On Ecosexuality

Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle

Here Come the Ecosexuals

For those of you who don't know, Elizabeth Stephens is an interdisciplinary artist, activist and academic whose work explores themes of sexuality, gender, and politics.

Former prostitute and porn star Annie Sprinkle, meanwhile, played an important role in the sex positive feminist movement during the 1980s and has since built up over thirty-five years of experience in erotically charged entertainment, education, and performance art. 

Today, Sprinkle and her partner Stephens are committed to queering the environmental movement and to this end have declared themselves to be ecosexuals. They have also written an ecosex manifesto and established a new field of research and aesthetic practice called sex ecology.

Central to their philosophy is the notion of replacing the metaphor of Earth Mother with that of Earth Lover, in the hope that this might "entice people to develop a more mutual, pleasurable, sustainable, and less destructive relationship with the environment". This means not only treating the Earth with kindness and respect, but also engaging in libidinal relationships with the material world; hugging trees, caressing rocks, being pleasured by waterfalls, etc.

Now, you might be thinking at this point that, as someone who has written enthusiastically on floraphilia, I would happily and unconditionally offer my support to Stephens and Sprinkle - but you'd be mistaken. Unfortunately, I have a number of problems with their project, but these might, for the sake of convenience, be boiled down to just two: firstly, I don't share their idealism and, secondly, I don't like the way they attempt to impose a unified and recognisable sexual identity upon a diverse range of paraphilias and polymorphously perverse practices.

Let's examine each of these points in a bit more detail ...   

1. Like many others before them, including nature worshipping Romantics and blood and soil loving Nazis, Stephens and Sprinkle quickly fall into idealism and, related to this, anthropocentric conceit as they project their own egos (their own politics, their own prejudices, their own peccadilloes) into everything; not just the Earth, but the Sun, the Moon and the Stars to boot. Their ecosexuality is thoroughly - and disappointingly - allzumenschliche.

They would do well, in my view, to learn from Lawrence on this, who, with reference to the case of Thomas Hardy, warns that to try and subject the earth to your own idealism always ends badly - not least of all for you as an idealist. He writes:

"What happens when you idealize the soil, the mother-earth, and really go back to it? Then with overwhelming conviction it is borne in upon you ... that the whole scheme of things is against you. The whole massive rolling of natural fate is coming down on you like a slow glacier, to crush you to extinction. As an idealist.
      Thomas Hardy's pessimism is an absolutely true finding. It is the absolutely true statement of the idealist's last realization, as he wrestles with the bitter soil of beloved mother-earth. He loves her, loves her, loves her. And she just entangles and crushes him like a slow Laocoön snake. The idealist must perish, says mother-earth. ...
      You can't idealize mother-earth. You can try. You can even succeed. But succeeding, you succumb. She will have no pure idealist sons [or, in this case, daughters]. None.
      If you are a child of mother-earth, you must learn to discard your ideal self ... as you discard your clothes at night."

Put simply, the Earth doesn't want to nourish you like a child nor accept you as a lover or spouse; it is massively and monstrously indifferent to your existence and your longings.

2. One of the joys of floraphilia is that it's a paraphilia and not a legitimised form of love; the prefix para implying not only that it exists alongside the latter, but that it's abnormal. And that's how I like it and want it to remain. To be pollen-amorous is to allow one's desire to free float on the passing breeze; it is to become-flower, which is to say, beautiful and soulless. It's not about constructing some new form of sexual identity and of tethering the latter to an essential truth.

Foucault, of course, brilliantly analysed the dangers and disadvantages of this with reference to the birth of the modern homosexual, arguing that homosexuality only "appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species" subject to an entirely new discursive regime.

I'm sure Stephens and Sprinkle are aware of all this and so it surprises me to say the least that they insist on positing ecosexuality as a primary drive and identity, or some sort of ontological category into which all other sexual positionings - GLBTQI - can ultimately be collapsed (because we are all natural beings and all sex is ecosex).

I wish them well, but I also wish they'd exercise a little more philosophical caution and nuance ...       


Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Dana's "Two Years before the Mast"', Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998). 

Readers interested in knowing more about the work of Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle and reading their ecosex manifesto can visit: sexecology.org

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Naomi (Notes on a Japanese Novel)

I.

Sadly, I have to confess my slight disappointment with Tanizaki's novel Chijin no Ai, often translated into English as A Fool's Love, but more commonly known as Naomi (1924). 

For ultimately, talented though he is, Tanizaki is no Nabokov and the book pales in comparison to the latter's tragi-comic masterpiece, Lolita (1955). Joji isn't a fascinating monster of depravity like Humbert and, unlike poor Dolores Haze, the teen waitress Naomi - object of Joji's erotic obsession - fails to capture our hearts (by which I mean arouse our compassion, not just our affection or illicit desire). 

At the end of Tanizaki's book, we are left mildly amused; we are not ravished or made to feel complicit in corruption as readers. There is no dark perversity present in Naomi, no great cruelty or crime. And there is no death.

Having said that, Naomi remains a novel of some import - not least for what it tells us about Japan during the interwar years, as it struggled to come to terms with modernity and the encroaching influence of Western culture. For Naomi is not simply a greedy and manipulative good-time girl with Eurasian features who likes to dance and take lovers, she's the future made flesh come to challenge old conventions, institutions and values with her high heels and hedonism.

Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, the book was received enthusiastically by young, progressive readers who dreamt of the appearance of emancipated women with chic Western hairstyles smoking cigarettes on the cosmopolitan streets of Tokyo unencumbered by centuries of tradition; they even termed this Naomi-ism. But more conservative readers weren't so pleased and the government censors were soon alerted to the existence of this less than wholesome work.


II.

The story, in brief, is that of a rather dull 28-year-old electrical engineer, Joji, who falls for a stylish 15-year-old girl, Naomi, working at a local café. She accepts his offer to place herself under his care and guidance and, eventually, to become his wife. But she doesn't accept that this should in anyway restrict her freedom to come and go as she likes - or, indeed, to love whom she wants. When this invariably results in conflict, it is Naomi who emerges triumphant and Joji who must submit.

From the first, it's obvious what Joji finds attractive about Naomi: her sophisticated-sounding name and the fact that she has something exotically Western about her appearance: "And it's not only her face - even her body has a distinctly Western look when naked", he tells us.

Indeed, despite a certain playful innocence in their relationship, Joji is not blind to the beauty of Naomi's flesh and the wonderful proportion of her limbs; the graceful arms and long straight legs. He derives much pleasure from habitually bathing his young mistress in the washtub and observing how her figure grows strikingly more feminine over time.

Joji's ablutophilia isn't his only kinky method of finding physical satisfaction from his relationship with Naomi, however. He also enjoys engaging in a spot of pony play and having the girl ride on his back whilst he crawls round the room on all fours; giddy-up! she'd cry, and for reins she'd make him hold a towel in his mouth.

Essentially, however, Joji's a foot fetishist and likes most of all to caress, kiss and lick Naomi's lovely soft, white feet (particularly the toes, heels, and insteps). Even after he discovers that she's been deceiving him, Joji can't resist the temptation of Naomi's bare feet. For the opportunity to once again glimpse them peeking out from beneath her kimono, he can forgive her anything and overlook the fact that she was a born prostitute and prick tease:

"Naomi was always whetting my desire ... and luring me to the brink, but then she'd throw up a rigid barrier beyond which she wouldn't step ... no matter how close I thought I'd gotten, there was no penetrating that final barrier."

This continued teasing with which the novel culminates, results at last in a form of male hysteria. Joji grows more and more exasperated and obsessed by the thought of the woman, recalling the tiniest details of Naomi's anatomy: "the shape of her nose; the shape of her eyes; the shape of her lips; the shape of a finger; the curve of her arm, her shoulder, her back, or her leg; her wrist; ankle; elbow; knee; even the sole of her foot ..."

These memories of her flesh have a terrifying capacity to arouse his carnal feelings and seemed in some sense even more vital than the real body parts. Thus it is that this masturbatory fantasia of mental images - supplemented by the many photographs he took of the girl back in happier times - makes Joji dizzy and delirious with desire:

"I saw Naomi's red lips everywhere I looked ... Naomi was like an evil spirit that filled the space between heaven and earth, surrounding me, tormenting me, hearing my moans, but only laughing as she looked on."

In the end, all of Joji's fetishistic pleasures come together and ironically result in his absolute submission. Looking at Naomi fresh from her morning bath, he admires her delicate, pure, vivid white skin. She asks him to shave her body, including her underarms, but without laying a finger on her skin. It quickly gets too much for poor old Joji and he begs her to stop teasing; throwing the razor aside, he then throws himself at her feet and cries: let me be your horse.

For a moment, Naomi hesitates. She stares at him in silent, unblinking astonishment and with an element of fear (worried that he's gone insane): "But then, with a bold, audacious look, she leaped savagely onto [Joji's] back" and forces him to concede to all of her demands; he'll do whatever she says; he'll give her as much money as she needs; he'll let her do whatever she wants; he'll stop calling her Naomi and call her 'Miss Naomi' instead.

These things agreed, she shows him mercy and let's him fuck her: soon, both were covered with soap.


III.

Several years later, Joji in his role as slave-narrator concludes:

"I've known all along that she's fickle and selfish; if those faults were removed, she would lose her value. The more I think of her as fickle and selfish, the more adorable she becomes, and the more deeply I am ensnared by her. I realize now that I can only lose by getting angry.
      There's nothing to be done when one loses confidence in one's self. In my subordinate position, I'm no match for Naomi ... She seems strangely Western as she goes around spouting English ... Often I can't make out what she's saying. ... Sometimes she calls me 'George'.
      The record of our marriage ends here. If you think my account is foolish, please go ahead and laugh. If you think that there's a moral in it, then, please let it serve as a lesson. For myself, it makes no difference what you think of me; I'm in love with Naomi." 


Junichirō Tanizaki, Naomi, trans. Anthony H. Chambers, (Vintage, 2001). All lines quoted are from this edition.

This post is dedicated to my friend and fellow philosopher, Naomi G.

On the Politics of Movember

You might have thought that the Movember Foundation - a charity dedicated to improving men's health and raising awareness of issues around male well-being - would be able to stage its events without attracting too much controversy or critical attention. But you'd be wrong. For even growing a moustache for thirty days can have prickly and pernicious political implications.

Indeed, according to Arianne Shahvisi and Neil Singh, the annual campaign which encourages men to proudly or humourously display facial hair during November and raise money for research into male-specific cancers, such as prostate and testicular cancer, is divisive, gender normative and racist. The problem, as they see it, is essentially twofold:

Firstly, women are effectively prevented from joining in the event, as females with facial hair are regarded as totally unacceptable within our culture (apart from the bearded ladies who appear in circus freak shows). Women who have attempted to show solidarity by relaxing their own shaving etiquette, have often been subject to vile and violent abuse across social media. No one, it seems, wants to see women with hairy legs or upper-lips.

Movember thus lacks inclusivity and serves as a reminder that "women should think carefully before subverting their sexually objectified bodies to join in with boy's games". What's more, the phallocentric decision to fetishize the moustache "reinforces the regressive idea that masculinity is about body chemistry rather than gender identity, and marginalises groups of men who may struggle to grow facial hair, such as trans-men".

Secondly, Movember sends out a very negative message to those minority-ethnic men who sport beards and/or moustaches as cultural and/or religious signifiers and for whom facial hair is neither optional nor something of a joke. For such men, including the millions of UK Muslims, Movember reinforces the othering of hairy, dark-skinned foreigners by the (usually) clean-shaven, white majority and invites laughter in and at their faces.

Thus, for a white man to temporarily grow a moustache as part of a sponsored activity is undeniably racist; at the very least, it displays the same kind of insensitivity and ignorance as shown by those who think it funny to wear blackface or appropriate certain symbolic items of clothing as fancy dress.

And so it's no real surprise to discover that Movember culminates in a number of gala costume parties that showcase what the movement is ultimately about: "white young men ridiculing minorities, and playing up to the lad culture within which the charitable practice has become embedded ... [whilst] female attendees take on the uniforms that now seem fit for any occasion, yet really for none at all: Playboy bunnies, air-hostesses, nurses, cheerleaders ..."

Sadly, because of its laddish tactics and macho bluster, it's doubtful that the Movember Foundation even succeeds in getting male health issues taken more seriously. One might suggest that if they genuinely want to change things and enable men to live healthier, happier lives then they might think more, for example, about deconstructing gender norms that encourage jerkish and destructive behaviour. 


See: Arianne Shahvisi and Neil Singh, 'Why Movember isn't all it's cracked up to be', essay in the New Statesman, (27 Nov 2013). Click here.

For those interested in knowing more about the Movember Foundation (UK), click here.

 

In Praise of Shadows and the Beauty of Japanese Ghost Girls (A Post for Halloween 2016)

A Japanese Ghost Girl or Yūrei [幽靈]

The Land of the Rising Sun is also the Land of the Falling Shadow; a place in which the gathering gloom of twilight and the brilliance of daybreak are held in equal regard and darkness causes no anxiety or discontent. The Japanese accept the moon at midnight and resign themselves to the presence of bats, ghosts, and witches, etc.  

Perhaps no one writes more profoundly in praise of shadows than Junichirō Tanizaki. He understands that the power and the beauty of the object - its allure - is tied precisely to that aspect of it which is forever concealed in darkness and which withdraws from sight (that is to say, its occult aspect).

Take, for example, the fairest and most seductive of all objects - woman - who is arguably never so lovely as she is when at her most spectral, like a phosphorescent jewel glowing softly in the night that loses its magic in the full light of day. In the erotic imagination of the Japanese male, woman is inseparable from darkness; cosmetically enhanced and concealed in the folds of her robe or gown; her raven black hair framing (and often hiding) her white face.       

This is not, typically, a Western aesthetic. For Westerners, beauty is that which shines forth, which radiates, which loves, like truth, to go naked and which can be perceived by the eye. There is, thus, something obscene about our theory of beauty in that it ultimately rests on indecent exposure (not least of sun-kissed female flesh).

And we really rather despise shadowy existence: our quest for enlightenment never ceases and we spare no effort to eradicate even the faintest trace of darkness. Indeed, as Jean Baudrillard pointed out, we would, if we could, leap over our own shadows into a world of pure lucidity and transparency in which to accomplish perfect self-actualization.

Thankfully, however, a being devoid of their shadow, of their mystery, of their object-allure, is no more than a mad fantasy. No matter how bright we make the lights, no matter how much we bare our flesh and reveal our innermost thoughts and feelings, we'll never transcend the night or escape the shadows.

Happy Halloween ...


See: Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, (Vintage, 2001).

Let Them Sing Carols

Ding dong merrily on high ...

The phrase Let them eat cake may never have passed the lips of Marie Antoinette, but it's still commonly attributed to her and has significantly helped tarnish her reputation within the popular imagination. 

Similarly, Angela Merkel's suggestion this week that German citizens address their growing anxiety over the perceived threat posed by Islamism to their way of life - be it secular-liberal or Christian-conservative in character - by singing a few Christmas carols accompanied by someone playing a flute, is likely to prove something she'll never live down and which will be remembered long after her disastrous Chancellorship has ended.

Admitting there are very real concerns - and very real grounds for concern - over her policy of admitting over a million Muslim refugees into Germany last year alone, Merkel told an emergency congress of CDU members in Wittenberg that the way to counter terrorism, rising crime and the creeping Islamisation of European culture, was for German families to gather round and break into a rendition of Silent Night.

Unfortunately, however, all isn't calm and all isn't bright and we can none of us afford to sleep in heavenly peace whilst the barbarians are at the gates and the enemy is already within ...   

Science is Universal

When not writing in praise of shadows and the superiority of the traditional Japanese toilet as a place of spiritual repose and poetic inspiration, Tanizaki likes to dream - somewhat dangerously, I'd suggest - of an Oriental science that would stand in radical opposition and contrast to the knowledge forms and mechanical innovations developed in modern Europe:

"Suppose for instance that we had developed our own physics and chemistry: would not the techniques and industries based on them have taken a different form, would not our ... everyday gadgets, our medicines ... have suited our national temper better than they do? In fact, our conception of physics itself, and even the principles of chemistry, would probably differ from that of Westerners; and the facts we are now taught concerning the nature and function of light, electricity, and atoms might well have presented themselves in different form."

Now, to be fair, Tanizaki immediately pulls himself up at this point and admits that he is merely indulging in idle speculation on matters of which he's entirely ignorant. But it needs to be emphasised just how mistaken and insidious this view is - not least of all in this age of irrationalism, relativism, and anti-scientific stupidity in the name of diversity, otherness, and traditional wisdom.

For whilst each and every nation can have its own cuisine, its own art, its own cinema, etc. it cannot have its own science in the sense in which we today talk about and understand science; the scientific method isn't peculiar to one group of people and the facts it discovers about the world aren't merely local interpretations. Ultimately, science is universal and not determined by race, religion, ideology, or culture. There's no such thing as Soviet biology or Chinese medicine; nor is there Christian evolution, or feminist physics.           

When scientists talk about the Big Bang, for example, they are not simply playing a language game or indulging in empty metaphor; nor are they constructing an oppressive grand narrative. They are, rather, attempting to conceptualise the universe as it exists in mind-independent actuality. By observation and experimentation carried out within a theoretical context, they are making a noble effort to verify that their statements about the world are as objectively true as it's possible for statements to be (whilst still remaining open to falsification in the light of new evidence).

Science is universal not because it's a humanism, but because it describes an inhuman universe ...

See: Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, (Vintage, 2001), p. 14.

Aux Chiottes with Junichirō Tanizaki

Junichirō Tanizaki (1886-1965) was one of the great figures of twentieth century Japanese literature. His work has two main obsessions: erotics and cultural identity and is thus of obvious interest and appeal for the present writer. 

Whilst a young man, he was very much the modern dandy and keen to lead a western lifestyle. But, during his thirties, he became increasingly interested in the traditions and artistic practices of his homeland (particularly the Kansai region) and he is perhaps best known today outside Japan not for his fiction, but for an enchanting little essay - In Praise of Shadows - in which he sketches out his aesthetic credo.

Tanizaki was neither a reactionary nor an eccentric. He didn't violently reject the necessities of modern life and - unlike D. H. Lawrence - he writes enthusiastically of the blessings of scientific civilization.

For example, he's surprisingly relaxed on the subject of electric lighting; "the sight of a naked bulb beneath an ordinary  milk glass shade seems simpler and more natural than any gratuitous attempt to hide it" [6]. Indeed, gazing out from the window of a train at twilight as it passes through the lonely countryside, can give even the most humble of lamps a decidedly elegant glow.

On the other hand, Tanizaki has no time for the snarl of an electric fan and insists they remain out of place in a Japanese room. Similarly, no modern stove will ever look right. What's more, gas stoves are noisy and produce headaches, whilst electric stoves, "though at least free from these defects, are every bit as ugly" [7].

As for the question of bath tiles, Tanizaki admits they are practical and economical, but their sparkling whiteness can completely ruin the beauty of the bathroom if the latter is mostly made of fine wood. But this isn't a major worry for him and he's prepared to compromise. The toilet, however, is another matter and the source of far more vexatious concerns.

For Tanizaki, the toilet is the key room of the Japanese dwelling place - not the kitchen, or the bathroom. And whilst the parlour may have its charms, it's the noble Japanese kharsie that "truly is a place of spiritual repose", standing apart as it does from the main house "in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss" [9].

At first, you think he's joking. But then it becomes apparent that Tanizaki is writing in earnest in praise not only of shadows, but of the shithouse: "No words can describe that sensation as one sits in the dim light ... lost in meditation or gazing out at the garden ... surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood ..." [9]

He continues:

"There are certain prerequisites: a degree of dimness, absolute cleanliness, and quiet so complete one can hear the hum of a mosquito. I love to listen from such a toilet to the sound of softly falling rain ... And the toilet is the perfect place to listen to the chirping of insects or the song of birds, to view the moon, or to enjoy any of those poignant moments that mark the change of the seasons. Here, I suspect, is where haiku poets over the ages have come by a great many of their ideas. Indeed one could claim with some justice that of all the elements of Japanese architecture, the toilet is the most aesthetic. Our forebears, making poetry of everything in their lives, transformed what by rights should be the most unsanitary room in the house into a place of unsurpassed elegance, replete with fond associations with the beauties of nature. ...
      Anyone with a taste for traditional architecture must agree that the Japanese toilet is perfection." [9-10]

Having said that, Tanizaki concedes that wood-flooring and tatami matting is hard to keep clean, so one might be better off installing all the latest mod-cons after all. Certainly, he wants a powerful flush system - even at the cost of destroying all affinity with nature and good taste! But excessive illumination and cleanliness in the toilet, however, is just too antithetical to the Japanese sensibility; "what need is there to remind us so forcefully of the issue of our own bodies ... the cleanliness of what can be seen only calls up more clearly thoughts of what cannot be seen" [11].

When it comes to constructing a toilet of great beauty that serves as a place of philosophical reflection, then "the distinction between the clean and the unclean is best left obscure, shrouded in a dusky haze" [11].
 

See: Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, (Vintage, 2001). Page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.     
  

Thanks to Katxu for suggesting I read the above work.

Carlo Rovelli: Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (A Review)

It's no surprise that Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist, should feel comfortable discussing very large things on the one hand - the architecture of the cosmos - and very small things - elementary particles - on the other.

No surprise either that he should choose to discuss both within the pages of a single book. For, like many of his colleagues, Rovelli is keen to promote the possibility of a unified theory of the universe in which the principles of general relativity and quantum mechanics cease to contradict one another.   

What is a surprise, however - and something of a disappointment - is that he should choose to do so in such a slim volume and that the critical consensus is so overwhelmingly favourable. I have to admit, I would've liked a bit more; in aiming for rapidity one sometimes ends up flirting with vapidity.  

Further, where others located a sparse and elegant beauty in his writing, I have to admit I found something cloying and romantic. Ultimately, I don't really want science masquerading as poetry, anymore than I expect poetry to pose as a form of logical analysis. And whilst I don't mind attempts at producing popular science books or TV shows, I don't want things to become folksy and patronising.

In other words, Carlo, if you wish to place your intellectual project within a nutshell that's fine by me - but please, signor, not inside a Kinder Sorpresa ...

Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, trans. Simon Carnell and Erica Segre, (Penguin Books, 2016).

Ben Lerner: The Hatred of Poetry (A Review)

Ben Lerner is a very clever man: a poet, a novelist, and a professor of English. And so it's no real surprise to discover he's written a very clever little book on the hatred of poetry, which, he argues, is essential to the practice of writing poetry; a practice that is also destined to failure, no matter how successful certain poems might appear. For whilst it aspires to be an art of transcendence, poetry is ultimately as mortal and as mundane as everything else. Thus, as Lerner points out, the poet is always a tragic figure.

Discovering this, however, is a bitter disappointment to many practitioners and readers and it makes them rather resentful. But hate, as Lawrence says, is more often than not only love on the recoil. And so as much as Lerner claims to dislike poetry and to read it, like Marianne Moore, with a perfect contempt, he remains of course devoted to it and his book is a defence of poetry (as a space of authenticity), not an assault upon it, nor another tedious and premature announcement of its death. 

Unlike those who feel in some manner betrayed by poetry's failure to deliver on its promise, Lerner seems to rejoice in the impossibility of writing a genuinely successful (or successfully genuine) poem, i.e. a virtual as opposed to an actual verse. He has - in part at least - reconciled himself to the fact that "There is no genuine poetry; there is only, after all, and at best, a place for it." [18]

And Lerner remains determined to defend this place; not merely as an individual writer struggling with his own unique demon, but as a member of a wider human community, despite the latter often being no more than a privileged white male political fantasy - the myth of universality - as he exposes and concedes.  

Following his introductory remarks, Lerner provides fresh and insightful readings of two great poets, Keats and Emily Dickinson, who, although very different writers, nevertheless "make a place for the genuine by producing a negative image of the ideal Poem we cannot write ... [and] express their contempt for merely actual poems by developing techniques for virtualizing their own compositions ..." [51-2]

More controversially perhaps, he also makes a case for reconsidering the work of William McGonagall - thought by many to be the world's worst poet. Lerner doesn't wish to challenge this critical consensus, but, more interestingly, argue that it's the abysmal nature of his verse that gives it value:

"The horrible and the great ... have more in common than the mediocre ... or even pretty good, because they rage against the merely actual ... in order to approach ... the imaginary work that could reconcile the finite and the infinite, the individual and the communal, which can make a new world out of the linguistic materials of this one." [51-2]

Lerner then discusses Whitman. And, to his credit, he does so with the same relaxed brilliance as he discussed the other poets mentioned, concluding that Walt's great utopian project has never been - and can never be - realised.

Whitman thought he could personally embody all differences and all contradictions, could speak for one and all. But he couldn't. And Lerner's discussion of the black female poet Claudia Rankine, whose work "reflects many of the contradictory political demands made of poetry while providing a contemporary example of how a poet might strategically explore the limits of the actual" [87], explicitly tells us why this is so.

Poems, Lerner concludes, "can fulfil any number of ambitions ... can actually be funny, or lovely, or offer solace, or courage, or inspiration to certain audiences at certain times; they can play a role in constituting a community" [101-02], no matter how restricted in scale and provisional the latter might be.

But they can't rise above time, express irreducible individuality, achieve universality, defeat the more powerful language games of society, or bring about a revaluation of all values. Thus we need, if you like, to curb our enthusiasm for poetry; if we stopped expecting too much of it and persisting in our idealism, then we may possibly learn how to stop hating it too.

Indeed, if we strive in a Nietzschean fashion to consummate our hatred and perfect our contempt, then, who knows, "it might come to resemble love" [114].  

Ben Lerner, The Hatred of Poetry, (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2016). Page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.

This post is gifted to my friend Simon Solomon as a slightly premature birthday present. 

The Sisters of Artemis

Jennie Linden as Ursula and Glenda Jackson as Gudrun

Women in Love, dir. Ken Russell (1969)

"The sisters were women, Ursula twenty-six, and Gudrun twenty-five. But both had the remote, virgin look of modern girls, sisters of Artemis rather than of Hebe."

- D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love

These enigmatic lines, which appear early on in the opening chapter of Lawrence's greatest novel, arguably provide a key not merely to the character of the Brangwen sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, but to the sexual politics of the book and Lawrence's often disconcerting views on women - particularly modern women.

In the first sentence, the narrator isn't indicating the ages of the sisters just as a matter of sexist convention (one still subscribed to even now by certain members of the press). Rather, he wants us to understand that they have had experience in the world, including the world of love. They are knowledgeable women, even if unmarried and childless, not naive, inexperienced young girls, or unhappy spinsters still dreaming of their first kiss.

However, the next sentence opens with a crucial conjunction that qualifies what has just been said:

The sisters were women ... But both had the remote, virgin look of modern girls ...

In other words, whilst Ursula and Gudrun have had lovers in the past - and so were not technically virgins - yet they appeared to still have something virginal about them; not so much an innocence or purity, but a remoteness characterized as a specifically modern phenomenon related to the collapse of values and death of authentic, spontaneous feeling.

We might say that whilst both sisters had been fucked, neither had been touched or in any significant manner changed by their sexual encounters. They were essentially cut off from other people, from the men they knew, and yet ironically indifferent to the fact - prepared to joke about their single-status and fiercely proud of their independence.

Like sisters of Artemis, they planned on hunting down every new experience and sensation dressed in short-skirts and brightly coloured-stockings, whilst remaining free and essentially untouched. They possessed not the lovely innocence of the goddess Hebe which is tied to youth and, crucially, to an idea of service and submission promising fulfilment (Hebe, for those unfamiliar with Greek mythology, was the adolescent cup-bearer to the gods of Olympus). 

Gudrun especially will never get down on her knees to any man, as Gerald discovers to his cost. She will strike the first and last blow in the battle of the sexes and never play the humble slave. Ursula, however, through her transcendent and abiding relationship with Birkin, does eventually learn how to become a wife and woman in the officially-approved Lawrentian manner; i.e. accepting the man and the superfine stability that he offers as a fate.

For without such, it's implied, she's just like a stray cat - a fluffy bit of chaos ...


This post was suggested by David Brock and I am grateful for his thoughts on the topic.