Easter with the Anti-Christ: (2019 Version)

Eric Idle and Graham Chapman in The Life of Brian (1979)

I.

Although Voltaire advised that we crush the Church and its vile superstitions - and whilst Nietzsche became increasingly hostile towards der Gekreuzigte, pitching his own Dionysian philosophy in direct opposition to Christianity conceived as "the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity [...] the one immortal blemish of mankind" - I'm increasingly coming round to the view that the best thing to do is simply laugh at Jesus hanging on his Cross, just as the Monty Python cast laughed in The Life of Brian and as Larry David often laughs in Curb Your Enthusiasm ...

II. 

One of the most controversial scenes in The Life of Brian (1979) is the ending in which Brian Cohen - who has been mistaken for the Messiah throughout his life - is crucified. Christian critics and protesters said it was mocking the Passion of Christ, which, of course, it is, no matter what the makers or defenders of the film may like to pretend.

But then that's precisely why it's so amusing and subversive of all the unnecessary suffering and pain that Christianity fetishises and foists upon us. I agree with director Terry Jones, when he argues that any creed that transforms a form of torture and execution into an iconic symbol before which to kneel, is a perversely corrupt form of religion.   

In just eight words, the Pythons perform a magnificent revaluation: Always look on the bright side of life. Such stoicism and, more importantly, gay insouciance, is profoundly anti-Christian and lyricist Eric Idle is to be congratulated. If only Jesus had of cared less about sin and dared to give his followers a grin ...


III.

In a season five episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry's father-in-law has purchased a nail on the internet and is wearing it proudly around his neck. The nail, he says, was used in The Passion of the Christ (2004) - Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic piece of Christian torture porn.

Clearly, not the kind of film likely to appeal to Larry (or any sane individual), he can't resist trying to provoke Cheryl's idiot father:

"'You're nuts about this Jesus guy, aren't you?'
'Yeah, I have a personal relationship with Christ.'
'Really?'
'Yeah.'

'I can see worshipping Jesus if he were a girl, like if God had a daughter. Jane. I'll worship a Jane.' 

'No.'
'But, you know, to worship a guy, it's like a little, you know, it's a little gay, isn't it?'
'It's the Son of God! What's the matter with you?'
'I'm just saying. A girl ... I would worship Jane, if he had a daughter Jane. I could have a relationship with a Jane.'
'He didn't have a daughter!'
'It's a shame it wasn't a girl. That's all I have to say. Good-looking woman, zatfig, you know? Good sense of humour.'   

'No! No! No!'

'If he had a daughter, everybody - everybody - would worship Jane.'"

This scene isn't perhaps as outrageous or as provocative as the Python scene, but it's beautifully blasphemous in its own way. It's worth noting also that, later in the episode, Larry takes the nail and uses it to hang a mezuzah to the door before his own father's arrival.

And on that note ... Happy Easter to all torpedophiles. 

Notes

In a letter to the mathematician and philosopher Jean le Rond d'Alembert (28 November 1762), Voltaire famously wrote: Quoi que vous fassiez, écrasez l'infâme, et aimez qui vous aime. Those interested in Voltaire's correspondence can visit Oxford University's Voltaire Foundation: click here.   

Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1990), section 62.

Click here for the end scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, 1979). The song, 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life', can be found on the film soundtrack album released by Warner Bros. Records (1979).  

Click here for the scene transcribed above from 'The Christ Nail' (S5/E3), Curb Your Enthusiasm, written by Larry David,  dir. by Robert B. Weide, (2005). 

Finally, for the 2013 version of Easter with the Anti-Christ, click here. 

Believe in the Ruins: Reflections of a Gargoyle on the Great Fire of Notre-Dame de Paris

croire aux ruines ...

I.

It's a shame that the fire at Notre-Dame only destroyed the roof and spire, leaving the towers and most of the building still standing. It would have been better for the people of France - better for all of us - if the whole thing had been razed to the ground.

I say this not as some kind of cultural barbarian or iconoclast, nor simply to be provocative; but, rather, as someone in agreement with D. H. Lawrence, who writes in one of his Etruscan sketches:

"We have reached the stage where we are weary of huge stone erections, and we begin to realise that it is  better to keep life fluid and changing, than try to hold it fast down in heavy monuments. Burdens on the face of the earth, are man's ponderous erections."

Like Lawrence, I love to see small wooden temples, that are unimposing and evanescent as flowers. Buildings - particularly religious buildings - should aim to be modest and charming rather than grand and impressive, preserving the natural humour of life: "And that is a task surely more worthy, and even much more difficult in the long run, than conquering the world or sacrificing the self or saving the immortal soul."   

Lawrence continues:

"Why has mankind such a craving to be imposed upon! Why this lust after imposing creeds, imposing deeds, imposing buildings, imposing language, imposing works of art? The thing becomes an imposition and a weariness at last. Give us things that are alive and flexible, which won't last too long and become an obstruction and a weariness."

Even Notre-Dame, if we're honest, standing in Paris for centuries on end, had become a colossal dead weight - stuffed full of priceless treasures and cultural artefacts, but dead treasures and dead artefacts, belonging to another time, another people.

And one suspects that those who claim to revere the past and seek to preserve it - along with those billionaires and politicians who are now pledging obscene sums of cash to rebuild the cathedral (whilst continuing to ignore the deprivation in many parts of the city and its suburbs) - do so simply because they are unable ultimately to face up to the challenge of modernity to make it new.   

II.

Lawrence, of course, was ambiguous (at best) on the question of cathedrals - from Lincoln to Milan - long before his trip to see the Etruscan tombs in 1927.

In The Rainbow, for example, his novel of 1915, Lawrence stages an amusing conflict between Anna Brangwen and her husband Will, in which she destroys his passion for Lincoln Cathedral with her own gargoyle philosophy ...

Will is physically excited by the cathedral and willingly allows himself to be transported by it to another world. But to Anna, it's merely a thing of the past and she rather resented his ecstasy, wishing he might curb his enthusiasm.

Lawrence writes:

"The cathedral roused her too. But she would never consent to the knitting of all the leaping stone in a great roof that closed her in [...] it was the ultimate confine [...] She claimed the right to freedom above her, higher than the roof. [...]
      So that she caught at little things, which saved her from being swept forward headlong in the tide of passion that leaps on into the Infinite [...] the wicked, odd little faces carved in stone, and she stood before them arrested.
      These sly little faces peeped out of the grand tide of the cathedral like something that knew better. They knew quite well, these little imps that retorted on man's own illusion, that the cathedral was not absolute. They winked and leered, giving suggestion of the many things that had been left out of the great concept of the church."

Understandably, Will is unimpressed with such thinking and has little or no time for the carved faces; his wife was "spoiling his passionate intercourse with the cathedral" and this made him bitterly angry:

"Strive as he would, he could not keep the cathedral wonderful to him. He was disillusioned. That which had been his absolute, containing all heaven and earth, was become to him as to her, a shapely heap of dead matter [...]
     His mouth was full of ash, his soul was furious. He hated her for having destroyed another of his vital illusions."

Anna's nihilism, however, inasmuch as it's a counter-idealism, is an active negation of the negative and of nothingness. Thus, despite Will's initial anger and despair, gradually he became more responsive to the call of the gargoyles than to the perfect surge of the cathedral itself, realising that outside the cathedral "were many flying spirits" that could never be contained within the holy gloom.

"He listened to the thrushes in the garden, and heard a note which the cathedrals did not include: something free and careless and joyous. He crossed a field that was all yellow with dandelions [...] and the bath of yellow glowing was something at once so sumptuous and so fresh, that he was glad he was away from his shadowy cathedral.
      There was life outside the church. There was much that the church did not include. [...] He thought of the ruins of the Grecian worship, and it seemed, a temple was never perfectly a temple, till it was ruined and mixed up with the winds and the sky and the herbs."

And so, my advice to the good people of Paris is this: either finish the job and demolish the rest of Notre-Dame, or leave it as a lovely ruin, roofless, and at the mercy of the elements.

See:

D. H. Lawrence, 'Sketches of Etruscan Places', in Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Simonetta de Filippis, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 32-33.

D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 188-89, 190, 191. 

Jamie Reid archive 

vam.ac.uk 

On the Nine Lives of Cats and Two Methods for Ending Them

I. On the Nine Lives of Cats

The myth of cats having multiple lives is one found in many countries and cultures ...

In England, for example, which is presently home to around eight million cats, they are believed to have nine lives, divided equally between playing, straying, and staying curled up by the fireplace on a comfy chair. In some European nations, however, such as Greece, cats are said to have seven lives; this number falling to just six within the Arab world.   

No one really knows why (or where) this myth originated, but probably it has something to do with the fact that cats are instinctively good at extricating themselves from potentially life-threatening situations. Naturally supple and almost supernaturally sensitive to danger, cats - unlike clumsy human beings - invariably land on their feet and not flat on their faces.  

II. Cat Throwing

Of course, no matter how many lives they possess, cats can be killed if they fall from a significant height; or, indeed, if they are thrown from a belfry, as they used to be by the good people of Ypres during the Middle Ages and early modern period.*

There are various local legends about how this festival of animal cruelty originated; some suggest it was designed to protect the city from evil spirits (cats often being associated in the popular imagination with witchcraft); other sources say the cats were rounded up and killed each spring simply in order to control their numbers.

Whatever the truth of the matter, it was an annual source of great amusement for the townsfolk - as was the craze for cat burning that swept neighbouring France in this period ...


III. Cat Burning     

Cat burning was a gruesome form of popular entertainment in France prior to the 1800s, in which people stuffed dozens of cats into a basket or sack, hoisted them high into the air, and then lit a large bonfire beneath.

According to one historian, the assembled masses "shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized". The remains were often collected as souvenirs and taken home for luck.**

Although the practice varied from place to place, the suffering and ensuing hilarity remained the same; it was said that wherever the scent and sound of burning felines filled the air, laughter was guaranteed.  

Interestingly, Jean Meslier - a French priest (who privately held atheist views) - partly blamed the rise of Cartesian philosophy in which animals were viewed as automata, possessing neither soul nor sentience, for the practice of cat burning. He argued that such thinking inhibited natural feelings of kindness and compassion that man would otherwise have for living creatures.***

Notes

* In fact, the last recorded event of this kind happened as recently as 1817 and is commemorated in the so-called Kattenstoet, held regularly since 1955 on the second Sunday of May. Thankfully, a jester now merely throws stuffed toy cats from the Cloth Hall belfry to the crowd below, who eagerly await with outstretched arms hoping to catch them. For more details, visit the official Kattenstoet website by clicking here.    

** See Norman Davies, Europe: A History, (Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 543.

*** See Jean Meslier, Testament: Memoir of the Thoughts and Sentiments of Jean Meslier, trans. Michael Shreve, (Prometheus Books, 2009), pp. 562-63.

Paul Morel and Knife Crime

Susan Catherine Waters
Young Boy with a Pocket-Knife

I.

According to Professor Woody Caan, experience of bullying or victimisation at an early age is the root cause of knife and gun crime. In other words, many teens carry weapons for self-protection; not because they want to feel powerful and intimidate others, or are inherently attracted to a criminal lifestyle. 

Thus, the best way to prevent stabbings and shootings by angry, but often frightened youths, says the professor, is to invest in effective anti-bullying policies and cultures that do not breed hate and insecurity within primary schools. Make children of six and seven feel loved and safe in their environments and they'll not feel the need to arm themselves as adolescents. 


II.

Such liberal idealism seems a little naive to me. However, the idea that bullying results in a desire to arm oneself and perhaps seek revenge upon thugs who think it funny to threaten and humilate others whom they deem to be weaker or more vulnerable, finds support in the following scene involving a 13-year-old Paul Morel (the protagonist of D. H. Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers).

Paul has a passion for foreign languages and literature. But he doesn't like sports and refuses to compete in anything: "'I don't care whether I'm first or last. I don't care whether [everybody] does things better than me. What does it matter?'"

As Lawrence notes, this "modern and decadent contempt for action separated him from the mass of boys" and made him a prime target for bullying. Paul had a few friends, but the rest "regarded him coldly, with hostility, or contempt", thinking him aloof and somewhat effeminate, with his fancy ways and fancy clothes.

In an astonishing passage, that betrays the fact that, although exceedingly gentle, Paul is full of the molten hot potential for murderous violence, Lawrence writes:  

"Once, the bully faction, which he scorned, avoiding them [...] were set upon him because of the respect or consideration shown him by one of the teachers. They attacked him first with the sleering, coarse abuse of a gang in cry. He made no answer, merely looked away. Meanwhile his heart was boiling with hate. Then they took offence at the bow of black ribbon his mother tied him for a tie. The biggest bully tore it off. Another ripped his collar.

      Paul did not move, only stiffen his back against the tugs on his clothing. He did not speak, nor moved a muscle of his face, only his eye like a mad thing's flashed from neck to neck of the bullies.
      'If,' he said over and over again in his heart, 'If I had a knife, I would stick it there, and there, and there,' glancing his eye from throat to throat, looking always at the big vein. 'If I had a knife, if I had a knife -'

      Then, as he imagined the difficulty of pulling a knife out to strike the next blow, the delay thereof, he changed his glance, looked intensely between the eyebrows of the lads, whose faces he saw not.
      'If I had a revolver - there, there, there,' he counted in a flash, 'with five chambers, I would blow their brains out, one after the other.'

      He chose the spot, felt his fingers stiffen to the trigger.
      'Though,' he said to himself, 'I'd rather have the knife, to strike, to strike in their necks.'"


What this tells us, amongst other things, is that the will to violence and urge to kill is nothing new in teenage boys and that if pushed too far too often - or called upon to protect their friends or family members - even the meekest or most docile of creatures will retaliate or seek revenge:

The smallest worm will turn being trodden on, 
And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.

See:

D. H. Lawrence, Paul Morel, ed. Helen Baron, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 55.

This early draft of Sons and Lovers is quite different from the final version of the novel published in 1913. There's more humour, but also more violence and nervous energy. It also contains episodes - like the one here, based on Lawrence's own childhood experience - that were eventually discarded.  

Woody Caan (Professorial Fellow, Royal Society for Public Health), writing in a letter on knife crime published in The Guardian (18 Jan 2018): click here to read online.

Note: the lines at the end are - of course - from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Pt. 3 (Act II, Scene 2). 

Paul Morel and the Sacrifice of Arabella

I.

Paul Morel was a pale, quiet child, slightly built, with reddish-brown hair, and highly attuned to the feelings of others (particularly his mother). As his elder brother, William, tended to ignore him, he transferred his affections to his sister, Annie, who was intensely fond of him. 

Annie also possessed a large doll "of which she was fearfully proud, though not so fond", called Arabella. One day, Paul accidently jumps on the doll and breaks her face; something that makes Annie cry and, consequently, makes Paul feel helpless with misery.

Seeing how upset he was - once her own tears dried - she immediately forgave her brother. A couple of days later, however, he shocks her with the following suggestion: '''Let's make a sacrifice of Arabella [...] Let's burn her.'''

Naturally, Annie is horrified - yet also, Lawrence writes with knowing insight into the cruelty of children - fascinated by the suggestion and keen to see what her brother would do once she (silently) gave consent to the proposal.      

"He made an altar of bricks, pulled some of the shavings out of Arabella's body, put the waxen fragments into the hollow face, poured on a little parafin, and set the whole thing alight. He watched with wicked satisfaction the drop of wax melt off the broken forehead of Arabella, and drop like sweat into the flame. So long as the stupid big doll burned, he rejoiced in silence. At the end, he poked among the embers with a stick, fished out the arms and legs, all blackened, and smashed them under stones.
      'That's the sacrifice of Missis Arabella,' he said. 'An' I'm glad there's nothing left of her.'"

Whilst the intensity of her brother's hatred for the doll disturbs Annie, she remains silent throughout and following the sacrifice. I think we, as readers, are obliged to say something, however ...


II.
   

Perhaps unsurprisingly, in much of the critical literature on Sons and Lovers, this scene, like so many others, is read symbolically from a psychoanalytic perspective.

Margaret Storch, for example, wearing her Melanie Klein hat, informs us that the sacrifice of Arabella reveals that what lies beneath the triangular oedipal structure is the more primary mother-child dyad and that whilst one might imagine this to be a relationship founded upon love, it can also manifest violent hatred at its core.

She writes:

"The 'sacrifice' is an act of desecration against a figure who should be revered. This is apparent in [...] the aura of 'wicked satisfaction' that emanates from defying a taboo. The body of the mother is, in fantasy, dismembered and destroyed, disintegrating in a flash of fiery consuming anger, and liquified into the wax and sweat of elemental fluids. When already blackened and 'dead', the fragments are retrieved with phallic curiosity by means of a poking stick, and then further pulverized into nothingness, not 'with' stones but 'under' stones, suggesting both a final horror that cannot be looked at and the gravestones that cover the dead [...]"       

Storch concludes that the scene is "a vivid depiction of a child's sadistic fantasy against the mother" - a fantasy that Paul shares with his sister Annie, whose presence and complicity is an essential component; for little girls too can (secretly) resent the suffocating love of a devoted mother and her moral authority.  

III.

As much as I admire this reading, I don't quite buy into it. Which is not to say that it isn't true, only that something else is also true; namely, that children like mutilating dolls and action figures simply for the joy of destroying things, or because they hate the toys themselves - not because they hate their parents (although they might).

Interestingly, researchers at the University of Bath discovered in a study of 2005 that many 7-11 year olds grow to dislike their toys so much that they physically assault them. And of all the products the children were asked about, Barbie aroused the most complex and violent emotions.

Various torture techniques were gleefully experimented with in an attempt to express ambiguous feelings about the figure and common forms of mutilation included decapitation, burning, and even microwaving. What's more, the children interviewed saw these things as belonging to perfectly legitimate play activity; i.e., good clean fun.

It's adults who often find such activity deeply disturbing. Perhaps because they read so much meaning into it. Or perhaps because it's they - not their children - who anthropomorphise cheap plastic figures and get ridiculously sentimental about inanimate objects.

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 82-3.  

Margaret Storch, Sons and Adversaries: Women in William Blake and D. H. Lawrence, (University of Tennessee Press, 1990), pp. 98-100. 

Andrew McLaughlin, University of Bath Press Office, 'Barbie under attack from little girls, study shows', press release (19 Dec 2005): click here to read online.
 

Reflections on a Black Hole in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

A black hole as captured by the Event Horizon Telescope

Photograph: EHT Collaboration

As a nihilistic anti-theist, it made me very happy when astronomers released the first image of a supermassive black hole yesterday, thereby demonstrating that at the heart of the universe is not a loving presence, or judgemental God, but rather an enigmatic object defined by its absence and darkness.

Certainly that's true for the Messier 87 galaxy (or M87, as it's known); a giant elliptical galaxy, fifty-five million light years from Earth in the constellation of Virgo, that was discovered by the French star-gazer Charles Messier in 1781.

And it's doubtless true for our galaxy also (in fact, the EHT team are presently working on producing an image of the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way and hope to have such sometime soon). 

Further, one is tempted to suggest that if there's any truth in the old saying that suggests the microcosm corresponds with the macrocosm - as above, so below - then maybe it's the case that what was once called the soul is nothing but a tiny and mysterious core of chaos; a dark source of eternal creation that exists beyond the event horizon of the known self; a place wherein psychological law collapses and all human reality is distorted beyond recognition.

And who knows, maybe we'll one day even have a picture of that ...

Notes

The astonishing image of the black hole was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (which is actually a network of eight radio telescopes spanning locations from Antarctica to Spain and Chile) using a technique known as interferometry. 

Of course, crackpot conspiracy theorists are, with depressing predictability, already claiming online that - just like the NASA moon landings - the picture is fake and the 200 scientists involved in the collaborative research project are therefore wilfully attempting to deceive the public as part of some elaborate hoax. 

Punk Friends Reunited

I remember with vague fondness my time at Trinity and All Saints College, which was then a small Catholic institution affiliated with the University of Leeds, but which has since gained full university status and autonomy.

Although I was there under the pretext of studying for a degree in Sociology and Media, essentially, like many undergraduates at this time, I was more interested in extracurricular activities that might broadly be categorised as messing around and fucking about. 

This included the cultivation of my own punk persona, Jimmy Jazz - after the song by the Clash - and becoming part of a small gang of misfits that numbered amongst its members:

(i) Clive Hooker, a drummer and DJ from Northampton, with a speech impediment that unfortunately made him sound like Klunk from Stop the Pigeon.

(ii) August Finer, a bass player with a knicker-invading smile and a mohican haircut; ultimately, a nice, middle-class Jewish boy, from Knutsford, posing as a punk (but who did have a brother in The Pogues).     

(iii) Kirk Field, a drama student (who couldn't really act) and a vocalist (who couldn't really sing), but a clever, funny, charming personality with a quiff and a penchant for magic mushrooms who went on to become a successful tour operator and events organiser for people who like to party.

During the years 1981-84, we four were as thick as thieves. But, amazingly, the moment we graduated the magic spell that bound us together was completely broken; even my friendship with Mr. Field, which had been extremely intimate and intense, didn't long survive the move to London.

I suppose there were reasons for this - but no real reason - and I'm told that it's a common phenomenon; that adolescent friendships often blossom with spectacular colour, but then quickly fade and die and that it's pointless trying to hold the petals on.

Regrets? I have a few. But then again, too few to mention. Besides, any lingering sense of loss only adds a delicious poignancy to nostalgic reflections like this; which is how dead friendships can continue to give pleasure.           

If the opportunity ever arose, I'd be happy to meet any or all of the above for a drink. But I suspect there'd be moments of awkward silence. And underneath the delight of seeing them again there'd be a slight sense of boredom and embarrassment and a longing to get away as soon as possible ...  

On Poetry, Fashion and Punk

Sonia Delaunay and Tristan Tzara

Robe poème, Le ventillateur tourne ... (1922)

Photo: R. Riss / The Delaunay Estate (Paris)

According to an article in Vogue, poetry is back in fashion and a number of recent collections have been inspired by verse.

Pierpaolo Piccioli, for example, collaborated with several poets to create a series of garments for his autumn/winter 2019 Valentino collection, in an attempt to redefine romanticism for a digital generation (i.e., to transport millennials beyond the screen and into the realm of dreams). 

But of course, as Rosalind Jana reminds us:

"The dialogue between clothes and poetry isn’t a novel one. In the '20s, textile artist Sonia Delaunay collaborated with [...] Dadaist poets including Tristan Tzara and Joseph Delteil to cover a series of dresses in snippets of their poetry. She called them robes poèmes. None of the resulting works still exist, but illustrations show gorgeous, colour-blocked garments with words snaking across arms and descending down skirts."

As a philosopher on the catwalk, I'm naturally excited by this combination of words and fabrics - or text and textiles - animated by the body of the wearer. However, as more punk-provocateur than poet, I'm perhaps more interested in the possibilities that fashion provides for political sloganeering rather than the reproduction of lines of verse.    

Thus, lovely as Delaunay's colourful designs could be - and as amusingly avant-garde as Tzara's poems were - I prefer the clothes of - or inspired by - McLaren and Westwood that incorporated Situationist slogans and lyrics by the Sex Pistols. I'm not sure to what extent (if any) these items brought about social and cultural change, but they certainly made one feel heroic and dangerous at the time.

I remember, for example, riding the rush hour tube in my youth and attempting to antagonise commuters by wearing a hand-painted shirt that read: 'Wise up sucker! Punch your boss, not the clock!'       

c. 1984/85

Notes

Rosalind Jana, 'Why Poetry is Back in Fashion', Vogue (15 March 2019): click here to read online.

The poem by Tristan Tzara that appears on the dress design by Sonia Delaunay above reads in the original French:

Le ventillateur tourne
dans le coeur de la tête
La fleur du froid serpent
de tendresse chimique

Susan de Muth's English translation reads:

The extractor fan turns 
In the head's heart
Bloom of the cold snake
Of chemical tenderness

See: Tristan Tzara and Susan de Muth, 'Dress Poems', Art in Translation, (Routledge, 2015), Vol. 7, No. 2, 304-308. Published online 17 August 2015: click here.    

When Ancient and Modern Worlds Collide: Notes on the Profane Fate of Plato's Sacred Olive Tree

A preserved section of Plato's olive tree

Agricultural University of Athens

According to legend, the ancient Greeks had the minor deity and culture-hero Aristaeus to thank for teaching them three essential skills: cheese-making, bee-keeping and - most crucially of all - the care and cultivation of olive trees.

For whilst the Greeks liked their feta and honey, they really loved their olive oil ...

Not only was the latter a key ingredient in their cuisine, for example, but they would anoint their kings and champion athletes with it. Indeed, even ordinary citizens, including philosophers, liked to rub olive oil onto their bodies in order to keep the skin supple and healthy.

Thus, it's really no surprise to discover that Plato's Academy was situated next to a sacred olive grove dedicated to the goddess Athena. It's believed that each of the twelve gated entrances to the school had its own tree standing as an evergreen sentinel and symbol of wisdom, fertility, and purity.

But there was also one very special olive tree under which Plato was said to have taught his students. And this tree continued to stand for thousands of years - long after the Academy itself had crumbled into dust - until, on one fateful day in October 1976, a bus was driven into it, breaking the noble trunk in two.

The upper section was taken to the Agricultural University where it has been preserved and displayed ever since. The lower part, however, including the enormous roots, remained at the original site until being dug up in January 2013 to serve as firewood by local people adversely affected by the Greek financial crisis.

Or so the popular story goes, as reported widely at the time by both local and international media ...  

Seeking to clarify the situation, however, the General Directorate of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage issued a (seemingly little-read) statement a few days later explaining that Plato's olive tree had, in fact, been uprooted and killed - not merely damaged - as a result of the accident 37 years earlier.

A new tree, with three trunks, had been planted in its place by the Agricultural University of Athens and it was one of these that was removed, having died, on January 6th, 2013 (the other two trunks remaining intact and in situ).       

Whilst there are amusing aspects to this tale, one can very well imagine what Plato - who esteemed truth above all things - would think of fake news: False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Photo: Olive Oil Times Collection

A Vagina Monologue

Poster for the film Chatterbox starring Candice Rialson 

(dir. Tom DeSimone, 1977)

I.

Many people are familiar with Eve Ensler's critically acclaimed but philosophically problematic play, The Vagina Monologues (1996). But not everyone knows of the artistic tradition to which it belongs and which can be traced back to an ancient folkloric - and phonocentric - origin.      

The vagina loquens is a particularly popular motif in France. When not working on his Encyclopédie, for example, the philosopher Diderot was also writing a novel entitled Les bijoux indiscrets (published anonymously in 1748), whose story concerns an African sultan who possesses a magical ring - given to him by a genie - that when rubbed and pointed in the right direction grants female genitalia the autonomous power of speech.   

This is often awkward for the women concerned, as what shameless cunts most like to speak of when given the opportunity is past amorous experience, including acts of infidelity that their owners might prefer to keep secret and remain silent about.

Now, whilst I quite like this idea of an independently-minded, free-speaking vagina, nobody likes a rat and nobody wants a snatch that snitches. Also, I have problems with the idea of locating a moral-confessional notion of truth in the vagina, thereby simply turning the cunt into another form of soul and reviving traditional ideas of sex and subjectivity.


II.

In effect, this brings us back to some of the philosophical criticisms made of Ensler's play. For example, some feminists, trans activists and genderqueer individuals are far from happy to see women being reduced once more to their biology and are dismissive of the claim that they can be politically empowered via a form of cunt-awareness. 

Critiquing The Vagina Monologues from a very different perspective - but with even more overt hostility - is Camille Paglia, who regards the play as a bourgeois perversion of feminism and a psychological poison that denigrates men and celebrates victimhood.

Whilst I don't quite share Paglia's almost obsessive insistence on discussing female sexuality in terms of elemental mysteries and bloody horror, I do agree with her that Ensler's sentimental and complacent humanism in which the vagina is turned into a user-friendly safe space and given a winning personality is deeply depressing.

Ultimately, of course, it's not for me to suggest what a speaking vagina might have to tell us. But one would hope it might amuse and challenge, rather than bore to tears by merely repeating what it's already heard the mouth blabber on numerous occasions.

Either that, or, preferably, just stay mute with a noiseless soft power of its own that lies beyond all truth (unless it be the truth of zero), all identity, and all metaphysics of presence. In fact, that's precisely what I want the cunt to be; a kind of ontological black hole or site of sheer loss, as silent and as inviting as a freshly dug grave.