In Praise of the Praying Mantis and Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno

Isabella Rossellini as a male mantis in Green Porno

Photo: Sundance TV

 

 

I. From Whence Arrived the Praying Mantis?

 

To speak in the singular is always misleading when referring to a group of insects and this certainly holds true of the Mantodea [1], an order which contains over 2,400 known species divided up into approximately 460 genera and around 30 families, the largest and best known of which is the mantis family who are found living all over the world in both tropical and temperate habitats. 

 

Although sometimes confused with stick insects [Phasmatodea], or other insects with elongated bodies - such as grasshoppers [Orthoptera] - mantises are more closely related to termites and cockroaches [Blattodea]. However, they have a much better reputation amongst humans than the latter and are commonly kept as pets [2]. 

 

Why that should be, I don't know; perhaps we like their triangular shaped heads and bulging compound eyes, or perhaps we genuinely think them devout (although we might question to what god they are praying when, with spiked forelegs bent and pressed together, they sit in perfect silence and perfect stillness).

 

 

II. L'amour sera cannibale ou il ne le sera pas du tout 

 

One group of artists who were particularly fascinated by mantises and their alien good looks, were the Surrealists. 

 

The fact that ancient peoples believed mantises to possess supernatural powers certainly helped excite their interest, but, first and foremost, the Surrealists were aroused by the knowledge that these insects practice sexual cannibalism; the females sometimes eating their mates during or after copulation, usually starting with the head [3].

 

As one commentator writes:

 

"The praying mantis became a central iconographic preoccupation for the Surrealists and their circle primarily as a result of its extraordinary mating ritual [...] the Surrealists found this insect's cannibalistic nuptial a compelling image for the potential for erotic violence lurking in the darker recesses of the human mind." [4]

 

André Breton, Paul Éluard, André Masson, and, of course, Salvador Dalí, were all mad about la mante religieuse and the same critic, William L. Pressly, is spot on to conclude:       

 

"The preying mantis proved to be a compelling metaphor for the Surrealists in their exploration of eroticism. Its instinctive and voracious sexuality offered a natural expression of the demonic potential of man's repressed unconscious. The female was depicted as a bestial femme fatale, alluring, detached, and deadly, who destroyed her lover in the very act of mating. Yet this insect's diabolical reflexes led to a divine union, for both its sexual cannibalism and its mimetic pantheism suggested a release from finite boundaries. The Surrealists felt an intoxicating desire to participate in the total communion of love's fatal embrace with its promise of a liberating absorption. The mantis, then, could also represent the miraculous transformation that occurs in the complete fusion of the artist with the primary external source of inspiration - the beloved." [5]  

 

However, as interesting as this all is, it's not Surrealism which I wish to discuss in closing here. Rather, it's the series of short films conceived, written, and directed by Isabella Rossellini and entitled Green Porno ...

 

 

III. From Blue Velvet to Green Porno

 

In the original series of eight films that aired in 2008 on what was then the Sundance Channel [6], Rossellini enacted the perverse mating rituals of invertebrates, including the dragonfly, spider, earthworm, and mantis, using paper costumes, cardboard cut-outs and foam-rubber sculptures.  

 

If Rossellini's primary aim was to comically entertain (and perhaps scandalise) she also wanted the films to educate people about the small creatures with which we share the world and might commonly encounter in our daily lives.      

 

The films proved extremely popular [7] and can now conveniently be found on YouTube where they have had millions of views: click here to watch the 'Preying Mantis' episode (dir. Jody Shapiro and Isabella Rossellini). 

 

Arguably, this is Rossellini's most powerfully disturbing performance since she played Dorothy Vallens in Blue Velvet (1986), and most hilarious since playing Lisle von Rhuman in Death Becomes Her (1992) ... 

 

Notes

 

 [1]  The name Mantodea is formed from the ancient Greek words μάντις [mantis], meaning prophet, and εἶδος [eidos] meaning form or type. It was coined in 1838 by the German entomologist Hermann Burmeister.

 

[2] Mantises are among the insects most widely kept (and bred) as pets. As entomophiles point out, it's really no weirder to keep a praying mantis in a glass tank than a goldfish in a bowl. Further, mantises cause very little trouble and require very little effort to look after. They might not provide the same level of companionship and affection as a cat, but they don't scratch the furniture.

 

[3] Sexual cannibalism is the norm among most predatory species of mantises. However, it's interesting to note that whilst in natural populations only about a quarter of male-female sexual encounters result in the male being eaten by the female, in captive populations this tragic outcome is far more common. Quite why mantises engage in this grisly practice is debatable, but it did inspire Aldous Huxley to reflect philosophically on the nature of death in his final novel Island (1962).    

 

[4-5] William L. Pressly, 'The Praying Mantis in Surrealist Art', The Art Bulletin, vol. 55, no. 4, (Taylor & Francis, Ltd. / College Art Association, 1973), pp. 600-15. This illuminating (and generously illustrated) essay can be found on JSTOR: click here. 

     

[6] The Sundance Channel was launched on February 1st, 1996. It was rebranded as Sundance TV in 2014. Whilst it's an extension of Robert Redford's non-profit Sundance Institute, the channel operates independently of both the Institute and the Sundance Film Festival. 

     

[7] The original season of films on the Sundance Channel was followed by two more. Over the course of the three seasons the focus of the show shifted somewhat. Thus, whilst season one dealt exclusively with invertebrates, the second season focused on sea creatures. The short third season adopted an environmental theme and looked at the mating habits of animals commonly eaten by humans as food. This final season was given significant multimedia promotion, with all four episodes premiering at the Toronto Film Festival (Sept 11, 2009). A Green Porno book containing full-colour photos was published to coincide with (and supplement) the new season.

      Rossellini has since worked on other film projects to do with animals in the style of Green Porno and, with the help of the French filmmaker and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, created a 70-minute monologue (and live performance piece) that expands upon the philosophy behind the films. Rossellini debuted her stage version of Green Porno at the Adelaide Festival of Arts on 15 March 2014. 

 

 

Ouch! Another Brief Note on Pain and The Palliative Society

Haroshi: Agony Into Beauty from the solo exhibition Pain

StolenSpace Gallery, London (Oct 10th - Nov 3rd 2013)
stolenspace.com

 

 

According to Byung-Chul Han, algophobia - a generalised fear of pain - is one of the key features of what he terms the palliative society: 

 

"The consequence of this algophobia is a permanent anaesthesia. All painful conditions are avoided. Even the pain of love is treated as suspect. This algophobia extends into society. Less and less space is given to conflicts and controversies that might prompt painful discussions. Algophobia also takes hold of politics. The pressure to conform and to reach consensus intensifies." [a]  

Now, as a reader of Nietzsche, I am of course aware that whilst one of the defining achievements of the modern age has been to vastly improve human health thanks to unparalleled advances in medical science, there has nevertheless been a peculiar softening of the species and what might be called a loss of spirit [b].

 

People used to be able to endure - and inflict - great suffering and regarded pain as a form of passion; now they immediately reach for the paracetamol if they even think they might have a headache coming on. Ironically, as our direct experience of severe pain has lessened, our horror of it has increased and intensified.   

 

However, even as one who affirms the tragic fact that life bleeds and is prone to disease and mortal decay, I don't wish to idealise pain, for fear that, in doing so, one ends up returning either to the foot of the Cross or to Romanticism.

 

I'm not sure, however, that this particularly troubles Byung-Chul Han. For he's someone who believes that art "must be able to alienate, irritate, disturb, and, yes, even be painful" [6], and celebrates the Christian mystic Teresa of Ávila for demonstrating how pain "deepens the relationship with God" [21]. 

 

Ultimately, the main difference between Han and myself is that he desperately wants pain (and everything else) to be meaningful, whereas the "persisting meaninglessness of life" [24] doesn't trouble me in the least. 

 

I don't think pain is an incarnation of truth - no matter what Viktor von Weizsäcker might say [c] - and, as a matter of fact, I like the "morality-free, and ostentatiously decorative" [4] art of Jeff Koons ...   

 

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, The Palliative Society, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2021), p. 1. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the post. 

 

[b] See §48 of The Gay Science, for example, wherein Nietzsche reflects on how nothing separates human beings or ages from each other more than their experience of pain.

 

[c] German physician and physiologist Viktor von Weizsäcker (1886-1957) was a pioneer in the fields of psychosomatic medicine and Gestalt psychology. Weizsäcker argued that if you wish to reliably distinguish between what is genuine and what is fake in this life, then trust to pain; only pain allows us to know what's what, give structure to our life, and find love. 

      Byung-Chul Han discusses Weizsäcker' essay 'Die Schmerzen' in chapter 6 of The Palliative Society, concluding that pain not only evokes reality, it is reality.    

 

This post is a companion piece to an earlier brief note on pain (written whilst waiting to see the dentist): click here.  

A Brief Note on Pain (Whilst Waiting to See the Dentist)

La douleur n'est pas mon fort ...       

 

Sitting here, with toothache, waiting to see the dentist, one recalls the line by Ernst Jünger with which Byung-Chul Han opens his new study: "Tell me your relation to pain, and I will tell you who you are!" [1]

Well, my relation to pain is a mixture of indifference and irritation. I don't share the universal algophobia that characterises our society today, but, unlike many artists and intellectuals, neither do I fetishise pain or regard suffering as the most crucial aspect of life. 

 

Thus, whilst I have a relatively high pain tolerance level and very rarely resort to painkillers, I don't think that this makes courageous or morally superior to those who reach for the paracetamol at the earliest opportunity and opt for drug-induced relief.

 

Pain, says Han, purifies. By which he means it has a cathartic effect. It should thus be recognised as a genuine passion. Which sounds suspiciously Christian to me and I remember Lawrence's remark made in a letter: "Jesus becomes more unsympatisch to me, the longer I live: crosses and nails and tears and all that stuff! I think he showed us into a nice cul de sac." [2] 

 

Lawrence's view contrasts nicely with the remark by Walter Benjamin which Han chose as an epigraph for The Palliative Society: 

 

"Of all the corporeal feelings, pain alone is like a navigable river which never dries up and which leads man down to the sea. Pleasure, in contrast, turns out to be a dead end, wherever man tries to follow its lead." [3]

 

This characterisation of pleasure as a dead end and affirmation of pain is simply a form of ascetic idealism, is it not? Again, far it be from me to reify pleasure, but I think we might challenge the idea that when pain is suppressed, happiness is attenuated and becomes merely a form of dull contentment. Or that those who are "unreceptive to pain close themselves off from deep happiness" [4].    

 

It may be Nietzschean to think like this - to give pain metaphysical significance and project it into the symbolic order (to speak of the art of suffering, etc.) - but when a tooth is troublesome who really cares about what this might (or might not) mean? At such times, we all rub our jaw and fall silent like Monsieur Teste ... [5] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Byung-Chul Han, The Palliative Society, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2021), p. 1. Han is quoting from Ernst Jünger's On Pain, (Telos Press, 2008), p. 32. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 322. Letter number 3516 [26 Oct 1925], to John Middleton Murry. 

      

[3] Walter Benjamin, 'Outline of the Psychological Problem', Selected Writings, Vol. 1, (Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 397.

[4] Byung-Chul Han, The Palliative Society, p. 13. 

[5] With reference to the figure of Monsieur Teste, Byung-Chul Han writes: 

      

"Paul Valéry's Monsieur Teste represents the modern, sensitive bourgeois subject who experiences pain as meaningless, as purely physical agony. He has completely lost the Christian narrative [...] and thus also the ability to alleviate pain symbolically. [...]

      For Monsieur Teste, pain cannot be narrated. It destroys language. Where the pain begins, his sentences break off. [...] 

      Confronted with pain, Monsieur Teste falls silent. Pain robs him of his language. It destroys his world, traps him in his mute body." [19-20] 

 

 

For another brief note on pain and the palliative society, click here.

     

Survival in the Age of Coronavirus

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I. 

 

I'm pleased to see that the philosopher and cultural critic Byung-Chul Han addresses the coronavirus pandemic within the context of his work on what he terms the palliative society (i.e., society characterised by a generalised fear of pain - or, indeed, any form of negativity that might possibly cause suffering or distress) [a].   

 

Pleased, not only because I think what he says is insightful, but because I think it important that heretics [b] speak up and challenge the prevailing Covid orthodoxy which governments, medical bodies, and the mainstream media are all promoting in order to justify the destruction of individual rights and liberties in the name of public health. 

 

 

II.

 

According to Han, Covid-19 reveals what kind of society we belong to; one in which survival has become an absolute value and where all forces are marshalled "for the prolongation of life" [14] at any cost. 

 

He writes:

 

"In the pandemic, the bitter fight for survival is subjected to a viral intensification. The virus enters the palliative zone of well-being and turns it into a quarantine zone in which life is completely paralysed into survival. The more life becomes survival, the greater the fear of death. Algophobia is utimately thantophobia. The pandemic makes death, which we had carefully repressed and set aside, visible again. The prominence of death in the mass media makes people nervous." [14]

 

That's true: there are people who terrify themselves reading the latest daily updates on infection levels, hospitalisations, and deaths; not just in their local area, but nationally and even globally. They seem to have lost all sense of perspective or context and treat even a tiny rise in the number of people dying with (and not necessarily of) coronavirus as if it were the end of the world, rather than the end of a few individual lives (mostly aged over 80 and very often with serious pre-existing health conditions).  

Han writes:

 

"The society of survival has no sense of the good life. Even enjoyment is sacrificed in the pursuit of health as an end in itself. [...] We are prepared to sacrifice everything that makes life worth living for the sake of survival. In the face of the pandemic, even the restriction of fundamental rights has been accepted without so much as a question being asked. We comply willingly with the state of exception that reduces life to bare life." [14-15]     

 

Bare life: i.e., a socially distanced existence in which we lock ourselves up at home or creep about in masks, regard strangers (and even our own relatives) as potential vectors of disease, and constantly self-test for signs of infection. It is a life divested not only of pleasure, but of all meaning (i.e., lacking in any meta-physical dimension). 

 

We become, in effect, zombies: "A society that is gripped by the mania for survival is a society of the undead [...] too alive to die, and too dead to live" [17].   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See Byung-Chul Han, The Palliative Society, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2021). All page numbers given in the post refer to this work.  

      Byung-Chul Han, of course, is not the first author to inveigh against this will to survive. Nietzsche was keen to stress that the will to power was more than merely a will to life and could, in fact, have aims contrary to the wellbeing and survival of the organism. D. H. Lawrence also wrote at length against the unappeased rage of self-preservation; see, for example, his 'Study of Thomas Hardy', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 3-128.  

[b] For a recent post on heresy (as/and philosophical idiotism), click here. Like Han, I conceive of the heretic as a figure of resistance opposing the violence of consensus and the commonly accepted values of their era. 

On Heresy and Philosophical Idiotism

 

Detail from a poster designed by Maciej Hibner 

for the film The Idiot (dir. Ivan Pyryev, 1958)

 The idiot has no soul: he is like a flower - an existence open to sunlight ... Botho Strauss

 

 

I. 

 

Derived from the ancient Greek term haíresis [αἵρεσις], heresy originally meant choice and thus implied the exercise of free will. 

 

And so one will readily understand why the heretic - he who chooses to hold views which are at variance with the orthodox position or party line - is so despised by those whose authority is challenged. 

 

For formal heretics deliberately cause division and sow discord and, according to the Church, are spiritually cut off from the Truth, even before they have been officially excommunicated (or burnt at the stake). 

 

Their sin is obstinancy rather than error; a persistent adherence to falsehood.  

 

 

II. 

 

Now, whilst I share certain traits with heretics, I'm not sure I would count myself among their number. 

 

For one thing, when presented with the blackmail of choice (either/or), I choose not to choose and affirm neither/nor. For some, this makes me an idiot, like Bartleby, but as we'll see below, that might not be so terrible.

 

Secondly, whilst a heretic may not subscribe to dogma, in choosing to believe something else, they remain persons of faith and often as fanatic in their belief (and their hatred) as those who accuse them of heresy - Martin Luther is a good example of this [1].     

 

Having said that, I sympathise with Byung-Chul Han's call for a form of heresy - based on what he terms idiotism - that might challenge the New World Order: 

 

"Today, it seems, the type of the outsider - the idiot, the fool - has all but vanished from society. Thoroughgoing digital networking and communication have massively amplified the compulsion to conform. The attendant violence of consensus is suppressing idiotisms." [2] 

 

Han continues: 

 

"In light of compulsive and coercive communication and conformism, idiotism represents a practice of freedom. By nature, the idiot is unallied, un-networked, and uninformed. The idiot inhabits the immemorial outside [...] 

      The idiot is a modern-day heretic. [...] As a heretic, the idiot represents a figure of resistance opposing the violence of consensus. The idiot preserves the magic of the outsider. Today, in light of increasingly coercive conformism, it is more urgent than ever to heighten heretical consciousness." [3]

 

That's a nice expression. And I do like this vision of an idiot, veiled in silence, refusing to identify himself or bow down to the neoliberal demand for total self-exposure. Today, the only way to resist the world is via silence, secrecy, and solitude. 

 

And it is philosophical idiotism alone which "erects spaces for guarding silence [...] where it is still possible to say what really deserves to be said" [4].

 

 

Notes 

[1] Nietzsche's changing view of Luther is interesting. He began as an admirer, but his favourable attitude undwent radical revision after Human, All Too Human (1878) and in his late writings Nietzsche offers a scathing denunciation of Luther as a moral fanatic. Essentially, for Nietzsche, Luther is the man who in reforming Christianity restores it to power and thereby terminates the hope of a neo-pagan Europe which the Renaissance had tantalisingly held out.  

[2] Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, trans. Erik Butler, (Verso, 2017), p. 82.

      Clearly, Han is not using the term idiot in its modern sense (i.e., to refer to a stupid person). Rather, he's returning to the ancient Greek term from which it derives - idiōtēs [ἰδιώτης] - which refers to a private individual who prefers to think their own thoughts rather than simply subscribe to common sense or public opinion (even at the risk of appearing ignorant or foolish). For Han, "the history of philosophy is the history of idiotisms" [p. 81].

 

[3] Ibid., p. 83. 

 

[4] Ibid., p. 84.

      Han acknowledges that this politics of silence was already being called for by Deleuze thirty years ago. See 'Mediators', in Negotiations 1972-1990, trans. Martin Joughin, (Columbia University Press, 1995), pp. 121-34, where Deleuze writes: 

      "It's not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don't stop people from expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying." [129]

Freedom In the Age of Coronavirus (Update)

Illustration by Jonathan McHugh (2021) 

beepencil.com

 

Well, how are you enjoying your newly returned freedom post-June 21st? Doesn't feel much like freedom in the old (pre-pandemic) sense, does it? 

 

Even the fully vaccinated who have been jabbed three times (because, who knows, maybe the third time will work like a charm) are still expected to wear masks on public transport, take endless tests for viral infection, and (in parts of the UK) flash Covid passes to gain access to certain venues and services. 

 

And hanging over us all is the threat of what the government calls Plan B - the most sinister plan since Plan 9 was devised in fiendish extraterrestrial minds - involving another Christmas lockdown.  

 

I'm beginning to think that Byung-Chul Han is right to argue that we are living in a peculiar phase of history when our ideal of freedom is paradoxically generating new and unlimited forms of compulsion and constraint:

 

"Freedom will prove to have been merely an interlude. Freedom is felt when passing from one way of living to another - until this too turns out to be a form of coercion. Then, liberation gives way to renewed subjugation." [1] 

As a matter of fact, I didn't need Han to tell me this; D. H. Lawrence was already exposing the Fata Morgana of Liberty a hundred years ago: "She may lead you very definitely away from today's prison. But she also very definitely leads you towards some other prison. Liberty is a changing of prisons [...]". [2]

 

Of course, Lawrence was never very keen on freedom (in a liberal, individual sense), being more concerned with belonging and fulfilment (in a religious sense), as is clear from the following lines: 

      

"Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealised purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. [...]

      Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. The moment you can do just what you like, there is nothing you care about doing. Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes." [3] 

 

I have to admit, I'm uncomfortable with the language Lawrence uses here and prefer to think of freedom precisely in the (nomadic) terms he rejects; as straying and breaking away from all bonds, homelands, and forms of authority. 

 

Interestingly, however, Byung-Chul Han also stresses that freedom is ultimately relational; something which involves being among friends [4]. He writes: "A real feeling of freedom occurs only in a fruitful relationship - when being with others brings happiness. But today's neoliberal regime leads to utter isolation; as such, it does not really free us at all." [5]   

Ultimately, we have to ask in closing whether men and women have ever really had the courage for freedom: didn't we invent the Covid-19 pandemic for the same reason we once invented God ...? And don't we carry smartphones for the same reason we once fiddled with rosary beads; to show our devotion and our obedience to the age in which we live [6].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, trans. Erik Butler, (Verso, 2017), p. 1.

      For Han, psychic maladies such as depression and burnout are "pathological signs that freedom is now switching over into manifold forms of compulsion" [p. 2].     

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence and M. L Skinner, The Boy in the Bush, ed. Paul Eggert, (Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 37. Thanks to David Brock for reminding me of what Lawrence writes here.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 17-18.   

 

[4] Etymologically, it's true that the words freedom and friendship share a common root in Indo-European languages, so that we might best think freedom as a form of connection to others on the basis of kinship and affection.

 

[5] Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, p. 3. 

      Han reminds us also that Marx defined freedom "in terms of a successful relationship to others" [3] (i.e., freedom is synonymous with communism and the bourgeois notion of individual freedom merely a ruse of capital). 

      Cf. Nietzsche's conception of freedom in Twilight of the Idols, however, which a libertarian friend of mine loves to quote: "Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. It is to preserve the distance which separates us from other men. To grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity, to privation, and even to life itself." ['Expeditions of an Untimely Man', §38.]

      For Nietzsche, then, the value of freedom lies not in what it attains for the individual, but in what he or she pays for it - what it costs them. Freedom doesn't make happy - it makes strong and marks an overcoming of self-contempt. The free spirit spurns the contemptible sort of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, etc. and they learn not merey how to love their enemies, but hate their friends.

 

[6] Byung-Chul Han writes: 

      "Every [...] technique of domination brings forth characteristic devotional objects that are employed in order to subjugate. Such objects materialize and stabilize dominion. Devotion and related words mean 'submission', or 'obedience'. Smartphones represent digital devotion - indeed, they are the devotional objects of the Digital, period. As a subjectivation-apparatus, the smartphone works like a rosary [...] Both the smartphone and the rosary serve the purpose of self-monitoring and control."

      Psychopolitics, p. 12.    

            

 

To read the earlier post on the subject of freedom for which this forms an update, click here.

Reflections on The Transparency Society by Byung-Chul Han (Part 3: From The Society of Information to The Society of Control)

ITMA: Byung-Chul Han

 

 

IV.

The Information Society

It could be argued that philosophy begins and ends in Plato's Cave. At any rate, that's where we find ourselves once again in chapter 7 of The Transparency Society [a] ...

 

Upon inspection, Byung-Chul Han decides Plato's cave is constructed as a kind of shadow theatre, in which even the objects casting shadows are not real things as such, but merely "theatrical figures and props" [37]. Real things and their shadows exist only outside of the cave, in the world of natural light (i.e., the medium of truth).

 

Interestingly, Han suggests:

 

"Plato's allegory does not represent different modes of cognition, as his interpreters commonly claim; rather, it represents different ways of living, that is, narrative and cognitive modes of existence. [...] In the allegory of the cave, the theatre as a world of narration stands opposed to the world of insight." [38]

 

You might think that Han would, as a philosopher, opt for the latter; but he seems to favour sitting by an artificial fire enjoying scenic illusions and spinning tales of his own. "The light of truth", he says, "denarrativizes the world" [38] and annihilates the play of appearances. And that's why the society of transparency - like Plato's Republic - "is a society without poets, without seduction or metamorphosis" [39].    

 

Han - as a Heideggerian - has a soft-spot for poets: "After all, it is the poet who produces scenic illusions , forms of appearance, and ritual and ceremonial signs; he sets artifacts and antifacts against hyperreal, naked evidence." [39] 

 

Having said that, Han is not entirely pro-darkness and anti-light - and he doesn't think these things separately: "Light and darkness are coeval. Light and shadow belong together. [...] The light of reason and the darkness of the irrational [...] bring each other forth." [39] 

 

And for Han, the transparency society (in contrast to Plato's world), "lacks divine light inhabited by metaphysical tension" [39]. He continues:

"The society of transparency is see-through [...] It is not illuminated by light that streams from a transcendent source. [...] The medium of transparency is not light, but rather lightless radiation; instead of illuminating, it suffuses everything and makes it see-through. In contrast to light, it is penetrating and intrusive. Moreover, its effect is homogenizing and leveling, whereas metaphysical light generates hierarchies and distinctions; thereby it creates order and points of orientation." [39]

The society of transparency may not wish to create order in the sense that Han thinks it here - but it certainly likes to generate (and accumulate) masses of information and innumerable images [b]. Why? Because, says Han, it wishes to disguise its own emptiness.

 

Unfortunately, all the information and imagery in the world doesn't prevent the growing void at the heart of our world ... 

 

The Society of Unveiling

 

"In a certain sense, the eighteenth century was not entirely unlike the present. It already knew the pathos of unveiling and transparency." [42] 

 

For it was, after all, the century of Rousseau, author of Les Confessions and one of the central figures within the Age of Enlightenment. Rousseau it is, who calls upon all men to unveil themselves, in the sincere belief that truth loves to go naked [c]. 

 

Thus whilst the eighteenth century was still a theatrum mundi - full of scenes, masks, and figures - "Rousseau's demand for transparency announces a paradigm shift" [43]. He explicitly "sets his discourse of the heart and truth against the play of masks and roles" [43] and "vehemently criticizes the plan to erect a theatre in Geneva" [43], on the grounds that it will be a "site of disguise, appearance, and seduction lacking all transparency" [43-44].

 

If, as a Nietzschean, I already had problems with Rousseau, Byung-Chul Han convinces me to despise him still further: 

 

"In Rousseau, one can observe how the morality of total transparency necessarily switches to tyranny. The heroic project of transparency - wanting to tear down veils, bring everything to light, and drive away darkness - leads to violence. The prohibition against the theatre and mimesis, which Plato had already legislated for his ideal city, impresses totalitarian traits on Rousseau's transparent society." [44]

 

In sum: "Rousseau's society of transparency turns out to be a society of total control and surveillance." [44] It differs from our world only in that digital transparency "is not cardiographic but pornographic" [44] and its goal "is not moral purification of the heart, but maximal profit" [44].

The Society of Control

 

The digital panopticon of the 21st-century is fundamentally different to the model designed by the English philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham in the 18th-century. For whereas the latter offers perspectival surveillance from a central point, the former offers aperspectival illumination of everyone from everywhere (by anyone). 

Bentham's panopticon is very much a product of disciplinary society. But, as Han has argued throughout his book, this model has given way to the society of transparency and control. Thus we possess a distinct panoptic structure of our own; we call it social media and we all "actively collaborate in its construction and maintenance" [46], surrendering our privacy and making a pornographic spectacle of ourselves:

 

"The society of control achieves perfection when subjects bare themselves not through outer constraint but through self-generated need, that is, when the fear of having to abandon one's private and intimate sphere yields to the need to put oneself on display without shame." [46]

 

We might say that we are enslaved by our own will to exhibitionism and voyeurism. 

Perhaps not surprisingly, there are lots of techno-utopians ready to celebrate surveillance and advocate the move towards a completely transparent society - Han mentions the work of sci-fi author David Brin, for example [d]. Such totalitarian fantasists are as despicable as Rousseau. 

 

However, Han also worries me when he reads all this as a moral crisis:

 

"Strident calls for transparency point to the simple fact that the moral foundation of society has grown faulty, that moral values such as honesty and uprightness are losing their meaning more and more." [48] 

 

There are no simple facts, and it's shameful for a philosopher to speak of such. What Han offers is a simplistic reading of an increasingly complex world and the very last thing we need is to make a vain attempt to restore (or return to) our moral foundations (or get back to basics). 

 

And, let me add in closing, I prefer the idea of chance gatherings of individuals pursuing a shared interest or clustering around a favourite thing, to a community in the strong sense of the term. Such gatherings may lack spirit and prove incapable of mutual political action, but I don't want to belong to any kind of Gemeinschaft thank you very much and I would remind Han of something Heidegger once wrote:

 

"The much-invoked 'community' still does not guarantee 'truth'; the 'community' can very well go astray and abide in errancy even more and even more obstinately than the individual." [e]   

    

  

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, The Transparency Society, trans. Erik Butler, (Stanford University Press, 2015). I remind readers that all page numbers given in the post are references to this work and that titles given in bold are Han's. 

 

[b] Although Han considers Heidegger's concept of Ge-stell (a way of revealing usually translated as enframing) in order to explain this technological proliferation of data and images, he argues that it is of limited use in describing the transparency society in that it only considers things in terms of power and domination and "does not encompass the forms of positioning that are characteristic of today" [40], such as exhibiting [Aus-Stellen] or putting-on-display [Zur-Schau-Stellen]. Ultimately, today's "multimediated mass of information [and simulacra] present things more as an accumulation [Ge-Menge] than as a 'framing'" [40].

 

[c] For many years, I believed that the line: "Craft must have clothes, but truth loves to go naked" was one of Rousseau's (and I'm pretty sure I was told this by Malcolm McLaren). But it seems that credit should actually be given to the British physician and author Thomas Fuller (1654-1734). See his work of 1732, Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs; Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings ...

[d] See David Brin's non-fictional work, The Transparent Society, (Perseus Books, 1998).  

[e] Martin Heidegger, 'Ponderings and Intimations III', 153, in Ponderings II-VI: Black Notebooks 1931-1938, trans. Richard Rojcewicz, (Indiana University Press, 2016), p. 127.

 

To read part one of this post, click here.

 

To read part two of this post, click here. 

 

 

Reflections on The Tranparency Society by Byung-Chul Han (Part 2: From The Society of Pornography to The Society of Intimacy)

David Spriggs: Transparency Report (2014)

davidspriggs.art

 

 

 

III. 

The Society of Pornography

If we must engage in aesthetics, then it's legitimate to point out that transparency "is not the medium of the beautiful" [a] and remind ourselves of Benjamin's argument that beauty requires "what conceals and what is concealed to be inextricably joined" [21]. 

 

In other words, "The beautiful is neither the veil nor the veiled object but rather the object in its veil." [b]

 

This means, somewhat ironically, that beauty can never be revealed or seen; that like truth, beauty hates to go naked: in fact, naked beauty, like the naked truth, does not exist. Having said that, Benjamin thinks the naked human body sublime - i.e., beautiful beyond all beauty and exceeding representation. 

 

But that doesn't hold true it seems for the naked human bodies within pornography: Han is quick to emphasise that the miserable body revealed in pornography may have exhibition value as a piece of flesh, but is lacking in all sublimity: "It is precisely exhibition that destroys creaturely sublimity." [22]

 

The pornographic body is obscene because it lacks grace. But - even if true - we might ask, so what? We admire the graceful movements and gestures of the ballet dancer or gymnast, but why should we expect such (or desire such) from the pornographic model or prostitute? 

 

I tend to agree with Giorgio Agamben, who maintains that "exhibition affords a prime opportunity for a nudity to emerge" [23] that is free of theo-aesthetic value and which, having become transparent, has a singular appeal (or unique allure) [c]. 

 

The girl posing pornographically online doesn't want you to admire her beauty with cool detachment as she exposes her gaping cunt (she's indifferent to your immaculate appreciation); she wants you to jerk off. Porn is a shameless incitement to masturbation, not contemplation [d]. 

 

Han might not like this, but to complain that porn is graceless - or disgraceful - seems to miss the point and all he's doing (apart from revive religious language) is reinstate the "essential difference between the erotic and pornographic" [25]. And that, like all such metaphysical binaries, is philosophically untenable (not to mention a form of violence).   

 

As to whether capitalism "heightens the pornographication of society by exhibiting everthing as a commodity and handing it over to hypervisibility" [24], well, that's another matter. I suspect it probably does and, in as much as it does, Han is justified in borrowing the old Situationist term to describe today's society as "a society of the spectacle" [28].

      

  

The Society of Acceleration

 

Pure movement, which "accelerates just for its own sake" [29] and is going nowhere fast, is something else that Han finds obscene: "it no longer really moves anything or anywhere, and it does not really bring about anything" [29]. 

 

He prefers, in contrast, those narrative processes that elude acceleration and structure time in a meaningful manner; rituals and ceremonies: 

 

"Rituals and ceremonies have their own temporality, their own rhythm and tact. The society of transparency abolishes all rituals and ceremonies becase they do not admit operationalization; that is, they impede the accelerated circulation of information, communication, and production." [30]

The result of this abolition is that our world is uneventful, in the philosophical sense of that term; plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. 

 

Also, we are no longer able to linger in attentiveness (or dwell in peace); no longer able to live the vita contemplativa. The pilgrim is replaced by the tourist, who never really arrives anywhere or finds what they're looking for:

 

"The pilgrimage is a narrative event. For this reason, the itinerary is not a passage to be traversed as quickly as possible, but a path rich in significance. Being underway is charged with meanings such as atonement, healing, or thanksgiving. Because of this narrativity, pilgrimage cannot be accelerated." [31]

 

Han continues: 

 

"In terms of temporality, the pilgrim is on the way to a future in which well-being or salvation [ein Heil] is expected. For this reason, he is not a tourist. The tourist sticks to the present, stays in the here-and-now. He is not underway in the proper sense. The way he travels holds no significance [...] The tourist knows nothing of the rich significance, the narrativity, of the way." [31]     

No surprises to learn that Byung-Chul Han studied Catholic theology and wrote his doctoral dissertation on Heidegger. Nor to discover the same kind of prejudice when discussing tourism that his attitude to porn betrays [e]. I suspect his real objection to contemporary society is the fact that it's secular in character and that when he uses the word obscene he essentially means profane. 

 

And when he says that compulsive transparency "annihilates the fragrance of things" [32], I'm guessing the fragrance he has in mind is a mix of benzoin, frankincense, and myrrh ...

 

Han concludes this chapter:  

 

"The crisis of our times is not acceleration, but rather the scattering and dissociation of temporality. Temporal dis-synchrony makes time buzz without direction and disintegrate into a mere series of  punctual, atomized presences. Thereby, time becomes additive and is emptied of all narrativity." [32-33]

 

So what's the solution? Not deceleration, since acceleration per se is not the actual problem. I think, for Han - as for Heidegger - the answer is: Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten ... [f]     

 

The Society of Intimacy

 

Whilst 18th-century society was theatrical in character, ours, in contrast, is far more intimate, as we abandon distance for immediacy and symbolic representation yields to pornographic exhibition. People don't want to play clearly defined social roles, they wish to strive for authenticity:

 

"Intimacy is the psychological formula of transparency. One believes that one attains transparency of the soul by revealing intimate feelings and emotions, by laying the soul bare." [35] 

And where does one commit this soul baring? Not in the confessional, or in a potentially hostile public space, but on social media, which sets up a virtual space of absolute closeness and closedness; "the outside has been eliminated" [35]. 

 

One can at last be perfectly safe and perfectly alone with oneself: 

 

"This digital vicinity [Nachbarschaft] offers users only sectors of the world that please them. In this fashion, it dismantles the public sphere [Öffentlichkeit] - indeed, it dismantles public, critical consciousness - and it privitizes the world." [35]  

 

We have been transformed into digital narcissists who prefer to encounter ourselves everywhere, rather than the stranger, or Other, who just might help us escape from the hell of the Same ...      

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, The Transparency Society, trans. Erik Butler, (Stanford University Press, 2015). Future page references will be given in the post itself. I would remind readers that the chapter titles given in bold are Han's. Part one of this post, which discusses the first three chapters (and preface), can be read by clicking here. 

 

[b] Walter Benjamin, 'Goethe's Elective Affinities', Selected Writings 1913-1926, Vol. I, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael. W. Jennings, (Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 351. Quoted by Han on p. 21 of The Transparency Society. 

[c] See Giorgio Agamben, Nudities, trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella, (Stanford University Press, 2010). Byung-Chul Han quotes fairly extensively from this work, even though he disagrees with what Agamben writes.

[d] D. H. Lawrence also pointed this out: "The pornography of today [...] is an invariable stimulant to the vice of self abuse; onanism, masturbation, call it what you will. In young or old, man or woman, boy or girl, modern pornography is a direct provocative of masturbation." See 'Pornography and Obscenity', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 244.

  

[e] This snobbish disdain for numerous aspects of popular culture - from tinned food to tourism; newspapers to cinema - was common amongst modernist writers in the twentieth-century - from D. H. Lawrence to T. S. Eliot; Theodor Adorno to Martin Heidegger. Although there are some deeply stupid opinions expressed in John Carey's The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939 (Faber and Faber, 1992), it remains one of the go-to books on this subject. 

[f] This phrase - Only a God Can Save Us - is the title of an interview given by Martin Heidegger to Rudolf Augstein and Georg Wolff, published in Der Spiegel magazine on September 23, 1966. 

 

This post continues and concludes in part three: click here. 

 

 

Reflections on The Transparency Society by Byung-Chul Han (Part 1: From The Society of Positivity to The Society of Evidence)

Stanford University Press (2015)

 

 

I. 

 

I might not share Byung-Chul Han's political views, but I certainly share many of his influences and points of reference; Nietzsche, Barthes, and Baudrillard, for example, all of whom feature in this essay on an ideal that has become central to public discourse in the 21st-century and which functions as one of the most pernicious of our contemporary mythologies. 

 

As Han notes in his preface, today the term transparency "is haunting all spheres of life" [a]. People operating in the social sector, science, business, politics, and the media, all pride themselves on their openness and insist they have nothing to hide; that they are fully accountable.    

But Han sees through this neoliberal (and porno-utopian) fantasy of the Transparenzgesellschaft and indicates the dangers of losing mystery, shadow, and privacy. According to Han - and as we will discuss below - the dictates of transparency enforce a totalitarian system of openness at the expense of other (older) social values such as shame, secrecy, and trust. 

 

Ultimately, more information does not mean more freedom, it means greater control, and as "total communication and total networking run their course, it proves harder than ever to be an outsider, to hold a different opinion" [vii]; consensus and conformity are two key terms within this new order of transparency. When everything and everyone is coordinated on Facebook then, as Jello Biafra predicted long ago, it's California über alles ... [b]

 

 

II.

 

The Society of Positivity

 

Although totalised transparency will ultimately result in terror, the society of transparency ironically manifests itself "first and foremost as a society of positivity" [1]. 

 

We used to think that the smiling face of the politician or salesman was just a mask, behind which lay the ugly reality. But now we know that the smiling face is the truth - just as we have come to understand that the phrase have a nice day is a moral imperative. For fascism not only compels speech, as Barthes pointed out [c], it demands active participatation 24/7. 

 

Whoever optimistically thinks woke liberalism will lead in all its positivity to a better world, has failed to understand the significance of the sign above the gates to Hell which reads: Built in the name of Love [d]. 

 

Similarly, as Han writes:

 

"Whoever connects transparency only with corruption and the freedom of information has failed to recognize its scope. Transparency is a systemic compulsion gripping all social processes and subjecting them to deep-reaching change. [...] This systemic compulsion makes the society of transparency a calibrated society. Herein lies its totalitarian trait: 'New word for Gleichschaltung: Transparency.'" [2]

Han is quoting the German writer Ulrich Schacht here [e]. Later, he quotes Baudrillard in order to provide the following memorable definition: "The society of positivity is dominated by the 'transparency and obscenity of information in a universe emptied of event'." [2] [f]  

 

A universe emptied of event - i.e., one in which there is no possibility of a new world erupting within the known world - is also a universe devoid of Otherness and singularity; what Han - again borrowing from Baudrillard - calls the hell of the Same. 

 

Now, clearly, sometimes the human soul needs sameness (stability, predicability, etc.), "where it can be at home without the gaze of the Other" [3] and not swept up in perpetual chaos. But this is not an argument for the elimination of all difference and becoming. 

 

Similarly, whilst a cerain amount of openness and transparency is healthy, the idea of "completely surrendering the private sphere" [3] is naive and misaken. Ultimately, "human existence is not transparent, even to itself" [3]. To put this in psychoanalytic terms, the id remains largely hidden to the ego:

 

"Therefore, a rift runs through the human psyche and prevents the ego from agreeing even with itself. This fundamental rift renders self-transparency impossible. A rift also gapes between people. For this reason interpersonal transparency proves impossible to achieve. [...] The other's very lack of transparency is what keeps the relationship alive." [3]

 

Compulsive transparency in the name of ideological positivity and a will to knowledge, lacks a sensitivity to the import of secrecy and for what Nietzsche termed the pathos of distance. The attempt to illuminate (and expose) everything and everyone under the same bright searchlight, "only makes the world more shameless and more naked" [4].  

In sum: we require a little negativity, a little shadow, even a little corruption in all spheres; negative thoughts and feelings - somewhat paradoxicaly - make happy and keep sane. An excess of positivity ends in exhaustion and depression. Click the like button if you agree ...

 

The Society of Exhibition

How do you know a sacred object when you see one? It's always hidden from view; the holy is not transparent. It's value depends upon its actual existence rather than its exhibition; the fact that it is what it is, even if it is withdrawn and separated off.

 

Within the society of positivity, however, seeing is believing; "things become commodities, they must be displayed in order to be; cult value disappears in favour of exhibition value" [9]. But this compulsion for display "that hands everything over to visibility" [9] results in objects losing their aura, defined by Walter Benjamin as a thing's unique existence within time and space [g]. 

 

This holds true for people too - and the human countenance ... 

 

If the last trace of aura can be found in a beautiful old photograph, digital technology assures "that the 'human countenance' has become a mere face that equals only its exhibition value" [10] on social media. All imperfections and blemishes and signs of aging are removed [h], even though it's these things that make us unique; the negativity of time, for example, playing a constitutive role. 

 

Transparency desires perfection, but it doesn't allow for transcendence. And digital photography is transparent photography: "without birth or death, without destiny or event" [11], says Han. However, whilst I understand the argument he's making (borrowed from Heidegger, Benjamin, and Barthes), I'm not sure I agree with it. 

 

Or rather, even if it's true, I'm not sure I care, as I like the pictures taken with my i-Phone; even if - or perhaps precisely because - they lack "semantic and temporal density" [11]. Not every image needs to be meaningful or mournful; nostalgic or romantic. 

 

And just because images are digitally reworked and circulated on social media, that doesn't necessarily mean they are obscene [i], or that the objects made visible have had their inherent nature compromised. I tend to agree with Graham Harman, objects cannot be exhausted by their relations with other objects - including a human being with a camera - meaning that they retain an excessive reality that is always unseen, unknown, withdrawn.  

 

And whilst the exhibiting and exploiting of bare life is pornography to one man, it's the laughter of genius to another [j] ...

 

 

The Society of Evidence  

This opening paragraph could have come from my Illicit Lover's Discourse (2010): 

"The society of transparency is hostile to pleasure. Within the economy of human desire, pleasure and transparency do not fit to gether. Transparency is foreign to libidinal economy. Precisely the negativity of the secret, the veil, and concealment incite desire and make pleasure more intense. That is why the seducer plays with masks, illusion, and appearances." [15]

In some ways, I still agree with this and feel sympathetic; I like Baudrillard's suggestion that after the orgy comes the masked ball. And Han is right, I think, to insist that transparency spells the end of erotic fantasy and results in the pornification of society.

 

On the other hand, however, all that talk of desire and libidinal economy, etc. makes me feel a bit weary and as if I've travelled back in time. One of the reasons I decided to read Byun-Chul Han's work was because I wanted to see what a celebrated 21st-century philosopher had to say and I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed - despite its brilliance - to basically find a reworking of all the usual suspects (authors one read twenty or thirty years ago).      

 

Still, just like the famous Icelander Magnus Magnusson, having started this examination of Han's text, I'll finish it and readers may join me in part two of this post by clicking here (or, if they wish, leap ahead straight to part three by clicking here). 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, The Transparency Society, trans. Erik Butler, (Stanford University Press, 2015), p. vii. Future page references will be given directly in the post. Note also that the chapter titles given in bold are taken from the essay itself and are not of my invention. 

      The book was originally published in Germany as Transparenzgesellschaft, (Matthes & Seitz Verlag, 2012).  

 

[b] Jello Biafra was lead vocalist with the American punk band the Dead Kennedy's. 'California Über Alles' was their debut single (released June 1979). It was re-recorded for the album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (Cherry Red / Alternative Tentacles, 1980): click here for this later (faster) version. It describes the triumph of soft fascism which, arguably, the transparency society is in the process of realising.  

 

[c] See Roland Barthes, 'Inaugural Lecture, Collège de France', (January 7, 1977), trans. Richard Howard, in A Roland Barthes Reader, ed. Susan Sontag, (Vintage, 1993), pp. 457-78.   

 

[d] See Dante's Inferno, III, 5-6. 

      Note that Nietzsche famously describes this as a naive error on Dante's part, however, and says that it would have been more telling if he'd placed a sign above the Christian Paradise reading: 'Eternal hate created me as well'. See On the Genealogy of Morality, I. 15.

 

[e] See Ulrich Schacht, Über Schnee und Geschichte, (Matthes & Seitz, 2012), journal entry for June 23, 2011.  

[f] Jean Baudrillard, Fatal Strategies, trans. Phil Beitchman and W.G.J. Niesluchowski, (Semiotext[e], 2008), p. 45. 

[g] See Benjamin's crucial essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' (1936). It can be found in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, (Schocken Books, 2007), pp. 217-251.  

[h] Han writes: "Exhibition value above all depends on beautiful looks." [12] 

      Again, maybe that's true, but is that the worst thing in the world? The ancient Greeks also valued good looks, believing such to not only show that they were blessed by the gods, but possessed of a beautiful soul. They even had a phrase for someone who was both attractive and virtuous: kalos kagathos [καλὸς κἀγαθός]. I'm always a bit suspicious of those who seem to sneer at physical beauty, though I assume that Han is here talking about a fixed ideal of beauty based on stereotypical attributes and lacking any complexity or mystery.  

 

[i] Byung-Chul Han is borrowing the term obscene from Baudrillard, who defines it in Fatal Strategies as the "more visible than visible" [p. 30]. I don't disagree that hypervisibility, in as much as it lacks and challenges the negativity of what is hidden and kept secret, is obscene, but I don't think that obscenity ever truly prevents the object from dwelling in peace. For as I go on to say in the post, objects always find a way to elude us and retain their darkness.   

 

[j] I'm paraphrasing D. H. Lawrence in 'Pornography and Obscenity', see Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 236. My italics. I'll return to Han's thoughts on porn when I discuss chapter 4 of his book. See also the post on The Agony of Eros (2017): click here.