On Synthetic Biology (With Reference to the Case of the Spider-Goat)

Illustration by Benjamin Karis-Nix

As regular readers will know, I've long been fascinated by molecular bestiality and the creation of interspecies hybrids. 

And, thanks to astonishing advances in what is known as synthetic biology, the perverse fantasy of all organisms being able to promiscuously swap genes with one another - and not just fuck with their own kind - is fast becoming a reality.

Indeed, we can already marvel at the fact that we live in a world in which spider-goats are producing large quantities of incredibly strong silk in their milk thanks to a transplanted gene from an orb weaving arachnid. 

Such a procedure - described by opponents as Frankenstein science, or a crime against Nature - works because of the convenient truth that all life rests upon the same fourfold protein molecule arranged in various sequences. Thus the genetic code for making silk in a spider is written in exactly the same language as the genetic code for making milk in a goat. Since we now know the language, we can splice bits of code from one species to another.  

This effectively enables us not only to rewrite old forms of life, but to create previously unimagined new forms - things that Nature failed to conceive of despite having millions of years to do so.  

Now, it might be the case that there are important questions concerning this issue which deserve to be carefully and intelligently addressed. But I would invite those with moral concerns and anti-scientific prejudices to examine the facts, think of the potential, and dare to become just a little more bio-curious. 

     

Invasion of the Giant House Spiders

 The Spider at the Top of the Stairs (2015)

Photo by Stephen Alexander

Apparently, thanks to a wet, warm summer in which food has been plentiful, there's been a boom in numbers and an accelerated growth in size of giant house spiders.

The newspapers sensationally speak of UK homeowners facing an invasion which, of course, is overstating the case, but I can report having to confront four of these eight-legged nightmares, including the one pictured at the the top of the stairs, in the past couple of days.

Despite their name, giant house spiders usually prefer to live outside and it's most often sexually mature males who venture indoors, driven in search of a mate. Sadly, this erotic quest is ultimately a tragic one, as the lovesick spiders, having abandoned their webs, stop feeding and so are destined to starve to death - perhaps without ever locating the object of their desire.

I have to admit, I can't help admiring this mad devotion to Eros. But, on the other hand, I don't share the affection for monstrous house spiders that David Sedaris claims to feel and it certainly doesn't deter me from killing them if they creep too close.   

Note: Those interested in reading the humourous essay in which Sedaris expresses his love for April, a giant house spider, can click here for a link to the March 24, 2008 issue of The New Yorker in which it first appeared.    

The Case of Asifa Lahore

Courage comes in many forms, including that of gay drag queen Asif Quaraishi - more widely known as Asifa Lahore - who has bravely taken on the role of spokesperson for those within the British Asian community who want the right to openly express their queer sexual identities without being ostracized, or living in fear of violent repercussions.   

But naivety also comes in many forms and it seems to me that Quaraishi, whilst clearly a sensitive and intelligent individual - not to mention an amusing performer - is being naive in his demand that he not only be accepted as gaysian, but also recognised as a devout Muslim. This is probably not going to happen anytime soon and does rather suggest he wants to have his cake and eat it.

For I think Islam - like Christianity - is very clear on where it stands on the practice of homosexuality: it doesn't much care for it. Based on teachings in the Qur'an, Islamic scholars condemn sodomy as an obscene act (al-fahsha') and as an abnormality (shudhudh) which is contrary to God's will and the natural order, thereby likely to lead to the destruction of humanity.  

Unfortunately, not everything is open to personal interpretation and sometimes a choice has to be made between mutually exclusive and irreconcilable oppositions, such as, in this case, the right to individual and sexual freedom, or strict religious observance. You can't be both a defiant homosexual in complete good faith and practice and a subordinate Muslim in complete good faith and practice. To try, is to lead a compromised life full of contradictions. But perhaps we all lack integrity truth be told ...             

What really surprises me is why anyone who is so clearly disprivileged and despised within a homophobic religious tradition would want to belong to it in any way shape or form; is it really so much harder (or more dangerous) to come out as a secular atheist than a cross-dressing homosexual? Is apostasy still the most unforgivable sin in the minds of believers? 


Notes:

Those interested in this subject should view Muslim Drag Queens, a First Cut documentary for Channel 4, dir. Marcus Plowright, to be broadcast on 24 August, 2015.

Those who want to see a video of super-glamorous Asifa Lahore in action can click here, or visit her website: asifalahore.com   

 

In Solidarity with the Bloggers of Bangladesh

Avijit Roy and his wife Rafida Ahmed Bonya 

Facebook photo (2012)

Three members of an Islamist terror group have been arrested this week in Bangladesh, in connection with the brutal murders of secular bloggers Avijit Roy and Ananta Bijoy Das in separate incidents earlier this year.

Two other bloggers, also said to have insulted Islam with their atheism, have also been killed in Bangladesh in recent months: Niloy Chatterjee and Washiqur Rahman. 

I didn't know any of these writers personally and can't claim to be familiar with their work. I may not even share their politics and values. But, like many others, I feel it's right to protest their deaths, honour their lives, and send condolences to their families and friends - particularly, Roy's wife, Rafida Ahmed Bonya, also a blogger, who was seriously injured in the attack that left her husband lying dead on a street in Dhaka (the city of his birth, and where his father had taught physics at the university). 

The couple, who had US citizenship, had returned to Dhaka in February for a brief visit in order to attend the city's annual book fair. They were leaving one of the events when they were ambushed by a group of young men carrying meat cleavers. 

Roy was the author of several books in Bengali dealing with subjects guaranteed to enrage religious fundamentalists of all stripes. His two most recent works, translated into English as The Philosophy of Disbelief (2011) and The Virus of Faith (2014), give a good indication of his interests and the Dawkins-Dennett inspired perspective from which he passionately argued the case for secularism (something enshrined as one of the four founding principles of the Bangladeshi state, although this seems to be increasingly forgotten or ignored by the Muslim majority).      

I would encourage readers of this blog to read these works as I intend to. 

Klittra: On Sexual Politics in Sweden

Stieg Larsson's best-selling crime novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008), was originally published three years earlier under the much more provocative title Män som hatar kvinnor - Men Who Hate Women; one that indicates the misogyny and violence at the heart of the book and, it seems, Swedish society (despite its reputation for social and sexual equality).

As critics have noted, the work brutally examines this disjunction between image and reality. Where many imagine Sweden to be a kind of achieved utopia, Larsson finds political, financial, and moral corruption - not to mention a form of fascism that is both historically present and rooted in the everyday behaviour (the speech acts, the pleasures, the dreams and fantasies) of those who would like to see an Ikea world triumphant.        

I have to admit, Swedish neo-Nazism and corporate greed doesn't really surprise me. But I was shocked to learn from an EU report last year on sexual violence against women, that, whilst there is an extensive problem across the Continent, it's the Scandinavian countries, where the problem is at its most acute: 46% of Swedish women interviewed, for example, report being the victim of some form of physical or sexual abuse at the hands of men. 

Without wanting to sound flippant, it's perhaps no wonder that so many Swedish women have chosen to make their home in Chako Paul City, a female-only town established in 1820 on the edge of the forests to the north. Better to be in a healthy, happy lesbian world than an unhealthy, unhappy heterosexual one where misogyny and rape are common and normalized. 

Better even just to keep to yourself and make your own fun; which, apparently, a lot of Swedish women do with great enthusiasm. In fact, they even have a new word for it, thanks to the Swedish Association for Sexual Education (RFSU): klittra - a portmanteau of clitoris and glitter. This neologism might not be ideal, but it's better I suppose than other options that included pulla and runka. 

However, whilst I have no objections to Amazonian lesbians living in their own communities, or masturbating women who like to grind their own coffee, as Oliver Mellors would describe it, one can't help but hope for the establishment of better - non-violent, non-sexist - male/female relationships in the future. For I suspect that separatism and sexual solipsism are only partial and short-term solutions (though this suspicion itself might be one full of heteronormative prejudice).

Afterthought: perhaps it will be a young Swedish woman - with or without a dragoon tattoo - who will show us a way forward. And who knows, she might already be living in Malmö; obedient of heart and golden of skin ...     

In Praise of the Octopus

A serving of octopus at the Bar Celta - Barcelona's best pulperia

barcelta.com

We all remember Paul the Octopus, now sadly deceased, for his uncanny abilities of prediction during the World Cup 2010.

It was noted by commentators at the time that octopuses are highly intelligent and sensitive animals with complex thought processes, short and long-term memories, individual personalities, and able not only to learn by observation, but even use tools to solve problems and open jam-jars. In short, they are remarkable creatures.

Indeed, according to the latest findings of scientists mapping their genome, they are even more unique than previously realised; to the extent that we might almost think of them as an alien life-form. That said, they obviously share some features with other animals, including man, such as a closed circulatory system, for example. 

In uncovering their DNA sequence researchers found that octopuses have a similar set of genes (protocadherins) to those found in humans responsible for the forming of neural networks in the brain. This, it is thought, accounts for their ability to quickly adapt and learn from their environments.

But what's crucial to keep in mind is that the octopus - and not man or any other warm-blooded creature - was the first super-smart being on the planet; their primordial intelligence evolved more than 400 million years ago, i.e. 230 million years before mammals first stepped on the Earth.

And so, it's only right, surely, that octopuses are afforded some degree of protection under the law in the UK and other European countries; any experimental procedures that might cause pain may only be performed once the animal has been anesthetized, a kindness usually extended only to vertebrates.    

Ideally, of course, we should just leave them alone to live their lives happily beneath the waves. The problem, however, is that they are so delicious to eat when served with a sprinkling of sea salt, paprika, and olive oil, accompanied by a dry white wine from Galicia, that one suspects that, despite their psychic abilities and numerous other talents, they'll always be on the menu.  


This post is dedicated to my friend Carlos Machado - a great aficionado of catching and cooking octopus. 

On Militant Respectability

A gay protest outside the Pentagon (1965) 

Photo: Kay Tobin (New York Public Library)

Until recently, I had never heard of the strategy of protest termed by historian Marc Stein militant respectability. But now that I have, I'm intrigued by the idea.

For whilst there are times when one is obliged (politically and ethically) to break the law and resort to the use of force, what matters most is not whether a demonstration is violent or non-violent, legal or illegal, but whether it is effective; that is to say, whether it achieves its aims.

And there have been times when the most carefully choreographed, polite, peaceful, well-ordered and well-mannered of protests have been the most successful not in capturing, but in charming support from the public, the media, and, indeed, even opponents. For example, the demonstrations organized by Frank Kameny and the Washington branch of the Mattachine Society in the mid-1960s requesting (not demanding) that gay men and lesbians be given their full civil rights as American citizens, were absolutely carried out in the right manner and cleverly placed squarely within the tradition of lawful American protest. As David Johnson writes:

"Because they had long been seen as subversive and a threat to national security - perhaps even connected with the Communist Party - MSW members were exceedingly careful to highlight not only that they were homosexuals but that they enjoyed rights as American citizens ... suggesting that sexual identity and political rights were not incompatible."  

Wanting to be seen not only as upstanding citizens, but also as potential employees of the civil service, those who marched outside the White House and other government buildings, dressed appropriately; women in dresses, men in suits and ties:

"The MSW drew up strict regulations stating that 'picketing is not an occasion for an assertion of personality, individuality, ego, rebellion, generalized non-conformity or anti-conformity'. Dress and appearance were to be 'conservative and conventional'. Signs had to be approved, neatly lettered, and carried in a prearranged order. Talking among picketers, smoking on line, and acknowledging passers by ... were discouraged."

Militant respectability is thus an ordered and dignified - but also subversive and seductive strategy - rather than a chaotic and confrontational one. Those who do not see how this might at times be necessary and effective - those who think protesting must always be noisy and involve skirmishes with the police - are idiots (and useful idiots at that to the state and its security services).

Torpedo the Ark sometimes means: shut your mouth, smarten up, and put down the petrol bombs; because the 'ark' just might happen to be counterproductive revolutionary posturing, empty political rhetoric and ideological cliché.

Ultimately, if you want to be accepted and have your arguments heard, then you just might consider behaving in a socially acceptable manner and speaking in a pleasant tone of voice. Likewise, if you want to be accorded your rights, then face up to your duties and obligations as a citizen.      


Note: The lines quoted from  David K. Johnson are from The Lavender Scare, (University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 200-01.

On the New Barbarians

Riot police try to maintain order during a registration procedure on Kos. 

Photo: Alkis Konstantinidis / Reuters

From where will come the new barbarians, asked Nietzsche, rather wistfully. And it was a question that also troubled Lawrence. For despite the modern world being very full of people, there were no longer, he said, "any great reservoirs of energetic barbaric life", as in the ancient world. 

At one time, I also shared this romantic fascination for those who roamed outside the gates of Western civilization; peoples full of violent discontent and savage enthusiasm; cultured, but untamed. Men who still believed in their own gods, because they still believed in themselves.

But when one turns on the news and sees what is happening on the Greek islands, and in Sicily, or at the French port of Calais ... One can't help being disconcerted by these hundreds-of-thousands of refugees and asylum seekers - these new barbarians.

It would help, I think, if - despite their obvious desperation - they behaved in a rather more respectable fashion: would it kill them, for example, to queue in an orderly manner and to show at least a modicum of gratitude towards those among whom they would live and prosper?

Having escaped from war, persecution, and sectarian stupidity and made it to European shores, they need now to display the greatest degree of civility and overcome their own terrible and violent origins; not threaten to recreate the very conditions they have fled by importing chaos and resentment. 


Note: the line quoted from Lawrence is taken from Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (CUP, 2004), p. 189.        

Torpedo the Ark - Fire 500! (Ibsen, Nietzsche, and the Question of Revolutionary Nihilism)

Henrik Ibsen (2014) 
A low-poly portrait by Taudalpoi

taudalpoi.wordpress.com

In 1869, the Scandinavian playwright Henrik Ibsen composed a short poem entitled 'To My Friend, the Revolutionary Orator'. It was addressed to a critic who had accused Ibsen, then aged forty-one, of betraying the radical promise of his youth and becoming increasingly conservative. 

In the verse, Ibsen not only wishes to refute the charge, but demonstrate that he remains a perfervid revolutionary; more - not less - radical than before; one who desires the total destruction of the old order. He's not interested, he says, in moving pawns about the chessboard, or in futile social reforms. He wants to make a clean sweep of things.

Becoming increasingly intoxicated by his uncompromising vision of a future founded upon absolute freedom and purity of being achieved via a purge of all existing life forms, Ibsen announces that, come a new flood, he will happily torpedo the ark.

Discontent with anything other than the dream of a new beginning and a new mankind, Ibsen finds it impossible to identify with any political parties or programmes. His extreme individualism leads him towards a form of anarcho-nihilism in which not just the modern state, but the world itself needs to be blown out of the water. 

For some, this might all sound rather like Nietzsche in his grand political mode when he imagines himself as dynamite; a sort of human bomb longing to explode and make a breach in the walls of whatever constrains and coordinates life. For it's true, there are elements of fascism in Nietzsche - particularly in the later works, as he grows ever-more frustrated and possessed by the spirit of revenge that elsewhere in his texts he deplores and seeks to combat.

We shouldn't overlook or deny this; but we should remember also the Nietzsche who wrote: "I do not love people who have to explode like bombs in order to have any effect at all" and advocates a politics of resistance rather than a politics of revolutionary redemption. The Nietzsche who also wrote:

"If change is to be as profound as it can be, the means to it must be given in the smallest doses but unremittingly over long periods of time! Can what is great be created at a single stroke? So let us take care not to exchange the state of morality to which we are accustomed for a new evaluation of things head over heels and amid acts of violence ..."

Of course, some will point out that this 'small doses' passage taken from his mid-period writings is no more indicative of the authentic Nietzsche, or any more quintessential than the later texts in which he fantasizes the seizure of history and evolution. And they'd be right to do so. However, it seems to me to offer a much more interesting and credible teaching than the lame and ludicrous notion of holy war and a return to Year Zero. 

I don't know if Ibsen ever had cause to regret his desire to implement a final solution - but shame on him, as an artist and as a man, if he never came to realise that the chick does not break the shell out of animosity against the egg (as Lawrence would say).

And I would hope, finally, after 500 posts, that the phrase torpedo the ark is understood to mean something very different in the context of this blog to what Ibsen meant by it ...


Notes:

Those interested in reading the Ibsen poem in which the line 'torpedo the ark' appears should click here.

The lines quoted from Nietzsche can be found in (i) The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), III. 218, p. 210, and (ii) Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), V. 534, p. 211.

 

Outsider Art and Beyond

 D. Hall: Teddy, ballpoint pen on paper, (2015)

The phrase outsider art was coined by critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English translation for the French term art brut invented by Jean Dubuffet to describe works created outside the boundaries of official culture by those who are often socially marginalized, such as those suffering with mental illness, for example.

Those labelled as outsider artists are typically self-taught and there is often a naive beauty or innocence to their work, which compensates for lack of technique or sophistication. Usually, outsider artists have no contact with the mainstream art world and make no attempt to exhibit or establish careers. In many cases their work, born of solitude and isolation, is discovered - if at all - posthumously and thus makes money only for others; outsider art having now become a successful marketing category within the art world, despite Dubuffet's hope that it would prove immune to this process.

Interest in the art of those who exhibit extreme states of neuro-cognitive disorder and diversity - as well as young children, native peoples, and animals - is, of course, nothing new. Modernism might almost be said to be nothing other than the brilliant (sometimes cynical, often ironic and subversive) imitation and assimilation of such work, rich in unconventional ideas, fantasy, and expressive power. It's certainly true that many important figures associated with the avant-garde were fascinated and inspired by madness and primitivism (and that some had their own very real mental health issues to deal with).   

This interest in outsider practices among modern artists must, of course, be seen as part of a larger project; one that Nietzsche terms the revaluation of all values. Not that my mother, who is ninety and living with Alzheimer's, cares anything about any of this. She just doesn't know what else to do when alone and frightened and unable now to read the paper or follow her favourite programmes on TV other than pick up a pen and draw little pictures of familiar objects and faces.

And I don't think she's ever used the word art in her life or grasps it as a concept; her relation to art can hardly even be described as one of exteriority. In a sense, she's on the outside of that which is outside art and I have no idea what we might call that space ...