Lawrence, Derrida, and the Snake: It's Time for Man to Make Amends

Snake is one of Lawrence's most widely known poems, subject to numerous critical readings. But perhaps the best of these - certainly the one that most interests at present - is Derrida's. For it's a reading in which the question of interspecies ethics is paramount, i.e., how should we behave when confronted by the non-human otherness of the animal. 

The fact that we need to develop a new type of ethics and form a new relationship with animals can, I suppose, be regarded as a given. For the old relationship, determined by an implicitly anthropocentric moral philosophy in which the human subject is granted dominion over all other creatures and can treat them or eat them as he will, is clearly not satisfactory or working very well; unless, that is, one actively desires to continue the industrial slaughter of domestic beasts and further the mass extinction of wild things.

I certainly don't want this and, contrary to what some readers mistakenly believe, torpedo the ark doesn't mean exterminate all life forms. Rather, it means destroy the human coordination and exploitation of animals - the making them march two-by-two into captivity and containment within a system described by Derrida as carnophallogocentric; a system in which they are turned into just another natural resource to be processed and negated in their uniqueness of being.  

In his poem, Lawrence as narrator attempts to approach and to know a real snake - not merely an idealized construction or symbol - with a mixture of respect and due reverence. He's not entirely successful, but he tries. Thus he accepts that he is ethically accountable for his behaviour, including his cruelty, towards the snake and this is what fascinates Derrida in his reading. This and the fact that Lawrence openly challenges Judeo-Christian fears regarding snakes that are biblically rooted within our culture. As Anna Barcz notes:

"Derrida does not treat the poem as a challenge to literary criticism; he reads it, paying attention to details, as a sort of guidebook, a summary of human and other species' history of complex relationships and emerging problems. This results in a philosophical interpretation ... [that] sheds light on the issue of human and animal rapprochement and distance, not directly but also not far from the vantage point  of many critical, anti-speciesist and anti- or post-humanist accounts." 

Derrida is convinced that Lawrence's short verse effectively anticipates and contains his own animal philosophy in poetic form, as it touches upon just about everything that he himself is concerned with in a lecture series entitled The Beast and the Sovereign. Like Lawrence, Derrida concludes that we as humans have something to profoundly regret in the history of our relationship to the animal; a pettiness to expiate. 

This healing process begins when we recognise both the victimhood and the sovereignty of the snake; that he has been unfairly persecuted and that he is, in fact, an uncrowned king - one of the true lords of life.

Notes:

Anna Barcz, 'On D. H. Lawrence's Snake That Slips Out of the Text: Derrida's Reading of the Poem', Brno Studies in English, Vol. 39, No. 1, (2013), pp. 167- 82. Lines quoted are on p. 170.  

Jacques Derrida, The Beast and the Sovereign, trans. Geoffrey Bennington, Vol. I, Michel Lisse, Marie-Louise Mallet, and Ginette Michaud (eds.), (Chicago University Press, 2009); see the 'Ninth Session' for Derrida's discussion of Lawrence's poem Snake.  

D. H. Lawrence, 'Snake', Birds, Beasts and Flowers, in The Poems (Volume. 1), ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 303-05. 

 

Save the Chimps of Monkey Island!

Yes! We have no bananas, we have no bananas today.

One of the more upsetting stories in recent days concerns the threat of starvation facing the chimps of Monkey Island. 

The colony of over sixty individuals, is composed of ex-lab animals who played a vital role for many years in biomedical research for the New York Blood Center. Amongst other things, they helped scientists discover a vaccine for hepatitis and gain an international reputation for their work in the field of viral infections.

The NYBC, which established the apes in their idyllic new retirement home a decade ago, deep in the jungle of southern Liberia, has shockingly reneged on a promise to provide lifelong care by suddenly withdrawing the funds needed for supplies of fresh food and water, thus effectively leaving them to die.

This action has - not surprisingly - been condemned by numerous groups and charities and prompted a letter of moral rebuke from Jane Goodall. But, for me, it's not merely a matter of animal welfare; it's also a class issue to do with workers' rights in retirement, ensuring they can live out their days in freedom and security. It should thus also solicit full union support. 

These chimps are not wild animals; most spent decades as test subjects and part of an involuntary labour force. Some were born and raised in captivity. All are therefore fully deserving of compensation in my view, or a decent pension - particularly when this is essentially just the provision of a few bananas and maybe the odd mango. 

The $30,000 monthly cost of care is peanuts for a prestigious (and profitable) institution such as the NYBC which has hundreds of millions in revenue each year. They should not only be reminded of the written commitment made in 2005 by then director Alfred Prince to provide a sanctuary and look after the chimps, but legally obliged to honour such.

And it shouldn't require the evolution of a Caesar figure to ensure this ...

Note: those interested in the chimps of Monkey Island might like to view a short documentary from the makers of 20th Century Fox's Dawn of the Planet of the Apes available on YouTube: click here.

Those interested in the campaign to end the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research should click here.

  

Ours is the Day of Realization

Cover (detail) of the 1961 Penguin edition

The latest news from the Lawrence world is of a new adaptation of Lady C. made by the BBC and to be broadcast this autumn. Do we really need such? I don't know: it's debatable. What was once a vital and necessary book no longer seems so today. Nevertheless, the news has made me want to rethink the novel and, here, look again at Lawrence's surprising defence of it in the opening pages of his posthumously published essay A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'. 

After briefly detailing the various pirated editions, Lawrence claims that he wrote and published his most notorious novel in good faith as an honest, healthy book containing an obscene litany of four-letter words that shock at first, but "don't shock at all after a while". Is this because we as readers are rapidly depraved by familiarity? No, says Lawrence, it's because such words only ever troubled the eye and ear and never really disturbed the mind which has evolved far beyond the body and its overly-sensitive organs prone to "violent and indiscriminate physical reactions" that threaten culture and society.

This, it has to be said, is a rather astonishing argument coming from Lawrence of all people. For it implies our sensory organs work independently of consciousness and that their perceptions are superficial, dim-witted, and dangerous. Lawrence thereby not only reinforces a damaging mind/body division, but unexpectedly opts to come down squarely on the side of the former. Indeed, he says quite openly in this astonishing essay that individuals without minds don't interest him and don't matter.

Modern men and women, he continues, are superior to the people of the past precisely because they are capable of a more sophisticated and relaxed relationship with language; they can assign to words "only those mental and imaginative reactions which belong to the mind" and thus not respond like crude savages to every provocation and stimulus without thinking. 

Thus, whilst Lawrence wants us to act, "the great necessity is that we should act according to our thoughts" and not allow ourselves to be so feeble-minded  that we are incapable of contemplating our own bodies (and the words that relate to bodily functions) without "getting all messed up" and carried away. In particular, Lawrence wants us to be able to think sex. 

This, he writes, is the real point of Lady Chatterley's Lover. It's neither a manifesto for sexual liberation nor an apology for adultery. Rather, it's a bold - and puritanical - attempt to realise sex in the head; "fully, completely, honestly, and cleanly". Lawrence knowingly aims at an explicit literary representation of desire; that is to say, he wants to transform the intensity of physical experience and erotic sensation into a pure piece of knowledge. 

Indeed, it's his conviction that a large number of people are happiest "when they abstain and stay sexually apart, quite clean: and at the same time, when they understand and realize sex more fully". He continues, in a startling passage that anticipates Baudrillard's thinking on the world that exists after the orgy:

"Ours is the day of realization rather than action. There has been so much action in the past, especially sexual action, a weary repetition over and over, without a corresponding thought, a corresponding realization. Now our business is to realize sex. Today the full conscious realization of sex is even more important than the act itself. After centuries of obfuscation, the mind demands to know and know fully. The body is a good deal in abeyance, really. When people act in sex, nowadays, they are half the time acting up. They do it because they think it is expected of them. Whereas as a matter of fact it is the mind which is interested, and the body has to be provoked. The reason being that our ancestors have so assiduously acted sex without ever thinking it or realizing it, that now the act tends to be mechanical, dull, and disappointing, and only fresh mental realization will freshen up the experience."

Lawrence, we might conclude, ultimately encourages us to spend less time in the bedroom and more time in the library. Lady C. is a book for thinking, nothing else: a call for a new form of chastity, it belongs to those thought-adventurers for whom the pleasure of the text is the greatest pleasure of all. 

I'll be extremely impressed if Jed Mercurio's new BBC adaptation manages to get this point across and isn't merely another lame and ludicrous work of pretentious soft-porn. We'll see ...


Notes

A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' can be found in the Cambridge Edition of  Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (CUP, 1993), pp. 303-35. The lines quoted from this essay here can be found on pp. 307-08. 

Readers might be interested and amused to know that later in the same essay, Lawrence flagrantly contradicts what he says here by arguing the complete opposite and indulging in a far more familiar anti-mind, pro-body rant; calling for greater harmony between the two, whilst still keeping them separate within a system of metaphysical dualism. As with Nietzsche, you can find textual support in Lawrence for almost any position; the challenge is not to determine the author's genuine view, but to critically examine all perspectives and realise that truth can never be fixed or given absolute moral-logical consistency. 

   

Nietzschean Notes on the Question of Power

The question of power is, for Nietzsche and those who write within his shadow, one of primary importance and the attempt to formulate and advance a critical conception of power beyond the reactive representations of moral idealism remains a real concern. That is to say, a conception free from what Lawrence describes as the superficial contempt for power which most of us experience due to the fact that we moderns only know dead power. Live or active power is worthy of esteem. It is not brute force, which is base and tied to bullying authority or what Deleuze identifies as emaciated forms of prohibition.

This is the key: to rethink power outside of currently accepted values and as more than that which restricts, prohibits, and denies. For power, as Foucault pointed out, has somewhat ironically been made subject to a repressive hypothesis and conceived as poor in resources, sparing in its methods, and incapable of invention. Only when we liberate our thinking on power will we see that what makes power so intoxicating is the fact that it doesn't only weigh on us as a force that says no; rather, "it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasures, forms of knowledge, produces discourse". 

In other words, power keeps us alive and in touch with one another acting as it does as the great productive network running throughout the social and political body. This is why Lawrence insists that power is not only prior to love, but that the latter is ultimately called into being by the former; "the first and greatest of all mysteries". 

Jesus failed because he didn't understand this; didn't experience the joy of an erection on a sunny day. Indeed, rather than thinking of power as a form of eternal delight, he taught that goodness is a form of impotence and passivity and evil is the active springing from energy which violates all human attempts to stabilize the free movement of life. 

Nietzsche was having none of this. Like Blake (and like any other poet worth his salt), he recognised that man needs what is most evil in him if he is to develop what is also best and most beautiful in him. Be happy, he says, and you will be good (once more reversing Christian teaching). But one is only happy when one feels oneself powerful and a little bit demonic via an expenditure (not an accumulation) of energy - shining like a tiny star with brilliant intensity, but to no end. 

Power is thus not something one can consciously seek out or seize and possess; power, rather, is that which can only be accepted as a gift flowing into us from behind and below - and flowing just as vitally away from us forever beyond our control. And humanism is everything that would limit this and accustom us to see the figure of Man behind every event and phenomenon.

Nietzsche's anti-humanist philosophy doesn't consider goodness or pleasure as its primary aim. Nevertheless, as indicated, his notion of joy connected to his concept of power allows for a new ethic to emerge. Or perhaps not so new: ethos anthropoi daimon, as Heraclitus would say ...

Note: this post is an extract taken from my study of Nietzsche's project of revaluation entitled Outside the Gate (Blind Cupid Press, 2010) and those who are interested in reading more on the subject of power and the politics of evil - as well as tracking down references - might like to consult part II, chapter 5 of this text. 

In Defence of the Cleft of Venus

 
Camel toe is an ugly name for a beautiful thing; what is known and revered within more enlightened cultures as the cleft of Venus or, if you prefer the pudendal fissure; i.e., the groove at the base of the mons pubis where it divides to form the lips of the labia majora. 

Personally, I would like all women to be proud of their genitalia - or even cheerfully indifferent. 

But, unfortunately, there is a constant and concerted effort to make them ashamed of their bodies and remind them that they are forever being scrutinized, ridiculed, and judged (both by men and by other women who have learned how to view themselves and members of their own sex in a perversely puritanical manner).   

The jeeringly misogynistic term camel toe plays a significant role in this, letting women know that all eyes are fixed on their most intimate areas and that their cunts - even in outline - ought to be a source of acute embarrassment; an obscene fashion faux pas far worse than visible panty line.

But the same people who invent this false concern for women to worry about, also provide a solution: a pair of knickers designed by Maggie Han and sold under the name of Camel No. 

Ms Han, after suffering from the problem herself and fearing that it might make people think she had a huge vagina, has created a new form of polyester and spandex underwear fitted with a modesty enhancement panel composed of odourless medical-grade silicone to prevent all unsightly creases or the impression of faulty anatomy. Now all women can be as smooth as a Barbie doll between the legs! 

One surely doesn't have to be a radical feminist or a courageous vulva activist to find this strangely depressing and offensive ...?

For whilst I don't mind if some individuals aspire towards plastic perfection and opt for designer vaginas neatly tucked away, I do object when this ideal is extended into a categorical imperative within a pornified and photoshopped culture obliging women and ever-younger girls to find their flesh dirty and inferior and confuse anatomical self-loathing with empowerment (i.e., when sexism and misogyny become internalized and normalized across gender).  

The Case of Farah Ann Abdul Hadi (and Her Pudendal Cleft)

Twenty-one-year-old gymnast Farah Ann Abdul Hadi recently won six medals, including two gold, for Malaysia in an international competition and one might have thought that this would be cause for universal celebration in her Southeast Asian homeland. 

Alas, 'twas not the case ...

In fact, far from being proud of her sporting achievements and sharing in her joy, the country's religious lunatics are up in arms about the revealing nature of her leotard and the fact that they could clearly see her pudendal cleft beneath the material.

For whilst most of us are perfectly happy when watching gymnastics to marvel at the lovely curves of the body, the supple young limbs, and, indeed, the tightness of the outfits worn, it seems that senior clerics are deeply concerned about female athletes exposing their aurat. 

And so the MP for Islamic Affairs has announced there is to be a thorough review, making it very clear that he too expects athletes in future to wear clothing that complies with the standards of decency required of all Muslims.

Added to his voice, was that of Roszida Kamaruddin, head of the girls' division of the National Muslim Youth Association, who in a statement said that whilst women should not be stopped from competing in sports, it's imperative that they cover up their nakedness and allow no risk of camel toe under any circumstances. To be modestly attired, she argued, needn't restrict an athlete's chances of success - although she was obliged to concede that it might be difficult to perform gymnastics in a burka.

Happily, not only has Miss Abdul Hadi bravely - and humourously - stood up to these idiots, but thousands of her fans and members of the Malaysian public have also taken to social media to express their support. 

Many in the media have also mocked the grey-bearded religious authorities for their mixture of puritanism and pervyness, with one journalist expressing his shock that men of such learning cannot seem to tell the difference between a professional athlete performing with skill and grace and a pole-dancing stripper wilfully shoving her genitalia into the faces of her audience.       

The Case of Helly Luv

Whether one chooses to think of her as a Kurdish Vera Lynn - sweetheart of the Peshmerga forces - or as a Middle-Eastern Shakira shaking her booty in the face of the Islamic State, the case of Helan Abdulla or, as she is better known, Helly Luv, is one that raises some problematic issues.

Let me first say this: the 26 year-old actress, singer and dancer displays real courage in the face of mortal danger. For this, she deserves our respect. Miss Abdulla is a beautiful young woman prepared to risk life and limb in order to achieve chart success and a film career. And she's someone who has experienced hard times; born in Iran during the Gulf War, she and her family were forced to flee first to Turkey before then seeking asylum in Finland where they were eventually granted citizenship. 

At eighteen, Miss Abdulla moved to LA in order to pursue her dream of stardom. One thing led to another, and, in 2013, she released a single under the name of Helly Luv. Risk It All synthesized Latin and Middle-Eastern rhythms into a catchy contemporary dance track that highlighted the plight of the Kurdish people. The song and accompanying video garnered a good deal of critical attention and millions of YouTube views. It also - predictably - brought death threats her way from Islamic militants.

Rather than back down in the face of these threats, however, Miss Abdulla released a follow-up single in 2015 entitled Revolution for which a still more controversial video was shot in an abandoned village near Mosul, where Kurdish militia were engaged in combat with IS fighters. In the video, Helly Luv is seen painting the word 'revolution' on a shell in red lipstick before personally firing it towards the IS front line just a few kilometres away.

I suppose it's this kind of thing that ultimately causes me problems. For the packaging of warfare inside a slick and glossy music video undoubtedly glamourises violence and has something worryingly fascistic about it. I'm perfectly happy for performers to express political views (even if such views are often naive and misguided), but I don't really want to see them posing with petrol bombs and surrounded by dancers carrying AK-47 automatic rifles.

Nor even, for that matter, do I want to see wild animals being exploited; so please, Helly, no more lions ...


Notes:

To watch the video for Risk It All click here.  

To watch the video for Revolution click here. 

To visit the Helly Luv official site click here.

In Defence of Weeds and Wildflowers

Bill and Ben The Flower Pot Men, with much loved friend Little Weed

If the word vermin is one that I find offensive and problematic (as explained in a recent post), so too is the term weed - and for similar reasons. For like vermin, weed is not simply a neutral term which objectively describes; taxonomically, it lacks any real botanical meaning or reference. 

Weed, rather, is a qualitative noun used to classify certain plants thought to be growing out of place and in a manner that opens the way for the discriminatory practice of weeding, or the use of herbicides by those green-fingered fanatics who insist on human order and the coordination of life (or what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung).

Like vermin, weed is therefore a morally pernicious term that passes judgement; a form of fascist death sentence passed on any wildflower that threatens to encroach upon our intensively farmed agricultural spaces, or dares to blossom in our well-maintained, lovely-looking, but essentially joyless gardens and parks.

It should be noted that the term weed is also applied to those people thought to be feeble, effeminate, or perhaps too bookish; those who might not only be regarded as poor physical specimens, but politically suspect and socially undesirable - persons in need of weeding out ...

It is thus another thoroughly vile term; one that I never use and do not like to hear used - unless it's by Bill and Ben, The Flower Pot Men, and with reference to their friend Little Weed whom they obviously love dearly, as do I. 


This post is dedicated to David Brock.

Vermin (With Reference to the Case of Gregor Samsa)

 Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, 

fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

The word vermin is an ugly term for an ugly phenomenon; a qualitative noun that doesn't innocently describe a type of unclean animal or a class of sub-human subject, but identifies, classifies, and characterizes as such. 

A morally pernicious term that is effectively a mortal judgement passed; a death sentence. For to designate as vermin is to make fit for extermination. 

It includes wild birds and beasts that are thought to carry disease or in some other way endanger or threaten to disrupt human enterprise with their destructive activities; pesky insects and parasites that swarm and infest; and, lastly, people perceived as dirty, despicable, and problematic (Jews, gypsies, immigrants, the homeless, the unemployed, and the poor in general). 

Thus, if when applied to animals the term betrays mankind's innate sense of supremacy or speciesism, when applied to our fellow men and women it manifests our murderous racism and xenophobia. 

The Nazis, of course, had a particular penchant for portraying their opponents and those they feared and despised as Ungeziefer and Untermenschen - i.e. not worthy of sacrifice or society; Lebensunwertes Leben. 

And so vermin is a word that makes me particularly uncomfortable; one that I would never use and do not like to hear used. It reminds me at last of poor Gregor Samsa; what happened to him might happen to any of us, so there's surely a lesson to be learned here.

On Fossils and Fundamentalists

Reconstruction of Tiktaalik rosae by Obsidian Soul (2012)

In 2006, a team of scientists announced their discovery of Tiktaalik rosae, a fossilized creature from 375 million years ago that soon became known as the fishapod, combining as it did features and characteristics of both water-living and land-dwelling animals.  

Tiktaalik was one of those rare and astonishing things: a fantastically well-preserved transitional species (or so-called missing link) and thus a highly significant find. Not surprisingly, therefore, Tiktaalik's discovery was greeted with great excitement within the scientific community and received extensive media coverage. 

In fact, the only people who weren't amazed and captivated by Tiktaalik were those individuals who, for crackpot religious reasons, reject not only the theory of evolution, but even the observable facts upon which the theory of evolution is based. Individuals who describe themselves as young earth creationists. 

Creationism, as the name implies, is the belief that the universe originates from an act of divine creation, as described in Genesis. This includes all life on earth. Whilst some creationists read this biblical creation narrative symbolically and vainly attempt to reconcile it with modern science, others, the so-called young earthers, prefer to take it literally and thus fervently deny evolution and insist that the world cannot be more than 10,000 years old - whatever the empirical evidence may be to the contrary.    

Young earth creationism is thus religious fundamentalism at its most unabashed and its most wilfully stupid. It's tempting to simply look away and pretend that such people are few in number and small in influence. Unfortunately, however, creationism - particularly in the United States - is a genuine concern and presents a very real threat to scientific education and innovation. The Institute for Creation Research, the Creation Research Society, and Answers in Genesis (which, in 2007, established the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky) have more money and more power than one might like to think.

And so, one is obliged to confront and to challenge such stupidity; not in the hope that one might persuade creationists themselves to examine the known facts and reconsider their views in the light of such, but in the hope that some of those who might be swayed by the pseudo-science of intelligent design and the reassuring rhetoric of the faithful (God loves you and you are made in his image and living in a divinely ordered universe with purpose and meaning, etc.) will dare to keep their minds open and always ask for evidence.

Torpedo the Ark means valuing intellectual integrity over and above religious ignorance. And it means learning to love your inner fish in preference to the Jesus fish ...         

Notes:

Those who are interested in reading clear and concise counterarguments to the sort of nonsense put forward by creationists might like to see John Rennie's article in the July, 2002 edition of Scientific American - click here. 

Alternatively, click here for a transcript of Brian Dunning's podcast 'How to Debate a Young Earth Creationist' (Skeptoid # 65, September 11, 2007).

 

Those who would like to know more about Tiktaalik rosae should visit the University of Chicago website dedicated to this extraordinary fossil: click here.