D. H. Lawrence and Trans Issues

Image of D. H. Lawrence from Dawn of the Unread, Issue 7
Transgender Pride Flag designed by Monica Helms with added trans symbol

Those who think J. K. Rowling a hateful transphobe (which she isn't), had probably better look away now as we discuss D. H. Lawrence's essentialism in relation to questions of sex and gender identity.

 

For whilst Lawrence clearly understands the role that culture plays in, for example, the construction of feminine identity - see the article 'Give Her a Pattern' [1] - and concedes that you can have cocksure women and hensure men [2], he nevertheless insists that biology ultimately plays a determining role and that this forecloses the possibility of transitioning from one sex to another, no matter how extensive the hormone treatment, how radical the surgery, or how convincing the end result may be.

 

In Fantasia of the Unconscious, Lawrence writes:  

 

"A child is born with one sex only, and remains always single in his sex. There is no inter-mingling, only a great change of rôles is possible. But man in the female rôle is still male. 

      Sex - that is to say, maleness and femaleness - is present from the moment of birth, and in every act or deed of every child. [...] 

      We are all wrong when we say there is no vital difference between the sexes. There is every difference. Every bit, every cell in a boy is male, every cell is female in a woman, and must remain so. Women can never feel or know as men do. Man, acting in the passive or feminine polarity, is still man, and he doesn't have one single unmanly feeling." [3]

It's thus pretty clear where Lawrence would stand vis-à-vis the current debate around trans issues. And just to make this even clearer, we might read the following passage on organ transplantation (including xenotransplantation) in relation to sex reassignment surgery: 

 

"Every nose, every stomach is different, actually, from every other nose and stomach. [...] Noses and stomachs are not interchangeable. You might perhaps graft the end of one man's nose on the nose of another man. But the grafted gentleman would not thereby have a dual identity. His essential self would remain the same: a little disfigured, perhaps, but not metamorphosed. Whatever tricks you may perform, of grafting one bit of an individual on another, you don't produce a new individual, a new type. You only produce a disfigured, patched-up individual. [...] 

      It is sickening to hear scientists rambling on about the interchange of tissue and members from one individual to another. They have at last reached the old alchemistic fantasy of producing the homunculus. They hope to take the hind leg of a pig and by happy grafting produce a marvellous composite individual, a fused erection of living tissue which will at last prove that man can make man, and that therefore he isn't divine at all [...]" [4] 

 

Again, I think it clear what Lawrence would say about the idea of sex change operations: he would not approve, not accept, and scornfully dismiss. In the same essay, Lawrence also indicates that he would regard those seeking medical assistance to transition from one sex to another as being mentally ill in some manner: 

 

"The truth about man, before he falls into imbecility, is that each one is just himself. [...] Every man has his own identity, which he preserves till he falls into imbecility or worse. Upon this clue of his own identity every man is fashioned. And the clue of a man's own identity is a man's own self or soul, that which is incommutable and incommunicable in him. Every man, while he remains a man and does not lapse into disintegration, becoming a lump of chaos, is truly himself, no matter how many fantastic attitudes he may assume. True it is, that man goes and gets a host of ideas in his head, and proceeds to reconstruct himself according to those ideas. But he never actually succeeds in this business of reconstructing himself out of his own head, until he has gone cracked. And then he may prance on all fours [...] or do as he likes. But whilst he remains sane the buzzing ideas in his head will never allow him to change or metamorphose his own identity: modify, yes; but never change. While a man remains sane he remains himself and nothing but himself, no matter how fantastically he may attitudinise according to some pet idea." [5] 

 

Clinically speaking, I don't know how fair or accurate an assessment this is, but it should be noted that transsexualism is no longer classified as a mental disorder, but regarded as a sexual health issue. And it's somewhat surprising - if not disappointing - that a writer whose fiction is so profoundly queer and so richly perverse, should also reaffirm conventional notions of identity, integrity, and sanity.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] 'Give Her a Pattern' can be found in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 160-65. Whilst arguing that womanhood is in part an adaptation to male ideals and fantasies, Lawrence nevertheless insists that beneath this pattern lies "a real human being of the feminine sex" who comes with her own logic of emotion.   

[2] 'Cocksure Women and Hensure Men' can also be found in Late Essays and Articles, pp. 123-27. 

 

In this piece, Lawrence makes a dubious comparison between human beings and chickens in order to advance his argument that whilst a woman can certainly act in a cocksure manner, it's best if she retain her hen-like nature; "quietly and busily clucking around, laying her eggs and mothering her chickens". Similarly, whilst men today are often "timid, tremulous, rather soft and submissive", it's preferable that they be cocksure and boss the human farmyard. Indeed, Lawrence says that when the sexes play one another's role and throw the natural order out of scheme, it invariably has tragic consequences.  

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 131. 

 

This may or may not be true, but Lawrence is obliged by the terms of his own philosophy, based on vital polarity and sexual otherness, to believe this. The amusing thing, however, is the fragility of this metaphysic. For although he insists on the essential and immutable nature of sex, Lawrence also says it's important to keep boys and girls apart in virgin purity, as even casual mixing and familiarity threatens their "male and female integrity" and risks the "dynamic magic of life" [ibid., 132].    

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 101. 

[5] Ibid., pp. 101-102. 

  

Reflections on TB in the Age of Coronavirus

Chest x-ray of a patient with tuberculosis 

showing a lesion in the upper-right lung 

Zephyr / Science Photo Library

 

 

One of the positive aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic is that it has obliged people to consider all things virological, including how tiny parasitic agents evolve and cross from one species to another, infecting and exploiting host cells, etc.

 

One of the negative aspects - and this, ironically, as a consequence of knowing too much thanks to a 24-hour news media that is obsessed with the coronavirus - is that almost the entire world seems to have gone mad and is gripped by fear. 

 

In the past, when people knew much less about viruses and disease in general, they may have been concerned about catching something nasty and falling mortally ill, but there was no mass hysteria and the population didn't isolate themselves indoors, or walk around outside wearing masks and obsessively squirting hand gel.  

 

In 1920, for example, when the average life expectancy for a man in the UK was under fifty and for a woman fifty-four - and when we were only just emerging from the post-War flu pandemic that affected a quarter of the population, killing 228,000 British citizens - infectious diseases were the leading cause of death in young and middle-aged people. 

 

Polio, diptheria, measles, and mumps may now have been largely eradicated in the UK thanks to programmes of immunisation, but they were very serious illnesses a century ago. As was tuberculosis; a bacterial disease that was "by far the biggest and most consistent killer in Western Europe throughout the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries" [1]. 

 

 

II. 

 

According to David Ellis, in the year that D. H. Lawrence died, 1930, there were 50,000 registered deaths from TB in Great Britain; a figure higher than the present number of deaths associated with Covid-19, but also a figure that showed a significant decline from earlier years thanks to improved living conditions and better palliative care.   

Like the coranvirus, TB "is chiefly spread by droplets of sputum when the infected person coughs in the presence of others, with repeated close contact an important factor" [2]. But citizens in 1930 weren't ordered by their government to socially distance and obey the rule of six. Apparently, they accepted that disease and dying were a normal part of life and, whilst naturally wishing to remain healthy and avoid infection, they understood that risk can never be eliminated entirely.

 

Oh, and before anybody mistakenly says that consumption is old news in the Age of Coronavirus, it's worth remembering that one quarter of the world's population is thought to have a latent infection with TB and that in 2018 there were more than 10 million active cases, resulting in 1.5 million fatalities. 

 

TB thus remains the deadliest of all infectious diseases afflicting mankind and if we in the West don't seem to care about this, it's probably because the majority of the cases are in Asia and Africa (I think we all know that if Covid-19 had politely respected borders and stayed in China it would have received very little media attention).   

 

 

Notes

[1] David Ellis, Death and the Author, (Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 10.

 

[2] Ibid., p. 14.  

D. H. Lawrence is all the Rage

 James K. Walker and an outsider art style portrait of DHL

 

I. 

 

There are not many joyous events to look forward to in November: All Souls' Day, Bonfire Night, and Katxu's birthday - that's really about it. However, I'm pleased to announce an addition to this short list; a presentation by bibliophile and promiscuous homotextual James Walker to the D. H. Lawrence London Group [1].  

James - a teacher, writer, and critic who describes himself as a digital storyteller - has assembled two major projects of note in collaboration with Paul Fillingham: The Sillitoe Trail (2012-13), which explored the enduring relevance of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; and Dawn of the Unread (2014-16), a graphic novel celebrating Nottingham's literary heritage.

 

He is currently working on a transmedia project that will digitally recreate D. H. Lawrence's savage pilgrimage. It's this project - which James likes to describe as a Memory Theatre - which he'll be discussing in November, with particular reference to the subject of rage within the life and work of Lawrence. 

 

This obviously excites my interest, as I've recently been researching the ancient Greek concept of thymos (anger) which Plato named as one of the three constituent parts of the human psyche; the others being logos (reason) and eros (sexual desire) and which Peter Sloterdijk locates as central within Western history, arguing that an active form of this emotion - i.e., free of ressentiment - might actually be something vital and productive.

 

And so, without wishing to anticipate in too great a detail what James might be planning to say, here are a few thoughts on Lawrence and rage that I'm hoping he'll develop ... 

 

 

II.

 

James isn't, of course, the first to have noticed (and been amused by) Lawrence's semi-permanent fury with himself, with others, and with the world at large. 

 

Geoff Dyer, for example, picked up on this in his study of Lawrence entitled Out of Sheer Rage (1997) and, twelve years prior, Anthony Burgess had offered his own passionate appreciation of Lawrence in an episode of The South Bank Show which aired on 20 January 1985 under the title 'The Rage of D. H. Lawrence' [2].  

 

I don't know why Lawrence was so often so angry; some commentators have suggested it was symptomatic of his TB [3]; others take a more psychological approach and discuss Lawrence and his work in terms of behavioural disorders such as social anxiety disorder and intermittant explosive disorder. 

 

Again, I have no idea if Lawrence was bipolar, although he did seem to swing from periods of depression to periods marked by an abnormally elevated mood - but then, who doesn't? 

 

And it's important to note that Lawrence - perhaps aware of his own public image - often played up his anger for comic effect, as in the famous letter to Edward Garnett in which he curses his critics and fellow countrymen: 

 

"Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the snivelling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England today. They've got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is that watery it's a marvel they can breed. They can but frog-spawn - the gibberers! God, how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wish-wash. Exterminate them, slime." [4]

   

Only someone with no sense of humour would mistake this for genuine anger; it's Lawrence doing what writers love to do most, i.e., play with words.

Having said that, I think we can characterise even Lady Chatterley's Lover as a thymotic text and not simply an erotic novel or piece of romantic fiction. It's as much about Mellors raging against the class system, industrial capitalism, modern technology, poaching cats, crying children, ex-wives and girlfriends, lesbians, and contemporary art, as it is about Connie's sexual awakening. 

 

And I think we should also mention that there were occasions when Lawrence's rage was genuine and took a nasty, violent turn. I'm sure James will refer to the verbal and physical abuse suffered by Lawrence's wife Frieda, for example, and the incident involving poor Bibbles the dog (readers who would like reminding of these things can go to a post on the subject by clicking here).      

III.

 

Anger is an energy, as John Lydon once sang [5]. And, as a matter of fact, he's right; those experiencing rage have high levels of adrenaline and this increases physical strength and sharpens senses, whilst also inhibiting the sensation of pain. 

 

Rage, in other words, enables individuals to do things that they might otherwise be incapable of (and if you don't believe me or Rotten, ask Dr. Bruce Banner).  

 

And with that, it's over to you James ...

 

Notes

[1]  James Walker's presentation to the Lawrence London Group is via Zoom on 26 November 2020, between 6.30 and 8.30 pm local time. For further details of the event and for information on the DHL London Group, visit Catherine Brown's website by clicking here.  

 

[2] Readers who are interested in watching this episode of The South Bank Show [S08/E11] can find it on YouTube in four parts: click here for part 1.

[3] Katherine Mansfield, who was herself consumptive and "subject to outbursts of uncontrollable rage", also believed this. See David Ellis, Death and the Author, (Oxford University Press, 2008) p. 15. 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Edward Garnett, dated 3 July 1912, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp.420-22. Lines quoted are on p. 422. 

 

[5] Play 'Rise', by Public Image Ltd., a single release from the album Album (Virgin Records, 1986), by clicking here.

D. H. Lawrence's Daimonic Dendrophilia

Wallace Smith: Illustration for 

Fantazius Mallare (1922)

I have discussed D. H. Lawrence's dendrophilia elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark [click here] and readers will surely recall the scene in Women in Love in which Birkin enters into a state of erotic delirium whilst surrounded by various plants, bushes, and young trees: 

 

"The soft sharp boughs beat upon him, as he moved in keen pangs against them, threw little cold showers of drops on his belly, and beat his loins with their clusters of soft-sharp needles [...] and then to sting one's thigh against the living dark bristles of the fir-boughs; and then to feel the light whip of the hazel on one's shoulders, stinging, and then to clasp the silvery birch-trunk against one's breast, its smoothness, its hardness, its vital knots and ridges - this was good, this was all very good, very satisfying. [...] He knew now where he belonged. He knew where to plant himself, his seed: – along with the trees, in the folds of the delicious fresh growing leaves. This was his place, his marriage place." [1]

 

So one might imagined that Lawrence would have loved the above image by the American artist Wallace Smith for Ben Hecht's controversial novel Fantazius Mallare: A Mysterious Oath (1922) [2], showing a man having sex with a tree. 

 

Only you would be mistaken: Lawrence hated the novel and hated the illustrations by Smith. In a letter-cum-review of the work written shortly after publication - having had a copy of the book sent to him by a friend - Lawrence says this:

 

"Many thanks for sending me the Ben Hecht book. I read it through. But I'm sorry, it didn't thrill me a bit, neither the pictures nor the text. It all seems to me so would-be. Think of the malice, the sheer malice of a Beardsley drawing, the wit, and the venom of the mockery. These drawings are so completely without irony, so crass, so strained, and so would-be. It isn't that they've got anything to reveal at all. That man's coition with a tree, for example. There's nothing in it but the author's attempt to be startling. Whereas if he wanted to be really wicked he'd see that even a tree has its own daimon, and a man might lie with the daimon of a tree. Beardsley saw these things. But it takes imagination." [3]   

 

That, I think, is very interesting - particularly the part about the daimonic aspect of a tree and the possibility of a human being forming an erotic relationship with such, thereby adding an occult element to Lawrence's dendrophilia. 

 

I think Lawrence is right to suggest that a sexual encounter between any two objects involves a "contact between two alien natures" [4] and is always therefore as much a violent struggle as it is a sensual delight. And, personally, I dislike Smith's drawing because it anthropomorphises the tree; by having it take on a distinctly all-too-human female form he produces a heteronormative rather than truly transgressive artwork. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 107-08. 

[2] Those interested in reading Hecht's novel and taking a look at Smith's illustrations can do so thanks to Project Gutenberg: click here.

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Review of Fantazius Mallare: A Mysterious Oath, by Ben Hecht', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 215 

 

[4] Ibid.,  p. 216. 

Blasse Tage: Attempt at a New Translation and Notes Towards a Theory of Translation

Mascha Kaléko (1907-1975) 

Photo: Deutsches Literaturarchiv (Marbach)

 

 

I. 

 

Whilst I'm appreciative of Andreas Nolte's efforts at bringing the work of German-Jewish poet Mascha Kaléko to a much wider (English-speaking) audience, I have to admit I'm not always comfortable with his attempts to translate her verses line by line and word for word; "keeping the content unchanged, using similar phrases and syntax, and trying to maintain the poet's often very strict meter and rhyming scheme" [1].  

It's not that this nothing added, nothing taken away approach sometimes results in a rather odd-sounding English that troubles me. Rather, it's the implication that by staying as "close and true to the original" verse as he could manage, he somehow channels the spirit of the author. For Nolte subscribes to a myth of presence; i.e., the belief that if one listens closely enough one can hear the voice (and know the thoughts) of the dead speaker behind and within the text. 

 

It's because Nolte believes in linguistic transparency, universal themes, and timeless emotions, that he also believes Kaléko's work and his ultra-faithful translations "can still reach deep into the hearts and minds of today's readers". It's because I don't believe in such things and don't subscribe to a myth of authorial presence - i.e., don't care about communing with the holy ghost of Kaléko and doing justice to her emotional sincerity - that I prefer translations that Nolte would probably dismiss as loose depictions and prosaic deviations. 

 

 

II. 

 

For me, as for Paul Ricoeur, translation is primarily a work of remembrance and a work of mourning [2]. In other words, one attempts to salvage something from the past (and, just to make it even more difficult, from a past spoken in another language) and one learns to come to terms with loss; for inavariably in the attempt to carry across one will leave something behind (no one is infallible and no translation is ever perfect - it's simply fantasy to believe otherwise). 

 

I also think that sometimes one expresses one's fidelity to a writer one loves by an act that seems to smack of betrayal. There's simply no point in attempting a literal translation of individual words and working line by line - what matters is the text itself and the vision of the world expressed. That's what you must try to translate and this sometimes requires being a bit devious and a bit daring. A good translator, in my view, is always prepared to take a risk and work with a smile on their face; aware of their own limitations, but not apologetic for them. 

 

And to those who assert that being able to speak and read only one language fluently prohibits one from ever really being a translator - You merely interepret other people's translations - I'd remind them of Thomas Kuhn's remark that even knowing two (or more) languages does not automatically make one a translator: it might be a necessary skill, but it's not a sufficient condition.

 

 

III. 

 

Finally, we come to my attempt to translate one of Mascha Kaléko's most famous poems. I provide the original German afterwards so that readers who wish to judge the success or failure of my effort can do so, but, please note, this is a first draft only and there are certain lines - including the final line - which I will doubtless revise.  

 

 

Faded Days

 

All our faded days

Accrete in silent nights

Forming a great grey wall.

Stone sits upon stone seamlessly.

All sorrows of vacant time

Are locked within the soul.  

 

 Dreams arrive and dissolve

 As day breaks in ghostly fashion.

 In us remains the eternally hesitant

 Grasping for coloured shards,

 And in the shadows of faded days

 We live, because undying.   

 

 

Blasse Tage [3]

 

Alle unsre blassen Tage 

Türmen sich in stiller Nacht 

Hoch zu einer großen Mauer. 

Stein fügt immer sich an Stein. 

Alle leeren Stunden Trauer 

Schließt sich in die Seele ein. 

 

Träume kommen und zerfließen 

Gleich Gespenstern, wird es Tag. 

In uns bleibt das ewig zage 

Fassen nach den bunten Scherben, 

Und im Schatten blasser Tage 

Leben wir, weil wir nicht sterben.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Andreas Nolte, Mascha: The Poems of Mascha Kaléko, (Fomite, 2017), lines quoted above are on pp. 7, 25, and 21.  

 

[2] Paul Ricoeur, On Translation, trans. Eileen Brennan, (Routledge, 2006).   

[3] This verse was originally published in Mascha Kaléko, Das lyrische Stenogrammheft, (Rowohlt Verlag, 1933). It can also be found Mascha Kaléko: Sämtliche Werke und Briefe (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2012).  

 

Musical bonus: Dota Kehr, Blasse Tage (feat. Uta Köbernick), based on the poem by Mascha Kaléko: click here.  

The Greeks Had a Word For It: Thymos

 

 

I. 

 

The first time I remember hearing that the Greeks had a word for it was when listening to the 1981 single 'Chihuahua' by Bow Wow Wow [1] and it always rather amused and intrigued me; I wondered where, for example, McLaren picked the expression up from.

One possible answer is that he knew of the raunchy play of this title, written by Zoe Akins, which opened on Broadway in September 1930. She is generally given credit for coining the phrase. [2]. Of course, I don't know if that's the case - I'm just surmising; maybe he knew the expression from elsewhere.

 

 

II. 

 

Anyhoo, the above is merely a preamble - what I really want to speak of here is the Ancient Greek word thymos [θυμός] which Plato named as one of the three constituent parts of the human psyche; the others being logos (reason) and eros (sexual desire). Usually, the term is translated into modern English as anger, pride, or spiritedness. 

 

It seems to also have something to do with self-esteem and the need to be recognised by others (presumably as somebody of virtue and thus worthy of respect). As a concept, it therefore also has social and political importance. Francis Fukuyama picked up on this in The End of History and the Last Man (1992), as did Harvey Mansfield, in his book, Manliness (2006).

 

But the philosopher who has arguably given the most interesting contemporary reading of the concept thymos is Peter Sloterdijk, in his study entitled (in the English translation) Rage and Time (2010). 

 

 

III. 

 

Zorn und Zeit traces the unfolding of rage in Western history and promotes the Nietzschean argument that an active form of this emotion - free from ressentiment - might be something vital and productive. Unfortunately, however, rage in all forms has been suppressed as a form of evil within Christian-moral culture - as it has by psychoanalysis. For idealists of all stripes prefer to believe that all you need is love and mutual understanding for society to run peacefully and happily (or, at any rate, free from conflict). 

 

In an interview in which he discusses the above book, Sloterdijk says something I find very interesting in my present (extremely stressful and rage-filled) situation:

 

"If emotions weren't rational to some extent we wouldn't have them at all. That also makes sense in terms of evolutionary biology: if nature equipped us with some impulse or other it must involve a fitness benefit. It follows that pride and rage belong to the human make-up just as eroticism does. Evolution wouldn't have produced people capable of rage if that emotion were only senseless ballast. In fact, it is an important derivative of stress, and stress is the biological interpretation of acute danger, which means it is vital for survival. Normally a living being reacts to real present danger by fleeing or attacking. Both reactions require a high degree of energy, and that's exactly what the stress reaction provides. The early heroic poems describe great stress like a divine gift [...] that seems to flow into the soul from outside." [3] 

  

In other words, stress is a form of inspiration; which is a rather pleasing - thymotically positive - way to think of it ... 

 

The danger, as Sloterdijk acknowledges, is in allowing stress to become overwhelming; or bottling up rage until it becomes toxic and transforms into ressentiment. The trick is to remain calm and composed, even in those situations where it is difficult to act; which requires, of course, a certain asceticism (i.e., cruelty towards the self). Easy-peasy when you're sitting alone in your mountain cave, like Zarathustra, but difficult when providing extensive and intensive care for an elderly woman with Alzheimer's ...   

 

       

Notes

[1] It might be noted that the word given us by Annabella  - Chihuahua - is, like avocado, chocolate, and tomato, actually of Aztec origin rather than Greek, but I suppose that's by the bye. The single was taken from the brilliantly bonkers album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! (RCA Records, 1981). Click here if interested in hearing the track and watching a video on YouTube.  

 

[2] Zoe Byrd Akins (1886-1958) was an American poet and playwright, who won a Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1935. The Greeks Had a Word for It is perhaps her best remembered play. It tells the story of three young women looking to find rich husbands and was adapted for the big screen in 1932. A more famous film version - entitled How to Marry a Millionaire, dir. Jean Negulesco, and starring Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall - was released in 1953.

 

[3] Peter Sloterdijk, 'Thus Spoke Sloterdijk', interview with Res Strehle, in Selected Exaggerations, ed. Bernhard Klein, trans. Karen Margolis, (Polity Press, 2016), p. 197.  

The Flood is Never Over

Utnapishtim preparing for the flood

 

 

I. 

 

The story of a great flood or deluge, usually sent by a deity of some kind in order to punish humanity and cleanse the earth, is found within many cultures, not just the Judeo-Christian, whose famous flood narrative in Genesis featuring Noah and his ark was almost certainly adapted from an earlier Mesopotamian myth, a version of which can be found in the Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 1800 BC). [1]     

 

In the Gilgamesh flood myth, the supreme god Enlil decides to destroy the world not because human beings have become violent and corrupt, but because they are simply too noisy. However, the god Ea, who created mankind out of clay and divine blood, secretly warns the culture hero Utnapishtim of the impending flood and gives him instructions for building a huge boat so that he and others may survive. 

 

Of course, thanks to the fossil record etc., we know that a global flood such as the one described in these and other similar myths is incompatible with our modern understanding of the world and its natural history. Nevertheless, it remains a fascinating story and is one that clearly interests German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk ...

 

 

II.

 

In an interview with Manfed Osten [2], Sloterdijk discusses the libretto he wrote for the opera Babylon (2012), composed by Jörg Widmann. In the course of discussion, he says that one of the aims of the work was to appeal against traditional misunderstandings of the flood myth:

 

"We establish the fact that the Babylonian gods had nothing to do with the Flood at all. In the old accounts we read that they fled shivering to the mountaintops to await the end of the catastrophe. First and foremost, the God of Israel had no connection with the Flood - he was only associated with this Mesopotamian story later, in the post-exile period. It follows that he didn't send the Flood and that he had no powers to promise it would never return. In fact, he is completely outside the story - even though people might have perpetuated the false version of it for the past 2,500 years. The real point is that neither the gods of the Babylonians nor the God of Judaism were involved in causing the Flood. The Flood, with all its awe-inspiring astral drama, was an external cosmological event that was later internalized by means of religion and translated into the language of guilt and sacrificial duty."    

 

If Sloterdijk is right, that means that there is no real need to torpedo the ark - for this act no longer signifies that we refuse the judgement of God. Similarly, there is no need for any act of sacrifice:

 

"If the gods weren't involved in the great disaster at all they couldn't have any interest in sacrifices being made to avoid a repetition. The heavens - as understood in cosmological and meteorological terms - constitute a factor beyond divine power. Because God and gods didn't cause the Flood, we don't need to beg them to protect us from another flood. The gods have nothing to do with the cosmic disaster. Consequently, after the end of the Flood there was no need for a new covenant between God and human beings. [...] The rainbow in the sky after the Flood does not mean that God, after venting his wrath on the sinful mob, returned to calm reflection, as the biblical narrative suggests. If we want to make a symbol out of the rainbow, it stands for people finding the courage to carry on after the worst has happened. It inspires them to unite with each other against blind fate."

 

In fact, it arguably does more than this: it inspires them to love fate and acknowledge that life always faces some kind of existential threat (be it a natural disaster or a man-made catastrophe) and that the only way we can live is to live with an awareness of ever-present danger; not to creep about in a state of semi-permanent lockdown wearing masks, but to realise, as Sloterdijk says, that the flood is never over ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Just before any Babylonian readers get too carried away and pride themselves on being the authors of this story, it should be noted that the Epic of Gilgamesh is thought to to have originated in an even earlier Sumerian myth. 

[2] Peter Sloterdijk, 'With the Babble of Babylon in the Background', interview with Manfred Osten, in Selected Exaggerations, ed. Bernhard Klein, trans. Karen Margolis, (Polity Press, 2016), pp. 313-22. The lines quoted here can be found on pp. 317-19. 

On Background Radiation (in a Cultural-Philosophical Sense)

The Cosmic Microwave Background (NASA 2010)

 

 

I. 

 

Readers may recall the big hoo-ha created by physicists Sokal and Bricmont back in the late '90s when they criticised (and indeed mocked) philosophers and postmodern theorists for their misuse - as they saw it - of very precise scientific and mathematical concepts. 

 

Their book - first published in French as Impostures intellectuelles (1997) - polarized opinion, with those in the scientific community largely supportive, whilst opponents in the humanities argued that Sokal and Bricmont lacked understanding of the work they subjected to analysis and of how concepts are malleable and can thus be subtly (and sometimes playfully) reworked within different contexts and that doing so isn't necessarily a sign of charlatanism, ignorance, or pretension on behalf of thinkers such Baudrillard, Deleuze, and Irigaray. 

 

Nor is this reworking simply a sign of cognitive relativism and anti-scientific prejudice within European philosophy (though that's not to deny that such may exist). Using scientific terminology within a non-scientific context doesn't deny the original technical meaning, it expands the meaning and/or transfers it into a new environment (the terms are revealed as having a metaphorical component and capacity). 

 

Sokal and Bricmont may find this peculiarly offensive for a number of reasons, but then, on the other hand, some of us may find their linguistic puritanism and Francophobia equally objectionable. As Derrida rightly pointed out at the time, science and philosophy have long discussed their differences, but never with such an ugly emphasis placed on the nationality of individuals. 

 

(Derrida also stated, for the record, that there was neither relativism nor a naive rejection of reason in his work and hoped that in the future the debate might be pursued more seriously and with greater dignity: "at the level of the issues involved" [1].) 

 

 

II.                  

 

So why did I bring all this up once again? Well, because I have just been reading an interview with Peter Sloterdijk in which he mentions his fondness for the concept of background radiation ... 

 

Now, as Sokal and Bricmont would be quick to point out, this is a scientific term which refers to a measure of the ionising radiation present in the environment at a particular location originating from a variety of sources, both natural and artificial.

 

And as I'm sure they'd be equally quick to point out, Sloterdijk is a philosopher and cultural theorist - not a physicist - and, worse, he's a German thinker in the tradition of Nietzsche and Heidegger, so really shouldn't be allowed to use the concept of background radiation at all. 

 

Nevertheless, use it he does and in his own unique way which, hopefully, illustrates what I was saying above:

"I really like the concept of 'background radiation', especially applied to cultural structures. Astrophysicists may rack their brains about what background radiation means in cosmological terms. However, that there is something like cultural radiation from a darkened background - patterns of order that are so deeply hidden in the oldest things, so strongly embedded in the sediment of what we think is self-evident that they seem to escape any reflection [...]" [2]

 

As an interesting example of this cultural background radiation, Sloterdijk points to the fact we still use a technique of temporal ordering that was first developed in ancient Babylon:

 

"We live in the Babylonian week apparently naturally, without thinking that it was predicated on a theology of the Heavenly Seven, that is, on a kind of septemtheism, which means the worship of seven deities. The seven day week is a cultural creation because, unlike the day, the month and the year, it has no cosmic basis, but represents a freely made decision that fixes the arrangement of social time." [3] 

 

In sum: Sloterdijk nicely demonstrates how you can borrow a term from one discipline and redefine it within another - without in any way harming the original meaning or preventing its continued usage by others.

 

Notes 

[1] See Jacques Derrida, 'Sokal and Bricmont Aren't Serious', originally published in Le Monde, this short text can be found in Paper Machine, trans. Rachel Bowlby, (Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 70-72. It can also be found on Reddit by clicking here. 

[2] Peter Sloterdijk, 'With the Babble of Babylon in the Background', interview with Manfred Osten, in Selected Exaggerations, ed. Bernhard Klein, trans. Karen Margolis, (Polity Press, 2016), pp. 313-14.

       

[3] Ibid., p. 314.  

Aujourd’hui, Juliette Gréco est morte

Juliette Gréco by Erwin Blumenfeld (1951)

 

 

Juliette Gréco - the face (and voice) of chic postwar Paris and muse to numerous Left-Bank poets and philosophers, including Jacques Prévert and Jean-Paul Sartre - died today, aged 93, and, despite the fact she refused to collaborate on Malcolm's Paris project (I only sing in French), that's still sad news for all of us who loved everything about her; from her style to the fact she was an Aquarian.

 

 

Play: La Javanaise - a song originally written and composed by Serge Gainsbourg for Juliette Gréco in 1962, after they had spent the evening together listening to records and drinking champagne. It was released as a single in March 1963 (with Gainsbourg's own interpretation of the song as the B-side). Click here to listen, or here to watch her performing the song on French TV in 1972.      

On the Backs of Tigers

Henri Rousseau: Traumgarten

 

 

The above work by French post-impressionist painter Henri Rousseau, reminds me of something Nietzsche wrote in one of his early essays on man as a being who clings on the back of a tiger [1]. 

 

In other words, contrary to idealists for whom "there is no dark underbelly that empowers and sometimes devours us" [2], Nietzsche rejects the idea that man stands exclusively on the firm ground of moral rationalism and is fully responsible for his actions.      

 

It's an interesting metaphor. And I agree that most people know very little of their own nature, prefering to remain within the fantasies of a pristine consciousness; "aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibres" [3].  

 

Having said that, I don't think the unconscious is home only to wild beasts, monsters, and heaps of excrement. Like D. H. Lawrence, I'm sure there are also plenty of "lovely spirits in the anterior regions of our being" [4]. 

 

Nevertheless, push comes to shove and "man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him" and a tiger is a tiger, not a lamb, mein herr ...[5]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense', in Philosophy and Truth, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale, (Humanities Press International, 1993), p. 80.

 

[2] Peter Sloterdijk, 'Questions of Fate: A Novel About Thought', conversation with Ulrich Raulff, in Selected Exaggerations, ed. Bernhard Klein, trans. Karen Margolis, (Polity Press, 2016), p. 279. 

 

[3] Nietzsche, 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense', Philosophy and Truth, p. 80.    

[4] D. H. Lawrence, Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 9. 

[5] See: Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra ('The Convalescent') and then go listen to the brilliant Kander and Ebb song 'Mein Herr', from the musical Cabaret (1966): click here for Liza Minnelli's unbeatable performance of the song in the film version, dir. Bob Fosse (1972).