Nothing Important Happened Today (On Revolutionary Events)

King George III (1738-1820)

One of my favourite stories concerns George III who, on July 4, 1776, wrote in his diary with regal indifference to unfolding events in the Colonies: Nothing important happened today. 

Royal biographers and historians - overly concerned with the facts as these people often are - insist that this is entirely false; one of those apocryphal stories that enters and continues to circulate within the popular imagination simply because people wish to believe it to be true. King George didn't even keep a diary, they protest, but, sadly for them, to no avail; even former Deputy Director of the FBI, Alvin Kersh, referenced this fictitious journal entry.         

I suppose, philosophically, why it interests is because it makes one question what constitutes an event of any description; that is to say, what has to happen for something to be recognised as a happening? 

Without necessarily wanting to posit an absolute ontological distinction, it's tempting to think of events as things that occur dynamically in time, contra objects that exist concretely in space. The cat that sits on the mat is an example of the latter; his grin, or the flick of his tail as he leaves the room, might better be thought of in terms of the former. But it could well be that events are simply unstable objects and objects monotonous events and that there is thus no essential metaphysical difference.

For Deleuze and Guattari, whom we might characterize as philosophers of the event, the task of philosophy is to invent concepts which express events, or, more precisely, extract them from the material facts of the world; i.e., concepts that allow one to engage with social and political reality in such a manner that one challenges received ideas and royal prerogative. 

No wonder, then, that George was thought keen to turn a blind eye to (revolutionary) events ...

Ecosexuality Contra Necrofloraphilia (How Best to Love the Earth)

Black and Pink Floral Skull design 

sugarskullbedding.com

I greatly admire Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle for endeavouring to think ecosexuality and questions concerning broader human culture within a nonhuman and inhuman framework. And I fully approve of their attempt to encourage people to form connections with not only other life forms, but also inanimate objects, be they real or virtual, natural or artificial. 

But this isn't as easy as perhaps they imagine. For it's not just a question of sharing space and sharing affection with the things that you love, it's also a question of establishing a zone of proximity and entering into some kind of strange becoming. And it means abandoning all anthropocentric conceit and all traces of vitalism which posit life as something more than a very rare and unusual way of being dead.      

What I'm suggesting is that ecosexuality must shed itself of its moral idealism and become a more daringly speculative and perverse form of materialism. For the fact is, the earth, however you wish to metaphorically think it - as mother, as lover, or both - simply doesn’t care about the life that it sustains. Rather, it is massively and monstrously indifferent; just like the rest of the universe.  

In attempting to make an eroticised return to the actual, ecosexuality is ultimately fated to discover that it’s not an affirmation of life, but a form of romancing the dead; i.e., necrophilia. Thus it's really not a question of how to make the environmental movement sexier and full of fun, as Stephens and Sprinkle suggest, but queer-macabre in a deliciously morbid manner. And if you genuinely want to indicate the ecological entanglements of human sexuality then you must sooner or later discuss death as that towards which all beings move and find blissful unity in an orgiastic exchange of molecules and energy. It's death - not sex - that is radically (and promiscuously) inclusive.   

As for the 'twenty-five ways to make love to the earth' listed by Stephens and Sprinkle, which include dirty talk, nude dancing, skinny dipping, recycling, and working for global peace, if this is the best they can do at constructing a green lover’s discourse or an ars erotica then, to be honest, I’m deeply disappointed; all the multiple pronouns in the world don’t lift this above banality. 

One might - provocatively - suggest that there are other, more explicit, more obscene, ways of loving the earth; that our ecosexual relationship is actually a violent, mutually destructive type of amor fou in which the earth displays her passion with volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and earthquakes and we, in turn, display our virility through displays of power; mining for coal and drilling for oil, deforestation, dredging the seas, the erection of hydro-electric damns and nuclear plants, accelerated species extinction, etc. 

Perhaps it’s these things that turn the earth on – mightn’t global warming be a sign of arousal?

See: Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, ‘Ecosexuality’, essay in Gender: Nature, (MIHS), ed. Iris van Der Tuin, (Schirmer Books, 2016).

Note: This text is taken from a much longer commentary and critique of the above essay by Stephens and Sprinkle (emailed to the authors on 23 Nov 2016). 

Anankastikos (In Defence of OCPD)

When I hang my washing out on the line, I like to ensure three things: 

(i) all items of a similar type are kept together (socks with socks, pants with pants, etc.) 

(ii) all items are hung according to size (the largest things first) 

(iii) all items are hung inside out, facing the same way and the same way up.

In addition, I like to make sure all of the pegs are wooden and of the same type; or, if using the plastic pegs, that they are all the same colour (preferably blue). 

According to a full-figured friend of mine who likes to boast of having a degree in psychology, this meticulous attention to detail and concern with aesthetics isn't a noble attempt to impose order upon a chaotic world and give style to an otherwise drab and dreary domestic chore; rather, it's a sign that, like Sheldon Cooper, the fictional theoretical physicist played so brilliantly by Jim Parsons in the CBS television series The Big Bang Theory, I suffer from a mental health issue known as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). 

Technically, she means obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), which is clinically distinct from the above, though I hardly dare correct her for fear that she regards this as further proof of the condition; a condition which, in my view, is neither undesirable nor unhealthy, but is rather egosyntonic and characteristic of all great artists, dandies, philosophers, and others concerned with achieving a level of perfection.      

My friend might find pleasure in doing her laundry in a carefree manner - recklessly mixing the colours with the whites, hanging things in a higgledy-piggledy fashion, folding items in an incorrect manner - but she'll never know how to give birth to a dancing star or understand why it is that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.  

        

Sympathetic Reflections on the Case of Sir Clifford Chatterley

Clifford Chatterley

comicvine.gamespot.com

Rather like Jed Mercurio, whose recent adaptation of Lady Chatterley's Lover for the BBC caused some consternation in Lawrence circles, I'm increasingly sympathetic to the figure of Sir Clifford Chatterley. For whilst, metaphorically speaking, the war had brought the roof down over his wife's head, it was he, poor devil, not she, who had been shipped home from Flanders more or less in bits, paralysed from the waist down, and in need of constant medical care for two full years.

The narrator tells us Clifford had a marvellous hold on life and that, despite the nature of his injuries, he was not really downcast. Indeed, Clifford remained bright and cheerful - "almost, one might say, chirpy, with his ruddy, healthy-looking face, and his pale-blue, challenging bright eyes". What's more, Clifford also kept up a certain dandyish display of style: "He was expensively dressed, and wore handsome neckties from Bond Street."

One might very reasonably admire such stoicism, but the narrator seems keen to foreclose this possibility. Clifford, he says, isn't courageously indifferent in the face of pain and misfortune, rather, having been so badly hurt, "the capacity for suffering had to some extent left him ... something inside him had perished, some of his feelings had gone". All that was left, writes Lawrence, was blank insentience and the "slight vacancy of a cripple". In other words, Clifford is not only physically paralysed, he's numbed in soul.
 
We are also informed that, even before his injury, Clifford wasn't a particularly passionate man. Still virgin at twenty-eight when he married Connie, the sex between them didn't mean much to him; it was just "one of the curious obsolete, organic processes which persisted in its own clumsiness, but was not really necessary".

Having said that, he, like her, longed for a son and heir and hoped that he might one day regain some degree of potency, desperately trying to convince himself that he wasn't really mutilated and that the possibility of an erection wasn't entirely out of the question, even if the muscles of the hips and legs were paralysed: "'And then the seed may be transferred.'"*

Even, if need be, Clifford is open to the possibility of raising another man's child born of Connie as his own. Connie sees the logic of his thinking on this question; but she also finds it monstrous and slowly but surely she begins to turn against Clifford. Acknowledging that he wasn't to blame for the situation they found themselves in - and that his was the greater misfortune - she also concludes that he was responsible for the lack of tenderness between them: "He was never really warm, nor even kind, only thoughtful, considerate, in a well-bred, cold sort of way!"

In this way, Connie justifies her rejection and sexual betrayal of her husband: "Suddenly, with all the force of her female instinct, she was shoving him off. ... Connie was surprised at her own feeling of aversion from Clifford. What is more, she felt she had always really disliked him." Before long, this dislike has become pure hate:

"For the first time, she had consciously and definitely hated Clifford, with vivid hate: as if he ought to be obliterated from the face of the earth. And it was strange, how free and full of life it made her feel, to hate him and to admit it fully to herself."

Charming! No wonder then that he eventually turns to his nurse and housekeeper, Mrs Bolton, for comfort and affection: "At first he had resented the infinitely soft touch of her fingers ... But now he liked it, with a growing voluptuousness." After his breakdown, following Connie's decision to abandon him, Clifford and Mrs Bolton draw into a closer physical relationship:

"He would hold her hand, and rest his head on her breast, and when she once lightly kissed him, he said! 'Yes! Do kiss me! Do kiss me!' And when she sponged his great blond body, he would say the same! 'Do kiss me!' and she would lightly kiss his body ... And then he would put his hand into her bosom and feel her breasts, and kiss them in exultation ... Mrs Bolton was both thrilled and ashamed, she both loved and hated it. Yet she never rebuffed nor rebuked him."

Lawrence describes this as an intimacy of perversity, but his characterization of the relationship as such betrays something both limited and limiting - and at times deeply unpleasant - in his own thinking on sex and disability. The fact is, whilst Lawrence posits genital intercourse as the only truly legitimate and authentic sex act, others of us are happy to experience and experiment with a far wider range of pleasures and not worry whether these be counterfeit, unnatural, decadent or perverse in character. We're happy also to accept that people with disabilities may - through choice or necessity - differ in the manner they express their sexuality. 

One way or another, it's Mrs Bolton who makes a man of Clifford and rouses him to action in the world:

"And in this Mrs Bolton triumphed. 'How he's getting on!' she would say to herself in pride. 'And that's my doing! My word, he'd never have got on like this with Lady Chatterley. She was not the one to put a man forward. She wanted too much for herself.'"

This, I think, is true: acutely aware of her own feelings and desires throughout the novel, Connie never seems to consider that Clifford had also been gradually dying within the marriage and that she had neglected him and his needs. By the time she's fucking Mellors, she doesn't touch her husband any longer; not even hold his hand. Yet she blames their lack of physical intimacy entirely on Clifford and his impotent cruelty. 
    
I don't, like Clifford, believe that Connie's actions indicate she's abnormal or insane, or one of those perverted women who must run after depravity. But I do think her selfish and somewhat fickle. And I do rather sympathise with Clifford, in a way that I didn't twenty years ago when I thought of her as an embodiment of the New Eve and of him only in the wholly negative - often ablelist - terms suggested by the author-narrator.  


*Note: The exact nature and extent of Clifford's spinal cord injury isn't made clear in the novel and so there is no reason for us as readers to pour scorn on his hopes. Nor should we subscribe to the mistaken idea, prevalent amongst the non-disabled, that disabled persons are incapable of enjoying an active and fulfilling sex life, replete with orgasms. For decades, the medical community assumed - logically, but incorrectly - that paraplegics such as Clifford couldn't experience the latter. But now, thanks to recent research in this area, we know differently. There is only one thing that definitively precludes such and that is massive damage to the sacral nerve roots at the base of the spine which interferes with the automatic nervous system. For orgasm is an internal (automatic) reflex, not a somatic sensation transmitted from skin and muscle movement and it needn't be exclusively genital in character; some people with spinal cord injuries develop compensatory erogenous zones allowing them to experience orgasms triggered by stimulation applied, for example, to their necks, knees, or nipples. You're triggering the same sacral reflex, just doing so via different routes. Mary Roach describes these non-genital orgasms rather nicely as immaculate; see chapter eleven of her work on the scientific study of sex, Bonk, (Canongate, 2008). 

See: D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983).

On the Triumph of Donald Trump: Don't Say I Didn't Warn You ...

Photo credit: AP/LM Otero

I hate to be one of those people who says I told you so, but, back in 2008, in a series of essays on myth, history and cultural despair, I did suggest that - thanks to globalization - we in the West find ourselves today in very similar position to the people of Austria during the 19th century and that the potential for a new type of pessimistic and reactionary politics, based on notions of race, religion, and national identity, was thus a very real danger.   

Such a desperate response, I noted, might not be very desirable, but was perfectly understandable when mass immigration had resulted in the internal exile of indigenous populations in their own societies and concern over their future survival as ethnically and culturally distinct groups was increasingly widespread.

In order to provide some theoretical support for this argument, I referred to an essay by Jean Baudrillard in which he offered a painfully revisionist explanation for why it is that only figures on the far-right seem to possess the last remnants of political interest. This passage in particular seemed at the time - and still seems - absolutely spot on:

"The right once embodied moral values and the left, in opposition, embodied a certain historical and political urgency. Today, however, stripped of its political energy, the left has become a pure moral injunction, the embodiment of universal values, the champion of the reign of virtue and the keeper of the antiquated values of the Good and the True ..."

In short, the left has become boring and this results not only in their abject surrender, but in a situation where it’s only neo-fascist and populist politicians who have anything interesting left to say: "All the other discourses are moral or pedagogical," writes Baudrillard, "made by school teachers and lesson-givers, managers and programmers".

In daring to embrace evil and reject political correctness, I concluded, the far-right looks set to scoop the political jackpot ...

Now - just to be clear - this didn't mean back in 2008 and it doesn't mean now that I support or necessarily share the views of Geert Wilders, Nigel Farage, or Donald Trump. But it does mean I can understand the attraction of these figures to voters who are sick to death of being spoken down to by those in power who think they know better than the people who have to live with the consequences of their decisions.

And it does mean I'm conscious of the more prosaic reasons why the above seem to speak to and for an angry white working-class who feel increasingly marginalized by high-tech industries and the enforced integration of ethnic minorities into their communities.

For, unfortunately, globalization doesn't only unleash flows of capital, information, and talent across national borders, it also brings with it crime, disease, and barbarism (by which I mean unfamiliar and often antithetical customs, norms, values and beliefs). And so, unsurprisingly, defensive ideologies arise that promise to counter threats to national and cultural identity and restore order.

And so Brexit and the triumph of Donald Trump ...

Notes

Stephen Alexander, 'Reflections beneath a Black Sun', The Treadwell's Papers, Vol. IV, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010).

Jean Baudrillard, ‘A Conjuration of Imbeciles’, in The Conspiracy of Art, trans. Ames Hodges, (Semiotext[e], 2005). 

On Gender-Based Violence (With Reference to the Case of Lawrence, Bibbles and Frieda)

viopet.org

According to Dr Núria Querol, International Coordinator of animal protection society VioPet, domestic animals are as likely to be subjected to gender violence as women and if you want to understand more about the physical and psychological abuse of the latter, then you would do well to examine the mistreatment of the former at the hands of sexually aggressive men.

Indeed, refusing to make any distinction between human and non-human animals, Dr Querol argues that women and pets are equally victims of precisely the same kind of brutality; both, if you like, are subordinated as bitches and expected to tremble at the sound of their master's voice or raised hand. More often than not, if a man beats his dog - or worse - then he'll also be prone to hitting his wife or girlfriend. 

This is illustrated by the disturbing case of the writer D. H. Lawrence and his little black snub-nosed dog, Bibbles. 

In 1922-23, Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, were living on a ranch in New Mexico and had recently acquired a puppy of whom he was extremely fond. However, as one commentator notes, fond or not, Lawrence insisted on being the dog's absolute master and this occasionally resulted in violence. One incident, witnessed by two young Danish artists staying as guests of the Lawrences, is particularly disturbing ...

After going off with a handsome Airedale for a short romantic liaison (she was on heat), Bibbles discovered just how furious with rage and jealousy her master could become. Regarding her indiscriminate loving as an act of personal disloyalty - if not, indeed, rather weirdly, infidelity - Lawrence chased Bibbles out of the house and savagely "kicked her through the snowdrift into which she had blundered".

Then, catching hold of her by the scruff of the neck, he picked the poor creature up and threw her as far as he could. Only an intervention by one of the Danes prevented him from continuing the assault. John Worthen is not alone amongst Lawrence scholars in wondering how someone "so sane, sensible, caring and loving ... and who hated bullying", could mistreat a dog so viciously.   

Whilst recognising the fact that Bibbles was female surely mattered, Worthen says nothing more on why this should be so significant. Instead - controversially I think - he suggests it was because Lawrence "loved the dog too much" that he temporarily "lost himself in need and rage".

Presumably, it was because Lawrence loved Frieda too much that he often hit her as well. Not that Worthen believes we should be overly concerned about this, because, as he points out, the domestic violence between them "was something they had managed to incorporate into their marriage" and Frieda "was never frightened of him for more than a few seconds at a time".

We are encouraged thus to turn a blind eye to Lawrence's violence (as we are to other unpleasant and problematic aspects of his character and writing); to convince ourselves that animal cruelty and wife beating is somehow acceptable if carried out by a man of genius and great sensitivity in the name of love or phallic tenderness.   

Or if, as in this case, the incident inspires a memorable poem; art serving to justify the violence and redeem the suffering caused. 

       
See: John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Penguin / Allen Lane, 2005), pp. 282-85.

And see also 'Bibbles', in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923), which can be found in the Cambridge edition of the poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (CUP, 2013) - or read by clicking here (in a censored form - the word bitch being repeatedly - and ridiculously - replaced with a row of asterisks).   

Ghost Town

Stephen Alexander (2016)

Ghost Town, by The Specials, was a great punk single and, thirty-five years later, it continues to powerfully resonate within the cultural imagination. Indeed, its haunting melody and stark lyrics came back to me earlier today as I walked past the now derelict, burnt out pub and former Harold Hill landmark, The Pompadours.

For I'm of a generation that does recall the good old days before the ghost town, when locals danced and sang and the music played in a de boomtown.

Well, that's perhaps pushing it a bit ... But, nevertheless, I do remember a time before the great closure of the pubs and clubs began; a time when there was a genuine sense of community and not that ersatz thing which politicians and people in the liberal arts and media like to extol the virtues of; a time when people knew their neighbours (without necessarily liking them) and would socialise with one another over the garden fence and across the bar of their local boozer.  

Of course, there are many reasons why the pubs are closing - not just here in Essex, but all over the UK at the astonishing rate of four a day. Just as there are many reasons why, for example, the homogeneity and solidarity of white working class life - which often revolved around the pub - is not only disparaged and despised, but slowly being demolished in the name of ethnic and cultural diversity.

When you return here - as I have returned - and experience the daily conditions under which people are expected to live, you begin to understand the visceral resentment and rage that characterises so much public and political discourse today; indeed, one does more than understand - one begins to sympathise ...    

Can't go on no more / The people getting angry ...


Ghost Town, The Specials (2 Tone, 1981), written by Jerry Dammers, © EMI Music Publishing / BMG Rights Management US, LLC    

Note: The Pompadours opened in 1959 and was one of nine pubs on Harold Hill. To be honest, it was always something of a shithole full of dubious characters and with a reputation as a difficult pub to manage; the sort of place neither of my parents would ever dream of setting foot in. It closed its doors for the last time earlier this year. A plan to demolish it and build yet more low-rise but high-density housing was rejected by Havering Council after opposition from local residents. The future of the site is now uncertain.     

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.