Autobiographical Fragment: This is the Nine O'Clock News from the BBC

Fig. 1: Jazz and Kirk (1983): the anti-stewards

Back in the early-mid 1980s, students were always protesting against something - though mostly against those things that might negatively impact upon their own lives or future prospects; education reforms, youth unemployment, nuclear armageddon, etc.

And so, when a couple of buses were booked to transport would-be demonstrators down to London for a march organised by the NUS, it seemed like a good idea to my friend Kirk and me to get on board. Not that we were interested in the planned event, you understand, we simply wanted a day out in the capital. 

It wasn't that we were apolitical, so much as politically irresponsible; more anarcho-nihilistic, than socially progressive. We hated the Tories (obviously) - but so too did we hate the grey misery of the Labour Party. In fact, we pretty much hated everyone - left, right, or centre - and favoured a strategy of accelerating the processes already at work, regardless of the consequences. In other words, we had no interest in political reform, but simply wanted (à la Steve Jones) to make things worse. 

When we arrived in London and got off the coach, officials from the students' union - including Simon Skidmore, a fat fucking hippie with a high-pitched voice and a Pink Floyd t-shirt - immediately pulled on stewards armbands to show that they were in charge and everyone should obey their orders and follow the designated route, chanting pre-approved slogans: Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! - Out! Out! Out! 

Of course, we weren't having any of that - so we swiped a couple of armbands - which we wore upside down (see fig. 1 above) - and then proceeded to misdirect as many people as possible, issuing instructions to spend the day shoplifting, getting drunk, and trying to be arrested. Whether anyone actually listened to us I don't know, but it's nice to think that one or two went on a nicking spree ...

          

At some point, Red Ken - then leader of the GLC - addressed the crowds and I remember going up to him afterwards and telling him that if he wanted to be a revolutionary icon like Che Guevara, then he needed to ditch the raincoat as it made him look more like a dirty old man about to flash a group of schoolgirls. I don't think he was very happy to receive my unsolicited fashion advice, particularly as he was trying to chat up a pretty young journalist at the time (see fig. 2 below).

I ended the day posing in front of a thin blue line of policemen, provocatively kicking a traffic cone in an attempt to solicit a response; wisely, they just kept smiling, as press photographers opposite were ready to record any brutality (see fig. 3 below).

Of course, like idiots, Kirk and I missed the bus back. Fortunately, however, we were able to hitch a ride with some students from Leeds Poly. When we finally arrived home, friends were excited to tell us that we had been on the BBC Nine O'Clock News - mistakenly identified as two student demonstrators, when, really, we were just a couple of punks having a laugh ... 

Fig. 2 trying to annoy Ken Livingstone 

Fig. 3 trying to provoke the filth

Autobiographical Fragment: Eine Schöne Romanze

A lover of mine / From down on the Rhine

Whilst for most of the time in 1987 I was holed up in Blind Cupid House reading poetry, assembling Pagan Magazine, painting t-shirts, and endlessly listening to Killing Joke, some of my happiest days were spent in Germany in the company of deutsche girl Carolin Loerke ...

For although Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative government would win an historic third term in this year, it was actually a golden age in which to be voluntarily unemployed (i.e. free). Having signed on on the Tuesday, I would cash my giro on the Thursday, and then Interrail it all the way to Mainz and the arms of Fräulein Loerke.

Carolin was a good friend of a London-based punkette called Angelika Mischling, whom I was very keen on at the time. Unfortunately, the latter was romantically unavailable, living as she did with her English boyfriend who sang in a band and looked a bit like a young Dave Vanian. And so, Angelika decided to play Cupid and arranged for me to stay with Carolin, whom she insisted was sehr nett ...

And, to be fair, she was very nice: a physiotherapist who loved existentialism, Joy Division, and making fresh pesto sauce. Her English was excellent and, as well as having a cheeky smile, she had what many would describe as perfect breasts; i.e. slightly fuller below the nipple meridian than above, so that the nipple points upwards at a 20 degree angle. 

Her apartment, I remember, was close to a zoo or wildlife park of some kind; at night you could lie and listen to the animals calling out. During the day, I would wander around the town and see the sights, although most of the historical buildings were destroyed in air raids during the War. Sometimes, I would take a stroll by the River.

Alternatively, I would visit nearby cities including Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Cologne, and Heidelberg where I met (and shared a hot chocolate with) an extraordinary American, Laura Carleton, who would later find fame as Berlin's Singing Mermaid and is today better known as the artist Miss LaLaVox.

Still, that's another story. All that remains to ask here in closing is: Was ist mit Carolin Loerke passiert? Sadly, I cannot say; we fell out of contact as quickly as we had fallen into bed. But I've never forgotten the curls of this Deutsche girl.

Play: Adam and the Ants, 'Deutscher Girls', from the Jubilee soundtrack album (Polydor Records, 1978): click here. The track was later re-recorded and released as a single on E.G. Records in Feb. 1982, but with slightly altered lyrics: click here. 

Autobiographical Fragment: Off to Sunny Spain (October 1985)

¿Qué pasó con Ana y Asun?

Although I remember the journey vividly and in detail, it's almost 35 years ago that I left London for Madrid carrying a case containing everything I owned (mostly books) and an envelope stuffed with £1000 in cash on the day after Broadwater Farm erupted (following riots the previous month in Brixton and Handsworth).

The plan - if you can call it that - was to teach English as a foreign language and write a novel. But the hope was to meet señoritas by the score and, actually, I got off to a good start by meeting Ana and Asun at Victoria coach station and then travelling with them all the way until they got off the bus in Burgos.

That's me pictured with them aboard the ferry to France. I loved being up on deck in the autumnal sunshine, watching with Lawrentian eyes as England, like a long, ash-grey coffin, slowly submerged beneath the waves (not that the French coast looked any less dismal to be honest).

Ana, I recall, wanted to be a policewoman. But it was Asun, curled up against me like a cat on the back seat of the coach, who taught me my first words of Castilian: Me llamo Jazz ... Yo soy inglés ... Tengo hambre. Perhaps rather shamefully, that still pretty much constitutes the extent of my Spanish language skills.      

Although I was happy to be out of England, things did not go well in Madrid, which seemed to me a madhouse; everybody smoked and drank black coffee in order to stay awake (nobody seemed to sleep); everybody shouted and drove like a lunatic; armed police pointed guns in my direction, whilst the children followed me along the street shouting Olé! Olé! 

Even in late November, it was hot by day. But it was so desert-cold at night that I collapsed with hypothermia (the rented ground floor flat that I shared with the Polecat had no heating, just bars on the window; something which, like the beggars on every street corner, I had not experienced whilst living in Chiswick).   

Eventually, as the money and my patience ran out - and having failed as a teacher and failed as a novelist - I returned to England. Although I didn't know it then, my life-long love affair with Spain would only really begin two years later ...


Musical bonus: Sylvia Vrethammar, 'Y Viva España' (1974): click here. 

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Strategy (Notes on Blackfishing with Reference to the Case of Rita Ora)

If you're thinkin' of being my baby 

It don't matter if you're black or white

Albanian pop sensation Rita Ora is the latest star to be accused of blackfishing - i.e., adopting - or, if you prefer, appropriating - a look that is perceived to be African; braided hair, dark skin, full lips, curvaceous body shape, etc.

Why would she want to do this?

Well, presumably, in order to widen her fan base, increase her record sales, and raise her cultural status; for is there anything cooler today (certainly in the minds of advertisers and those who set or follow trends on social media) than being black, or, at the very least, bi-racial?

Blackfishing, then, is simply a contemporary form of what sociologists call passing - i.e., the ability of an individual to be regarded as a member of an identity group (or community) different from their own. Sometimes, this is a matter not merely of social acceptance, but survival; expressing one's true identity can be dangerous for all kinds of people, not just masked superheroes.

At other times, however, it's all about manipulating appearances in order to achieve fame and fortune. This may be cynical and show a lack of concern for others, but, to be honest, I don't have a problem with it. In fact, one might suggest that we're all just passing at some level; that all identities are styles and games of artifice - isn't that what the trans movement teaches us?

In other words, none of us are what we seem to be, or believe ourselves to be. And so, when I hear people getting upset about this issue, I don't doubt the sincerity of their outrage or the strength of their feeling. But I do think they're indulging in old-fashioned moralism and a naive form of essentialism.

And I would ask them: who really wants to be Doris Day when you can pretend to be Rihanna? 

Notes

For a related post to this one in defence of cultural appropriation, click here.

For a related post to this one on the case of Rachel Dolezal, click here. 

Simply Nietzschean

As Simon Solomon is keen to remind me, any attempt to cloak oneself in the skin of another is to violate Zarathustra's greatest teaching: Lose me and find yourselves. No master worthy of the name wants disciples and, in truth, there was only ever one Christian and he died on the cross.

And so, what then are we to make of Foucault's remark in an interview shortly before his death in 1984: I am simply a Nietzschean ... Doesn't this already betray an essential misunderstanding of Nietzsche and his philosophy?

I don't think so. Foucault wasn't a slavish disciple of Nietzsche's, nor an uncritical reader and so this statement is rather more complex than it first appears. It helps, I think, to read the sentence from which the remark is taken in full:

"I am simply a Nietzschean, and I try as far as possible, on a certain number of issues, to see with the help of Nietzsche’s texts - but also with anti-Nietzschean theses (which are nevertheless Nietzschean!) - what can be done in this or that domain. I attempt nothing else, but that I try to do well." [1]

I suppose what Deleuze says of D. H. Lawrence, we might also say of Foucault: it's not that either writer simply imitated Nietzsche; rather, each picks up the arrow shot into the future by the latter and then shoots it in a new direction.

So it is that, whilst finding new targets of his own, the weapons (i.e. genealogical methods) that Foucault adopts, originate in Nietzsche: "Many things change or are supplemented from one initiative to another, and even what they have in common gains in strength and novelty." [2] 

Ultimately, what enables one to call oneself a Nietzschean without embarrassment (but always with a dash of irony) is the fact that there was no one Nietzsche with whom one might identify.

Thus, what it means, to call oneself a Nietzschean, is that one is loyal only to fluidity of thought and a multiplicity of perspectives; that one likes wearing masks as a philosopher; that in all things, one values style above all else. It doesn't mean you have to have a big letter S tattooed on your chest or grow a walrus-handlebar moustache ... 

Notes

[1] Michel Foucault, 'The Return of Morality', trans John Johnston in Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961-1984), ed. by Sylvère Lotringer (Semiotext(e), 1996), pp. 465-73. The lines quoted are on p. 471. This interview was conducted by Gilles Barbedette and André Scala on 29 May 1984 and was originally published as 'Le Retour de la Morale', in Les Nouvelles littéraires, (Paris, 1984), pp. 36-41. 

[2] Gilles Deleuze, 'Nietzsche and St. Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos', Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco, (Verso, 1998), p. 37.

On Apples and Apricots, Poets and Philosophers

I've come to give you fruit from out of my garden ...

I.

It's interesting to compare the pleasure that Bertrand Russell took from eating a piece of fruit with that experienced by D. H. Lawrence ...

In an essay first published in 1935, the former writes: 

"I have enjoyed peaches and apricots more since I have known that they were first cultivated in China in the early days of Han Dynasty; that Chinese hostages held by the great King Kaniska introduced them to India, whence they spread to Persia, reaching the Roman Empire in the first century of our era; that the word 'apricot' is derived from the same Latin source as the word 'precocious', because the apricot ripens early; and that the A at the beginning was added by mistake, owing to a false etymology. All this makes the fruit taste much sweeter." [1]

It's pretty clear what Russell is attempting to demonstrate here; namely, how knowledge shapes and intensifies our sensory experience of the world, enhancing our pleasure and, as in this case, literally making life taste sweeter. 

But Lawrence, who, at one time, imagined that he and Russell might team up and put the world to rights, would doubtless reject this and accuse Russell of bartering away the physical delight of eating an actual piece of fruit in exchange for mental satisfaction.

Compare and contrast Russell's overripe intellectualism with Lawrence's more elemental joy in eating an apple expressed in one of his last poems:   

"They call all experience of the senses mystic, when the experience is considered.
So an apple becomes mystic when I taste in it
the summer and the snows, the wild welter of earth
and the insistence of the sun.
All of which things I can surely taste in a good apple.

Though some apples taste preponderantly of water, wet and sour
and some of too much sun, brackish sweet
like lagoon-water, that has been too much sunned.

If I say I taste these things in an apple, I am called mystic, which means a liar.
The only way to eat an apple is to hog it down like a pig
and taste nothing
that is real.

But if I eat an apple, I like to eat it with all my senses awake.
Hogging it down like a pig I call the feeding of corpses." [2]

II.

Now, to be fair, no one could accuse Russell of simply hogging down his fruit. But he too doesn't seem to eat his peaches and apricots with all his physical senses awake, even if his big brain is still mechanically whirring like clockwork. 

It's as if Russell has a secret horror for the soft flesh of the fruit and so seeks an escape route into historico-linguistic abstraction, transfusing the juicy body of the apricot with facts and false etymologies. It's what Lawrence terms cerebral conceit - the tyranny of the mind and the arrogance of the spirit triumphing over the instinctive-intuitive consciousness.

Having said that - and despite his obvious irritation at the charge - it could be that Lawrence is being just a wee bit mystical when he says he can taste in his apple the elements and seasons and wild chaos of creation, etc.

But of course, Lawrence is not the only poet to insist on this. One might recall, for example, Louise Bogan's verse 'The Crossed Apple', which was published in the same year as Lawence wrote his poem (1929) and which contains the following lines:

"Eat it, and you will taste more than the fruit: / The blossom, too, / The sun, the air, the darkness at the root, / The rain, the dew ..." [3]

I suppose we might conclude that whilst philosophers love to parade their learning, poets have to make a big deal about their sensitivity and insist that they can feel more than the rest of us.

(A friend, who happens to be a chemist, would say that what you can actually taste in an apple is a combination of sugars, acids, and tannins; that these things determine the flavour in terms of sweetness, sourness and bitterness. But then he might also insist that water is H2O and that's not quite the whole truth, is it?)

Notes

[1] Bertrand Russell, '"Useless" Knowledge', In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays, (George Allen and Unwin Ltd.,1935).

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Mystic', The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

[3] Louise Bogan, 'The Crossed Apple', Dark Summer, (Scribner's, 1929).

Thanks to Simon Solomon for suggesting the poem by Louise Bogan.

D. H. Lawrence and the Ideal Side of Books

What do I care for first or last editions?

Some writers think that publication is the be-all and end-all. Others, like D. H. Lawrence, claim not to care about publication and having a readership: 

 

"To me, no book has a date, no book has a binding. [...] One writes [...] to some mysterious presence in the air. If that presence were not there, and one thought of even a single solitary actual reader, the paper would remain forever white." [75-76]

Later, in the same introductory essay he adds:

"One submits to the process of publication as to a necessary evil: as souls are said to submit to the necessary evil of being born into the flesh." [78]

For Lawrence, what really counts is the creative process; a writer struggling with their own δαίμων in order to bring something into being that is beautiful - but passing - like a flower. The finished product, i.e., the published book, that people place upon their shelves and assemble into libraries, is, in a sense, just a husk.  

And perhaps the greatest novels and poems are ones that remain unwritten; "voices in the air, that do not disturb the haze of autumn, and visions that don't blot out the sunflowers" [75]. 

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Bad Side of Books', Introductions and Reviews, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 73-78. Page numbers given in the text refer to this edition. 

It's the Lad Himself (In Memory of Mssrs. Hancock and Hill)

Benny Hill and Tony Hancock pop art style
available from artandhue.com

I.

I suppose because I was a child of the '70s rather than the 1950s, I always thought that the lad himself was Benny Hill - that's certainly how I remember him being introduced (by the brilliant Henry McGee) at the start of each show.

But, as it turns out, this was just a borrowing from Tony Hancock, who died five years prior to Hill's appropriation of the phrase. Doubtless this was intended as a tribute to the man born in the same year as him (1924), in much the same way as the name 'Benny' was adopted in homage to another favourite comedian, Jack Benny. 



II.

What's interesting when you think about Mssrs. Hancock and Hill, is how the former's reputation and standing has only increased since his suicide in 1968; whereas following his death in 1992 - having been stabbed-in-the-back by ITV executives three years prior and had his comedy career rubbished by figures like Ben Elton - the latter has found himself unceremoniously dumped in a deep, dark memory hole.  

Now, whilst I'm pleased that Hancock has remained a much-loved figure within the British cultural imagination - for he fully deserves to be remembered fondly -  I do think that the fate which has befallen Hill is unfair and shameful.

It should be remembered that Hill was a huge star in Britain for almost forty years. And, at its peak, The Benny Hill Show was among the most-watched programmes in the UK, gaining an audience of over 20 million viewers. It was also, one might note, exported to nearly 100 countries around the world, earning Thames Television shit loads of money.  

Sadly, the world being as it is, there seems little chance of the show being repeated anytime soon - even though Hill does retain a number of loyal fans and even though some commentators place him in the top ten of greatest British comedians, alongside his childhood idols Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel.

To be honest, I was never a great lover of the show: it wasn't that I had any objection as a child to the pervy elements and dubious sexual politics of some of the sketches; rather, it was that I found some of the silent clowing and slapstick boring.

Having said that, I do have a soft spot for Benny if only because Ernie (the Fastest Milkman in the West) was the first single I ever bought (helping it reach the Christmas number 1 spot in 1971): click here to watch the promo video, starring Hill in the eponymous role and featuring Henry McGee as Two-Ton Ted from Teddington who drove the baker's van and Jan Butlin as Sue, a widow living all alone in Linley Lane, at number 22. 

Fatal Attraction: On Cats, Rats, and Parasites

One live cat, one dead rat, and one plush toy parasite (available from giantmicrobes.com)

The Cat has caught five rats in five days: either she's a very skilled huntress, or the rodents who pass through my back garden are absolutely useless at keeping out of harm's way.

Alternatively, they could be infected with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii which seems to cause them to lose their innate fear of cats and, indeed, become amorously aroused when they smell cat urine, rather than run and hide.

This may sound like a joke, but it's true: researchers at Stanford University discovered that the brains of infected male rats show heightened activity in the region associated with sexual response and various emotional states. In other words, the parasite deliberately manipulates the romantic behaviour of male rats in order to increase the chance that they'll be eaten by a cat.

Why would it want to do that? Because T. gondii can only reproduce inside the cat's small intestine, so it's vital - if it wishes to complete its lifecycle - that it find a way into its definitive host's digestive system.

As one of the scientists in the research team said, it's very impressive: for there are not many protozoan organisms that can fuck with the heads of other (more complex) species in this manner. It might even be argued that T. gondii knows more about the neurobiology of fear and attraction and epigenetic remodelling than we do.

Afternote

Once T. gondii has reproduced inside the cat's gut, the parasites are excreted in faeces; which is how shit-eating rats become infected, though they can infect any warm-blooded animal, including human beings. In fact, it may interest readers to know that approximately 30-50 per cent of the world's human population is believed to be infected with T. gondii (in France, this figure rises to over 80 per cent).

Fortunately, for most people, infection causes no ill effects, but it can be fatal for those with compromised immune systems and there are also recent studies showing that there may be a possible link with schizophrenia. So, perhaps these parasites are playing with our brains too, which, actually, aren't all that different in terms of circuitry and neural processes from those of rats. 

On the Question of Racial Aesthetics with Reference to D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love

Yoruba carved wooden figure

I.

As everyone knows, many European artists at the beginning of the twentieth-century were inspired by the aesthetics of traditional African sculpture and, without understanding anything of the original symbolism and function of the works, they cheerfully appropriated numerous elements into their own projects in an attempt to move beyond the naturalism that had defined (and limited) Western art since the Renaissance.

Soon, anyone and everyone who wanted to be thought of as avant-garde, began to purchase African figures and masks and to rave about the aesthetic and spiritual value to be found in primitivism. So, it's not surprising that when Birkin and Gerald stay with Julius Halliday and his bohemian friends at a flat in Soho there were "several negro statues, wood-carvings from West Africa" [74] on display.

Gerald finds the pieces strange and disturbing; particularly the figure of a woman sitting naked in a contorted posture (possibly giving birth), which he describes as obscene. The next morning, still troubled by the work, he asks his friend Rupert for his views on it:

"Birkin, white and strangely present, went over to the carved figure of the negro woman in labour. Her nude, protuberant body crouched in a strange, clutching posture, her hands gripping the ends of the band, above her breast.

      'It is art,' said Birkin." [78]
     
Gerald re-examines the figure. But somehow - and for some reason - it made his heart contract:

"He saw vividly, with his spirit, the grey, forward-stretching face of the negro woman, African and tense, abstracted in utter physical stress, It was a terrible face, void, peaked, abstracted almost into meaningless by the weight of sensation beneath. [...]

      'Why is it art?' Gerald asked, shocked, resentful. 

      'It conveys a complete truth,' said Birkin. 'It contains the whole truth of that state, whatever you feel about it.'

      'But you can't call it high art,' said Gerald. 

      'High! There are centuries and hundreds of centuries of development [...] behind that carving; it is an awful pitch of culture, of a definite sort.'

      'What culture?' Gerald asked, in opposition. He hated the sheer African thing. 

      'Pure culture in sensation, culture in the physical consciousness, really ultimate physical consciousness, mindless, utterly sensual. It is so sensual as to be final, supreme.

      But Gerald resented it. He wanted to keep certain illusions, certain ideas like clothing. 

      'You like the wrong things, Rupert,' he said, 'things against yourself.'" 

      'Oh, I know, this isn't everything,'" Birkin replied, moving away. [79]

Although he doesn't let on here, Birkin is perhaps even more perturbed by the female figure than Gerald. Thus it is that, twelve chapters later in the novel, when suddenly recalling the African fetishes he had encountered at Halliday's flat:

"There came back to him one, a statuette about two feet high, a tall, slim, elegant figure from West Africa, in dark wood, glossy and suave. It was a woman, with hair dressed high, like a melon-shaped dome. He remembered her vividly: she was one of his soul's intimates. Her body was long and elegant, her face was crushed tiny like a beetle's, she had rows of round heavy collars, like a column of quoits, on her neck. He remembered her: her astonishing cultured elegance, her diminished beetle face, the astounding long elegant body, on short, ugly legs, with such protuberant buttocks, so weighty and unexpected below her slim long loins. She knew what he himself did not know. She had thousands of years of purely sensual, purely unspiritual knowledge behind her." [253]

This passage - along with the earlier exchange between Birkin and Gerald - can only be understood in relation to the question of racial (and racialised) aesthetics ...

II.

We can, I suppose, take it as a given that there is a dynamic between race and aesthetics and that one of the privileges of having a white skin is that you get to determine what is (and is not) objectively beautiful and that on the basis of this determination white people can also justify the denigration of black art and culture - and, indeed, black people - as ugly and inherently inferior.

But the paradoxical thing, of course, is that white people also find blackness threatening and sexually provocative (something keenly exploited by pornographers). They might not wish to accept people of colour as their social, political, and cultural equals, but they are happy to indulge in exoticism and attribute extraordinary qualities to other races - often by virtue of their physical features - which makes them alluring.    

I think we can find aspects of all these things - the normative component of (white) aesthetics and the attempt to imbue beauty with racial meaning, the overt racism and often unconscious bias of white people unaware of their own privilege, the sexual stereotyping and objectification of black bodies, etc. - in the passages quoted above from Women in Love.

Gerald is shocked to hear Birkin describe the African statuette as a work of art and point out that it has thousands of years of culture behind it. He cannot accept this: for him, art - certainly high art - and culture (which he associates with clothing and illusion) belongs exclusively to the white world. Gerald hates the pure African thing and seems to regard Birkin as something of a race traitor for liking the wrong things - things that are non-white and non-Western. 

 
Almost, one is tempted to describe Gerald as a negrophobe; i.e., someone gripped by a fear and/or hatred for black people and black culture - a condition that if not rooted in the ideology of white aesthetics, is certainly reinforced by it. For Gerald, whiteness and blackness transcend mere skin tones or even aesthetic qualites; they have moral and metaphysical significance.* 

But then the same is also true of Birkin. Indeed, Birkin has an entire philosophy worked out in terms of race and two contrasting forms of abstraction (which seems to be his word for a fatal form of racial consummation):

"The white races, having the arctic north behind them, the vast abstraction of ice and snow, would fulfil a mystery of ice-destructive knowledge, snow-abstract annihilation. Whereas the West Africans, controlled by the burning death-abstraction of the Sahara, had been fulfilled in sun-destruction, the putresecent mystery of sun-rays." [254]

This is the kind of thing one only finds in Lawrence - and Nazi occultism. But Birkin's main interest in the African statuette, however, is more erotic than esoteric; he finds the female figure extremely elegant and utterly sensual and when he remembers her he does so vividly: she was, we are told, one of his soul's intimates. Does that mean Birkin has a black soul? Or does it mean, rather, that he fetishises black female beauty? Probably the latter, I would suggest.

In other words, rather than stigmatise the racial features of African women as deviating from the accepted standard of white beauty, he indulges in a little racial exoticism and pervs on their hair styles, their faces, and their bodies, particularly the protuberant buttocks and slim long loins.

Now, some people might suggest that's better than Gerald's overt negrophobia - but really it's just the other side of the same coin and it's worth noting that whilst Birkin may seceretly lust after black women, he marries snow white Ursula Brangwen and continues to move in all white circles. One suspects that, push comes to shove, he might even share the view expressed by Oliver Mellors; i.e., black women are sensual and orgasmic creatures alright, but, well, he's a white man: and they're a bit like mud.**    

What would be good, would be learning to see members of different races as people in their own right without viewing them only in relation to a white ideal of beauty. Of course, that's never going to happen - particularly in an age increasingly characterised by identity politics. And besides, perhaps it's an innately human thing (and not just a white thing at all) for people to judge others in relation to themselves ...  

See: D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987). All page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.

See also John M. Kang, 'Deconstructing the Ideology of White Aesthetics', Michigan Journal of Race and Law, Vol. 2, (1997), pp. 283-359, an essay which I found extremely helpful whilst writing this post.

* The term negrophobia was popularised in the mid-twentieth century by the political philosopher Frantz Fanon in works such as Peaux noires masques blancs (1952), trans. into English as Black Skin, White Masks, (1967), and Les Damnés de la Terre, (1961) trans. into English as The Wretched of the Earth (1963). 

** I'm referring here to an infamous exchange between Connie and Mellors, in which the latter reveals just what a misogynistic, homophobic, and racist character he is. See D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 204. For a full character analysis of Mellors, click here.