Stone Me, What a Life! (A Brief Post in Memory of Tony Hancock)

The Lad Himself

Anthony [Aloysius St John] Hancock 

(1924 - 1968)

 

 

On this day in 1968, the English comic actor Tony Hancock committed suicide, aged 44. The perfect way to die [1] and the perfect age to exit this life [2]. So as well as his comedic skills, I admire him for his courage and his timing.

 

Hancock was found dead at his rented flat in Sydney, Australia, besides an empty vodka bottle and a handful of barbiturates. Apparently, he left several suicide notes, in one of which he wrote: Things just seemed to go too wrong too many times.

 

Which is a concise, clear and honest statement; qualities that I think are important in such a document, though I don't mind more philosophically cryptic last words, such as those famously spoken by Socrates to Crito: We owe a cock to Aesclepius [3].

 

What I don't like are outpourings of guilt, regret, bitterness, or recrimination; nor even a desperate last minute attempt at humour. If that's all you have to offer, then best to go in silence. For as Nanette Newman's young Existentialist character Josey might say: Why waste words when you can quietly waste yourself? [4]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] There are several posts on Torpedo the Ark in which I write in praise of suicide as the simplest of pleasures and set out reasons for so doing: click here, for example, or here and here. 

 

[2] Many people I admire died at 44, including D. H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Spinoza. It has always seemed to me a good age to take one's leave of this life, although, sadly, I missed my opportunity to do so some years ago. 

     

[3] For my thoughts on the death of Socrates and his famous last words, see the post of 30 October 2015: click here. 

[4] I'm referring here to a character played by Newman in Tony Hancock's first feature film, The Rebel (dir. Robert Day, 1961), who asks the crucial question: Why kill time when you can kill yourself? Click here to watch the scene on YouTube,   

 

 

Musical bonus: Babyshambles, 'Stone Me' - click here. 

      This 2007 track, written by Pete Doherty and Mick Whitnall, was inspired by one of Hancock's favourite phrases; as was the title of the debut album by Doherty's other band, The Libertines - Up the Bracket (Rough Trade, 2002). 

      Doherty also wrote a song called 'Lady Don't Fall Backwards' after the book at the centre of the Hancock's Half Hour episode 'The Missing Page' (S6/E2, 1960), which can be found on his solo album Grace/Wastelands (EMI, 2009). 

      He also references Hancock by name in the lyrics to 'You're My Waterloo', a song on the third studio album by The Libertines, Anthems for Doomed Youth (Virgin EMI, 2015): click here.

 

Summer Solstice with D. H. Lawrence (1910 - 1928)

Max Pechstein: Summer in Nidden (1919-20)

 

 

D. H. Lawrence liked to think about human life in relation to the wheeling of the year, i.e., the coming and going of the seasons and the movement of the sun through solstice and equinox. So it seems fitting that we might examine what he was up to and what he had to say on the longest day of the year as he experienced it during his (relatively short) lifetime ... 

 

 

21 June 1910 

 

In a letter to the somewhat troubled 27-year-old schoolteacher Helen Corke to whom he was attracted at the time, Lawrence voices his impatience and irritation with their (sexless) relationship: "I would yield to you if you could lead me deeper into the tanglewood of life" [1], he says. 

 

But she can't. Or won't. And so Lawrence feels peeved and unable to express his passion, which, like anger, comes with bright eyes like an angel from God carrying a fiery sword: "I ask you for nothing unnatural or forced. But a little thunder may bring rain, and sweet days, out of a sultry torpor." [2]

 

Indeed. But Helen just wasn't that kind of girl.   

 

 

21 June 1913

 

In a letter to his literary editor, Edward Garnett, written from the latter's own home in Kent (The Cearne), Lawrence expresses his joy at the reviews and letters of congratulations he has received for his newly published third novel, Sons and Lovers. He is excited too that Ezra Pound has asked him for some short stories.

It's nice to find Lawrence upbeat for once, although, of course, he's never quite happy: "I love the Cearne and the warm people, but the English dimness in the air gives me the blues." [3]

 

Sometimes, you really do want to tell him to shut up and go net some more raspberries. 

 

 

21 June 1920  

 

Writing from Taormina, Sicily, to Marie Hubrecht - a Dutch painter whose drawing of DHL can be found in the National Portrait Gallery - Lawrence speaks of several mutual acquaintances and, of course, the weather: 

 

"We have had beautiful days here. Once it rained quite heavily, and made the almond trees and vines bright green. Generally it is sunny, with a cool wind." [4] 

He also mentions the condition of the local fruit: "The grapes are growing big. The first figs are ripe, and abundance of apricots and cherries and yellow peaches." [5] Luckily for a man always watching the pennies, all these items were (comparitively) cheap to buy.

 

It seems that Miss Hubrecht is planning a trip to Norway. Not somewhere Lawrence ever visited, as far as I remember, but, as readers of Women in Love will know, he subscribes to the idea that there are two modes of aesthetic abstraction and disintegration: the African, which is all about the burning heat of the sun and mindless sensuality; and the Arctic, which is all about the annihilating mystery of snow and ice and destructive intellectualism.  

 

Usually, Lawrence writes in favour of dark-skinned, brown-eyed peoples (whom, at times, he comes close to fetishising). But, in his letter to Miss Hubrecht, he confesses a desire to go to the far north and meet the natives:

 

"Blond, blond people, with the fair hair coming keen from the tanned skin, like ice splinters, and the physique sudden and sharp like foam, and eyes blue like water, and like sky, they have a great fascination for me." [6] 

 

Not that he would wish to know them intimately; "frail streaming contact is what I like best: not to know people closely" [7]. The priest of love is, it seems, a voyeur of life, admiring from a distance. Thus, as he also admits in this letter, he loves to watch the Sicilian peasant girls come-and-go "with great bundles of bright corn on their heads" [8].

 

 

21 June 1922

 

Whilst in Australia, Lawrence wrote several letters on what was the shortest day Down Under. 

 

In one, to his American publisher Thomas Seltzer, he announces his plan to sail in several weeks time from Sydney to San Francisco, where he is hoping to arrive without any fuss: "I don't want any strangers to know, or any foolish reporters." [9]

 

And in another, sent to his literary agent Robert Mountsier, he confesses that whilst he doesn't wish to stay in Australia, he's not entirely comfortable with the idea of going to America: "For some reason the U.S.A. is the only country in the world that I shrink from and feel shy of: Lord knows why." [10]

 

Actually, I think Lawrence was perfectly aware of what caused his sense of anxiety about going to the States - for who understood the spirit of America better than he? In the first version of his opening essay to Studies in Classic American Literature, he wrote:

 

"There is an unthinkable gulf between us and America, and across the space we see, not our own folk signalling to us, but strangers, incomprehensible beings, simulacra perhaps of ourselves, but other, creatures of an other-world." [11]

 

 

21 June 1924

 

Writing to one of his (many) homosexual friends, Willard Johnson - often known by the nickname 'Spud', but addressed here with affection as Dear Spoodle - Lawrence complains about the "complicated triangly business of inviting and not inviting" [12] friends to his ranch in Taos, New Mexico: "I'm tired of all that old stuff. I really am. This sort of personal wingle-wangle has been worked to death." [13] 

However, having said that, he does also say: "if you come to the ranch and would like to stay a while and we feel it would be nice - why, let it be so. But let's let things evolve naturally of themselves, without plans or schemes [...]" [14]. 

 

Which I suppose is the Lawrentian way of saying feel free to visit anytime - mi casa, su casa.

 

 

21 June 1927

 

Back in Italy, Lawrence writes a letter to his old friend Gertie Cooper. He sympathises with the fact that she's unwell - "sad to know you are still in bed" [15] - and mentions how hot it is in Florence: "I've never know the sun so strong, for the time of the year." [16] 

 

Considering the date - and considering his obsession with the sun and acknowledging the great phases of the cosmic year - it's surprising that this is the one and only mention of the sun that Lawrence makes in his solstice letters.  

He also reports that Maria Huxley was stung on the arm by a large jelly fish and how much he enjoys watching the peasants cutting the wheat: "It's a fine crop this year, tall and handsome, and a lovely purply-brown colour." [17]

But, ultimately, Lawrence wouldn't swap his own life for the life of a peasant working happily in the wheat fields and sleeping all afternoon:

"Sometimes I think it would be good to be healthy and limited like the peasants. But then it seems to me they have so little in their lives, one had better put up with one's own bad health, and have one's own experiences. At least they are more vivid than anything these peasants will know." [18]

 

 

21 June 1928 

 

And so, finally, we come to a couple of summer solstice letters written in 1928 [19] ... Lawrence is in Switzerland. Frieda has gone to Germany for a week. 

 

To Pino Orioli, the Italian bookseller who privately published Lady Chatterley's Lover on his behalf, Lawrence sings the praises of the Brewsters, who are looking after him in Frieda's absence; concedes that it is better to be warm and comfortable rather than cold and uncomfortable; and asks for the latest news about his scandalous new novel: "I'm so anxious to know what milady is doing [...]" [20]

 

To Harry Crosby, the poet, publisher and solar lunatic, Lawrence complains about being in "a dull hotel with dull people in a dull country" [21], but again acknowledges that, thanks to a beautiful view, good mountain air, and the fact that he's still in possession of the gold coins given to him by Crosby, he's "pretty well content" [22].   

 

A phrase that gives lie to the claim that Lawrence was always a raging malcontent. 

 

In fact, during his final days drinking Ovaltine, writing The Escaped Cock, and preparing his little ship of death, I like to believe that Lawrence discovered a fighter's peace - like a cat asleep on a chair and at one with the world. He earned the right to that I think.     

 

Notes

 

[1-2] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Helen Corke (21 June 1910), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 164.  

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Edward Garnett (21 June 1913), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 27. 

 

[4-8] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Marie Hubrecht (21 June 1920), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 553-54.  

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Thomas Seltzer (21 June 1922), The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. IV, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 267.

[10] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Robert Mountsier (21 June 1922), The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, IV 268.

[11] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Spirit of Place', Studies in Classic American Literature, First Version, (1918-19), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 168.  

[12-14] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Willard Johnson [21 June 1924], The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 60. 

[15-18] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Gertrude Cooper (21 June 1927), The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 87. 

[19] Note that Lawrence wrote to Frieda, Catherine Carswell, and Max Mohr on this date also.

[20] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Giuseppe Orioli [21 June 1928], The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, VI 428. 

[21-22] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Harry Crosby (21 June 1928), The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, VI 429. 

Are We Really Returning to the 1970s? (I Wish ...)

Front page of The Sun (20 June 2022)

 

 

I. 

 

Some commentators seem to imagine that Britain is returning to the 1970s, pointing to rising inflation, higher taxes, strikes, shortages, and even the threat of power cuts, as if these things alone defined the decade, when, actually, I think it might just as legitimately be argued that it was predominantly characterised by a greater level of joie de vivre: everything was so much more fun in the 1970s - the fashion, the football, the music ... etc. 

 

It was certainly a fun time to be a child growing up; the 70s was a golden age of sweets, comics, conkers and playing outside all day, whatever the weather, with friends, but without parental supervision, electronic surveillance, or any concern for health and safety. You might come home muddy or with a grazed knee, but you always came home happy. 

But even adults seemed to laugh more and enjoy all kinds of manual labour; including hard, tiring, often dirty jobs. People sweated more - and smoked more - in the 1970s, but they also whistled more than they do now. My father used to return exhausted some days from work, but I never remember him complain about being tired. Similarly, I never heard my mother say she was stressed.  

 

In a sense, the 1970s marked the end of the post-War world as we had known it; a time when the British still had a sense of themselves as a people and were happier and healthier because of it. 

 

 

II.

 

I know, of course, that some readers will say I'm being nostalgic and suffering from the psychology of declinism (i.e., the belief that things only ever get worse over time and that this distorts one's recollection of the past). And I know that they'll be able to point to all kinds of data to show that life is measurably better for most people in the UK now than it was fifty years ago (particularly for ethnic and sexual minorities).

Let me remind these readers, however, that I didn't say things were better in the 70s, only more fun. And whilst people might live longer now and own more expensive houses, drive bigger cars, and have all kinds of technology at their disposal, are they really any happier? 

 

I doubt it. 

 

In fact, British people seem so angry and resentful these days: Everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody is civil anymore, or smiles at a passing baby. I think if we were truly able to go back to the 1970s we might learn something important; something which we've forgotten.    

 

 

Note: Whereas I remember the 1970s mostly for fun and games, Polly Toynbee writing in The Guardian remembers the decade as one of feminist and working class solidarity. To read her take on things, click here.   

A Philosopher's Guide to Home Decorating 1: Always Use a Paintbrush Not a Roller

Deutsche Philosophen malen lieber mit Pinseln 

(SA/2022)

 

 

We all know the advantages of working with a roller rather than a brush; thanks to its porous character, the former holds far more paint and provides a thin, even coat over a larger surface area.

 

Thus it is that rollers are much favoured by those who worry about saving time and money, which is probably the majority of people drifting round Homebase like DIY zombies.   

But even if the roller is a faster and more economical method of painting walls and ceilings, as a philosopher I continue to advocate for the use of a fine set of brushes and decorating slowly with great care taken over every stroke, so as to create a more textured and individual look.   

 

Ultimately, the paintbrush is a genuine hand tool (and thing) in the way that a roller is not. 

 

That is to say, when one paints with a brush, one works in a blind fashion that is determined by the body (its pleasures and fatigues); when one uses a roller, the mind is very much directing things and the eyes remain wide open at all times. 

 

I don't know if Heidegger ever painted his mother's house, as I am now doing, but he certainly knew a thing or two about the vital importance of what he termed handwork (which, rather surprisingly perhaps, also includes thinking) [1].     

 

Just as the typewriter degrades the art of writing, so does the roller degrade the art of painting [2]. Take a brush in your hand and paint with it and you will understand that, in its essence, it is more than merely useful - it is reliable. 

What does that mean? 

 

Well, according to Heidegger, the reliability of things (as things) - be they tools or items of footwear - consists in the fact that they "embed human beings in those relations to the world that make life stable" [3].

 

A roller is reliable only in the most banal sense of the word, exhausting itself in pure functionality. It might allow you to quickly add colour to the walls of a property, but it won't allow you to paint a dwelling place (any more than email allows you to compose a love letter). 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See my post 'You Need Hands' (1 June 2019), for remarks on Heidegger's love of the human hand: click here. 

 

[2] Readers are reminded of my three part series of posts reflecting on the typewriter published in June 2019: click here, for example, to read part one on the case of Martin Heidegger and the Schreibmaschine.   

 

[3] Byung-Chul Han, Non-things, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2022), p. 69. 

 

 

On the Necessity of Killing Carpet Moths

Trichophaga tapetzella [1]

 

 

I.

 

I have always liked moths. Indeed, I once wrote a post in praise of them: click here.

 

And even when they ate holes in my favourite Vivienne Westwood jumper, I didn't complain and figured it was not only in keeping with a punk aesthetic, but ethically the right thing to allow these little winged creatures the right to feast freely; they've got to live, after all.    

 

However, a £200 piece of knitwear is one thing and a £2000 pure new wool carpet is something else, and I fear that my fondness for moths and wanting to do the right thing by them won't stop me reaching for a spray gun should they start to munch away at my Axminster ... 

 

 

II.

 

Now never in my life have I sprayed a living thing: I never wanted to. I always felt insecticides very repugnant: sinister, mean. Other people could spray if they wanted to. Myself, individually, it was repugnant to even try. 

 

But something slowly hardens in a man's soul. And I know now, it has hardened in mine. One must be able to spray carpet moths if they threaten one's home. For wherever man establishes himself  upon the earth, he has to fight for his place, against other forms of life. [2]

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Once common, this species of moth is now quite rare in the UK. The larvae feed on naturally-occurring fibrous material such as hair, fur, or feathers and are typically found in birds' nests (or carpets). The picture is a modified version of a photo of an adult specimen located at the Mississippi Entomological Museum.

 

[2] I'm paraphrasing D. H. Lawrence writing in 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 353-54.

 

Cat Killer / Cat Saviour

The Gayer-Anderson Cat

britishmuseum.org

 

I. The Case of Steven Bouquet

ITV recently broadcast a particularly distressing documentary about the Sussex Police investigation into the murder of several cats by security guard (and former Royal Navy gunner) Steven Bouquet, in 2018-19. 

 

Jailed for five years and three months in September 2021, Bouquet was found to have killed nine cats in total and injured seven more with a knife in and around the Brighton area, during a campaign of wilful and sustained cruelty. The police suspect he may have actually harmed or killed as many as forty cats. 

Personally, I take an ancient Egyptian line when it comes to punishing those who kill cats, but English law has no provision for capital punishment. Still, I'm pleased to report that Bouquet died in January of this year, whilst still refusing to admit his guilt and to apologise for the pain and suffering he caused.

 

May the goddess Bastet devour his soul. 

 

 

II. The Case of Robert Brantley

 

On a happier note, it's nice to know that there are kind-hearted ailurophiles like Robert Brantley in the world ...

 

Upon discovering a tiny kitten at the side of the road and fearing for its safety, Brantley decided to play the good Samaritan and rescue the abandoned creature, only to then be ambushed by a dozen other kittens hiding in the long grass, all looking for protection and meowing at his feet, as can be seen in this video on YouTube: click here.

 

Clearly surprised and a little overwhelmed, Brantley initially informs the kittens that he can't take them all. However, because he has a big heart, I'm pleased to say Brantley did take all thirteen cats home with him, where they are presently being fed and cared for. 

  

Brantley plans to keep at least two or three of the kittens - including the one he initially stopped to rescue - and distribute the rest amongst friends and neighbours in Louisana.

 

May the goddess Bastet bring blessings upon him and his family.    

 

 

Note: for a related post requesting kindness to cats, click here.  

 

External link: Cats Protection: cats.org.uk

Anti-Human Reflections on the Red-Billed Leiothrix

Leiothrix lutea

 

 

I. 

 

In a country in which insect numbers have fallen a staggering 65% in the last twenty years and other factors, such as agricultural intensification and habitat destruction, are all making survival increasingly difficult for our feathered friends, it's surprising that any foreign bird species would decide to try its luck and make the move to England.

 

However, that's just what the red-billed leiothrix - known by some as the Pekin robin or the Japanese nightingale - has decided to do; much to the horror and outrage of those who fear this brightly-coloured subtropical songbird will colonise our gardens, threaten native bird populations, and change the dawn chorus for ever ...

 

It's a familiar tale: the same people who hate ring-necked parakeets hate these little birds. And they always justify their opposition to the invasive species on the same grounds; namely, a desire to safeguard the survival of native creatures, although they don't seem to have done a very good job of that over the last 50 years, during which time tens of millions of birds have disappeared from our skies.  

One might have imagined, therefore, that they would welcome these newcomers, who have been recorded in several parts of the country. 

 

But not so: a tiny number of red-billed leiothrixes spotted in southern England and thought to have escaped from captivity - not flown here directly from China and not known to be successfully breeding - has got them worked up into a frenzy: Non-native species are never a good thing, sometimes they’re neutral, but they're never positive, as one expert put it.

 

II. 

 

Meanwhile, I heard today on the news that ten thousand human migrants have (illegally) crossed the Channel in small boats and set foot on British shores so far this year (after 28,500 arrived in 2021), ever increasing the UK human population and transforming England into the most overcrowded (and nature-depleted) large nation in Europe.   

 

Personally, I'd like to see far more birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and insects and far fewer people on these islands and would happily support an extensive programme of rewilding and depopulation in order to increase biodiversity. For frankly, the latter isn't going to happen without the former. 

 

Ultimately, I agree with Birkin, there's no thought more beautiful or cleaner than a world empty of people and full of birdsong.   

She Never Lied to Us: Reflections on the Case of Irena Dubrovna

Simone Simon as Irena Dubrovna in  

Cat People (dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1942)

 

She was marked with the curse of those who slink and mate and kill by night ...

 

 

The 1942 psychological and supernatural suspense - I wouldn't call it a horror movie - Cat People is the fascinating tale of a beautiful and mysterious fashion illustrator in New York; Serbian-born Irena Dubrovna (played by the kitten-faced - but said to be temperamental - French actress Simone Simon).

 

Crazy as it sounds to her new apple-pie loving husband and the creepy psychiatrist he persuades her to visit, Irena believes herself - rightly as it turns out - to be descended from an ancient race of ailuranthropes who shapeshift (or metamorphose) into panthers when emotionally (or sexually) aroused.        

 

Her foreignness combined with her feline qualities make her doubly exotic and doubly attractive to those of us who identify as xenophiles and cat lovers, although she undoubtedly would make a problematic wife or girlfriend, unless one happens to have a fetishistic desire to be killed and possibly eaten by a wild animal (which I don't, but some people do).    

 

Several critics have described Cat People as boring and Simone Simon's acting as poor. But, having recently rewatched the film on TV, I would challenge this. The film may not be sensational, unlike many contemporary films, but it has a subtle understanding of shadowplay and the sexual politics of the period. 

 

Further, as far as I can see Miss Simon does a perfectly fine job in the role of Irena, one of the strangest characters in mid-20th century American cinema; a woman soothed by the sound of lions roaring and who finds the darkness friendly.     

 

One only wishes that the character could have embraced her nature and acknowledged her kinship with the feline-looking woman (played by Elizabeth Russell) who addresses her in a Serbian restaurant on her wedding night as moja sestra. 

 

And it might also have been satisfying to have seen Irena use her claws on Oliver, her patient but patronising (and ultimately unfaithful) husband (played by Kent Smith) and his co-worker-cum-mistress, Alice (Jane Randolph), as she does on the sleazy shrink (and sexual predator) Dr. Judd (Tom Conway) who, having dismissed her fears as irrational and infantile - and having threatened to have her locked up - attempts to seduce Irena, thus triggering the fatal transformation from woman to panther.

 

If things don't end well for Dr. Judd, then, sadly, things don't end well for Irena either and she too lies dead at the end of the film, thereby leaving the path clear for Oliver and Alice to marry and live happily ever after in a world no longer threatened by Irena's inhuman otherness [1].    

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Actually, that wasn't quite the case: in The Curse of the Cat People (dir. Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise, 1944), Oliver and Alice (played once more by Kent Smith and Jane Randolph) are now married and have a six-year-old daughter, Amy (Ann Carter), an extremely introverted child with a predilection for fantasy, who befriends the ghost of her father's deceased first wife, Irena (again played by Simone Simon). 

      Although sharing some of the same cast and characters - and clearly marketed as a sequel by RKO studio executives hoping to cash in on the success of their 1942 release - The Curse of the Cat People has little relationship to Cat People. Interestingly, however, its critical reputation has grown over the years and it is now seen by some as an enchanting and complex study of child psychology disguised as a ghost story.     

To watch the original trailer for Cat People, click here. 

 

To read a related post from May 2017 on woman-as-animal (with reference to a picture of Naomi Campbell by David LaChapelle entitled Cat House), click here.   

Notes on Byung-Chul Han's 'Non-things' (Part 2)

Byung-Chul Han: author of Non-things,

trans. Daniel Steuer (Polity Press, 2022).

Page references given in the post refer to this work.

 

 

Note: This post is a continuation. To go to part one (sections I - VI), click here. We continue our reflections on Byung-Chul Han's new book by discussing things in their evil and magical aspects ...

 

 

VII.

 

Han argues that things have lost their malevolent or villainous character; that objects, if you like, no longer seek revenge upon subjects - even when those subjects are cartoon mice or silent film stars like Charlie Chaplin. Material reality has become a safe space and offers no resistance or dangers. 

 

Things, in short, are now subordinate to our control and "even Mickey Mouse leads a digital, smart and immaterial life [...] and no longer collides with physical reality" [47]. Now there's an app for everything and a quick solution to all life's problems. Objects behave themselves; even if we build our world upon their backs, they'll no longer attempt to shrug us off. 

 

But, just in case those pesky objects are still up to no good when we're not around to keep an eye on them, we have invented the Internet of Things: "The infosphere puts things in chains. [...] It tames things and turns them into servants catering to our needs." [49]

 

In the past, we accepted the independence of things; the kettle might start whistling before we were ready to make the tea; the door might start creaking or the window begin to rattle in the middle of the night, keeping us awake. 

 

Even Sartre remained familiar "with what it means to be touched by things" [50] and this filled the protagonist of Nausea (1938) with terror. On the other hand, for Rilke things emanated warmth and he fantasised about sleeping with his beloved objects. 

 

But then things cooled down and no longer warmed us, touched us, or seduced us. And now, things are not even frigid: 

 

"They have neither cold nor warmth; they are worn out. All their vitality is waning. They no longer represent a counterpart to humans. They are not opposing bodies. Who, today, feels looked at, or spoken to, by things? [...] Who feels threatened or enchanted by things?" [52].

Perhaps a handful of object-oriented philosophers and a small number of objectum sexuals - but that's about it. It's a bit depressing to realise just how poor in world we have become as we sit staring at screens (and this has nothing to do with the so-called cost of living crisis or rising inflation):

"The digital screen determines our experience of the world and shields us from reality. [...] Things lose their gravity, their independent life and their waywardness" [52], says Han. And he's right. 

 

Right also to argue the impossibility of forming a genuine relation with a world that consists more and more of digital objects (or non-things). People talk about a mental health crisis, but depression is "nothing other than a pathologically intensified poverty in world" [53].   

 

VIII.

Han argues that we perceive the world primarily through (and as) information. Information not only covers the world, but "undermines the thing level of reality" [56] in all its intensity of presence. 

 

One way to counter this would be to establish a magical relationship with the world that is not characterised by representation, but by touch (an idea that will appeal to witches and Lawrentians alike). This is really just a question of greater attentiveness paid to things as things and forgetting of self for a moment or two: "When the ego gets weak, it is able to hear that mute thing language." [57] 

 

This may of course be disturbing, but Han wants human beings to be disturbed by the world; to be "moved by something singular" [58], to be penetrated from behind and below, so that we are thrown into a condition of radical passivity and presence is allowed to burst in. This is what creates epiphanic moments (as well as erotic joy). 

Apart from magic, there's also art ... At its best, art creates things, or material realities that are born of handwork, as Rilke says. 

 

A poem, for example, has a "sensual-physical dimension that eludes its sense" [60]. And it is because a poem exceeds the signifier and isn't exhausted by its meaning, that it constitutes a thing. One doesn't simply read a poem - any more than one simply drinks a glass of fine wine - both invite one to experience and enjoy them (to know their body, as it were).

 

Unfortunately, art is - according to Byung-Chul Han - moving away from this materialist understanding of its own practice. And what is particularly depressing about today's art "is its inclination to communicate a preconceived opinion, a moral or political conviction: that is, its inclination to communicate information" [64].  

 

In brief: "Art is seized by a forgetfulness of things [...] It wants to instruct rather than seduce." [64]  

 

Artworks today lack silence, lack stillness, lack secrecy; instead, they shout and insist that we interact with them. This probably explains why I would now rather sit in my backgarden amongst the daisies, than visit a bookshop, gallery, or theatre.   

 

 

IX.

I'm going to refrain from commenting at length or in detail upon sections in Han's new book dealing with Kakfa's struggle against ghosts and the philosophical importance of the hand in the work of Martin Heidegger (something I have previously discussed in a couple of posts published in June of 2019: click here and here).   

 

However, I very much like Han's observation that, were he alive today, the former would reluctantly resign himself to the fact that "by inventing the internet, email and the smartphone, the ghosts had won their final victory over mankind" [54] [a]. 

 

And it's always good to be reminded how the latter raised his hand (and stomped his foot) in a vain attempt to defend the terrestrial world against the digital order. He was a bit of a Nazi, but it's hard not to admire many aspects of Heidegger's thinking. But, as Han concedes, human beings have long since stopped dwelling between Earth and Sky:

 

"Human beings soar up towards the un-thinged [unbedingtheit], the unconditioned [...] towards a transhuman and post-human age in which human life will be a pure exchange of information. [...] Digitilization is a resolute step along the way towards the abolition of the humanum. The future of humans seems mapped out: humans will abolish themselves in order to posit themselves as the absolute." [72]

 

There will be no things close to our hearts - but that won't matter, for we won't have hearts, nor hands, feet, or genitals in the disembodied time to come. 

 

What was that line from Proverbs again ...? [b]

 

 

X.      

 

Why do so many people have headaches today? (I have one now.)

 

Could it be because the world is so restless and noisy; because no one knows how to keep still and stay silent; because no one can close their eyes or shut their fucking mouths for a moment?

 

As Arthur Fleck says: "Everybody is awful these days. It's enough to make anyone crazy. [...] Everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody's civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it's like to be the other guy." [c] 

 

But you don't have to be a mentally ill loner to recognise this - Byung-Chul Han pretty much tells us the same thing: "Hypercommunication, the noise of communication, desecrates the world, profanes it." [76] 

 

Learning to listen is a crucial skill; as is learning to be still if you wish to know the transcendent joy of the Greater Day and gaze with wonder upon the immensity of blue (this includes the blue of the sky, the blue of the sea, or the blue of a butterfly's wing, for example). 

 

But, paradoxically, learning to gaze also involves learning how to close one's eyes and look away, because gazing has an imaginative component. And that's important, for as Han writes:

 

"Without imagination, there is only pornography. Today, perception itself has something pornographic about it. It has the form of immediate contact, almost of a copulation of image and eye. The erotic takes place when we close our eyes. [...]

      What is so ruinous about digital communication is that it means we no longer have time to close our eyes. The eyes are forced into a 'continuous voracity'. They lose the capacity for stillness, for deep attentiveness." [79]

 

Staring at a screen is not the same as gazing at the sky; if the latter produces wonder, the former results only in eyestrain and a slavish inability not to react to every stimulus (which, as Nietzsche pointed out, is symptomatic of exhaustion and spiritual decline). Noble and healthy souls know that doing nothing is better than being hyperactive; that philosophy, for example, is born from idleness. 

 

Han terms this ability to do nothing negative potentiality:

 

"It is not a negation of positive potential but a potential of its own. It enables spirit to to engage in still, contemplative lingering, that is, deep attentiveness. [...] Stillness can be restored only by a strengthening of negative potentiality." [82] 

And where is all this leading? Towards the loss of identity - the surrender of self - towards happy anonymity: "Only in stillness, in the great silence, do we enter into a relation with the nameless, which exceeds us [...]" [83]

 

 

XI.

Byung-Chul Han closes his book with an excurses which begins with him falling off his bicycle (talk about the villainy of things) and then falling in love with a jukebox (talk about things close to the heart).  

Han likes old jukeboxes from the 1950s; they are erotico-magical things to him which "makes listening to music a highly enjoyable visual, acoustic and tactile experience" [87]. The records played on the jukebox give him "a vague sense that the world back then must have been somehow more romantic and dream-like than it is today" [88].  

Admitting that Heidegger would probably not have been a fan of the jukebox, Han insists nevertheless that apart from playing tunes, it imparts presence and intensifies being, which is something Alexa can never do.

 

This does kind of hint at the fact that Han awards thing status to whatever objects he happens to favour: J’aime, je n’aime pas - Oh, Miss Brodie, you are Barthesian ...

 

  

Notes

 

[a] I keep telling members of the D. H. Lawrence Society that whilst Zoom is extensive it lacks intensity and that being connected is not the same as being in an actual relation. Like it or not, digital communication negates physical presence and "accelerates the disappearance of the other" [55]. 

      Unfortunately, they either do not listen, do not understand, or do not seem to care. To read my post on this subject: click here. 

[b] I'm referring to Proverbs 4:23: "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." According to Byung-Chul Han, this was placed above the front door to Heidegger's house. 

[c] Joaquin Phoenix in the role of Arthur Fleck (Joker) speaking to Robert De Niro's character Murray Franklin (shortly before shooting him) in Joker (dir. Todd Philips, 2019): click here to watch on YouTube. 

 

 

Musical bonus: as Byung-Chul Han loves French singers and jukeboxes so much, here's Serge Gainsbourg on TV in 1965 performing Le claquer de doigts.

 

    

Notes on Byung-Chul Han's 'Non-things' (Part 1)

 

Polity Press (2022) [a]

 

 

I. 

 

Once upon a time, to value material objects - or things - was seen as some kind of moral failure; a sign that one lacked spiritual refinement; that one was greedy, vulgar, and superficial.

 

But times have changed and, today, more and more people are waking up to the fact that if they wish to do more than live their entire lives in a virtual universe, then they had better find a way to reconnect with actual objects which provide a (relatively) stable physical environment in which to dwell and encounter other beings.      

 

Philosopher and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han has been telling us this for some time now and, in his new book, he describes how the terrestrial order is disappearing before our very eyes; that is to say, how the world of things is being rapidly replaced by a digital realm of Undinge. 

 

Not only does digitalisation disembody the world, it abolishes memory, as the Japanese author Yōko Ogawa foresaw in her 1994 novel Hisoyaka na Kesshō [b] - a work that Han nods to in the preface to his new book, although, as he points out, in contrast to her fictional dystopia, "we do not live in a totalitarian regime whose memory police brutally rob us of our things and memories" [viii], it is, rather, "our intoxication by communication and information that makes things disappear" [viii]. 

 

In other words - and this is the main argument of the book - non-things obscure actual objects, including human beings, draining them of physical presence as they effectively become ghosts in the machine: "We no longer dwell on the earth and under the sky but on Google Earth and in the Cloud." [1]          

 

 

II. 

 

The old tree at the bottom of the garden - or that little wooden table which has stood in the corner of the frontroom for as long as you can remember - these things provide a calm centre to the world and stabilise our lives by providing a level of familiarity and continuity that you won't find in the frenzied virtual realm. 

 

Even the so-called internet of things, is really just an attempt to turn things into information terminals. Similarly, 3D printers "devalue the being of things" [3], transforming them into "the material derivatives of information" [3] - simulated objects which you can interact with but never touch or hold tight (not that we still possess hands). 

 

It's impossible to be Heideggerian in the land of non-things: for Dasein dwells in the terrestrial order of things. The smart home is really just a smart prison allowing ever-greater surveillance of our lives; we are being incarcerated, says Han, in the infosphere - and its happening in the name of greater freedom (not the freedom to act, but the freedom to choose; the freedom of the consumer). 

Another thing that is vanishing, is truth - remember that? It seems we don't have time for it any longer: "In our post-factual culture of excitement, communication is dominated by affects and emotions." [6] Spend a few minutes on Twitter and you'll soon find that out. 

 

Not only do we have no memories of the past, we cannot promise the future; as Nietzsche recognised, we are no longer capable of making commitments or being faithful - again, these things require too much discipline, too much hard work and too much time. We're too playful - and too pain averse - to practice even the slightest degree of cruelty towards the self. 

Those who still have hands and feel themselves able to act, have a duty to safeguard those old things in which memories are stored (to resist the urge to sell everything on eBay) - and to self-harm ...

 

III.

 

So: is it better to own a small record collection, or be able to access unlimited music online? How you answer this question tells us a good deal about what sort of human being you are (and not simply what generation you belong to). 

 

Possession, as Han says, "relates to the paradigm of the thing" [13]. 

 

Those like Klaus Schwab who think access rather than possession is the key to happiness, are not, it seems, interested in forming intense libidinal ties to objects. Indeed, some of these people are "no longer able to dwell with things or to imbue them with life" [13]. 

 

Personally, I love objects from the past - particularly from childhood (not that I have many) - even objects which have no value, interest, or meaning to other people (such as an old sea-shell). As Han says, possession is characterised by intimacy and is psychologically charged: "Things in my possession are vessels filled with emotions and recollections." [15]

 

In an interesting passage, he continues:

 

"The history that things acquire in the course of being used for a long time gives them souls and turns them into things close to the heart. Only discreet things, however, can be animated by intensive libidinal ties [...] Today's consumer goods are indiscreet, intrusive and over-expressive. They come loaded with prefabricated ideas and emotions that impose themselves on the consumer. Hardly anything of the consumer's life enters into them." [15]

 

This, sadly, is particularly true of children's toys and games (not that modern parents seem to care or the youngsters know what they are being denied). But it's also true of books, which have also lost their thingliness and their fate: 

 

"An e-book is not a thing, but information; it has an altogether different status of being. Even if we have it at our disposal, it is not a possession. It is something to which we have access. [...] It lacks the auratic distance from which an individual fate could speak to us [...] and it does not allow for the formation of intense ties. [...] E-books are faceless and without history. They may be read without the use of the hands. There is a tactile element in the turning of a book's pages that is constitutive of every relationship. Without bodily touch, no ties can emerge." [16] 

 

 

IV. 

 

Talking about the heavy weight of fate ... We now come to a chapter in Han's book on smartphones; in a nutshell, he doesn't like 'em. Like Walter Benjamin, he prefers the big, heavy phones from back in the day, which had "an aura of fate-like power" [18] about them. 

 

You don't get that with a smartphone - you get something small and light that you can put in your pocket; something that makes you feel in charge and connected to a non-resistant world that is at your fingertips 24/7 (the digital illusion of total availability). 

 

Meanwhile, what passes for and remains of the real world is desecrated as smartphone users retreat into their own self-enclosed space, where all is image and information. We carry the smartphone, but the smartphone enframes us, depriving reality of its presence and human beings of lived experience.

Oh, and don't get him started on the smooth design! Something he has previously compared with the trend for Brazilian waxing and the art of Jeff Koons (as discussed elsewhere on this blog - click here, for example). 

 

Their shiny smoothness shouldn't disguise the fact that smartphones are essentially the "devotional objects of the neoliberal regime" [24]; a regime that is itself smart enough to know that by serving our needs and exploiting our freedom it can exercise complete control.  

 

Whilst they may well function as devotional objects - i.e. a digital form of rosary - they are not transitional objects (i.e. a digital form of teddy bear or security blanket). And that's because they do not represent the other - rather, they are an extension of ourselves and the relationship we have with them is narcissistic. We might better think of smartphones as autistic objects (i.e. hard sources of sensation which ultimately destroy empathy and intensify our loneliness).     

 

 

V.

In a post from October 2013 on selfies, I said this:

 

"I have no wish to add my voice to those who suggest the selfie is evidence of either the empty narcissism of today's youth, or a sign that they have been pornified and suffer from low self-esteem. I understand the arguments put forward by concerned commentators, but fear that they often collapse into precisely the sort of moral hysteria that greets everything to do with technology, sex, and the play of images." [c]

So it's a little awkward - if I wish to appear consistent - to now agree with Byung-Chul Han's critique of selfies: "A selfie is an exhibited face without aura. It lacks 'melancholic' beauty. It it characterized by digital cheerfulness. [...] A selfie is not a thing ..." [33]

 

However, he's right that an old (analogue) photo lovingly kept safe in an album is a thing in a way that a digital image stored on one's phone is not: "Because of its material nature, it is fragile and exposed to the processes of ageing and decay." [29]

 

And he's right also to say: "In digital photography, alchemy gives way to mathematics. It disenchants photography." [31] Worse, it eliminates the referent - i.e., kills the thing it seeks to represent - and instead of capturing something of the real world, it generates a "new, expanded reality that does not exist, a hyper-reality that no longer corresponds to reality" [32]. 

 

If e-books have no history and smartphones have no fate, then digital images have no destiny and selfies have no secrecy. They don't deserve to be printed - only quickly viewed and then deleted. Snapchat is an instrument of what Han calls perfect justice and "represents the culmination of instantaneous digital communication" [34].

 

The problem I have with a lot of what Han says here is related to the question of the human face, something he regards far more positively than I do. Also, he wishes for photography (and human life in general) to be accorded a certain seriousness and depth. 

 

Thus, he hates selfies for "announcing the disappearance of the kind of human being who is burdened by destiny and history" [36] and for giving expression to "a form of life that devotes itself playfully to the moment" [36]. But I think that's why I like them - I don't want to see people - especially young people - looking mournfully into the camera like beasts of burden weighed down by the spirit of gravity.   

 

VI.

 

I like this idea: "Artificial intelligence is incapable of thinking, for the very reason that it cannot get goosebumps." [37] 

 

In other words, AI lacks the "affective-analogue dimension, the capacity to be emotionally affected, which lies beyond the reach of data and information" [37]. 

 

Not only do heartless machines lack passion, but they aren't prone to moods either - i.e., they can't attune themselves to the world in the way human beings can and so cannot access the world (or read the room, as it were). 

 

Oh, and they're also deaf, which is a problem, as genuine thinking requires the ability to listen. 

 

Which is all very reassuring, particularly for Heideggerians keen to reaffirm Dasein's uniqueness. Han will be telling us next that robots lack spirit ... 

 

"Artificial intelligence may compute very quickly, but it lacks spirit." [38] 

 

See - what did I tell you? 

 

Without a pinch of Geist, all AI can do is assemble Big Data which will provide knowledge of a rudimentary kind, but won't reveal unto you the secrets of the universe, or even allow you to understand the results of your own data gathering. 

 

Human thinking may have its limitations, but, at its best - when it has become a form of erotics and seems to some a kind of madness or idiocy - then it is more than mere problem solving: "It brightens and clears the world. It brings forth an altogether other world." [43]

 

And the main danger that arises from AI, "is that human thinking will adapt to it and itself become mechanical" [43].     

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2022). The work was originally published in German as Undinge: Umbrüche der Lebenswelt (Ullstein Verlag, 2021).

 

[b] This novel by Yōko Ogawa has been translated into English by Stephen Snyder and published as The Memory Police, (Vintage, 2020). 

 

[c] To read the post on selfies and the rise of the Look Generation in full, click here.  

This post continues in part two, which can be accessed by clicking here ...