On the Development of Cyborg Technology

Front cover of The Lawrentian 
Autumn Edition 2020 [1]

I don't know why some people dream of becoming-machine, whilst others fantasise about becoming-animal. I suppose in both cases it's all about enhancement - i.e., not only improving or strengthening what we are, but in some sense transcending our present (all-too-human) condition.

At any rate, researchers have recently made significant progress with the goal of integrating electronics with human tissue (including grey matter), thanks to the use of a conjugated polymer coating for components.

Previously, this was proving extremely difficult to accomplish, for traditional microelectronic materials - such as silicon, gold, or stainless steel - cause damage to organic material and the scarring that results disrupts or prevents the sending of electrical signals.

But now, thanks to poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) - or PEDOT as it is conveniently known - it looks like we'll soon be able to establish a seamless interface between hardware and soft tissue and merge artificial intelligence with the brain [2].

Is that a good thing? Well, it's certainly being sold to us as such; not because scientists will be able to create a race of superhuman cyborgs, but because it will enable a new generation of medical implants, dramatically improving the survival rate and quality of life of patients who may urgently require such.

And, I suppose, push comes to shove, if diagnosed with an intracranial tumour, I'd welcome these developments.

However, as a reader of D. H. Lawrence, I can't help being a little troubled by the thought of man's reinvention by the machine and wonder if one shouldn't try to side-step further enframing by technology ...? [3]    

Notes

[1] The material in this post was originally intended for publication in The Lawrentian (Autumn 2020), ed. David Brock, but was cut due to limitations of space. The new issue, on D. H. Lawrence and the question concerning technology, is out on 11 September. 

[2] For more details, see the recent press release from the American Chemical Society headed "'Cyborg' technology could enable new diagnostics, merger of humans and AI." (17 August, 2020): click here. 

[3] I'm thinking in particular here of Lawrence's poems in The 'Nettles' Notebook, such as 'Man and Machine' and 'Side-step, O sons of men!' - see The Poems Vol. 1, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 552 and 554. 

Why I Love Goldie Hawn

Goldie Hawn as Gloria, Judy, Helen and Gwen

There are some movie stars who seem to have been around for ever and who have irritated me all my life; actors who have been in the business for fifty years plus and just will not quit and will not die. On the other hand, there are some actors who have had equally long careers, but who have always made happy and for whom one feels a special affection having, as it were, grown up with them. And Goldie Hawn belongs in this latter category ...

Maybe because I have a thing for beautiful Jewish women - particularly beautiful Jewish women who are also very funny - I'm always pleased to see Miss Hawn on screen and there are at least four of her films that I will watch whenever they are shown on TV:

Foul Play (dir. Colin Higgins, 1978); a romantic comedy thriller that pays homage to Hitchcock, starring Goldie as Gloria Mundy, a sexy-but-shy recently divorced librarian unwittingly caught up in a plot to assassinate the pope. It's not a great film: but it has some great scenes involving an albino, a dwarf, and a python. Podophiles might also like to note that Miss Hawn removes her shoes whilst climbing on to a fire escape in the rain. Click here to watch the official trailer.

Private Benjamin (dir. Howard Zieff, 1980); a rather sweet and old-fashioned comedy starring Goldie as Judy Benjamin, a 28-year-old Jewish American Princess* who decides - following the death of her husband on their wedding night - to join the US Army. Again, it's not a great film, but has some great scenes and is an excellent showcase for Hawn's comic persona and acting skills (as it is for co-star Eileen Brennan, as Capt. Doreen Lewis). Click here to watch the official trailer. 

Death Becomes Her (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1992); a black comedy starring Goldie as Helen Sharp alongside Meryl Streep as her friend and rival Madeline Ashton; the pair drink an elixir of life - provided by Isabella Rossellini as Lisle Von Rhuman - that promises eternal youth, but which invariably leads to their downfall and destruction. Although it received mixed reviews from the critics, the film was a commercial success and has since becomes a favourite amongst the LGBT community who know a camp classic when they see one. Click here to watch the official trailer.

Housesitter (dir. Frank Oz, 1992); a screwball comedy starring Goldie as Gwen (actually, it's Jessica), an enchanting fantasist, and Steve Martin as the struggling (slightly reserved) architect Newton Davis whose life she turns upside down (in a nice way) by claiming to be his wife. Personally, I can't find anything not to love about this film (again, the critics can go fuck themselves) and whilst I'm sure Meg Ryan would've done a first rate job had she accepted the role of Gwen that she was initially offered, I'm pleased it went to Miss Hawn. Click here to watch the official trailer.

* Note: I'm aware, of course, of the pejorative and, indeed, dangerous aspect of stereotypes - not least racial and sexual stereotypes such as this one, which portrays young Jewish women from a privileged background as shallow, selfish, and slightly neurotic. Although partly constructed and popularised as a post-War stereotype by Jewish writers and comedians, it's hard to disagree with those who point out elements of both sexism and anti-Semitism. Whether Private Benjamin reinforces or satirises the stereotype is something viewers will have to decide, but it's interesting that in recent years some Jewish women have attempted to re-appropriate the term JAP and affirm it as part of their cultural identity.     

Don't Go to the Baker's with D. H. Lawrence

What food is this for the darkly flying 

Fowls of the Afterwards!

In a recent post [click here], I compared the pleasure that Bertrand Russell took from eating an apricot with that experienced by D. H. Lawrence when eating an apple.

For the former, knowledge shapes and intensifies sensory experience of the world, enhancing our pleasure and, in this case, literally making a piece of fruit taste all the sweeter. But for the latter, there is a danger that decadent intellectualism barters away the physical delight of eating an actual piece of fruit in exchange for mental satisfaction.

Russell, we might say, has his apricot in his head; his secret horror for the soft flesh of the fruit itself compels him into historico-linguistic abstraction, transfusing the juicy body of the apricot with fascinating 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.

However, as James Walker reminds us in a post on Instagram [click here], Lawrence himself - hypocrite that he was - couldn't even enjoy a sandwich without lecturing poor Frieda on how the word bread has both a mob-meaning and an individual meaning:

"The mob-meaning is merely: stuff made with white flour into loaves, that you eat. But take the individual meaning [...] and the word bread will take you to the ends of time and space, and far-off down avenues of memory. [...] The word bread will take the individual off on his own journey, and its meaning will be his own meaning, based on his own genuine imaginative reactions. And when a word comes to us in its individual character, and starts in us the individual responses, it is a great pleasure to us." [237]

To be honest, I'm having a hard time seeing any great difference between what Lawrence does here with a slice of bread and what Russell does with his apricot. If the latter is guilty of cerebral conceit and intellectual posturing, then so too is the former. For rather than just butter his bread, Lawrence has to spread it with his knowledge of the wide variety of breads that exist in the world.

Worse, he can't resist insulting those readers who are "almost all mob-self, incapable of imaginative individual responses" [238]; people, he says, who usually make up the professional classes (including lawyers, academics, and clergymen).

Not that less educated members of the public get off any easier; for being feeble-minded they do not possess the wit to preserve their own individual feelings; which is why they are so easy to manipulate and always open to exploitation.     

Again, one struggles to find anything particularly imaginative or original in Lawrence's disdain for the mob and contempt for the general public; such elitism (and snobbery) was widespread amongst modernists writers and intellectuals at the time. Disappointing, though, when Lawrence joins in.

Ultimately, my advice would be simple: don't go to the baker's with D. H. Lawrence - you'll never get home on time and will probably be insulted. 

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Page numbers in the text refer to this edition.

Today I Saw the DragonflEye

Project DragonflEye: this to-scale model shows 
the insect-controlling backpack with integrated 
energy, guidance, and navigation systems

 

I.

According to a recent report in The Observer (16 August 2020), thanks to climate change dragonflies are thriving in the UK as more and more of them migrate northwards. 

In the last twenty years, at least half-a-dozen previously foreign species of dragon (and the smaller-bodied damsel) fly have set up home here, bringing the total number of UK species to nearly fifty.

And more are expected to follow ...

That, I think, is a good thing: for I like these jewel-like insects, with their gossamer wings and brilliantly coloured bodies, that have been zipping around for at least 300 million years.

And this despite the fact that they have a slightly sinister reputation within the European imagination, unlike in Japan, by contrast, where they are an inspiration to poets and rightly recognised as a symbol of happiness; not that this stops the Japanese from grinding them up for use in so-called traditional medicine.   

That, of course, is an absurd way to die for such a beautiful creature. But it's worth noting that - even for an insect - there are fates worse than death by ancient quackery ...  

II.

Draper Laboratory is an independent, non-profit research and development unit based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which looks for new ways to deploy advanced technology in the areas of national security, space exploration, and health care.

Draper is also collaborating with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to create cybernetic insects using genetic engineering and optoelectronics. Indeed, a dragonfly has already been genetically modified with light-sensitive steering neurons in its nerve cord. Miniature sensors, a computer chip, and a solar panel have also been fitted in a backpack attached to the creature's thorax, just in front of its wings.

Pulses of light are sent along flexible optrodes from the backpack to the nerve cord in order to relay commands to the insect. According to the scientists working on the project, the result is a micro-aerial vehicle that's superior to anything purely mechanical; who needs robotic insects when you can turn real dragonflies into cyborg drones?    

The hope is - once they really get the hang of optogenetic stimulation (which is clearly an advance upon old-fashioned electrodes directly stimulating muscles) - they'll be able to have dragonflies carry payloads or conduct surveillance. And if the same technology can be used with bees, perhaps it will help them become more efficient pollinators ...

For more details on the DragonflEye project visit the Draper website: click here.

The Study of Myth is an Occupation for Imbeciles

Pop art prints by Amazon

I.

It's always worth remembering to whom Nietzsche dedicated the first edition of Human, All Too Human (1878): it wasn't Schopenhauer and it wasn't Wagner; it was Voltaire. 

And whilst there are very few references to Voltaire in Nietzsche's writings after this date, he always remained well-disposed towards this giant of the Enlightenment, describing him in Ecce Homo (1888) as a grand seigneur of the spirit in whom he sees a crucial aspect of himself.   

II.

Perhaps even more surprising than the dedication in Human, All Too Human to Voltaire was the inclusion of a passage - in lieu of a preface - taken from Descartes's Discourse on Method (1637) in praise of reason. 

All of which indicates that it's lazy and mistaken to characterise Nietzsche as an irrationalist, as many of his opponents (and, indeed, many of his supporters) have done. He wasn't - even if there are many passages in his work that lend themselves to an irrationalist interpretation.

Nor, having realised the error of his ways in The Birth of Tragedy (1872), was Nietzsche a mythologist.

If, in this dubious work, he asserted that "without myth all culture loses its healthy and natural creative power" [1], by 1876 he understood that the conditions no longer existed for myth to function in this way; not least because its narratives were no longer considered to have any significant truth content:    

"If an epoch has thought beyond the realm of myths, a breach has occurred which fundamentally alters a society's relationship to myths. Their value dwindles and is perhaps replaced by aesthetic value. However, myths considered from an aesthetic point of view cannot maintain the impact required to consolidate a 'cultural movement' into a state of unity." [2]

Safranski continues:

"Nietzsche grew aware that [...] eras of the past could be conjured up in the mind, but that their renaissance could be enacted only at the cost of self-deception. A modern mythical consciousness is hollow; it represents systematized insincerity." [3]

It becomes, in other words, a will to aesthetic self-enchantment; or, in a word, Wagnerian. And Nietzsche had already begun to recognise what lay behind this word even before the shock and disappointment he experienced at Bayreuth in 1876, where he saw for himself how even supposedly sacred art rests on cheap scenery and costumes.

Whereas Nietzsche had once shared Wagner's goal of overcoming modernity and bringing about a rebirth of tragedy from out of the spirit of music, he now regarded this as an impossible - and undesirable - fantasy; an attempt to lie one's way into madness.

From 1876 on, Nietzsche refuses to employ philosophy to "nullify reason and dream his way into an aesthetic myth" [4]. And from this date on, he agreed with Voltaire that l'étude du mythe est une occupation pour les imbéciles ...

Notes

[1] Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, ed. Michael Tanner, trans. Shaun Whiteside, (Penguin Books, 1993), p. 109. 

[2] Rüdiger Safranski, Nietzsche, trans. Shelley Frisch, (Granta Books, 2002), p. 140.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., p. 141. 

This post is a revised extract from 'On the Abuses and Disadvantages of Mythology for Life: A Timely Meditation', in Stephen Alexander, Visions of Excess and Other Essays, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010), pp. 219-253.  

For a related post (also extracted from the above essay) on myth and literary criticism, click here.

On Myth and Literary Criticism

Northrop Frye (1912-1991) 

Photo by Andrew Danson 
The Canadian Encyclopedia

I.

Many (anti-modernist) writers continue to exploit ancient myths as a literary resource, even when they have ceased to be meaningful in any vital sense. And many critics still like to delve into what Philip Larkin referred to dismissively as the myth-kitty in order to interpret what they might otherwise find impossible to comprehend. 

As Deleuze and Guattari point out, there's nothing easier than to read in this way; "you can always do it, you can't lose, it works every time, even if you understand nothing" [1] and even if the mythological (and related psychological) approach to literature is ultimately reductive; i.e., one that degrades the object of its study.   

II.

I suppose if there is one name above all others associated with myth-crit, it is that of Northrop Frye, author of Anatomy of Criticism (1957), a work whose very title betrays a certain morbidity of thinking and the fact that Frye ultimately regards literary criticism as a mortuary enterprise. 

Frye posits the idea that all literature is founded upon myth - particularly myths concerning the cycle of the seasons and different phases of the agricultural year. Even the most sophisticated fiction can thus be read as archetypal - i.e., full of archetypal characters, archetypal events, and archetypal themes. 

For me, this is a form of monomania: or, at the very least, it is shaped by myopia. For in order to view things in this manner he has to turn a half-blind eye to the huge differences between modern literature and ancient myth, forcing everything individual into what Nietzsche calls a universal mould, so that all sharp corners and distinct outlines are blunted and blurred in the interest of uniformity.       

An archetypal approach will never have much time for precision; it will always deal in approximations and generalities. It is a distorted and deceitful understanding of literature that integrates and coordinates difference into a network of correspondences and similarities so as to "render consistent with one another categories that are no longer compatible in the modern understanding of the world" [2].

Ultimately, Frye and his followers use myth to reinforce the reign of the Stereotype and crush production of the New, thereby preserving the old order or what D. H. Lawrence refers to as the Great Umbrella.

Any contemporary text - even the most avant-garde in character - is immediately coordinated within the archetypal framework and even the most transgressive authors are passed off as myth-makers who are concerned with universal truths and eternal patterns of meaning, rather than singular events and unique individuals.   

Frye effectively covers everything and everyone in a thick layer of maple syrup (or what Barthes terms doxa). Supporters may pretend to locate within his criticism all kinds of potentially liberating elements, but it best serves to support a model of bourgeois realism based on the essential facts of human experience; i.e., those things that go without saying and thus need no further explanation. Far from opening up the future, he uses the past to reaffirm the present.


III.

Like Frye, the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer is another idealist who fantasises about a mythic unconscious and treats myth as a primordial symbolic form; i.e., a kind of non-discursive language that is not only more archaic than logic, but also more vital.

For Cassirer, modern writers who explore the recesses of mythic consciousness should be valued above all others; for they keep us in touch with the very springs of our humanity. But as one critic asks, how can Cassirer and his admirers possibly know this:

"As we have no way of demonstrating that the mythopoeic ability of a modern writer is an archaic residue [...] there is not much point in saying it unless one happens to thrill at the very suggestion that primitive vestiges are present in modern man." [3]

This sounds a little flippant, perhaps, but I think a crucial point is being made here. For despite the "dreary earnestness of so much myth-critical writing", there is little doubt that many readers find the language used strangely seductive, resounding as it does with "awe-inspiring words [...] which promise to [...] put us directly in touch with the eternal and the infinite and the Wholly Other" [4].

In short, the language used by myth-critics is basically a rhetorical trick for soliciting approval from the faithful.

But like Deleuze and Guattari, I'm more interested in critics who suggest experimental methods of reading, rather than simply interpret a text; who ask how a book works, rather than what it means; who concern themselves with surfaces and lines of flight, rather than origins and depths.

For like Deleuze and Guattari, I think the aim of criticism is not to rediscover the eternal or universal, but to locate the conditions under which something new might be produced. Great books are never really concerned with the recounting of past experiences and memories - nor are they a place in which one merely confesses one's dreams and fantasies. They are, rather, sites of becoming and, as such, concerned with multiplicities, not myths.

Notes

[1] Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, (The Athlone Press, 1996), p. 41. 

[2] Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence, (Polity Press, 1994), p. 114.

[3] K. K. Ruthven, Myth, (Methuen, 1976), p. 74.

[4] Ibid., p. 78. 

This post is a revised extract from 'On the Abuses and Disadvantages of Mythology for Life: A Timely Meditation', in Stephen Alexander, Visions of Excess and Other Essays, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010), pp. 219-253. For a related post - also extracted from this essay - on Nietzsche, Voltaire, and myth, click here.

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.