even had the Gorgon's glare - the metaphor for the hypnotic power of vision, genius or madness." [57]

As Horsley rightly notes, Rotten was, in his punk heyday, flawless and blazingly beautiful: a true star who hated all other stars for failing to shine with his own intensity and integrity. Beneath the safety pins and the sarcasm, was a pure heart and a fierce intelligence and in the summer of '77, when he was being attacked in the streets of London by razor-wielding thugs acting in the name of queen and country, I hung on every word he said and adopted every gesture, every pose, every sneer. He articulated what a generation felt and he embodied how we wanted to look.

And for many years, I continued to hold Rotten in high regard and to have great affection for him; even though I was much closer in spirit to Malcolm and ultimately chose the latter's anarchic good humour and chutzpah over Lydon's increasing self-righteousness and self-indulgence.   

But it's got to the point today, I have to admit, where I can no longer stand to hear or see him. It's not merely that Rotten's lost his voice, his charm, and his sense of style; it's not even those butter adverts, his increasingly oafish behaviour, or that unseemly incident at the Mojo Awards in 2008 involving a young Welsh songstress.

For me, the final straw came with his embarrassing appearance on Question Time last year, in which he offered a few ridiculous platitudes and shamelessly played to the gallery as he looked to exploit popular sentiment. Rotten, sadly, has become the embittered, bullying, rambling and reactionary pub bore whom only morons could possibly find entertaining.

Where once we looked in awe and could not take our eyes off him, there is nothing to do now but look away ...