D. H. Lawrence and the Prickly Politics of Vitalism

Woodcut design by Wharton Esherick for D. H. Lawrence's 

Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine (1925)

In a notorious but often celebrated essay, 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine' (1925), Lawrence provides us with some very beautiful descriptive passages of an actual event involving a dog and the shooting of a porcupine. Unfortunately, these are followed by some very ugly didactic passages that are not merely moralizing metaphysical nonsense, but tied to a pernicious political vitalism that asserts an anthropocentric, aristocratic, and racist hierarchy of life.

Life - ha! what is life? 

One might say in philosophical agreement with Nietzsche that it's really just a form of prejudice; an extremely rare and unusual way of being dead that is grossly overvalued by the living. 

Lawrence, however, offers a very different definition: life is that which "moves in circles of power and of vividness, and each circle of life only maintains its orbit upon the subjection of some lower circle." And this vital truth, as Lawrence imagines it, is not something to lament, nor seek to challenge or reform. On the contrary, the only thing to do "is to realise what is is higher, and what is lower, in the cycles of existence"  and accept this as a law of creation.

That said, it might still reasonably be asked what is meant by higher and how might we correctly assign each life-form its proper place within a natural order of rank? Again, Lawrence is extremely forthright in his answer (despite the fact that his logic is tautologous): by higher he means more vividly alive. And each life-form earns its own place within a natural order of rank by out competing and, indeed, often devouring, the lesser lives below it. He writes: 

"In the cycles of existence, this is the test. From the lowest form of existence to the highest, the test question is: Can thy neighbour finally overcome thee? If he can, then he belongs to a higher cycle of existence. This is the truth behind the survival of the fittest."

Lawrence then conveniently lists some examples of higher and lower forms drawn from his own hierarchy of vividness in terms of species and race:

"Life is more vivid in the dandelion than in the green fern, or than in a palm tree.
Life is more vivid in a snake than in a butterfly.
Life is more vivid in a wren than in an alligator.
Life is more vivid in a cat than in an ostrich.
Life is more vivid in the Mexican who drives the wagon, than in the two horses [who pull the wagon].

Life is more vivid in me, than in the Mexican who drives the wagon for me."

Obviously, the final assertion is for most readers today the most controversial and offensive; but Lawrence insists that the subjugation and exploitation of one race by another (his own) is another inescapable law of nature and existence. Or, if you prefer, an inexorable law of life based upon a fourth dimensional form of ontological energy which he terms vitality (the determining factor in the struggle for existence).

What, really, are we to make of all this?

I think it shows how a philosophy of vitalism can very easily lend itself to a highly undesirable form of politics. Of course, this needn't always be the case - one thinks of Hans Driesch's principled resistance to the Nazi attempt to co-opt his idea of entelechy - but, unfortunately, it very often seems to be the case that vitalism + pessimism + romanticism = fascism.   

The political theorist Jane Bennett, who has developed her own model of vital materialism, addresses this problematic issue with a reassuring degree of sensitive intelligence and insight. She writes:

"I do not think that there is any direct relationship between, on the one hand, a set of ontological assumptions about life ... and, on the other, a politics; no particular ethics or politics follow inevitably from a metaphysics. But the hierarchical logic of God-Man-Nature implied in a vitalism of soul easily transitions into a political image of a hierarchy of social classes or even civilizations."
 
Thus, if like Lawrence you believe that life is radically different from (and irreducible to) matter; that human life is qualitatively different than all other forms of life; that this human uniqueness indicates a divine origin or special relationship with the gods; and there's a natural order of existence with yourself at the top, then you will probably also be tempted to flirt with the kind of politics that wages war in the name of the highest idealism in order to fulfil some form of national, cultural, or racial destiny.    

My advice is - when it comes to politics - never trust a hippie, never trust a poet, and never trust a vitalist.


Notes

D. H. Lawrence; 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 347-63.

Jane Bennett; Vibrant Matter, (Duke University Press, 2010), p. 84. And see sub-section of chapter 6 entitled 'A Natural Order of Rank' , pp. 86-89 which is particularly pertinent to this discussion.

D. H. Lawrence and the Idea of Sacrifice

In a short series of related poems Lawrence explored the idea of sacrifice. 

Initially, he seems quite keen: the sacrifice of an animal in what he thinks of as the splendid pagan manner is an act of vital necessity to which he enthusiastically lends his support:

"... blood of the lower life must be shed

for the feeding and strengthening of the handsomer, fuller life."

This is an active practice of sacrifice that is about affirming mortal existence and giving thanks to the gods; it is not about atoning for sin (a concept Lawrence explicitly repudiates), or seeking to appease a God who forever sits in judgement upon us:

"There is no such thing as sin.

There is only life and anti-life.

And sacrifice is the law of life which enacts

that little lives must be eaten up into the dance and splendour

of bigger lives, with due reverence and acknowledgement."

But, unfortunately, this old, pre-Christian idea of sacrifice as life affirmation has given way to one that invariably takes place within the shadow of the Cross and is fatally tied to disastrous notions of self-sacrifice, joy in suffering, and martyrdom. Lawrence wants nothing to do with these things. Self-sacrifice, he writes, is an ethically objectionable and mistaken idea - particularly when it involves the slaying of what is best in us:

"It cannot be anything but wrong to sacrifice

good, healthy, natural feelings, instincts, passions or desires ..."

In other words, to sacrifice what Nietzsche would term our innocence is the vilest cowardice:

"But what we may sacrifice, if we call it sacrifice, from the self,

are all the obstructions to life, self-importance, self-conceit, egoistic self-will ..."

Lawrence develops this theme in a later verse:

"Oh slay, not the best bright proud life that is in you, that can be happy,

but the craven, the cowardly, the creeping you, that can only be unhappy ..."

"Oh sacrifice, not that which is noble and generous and spontaneous in humanity

but that which is mean and base and squalid and degenerate ..."

If we learn how to shed those things which poison the blood - rather than our blood itself - then we might perhaps find a way to live beyond good and evil and free from bad conscience. And that would make a pleasant (and profound) change would it not ...

Notes

See the following four poems by D. H. Lawrence: 'Self-Sacrifice', 'Shedding of blood', 'The old idea of sacrifice' and 'Self-sacrifice'. They can be found in The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Vol. I, pp. 585-87. The lines quoted are taken from these verses.  

On the Crucifixion of Sebastian Horsley

Naturally, at Easter, one's thoughts turn to the Cross and the crucifixion of Sebastian Horsley, the Soho Kristos ...

In 2000, Horsley flew to the Philippines, accompanied by fellow-artist Sarah Lucas and the photographer Dennis Morris. Having decided that he wished to paint scenes of the Crucifixion, but only ever really able to paint what he himself had experienced directly, Horsley was heading for the small village of San Pedro Cutud, outside of San Fernando, in the province of Pampagna.    

Here, during Holy Week, locals hold an annual orgy of self-flagellation and mortification of the flesh, culminating in several devotees being willingly lashed to crosses with nails driven through their hands and feet in imitation of Christ. Officially, the Church does not approve, but the local tourist industry has no qualms about promoting the event (retailers selling religious nick-knacks alongside cans of Coke).   

This re-enactment of the Passion, has been going on for many years. Pseudo-martyrs tend to be young Filipino men hoping to experience the divine and produce some sort miraculous effect. Foreign participants were banned after a Japanese man marketed footage of himself being crucified as a sadomasochistic porn video. However, after months of negotiation (and payment of a significant fee) it was agreed that Horsley would be able to stage his own private ceremony.    

The hope was to heighten his artistic sensibilities via extreme suffering. In the event, however, he passed out from the intense and overwhelming degree of pain. Worse, the small platform supporting his feet broke, as did the straps around his wrists and arms supporting some of his weight, and Horsley, dramatically - if also somewhat embarrassingly - fell from the cross! (The malicious act of a God in whom he didn't believe but was happy nevertheless to mock, as Horsley reasoned afterwards.)

Some of the villagers ran away screaming; Sarah Lucas fainted; and Dennis Morris continued to snap pictures as anxious officials attempted to resurrect the artist, lying pale and unconscious, but strangely serene, as if a figure in a painting by Caravaggio. Afterwards, Horsley by his own admission felt humiliated and full of a sense of failure. Soon, however, this was replaced with a sense of quiet pride.

An exhibition of new works based on the event opened in the summer of 2002 and film footage shot by Sarah Lucas, entitled Crucifixion, was screened at the ICA in June of that year. The British press, unsurprisingly, were less than impressed:  'Art Freak Crucifies Himself', screamed the front page of the News of the World. Perhaps more surprisingly - and certainly more disappointingly - the art world was also distinctly cool (and sometimes sneering) in its reception.

Horsley, as ever, puts a brave face on this in his disarming and often highly amusing memoir, Dandy in the Underworld (2007):  "Jesus was crucified to save humanity. I had been crucified to save my career. Neither of us had much success."


Note: For those interested, Crucifixion can be viewed (in two parts) on YouTube by clicking here and here. 

Mono No Aware (Japanese Aesthetics Contra Teutonic Angst)

Birds and Flowers of Spring and Summer

One of a pair of six-fold screens by Kano Eino, 

Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo

The Japanese have a very lovely term for the poignancy of passing time and the mixture of joy and sadness experienced when one reflects upon the transient nature of existence: mono no aware. 

Often translated as the pathos of things, it's more, I think, than simply an awareness of impermanence or a sensitivity to ephemera. It's also an aestheticized form of the ontological anxiety that for Heidegger characterized Dasein - i.e., the certain knowledge that everything dies and that all being is therefore a being-towards-death. 

But it would be precisely this aestheticization of onto-anxiety that would be problematic for the German philosopher. For according to Heidegger, our essential task as human beings is to accept the inevitability of death, affirm its necessity, and strive to retain the authenticity of our own passing and we don't do this by transforming Angst into a kind of genteel reflection on things in the shadow of their future absence.      

And so, whilst for the eighteenth century scholar and poet Motoori Norinaga mono no aware heightens our appreciation of beauty and enables us to comprehend the singing of the birds and the silence of the snake, this, for Heidegger, is not merely sentimental and besides the point, but risks inauthenticity. 

That is to say, mono no aware fails to profoundly disturb or discomfort; it lacks the weight of almost unbearable fatality that the Germans are so insistent upon. Thus, whilst it makes us smile wistfully and go 'Ah ...' with a knowing sigh, it doesn't fill us with a sense dread at the monstrous and inhuman nature of existence; it doesn't make us want to scream when confronted by the truth of extinction and non-being.

In the end, I suppose, one has to make a choice here: does one want to picnic beneath the cherry blossom, or brood amongst the pine needles; does one want to develop a practice of joy before death, or a custom of fear and trembling?

I know which I'd rather do ...   

On the Pleasure of Queer Nostalgia

The face and body of British glamour model Kate-Anne Cooper arouse a queer kind of nostalgia for a lost world of vintage porn, wherein women weren't shaved, pierced, tattooed, cosmetically-enhanced, or airbrushed into digital perfection; when they looked softer, hairier, uglier, and their cunts, although more threatening, were nonetheless full of life and the promise of a blissful return to nature. 

Probably she knows this: for her hair and make-up suggest a deliberate retro styling designed to trigger this wistful erotic longing not just for the girls of the late sixties and seventies, but for the period itself in all of its popular cultural manifestations.

Time, which is often cruel, is kind in this regard; it adds charm and a certain element of pathos to days and things gone by. It allows us to remember our own past fondly and to sentimentally gloss hardcore events and the grim material facts that historians and social theorists often choose to emphasise.

In doing this, we sacrifice critical complexity. But we gain pleasure. And that's not something we should have to apologise for; least of all to those who would eliminate all forms of fun from life and tie intellectual language exclusively to an endless series of moralizing imperatives.

Alien Spring

Alien Spring  (2015)

To me, all flowering plants look decidedly alien: by which I don't mean extraterrestrial, so much as completely other or inhuman. That is certainly what I meant when I captioned the above photograph Alien Spring and sent it to a number of friends. I wasn't making a point about the environmental danger posed by invasive species; nor, indeed, was I offering a covert remark about UK immigration policy!

What anyway - since the subject has arisen - is the threat level to indigenous flora presented by non-native plants that have found a way to root and bloom in this green and pleasant land? 

Well, according to recent research carried out by researchers at the University of York, the answer is pretty minimal (if not actually negligible). Where alien species thrive, so too do the local plants; where they don't, neither do the latter. And so Nigel Farage can rest easy in his bed at night, happy in the knowledge that no delicate British flower is being driven towards extinction by overly-competitive newcomers (even if they make up 20% of species recorded in 2007).

The fact is that, unlike invasive animal species, plants seem to get along just fine growing side-by-side in chaotic harmony. Thus whilst eco-nationalists will always object to foreign plants growing on British soil and fantasise about a more natural state of affairs in some imaginary past, we can turn a deaf ear towards them and offer up instead three cheers for biodiversity whilst looking forward to an alien spring.  

Psychasthenia

Cover of the 1930 pamphlet produced by Georges Bataille and others 
in response to André Breton's attack upon them in the 
Second Surrealist Manifesto (1929)

The more I read about that castrated old lion and false revolutionary André Breton, the more I dislike him. Not loving love as a moral absolute and not believing that the marvellous can exist separately from the morbid and the monstrous, means I can't possibly embrace his concept of surrealism either.

Does this mean that I too suffer, like Bataille, from a form of decadence or that which Breton, with his clinical background, delighted in identifying as psychasthenia (a mental disorder characterized by irrational phobias, obsessions, anxieties and, apparently, a love of flies)? 

Maybe. 

But anyone who has read Nietzsche knows that these things are advantageous traits in an artist or philosopher (that whilst strength preserves, only sickness advances). Indeed, better death, as Deleuze says, than the good health we have been given and which is so valued by the bourgeois. 

And better even Bataille's excremental philosophy than Breton's angelic surrealism that is ultimately suited only to mystics, poets, and idealists.       

Everything Ends in Shit

Salvador Dali: The Lugubrious Game (1929)

Unlike Bataille, obsessed with making an all-out assault upon human dignity and aesthetics in the name of a base materialism, I don't feel compelled as a thinker to become-porcine and to dig deep into forms of heterogeneous matter with my snout in order to uproot everything with repugnant voracity.

I don't even want to toss rose petals like the Marquis de Sade into a madhouse latrine. In other words, I'm not what André Breton would describe as an excremental philosopher.

But, having said that, one is obliged to concede that everything ends in shit; life terminating as a shipwreck in the nauseous.       

The Ghost of Alexander McQueen

Jellyfish ensemble and Armadillo shoes, Plato's Atlantis, (SS10)

Model Polina Kasina. Photo © Lauren Greenfield/INSTITUTE

 

The ghost of Alexander McQueen will continue to haunt the British fashion industry for decades to come, as the current exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum evidences. Savage Beauty is the first major retrospective of McQueen's work to be presented in Europe, but it certainly won't be the last. 

Why? Because he was a fucking genius whose clothes didn't simply make heads turn, but spin with a mixture of astonishment and repulsion until sick and dizzy with disconcerted pleasure. Quite literally, one feels overawed by his designs and many of the dresses displayed are as difficult to view as they would be to wear and as they undoubtedly were to create and manufacture. 

The devil is in the detail, they say, and McQueen's clothes are so detailed that their exquisite beauty and fine craftsmanship doesn't disguise their malevolent and sinister qualities. All fashion designers attempt to give style to the body and this, of necessity, involves an element of cruelty. But McQueen takes this further than anyone; his dark romanticism and gothic queerness occasionally hint at a brutal and austere futuristic even fascist aesthetic, rather than a playful fetishism or an ironic sado-masochism. 

McQueen wanted the women who wore his clothes to look powerful and terrifying; like alien beings from another time and another world. He wasn't interested in simply provoking tabloid outrage or scandalising the middle-classes; rather, he wanted to instill elements of fear in the human heart in the hope it might beat a little faster. 

Notes

I have chosen an image from McQueen's Plato's Atlantis collection (SS10), not because I think it's his best work, but it was his final collection, presented just before his death in February of that year. Inspired not only by the myth of Atlantis, but also Darwin's theory of evolution, it featured fabulous footwear; including the infamous Armadillo shoes. Click here to see the catwalk show.

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty runs at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) from 14 March - 2 August 2015. For further information, including ticket prices and opening times, visit the Victoria and Albert Museum website (click here).     

Panchira

Panchira by dw817 on deviantart.com

Panchira is a Japanese term for what is doubtless a universal practice; looking up the skirts of young women in the hope of glimpsing what perverts always like to term panties.

Because panchira is a well-established convention within comics, cartoons, and other aspects of popular culture, generations of Japanese men are reared to regard the fetishistic obsession with female undergarments as perfectly natural; they are normalised, in other words, into a pornified worldview that encourages the belief that it is an acceptable and harmless pastime to sneak a peek or take a snapshot up the skirt of any woman in a public space, with or without her consent.

Ironically for a practice that is often regarded as a national sport, the phenomenon of panchira in contemporary Japanese society can probably be traced back to its Westernization following American occupation at the end of the Second World War. As elsewhere, during the fifties and sixties there was a relaxing of taboos as new ideas and fashions began to circulate.

One crucial catalyst to the emerging craze of panchira seems to have been the release of the Billy Wilder movie The Seven Year Itch (1955). The iconic scene in which Marilyn Monroe has trouble with her skirt as she stands on a subway grate, excited the pornographic imagination of the Japanese public even more than the rest of the world. The practice of scoring a glimpse up young women's skirts became extremely popular at this time and many magazines ran articles advising men of the best places where they might view panties.   

What, then, are we to think of this? Obviously, panchira can be analysed psychologically as a form of voyeurism and - from a feminist critical perspective - as an example of what is termed the imperial male gaze (an immobilizing glance by which a woman is both sexually objectified and fixed in place).

But could it not alternatively be argued that it is the male subject who is effectively seduced and made helpless (almost idiotic) before a panty-clad crotch: that panchira thus results in a revenge of the object ...?