Rupert Birkin and the Ichthyosaur

French illustrator Édouard Riou 

gives us his take on the ichthyosaur in 1863 [1]

 

I. 

 

Rupert Birkin famously declares that he would like to see a pristine world empty of people: "I abhor humanity, I wish it was swept away." [2] 

 

And that's fair enough; many of us share his vision of a posthuman future and find it an attractive and liberating thought to imagine a world in which new species arise and the unseen hosts move about freely. 

 

And many of us are convinced that man is not exceptional or the measure of all things. Indeed, some of us are even tempted to promote a programme of voluntary human extinction - click here - or to adopt an object-oriented philosophy that challenges all forms of anthropocentrism - click here.      

 

However, I think Birkin is wrong to describe the poor old ichthyosaur as "one of the mistakes of creation" [3]. I mean, say what you like about mankind, but why take a pop at these large marine reptiles which thrived during the Mesozoic era and survived well into the Late Cretaceous period ...?

 

Modern humans have only been around for 200,000 years or so - and even if you can trace our ancestors belonging to the Homo genus back a couple of million years, that's nothing compared to the 160 million years that the ichthyosaurs clocked up.

 

And so I find it puzzling - as well as irritating - that Birkin insists on making a comparison between humanity and the ichthyosaurs: "The ichtyosauri were not proud: they crawled and floundered as we do." [4]  

 

But then, at heart, Birkin is more of a flora-dendrophile than a zoophile, believing that bluebells (more than butterflies) are the greatest example of pure creation and that there's nothing sexier than a young fir tree [5].      

 

 

II.

 

I suppose the question that might be asked is why does Birkin pick on the ichthyosaurs rather than the four-legged, land-dwelling dinosaurs? I don't really know the answer to this, but I suspect it might be due to the fact that throughout the mid-late nineteenth and early-twentieth century ichthyosaurs were very much in vogue ...

 

Although bones, teeth and fossilised remains of these beasts had been found prior to the early 19th-century, nobody really knew what they were looking at. Usually, remains were wrongly classified as belonging to fish, dolphins, or crocodiles, although in 1708, the Swiss naturalist Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, identified two ichthyosaur vertebrae as being human in origin. 

 

However, as more complete skeletons were unearthed, the suspicion grew that these were from a distinct species of animal, although many still argued they were merely the remains of giant lizards, or some transitional form, and uncertainty around classification continued. It wasn't until 1835 that the order Ichthyosauria was named by French zoologist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville.    

 

The discovery of an extinct group of large marine reptiles generated huge publicity and captured both the scientific and popular imagination. People were fascinated by the strange anatomy of the creatures and astonished at the fact that they had lived so many millions of years before man. 

 

Some hoped that living specimens might yet be found; others, like the Scottish geologist Charles Lyell argued that since God's Earth was eternal, it was therefore inevitable that the ichthyosaurs would eventually return [6]. Meanwhile, crackpot fossil collector Thomas Hawkins believed that ichthyosaurs were the monstrous creations of the Devil and in 1840 he published a book denouncing the great sea-dragons. 

 

Fourteen year later, in 1854, when Crystal Palace was rebuilt in South London, the surrounding park was filled with life-sized, painted concrete statues of extinct creatures, including three ichthyosaurs, much loved by the public.

 

Finally, as the nineteenth century moved towards and into the twentieth, thousands of new finds - particularly in Germany - greatly improved the scientific understanding of these animals. In some cases, the quality of the finds was remarkable; not only were complete skeletons unearthed, but even preserved soft tissue.     

 

This, then, is the cultural background in which (and out of which) Birkin's thinking was formed. So not surprising, then, that he should refer to the ichthyosaurs - but still disappointing that he should dismiss them as evolutionary failures (or mistakes in creation, as he puts it) [7].     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Although it was known that ichthyosaurs lived in the open seas, they were often shown basking on the shore, or splashing about in the shallows; a convention followed by many nineteenth-century artists, which led to the belief that they had an amphibious lifestyle. Note how Birkin mistakenly says the ichthyosaurs 'crawled and floundered', whereas actually they happily swam about like modern marine mammals.

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey amd John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 127.  

[3] Ibid., p. 128.

[4] Ibid. 

      Later in the novel, when reflecting upon the death of his friend Gerald, Birkin muses: "God can do without man. God could do without the ichthyosauri and the mastodon. These monsters failed creatively to develop, so God, the creative mystery, dispensed with them." [p. 478]

 

[5] For a discussion of Birkin's flora-dendrophilia, please click here.   

[6] The possibility of this was ridiculed in an 1830 caricature by Henry De la Beche. See the related post entitled 'On Posthumous Revenge and the Resilient Cretaceous' (6 Mar 2023), where this amusing illustration by can be found: click here.  

[7] Having said that, it is true that after 160 million years or so, the ichthyosaurs did become extinct. However, this was probably due to external events (i.e., environmental upheaval and sudden climatic changes), rather than a long decline, loss of pride, or lack of resilience on their part. 

 

On Posthumous Revenge and the Resilient Cretaceous

Henry Thomas De la Beche: Awful Changes: 

Man Found Only in a Fossil State - Reappearance of Ichthyosaur (1830) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Is it possible that the spirit of an ancient people who have been supplanted in their own lands by another race - as the Native Americans were supplanted by white Europeans, for example - will one day reassert itself and take posthumous revenge upon the latter?

 

That certainly seems to be the haunting idea advanced by D. H. Lawrence in his non-fictional writings on - and produced in - Old and New Mexico during the 1920s and essentially forms the plot of his novel The Plumed Serpent (1926). There is, he warns, a rattle-snake still coiled at the heart of America which will one day lift its head again and sink its sharp fangs into the flabby behind of the pale-faced world. 

 

In a late essay, Lawrence is explicit in prophesying the collapse of the latter and the rebirth of aboriginal America: "The sky-scraper will scatter on the winds like thistledown, and the genuine America [...] will start on its course again." [2] 

 

 

II. 

Interestingly, Lawrence also likes to imagine worlds being successively created and destroyed, allowing new species to emerge from out of chaos and supersede older species; for mammals, for example, to supersede birds. 

 

But although he senses a malevolent spirit "rippling out of all the vanished, spiteful aeons" [3], he doesn't suggest that monstrous skinny-necked lizards will one day have their revenge upon those warm-blooded life-forms that came after them and return to rule the earth once more. 

 

For Lawrence, as for Birkin, the timeless creative mystery always brings forth newness - it doesn't give a second chance to those species that have been superseded or fallen into extinction due to an inability to change and develop. 

 

So, whilst the Aztecs and other native American peoples might one day have the last laugh over the white settlers - the spirit of their ancestors finding a new embodiment and expression - it seems that the ichthyosaur, for example, will not be staging a dramatic comeback in a posthuman future ... 

 

Unless, that is, those who subscribe to the notion of the resilient Cretaceous are on to something and "the temporary life of our species is part of the ichthyosaur's evolutionary plot to return after our species has reproduced, through climate warming, the conditions of the Cretaceous Period with warm seas, torpid swamps, and tropical trees" [4].  

 

Notes

 

[1] This well-known caricature by English geologist Henry De la Beche, lampooning the idea that the ichthyosaur might return, was first published in 1830. It depicts 'Professor Ichthyosaurus' lecturing in front of other Mesozoic marine reptiles. The caption that accompanied the picture read: "'You will at once perceive [...] that the skull before us belonged to one of the lower order of animals; the teeth are very insignificant, the power of the jaws trifling and altogether it seems wonderful how the creature could have procured food.'" 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'New Mexico', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde, (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 181.  

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Corasmin and the Parrots', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, p. 13.

[4] Terry Gifford, 'Reading D. H. Lawrence in the Anthropocene', in The D. H. Lawrence Society Newsletter, ed. Naveed Rehan, (Feb 2023), p. 40. 

 

 

To read a related post to this one on Rupert Birkin and the Ichthyosaur, please click here. 

Torpedo the Ark Versus the Censor-Bots

Screenshot of my post with sensitive content warning 

 

 

I.

 

D. H. Lawrence famously battled the censors throughout his life as a writer - often describing them as morons infected with the grey disease of puritanism and busy extinguishing the gaiety and rich colour of life, which they find both dangerous and obscene [1].

 

He also thinks of censors as dead men; "for no live, sunny man would be a censor" [2].

 

But of course, Lawrence was writing 100 years ago and things have changed since then. Now censorship is often carried out by an autonomous programme or bot relying on instructions supplied in the form of an algorithm.

 

Take, for example, the following case ...

 

 

II.

 

In ten years of publishing on Blogger - a site owned by Google since 2003 - I have never had any issue concerning content of the 2000 posts. 

 

But the first part of my post on Young Kim's erotic memoir - A Year on Earth With Mr. Hell (2020) - that I published recently (24 Feb), was immediately issued with a sensitive content notice, which warns that I have, apparently, infringed community guidelines (a document which describe the boundaries of what is - and is not - allowed on Blogger).

 

Admittedly, readers can still access the post, but it takes a bit more effort and this will, inevitably, result in a loss of views.      

 

I am unable to appeal this decision: and nor have I been told the exact nature of my offence; i.e., what word, phrase, or idea is so distressing to the censor-bot. 

 

Thus, although I have been invited by Google to update content so as to conform to their guidelines - and then instructed to republish the post so that it's status can be officially reviewed - I really don't know how or where to begin any revision. 

 

Not that I feel inclined to make changes to my text - to effectively self-censor. Did we have done with the judgement of God, merely to accept the judgement of Google ...? I think not. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] In a letter written in November 1928 to Morris Ernst - an American lawyer and prominent member of the American Civil Liberties Union who would later play a significant role in challenging the ban placed on works of literature including James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (1928) - Lawrence makes his disdain for the censor-moron clear:

 

"Myself, I believe censorship helps nobody; and hurts many. [...] Our civilisation cannot afford to let the censor-moron loose. The censor-moron does not really hate anything but the living and growing human consciousness. It is our developing and extending consciousness that he threatens - and our consciousness in its newest, most sensitive activity, its vital growth. To arrest or circumscribe the vital consciousness is to produce morons, and nothing but a moron would wish to do it." 

 

See: 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. 613.

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Censors', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. by Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 459.   

From a Baby in a Basket ... Lines in Memory of My Mother: Doreen Hall (10 July 1926 - 13 Feb 2023)

Me and My Mother (c. 1969)

 

 

I. 

 

I was in two minds about whether to speak or stay silent at my mother's funeral service, which was held this morning at South Essex Crematorium. But in the end I decided that I had to say something and wanted to say something; for if I didn't, then who would? 

 

But I also decided it was important to keep it simple, keep it brief, and keep it honest. And so, for anyone who might be interested, here's what I said ...    

 

II.

 

From a baby in a basket to a corpse in a casket: and in between - a life. 

 

A life defined in terms of duty and by a promise made as a Brownie: I promise to do my best. 

 

I think the one thing that can be said of my mother without fear of contradiction is that she always tried to do her best. 

 

But now, sadly, my mother's life has come to a close and everyday language is somehow inadequate to express one's emotions at this time - which is why we turn to poetry ... 

 

This short verse, written by D. H. Lawrence at the end of his own life, is one that I find particularly touching: 

 

 

All Souls Day 

 

Be careful, then, and be gentle about death. 

For it is hard to die, it is difficult to go through 

the door, even when it opens. 

 

And the poor dead, when they have left the walled 

and silvery city of the now hopeless body 

where are they to go, O where are they to go? 

 

They linger in the shadow of the earth. 

The earth's long conical shadow is full of souls 

that cannot find the way across the sea of change. 

 

Be kind, Oh be kind to your dead 

and give them a little encouragement 

and help them to build their little ship of death. 

 

For the soul has a long, long journey after death 

to the sweet home of pure oblivion. 

Each needs a little ship, a little ship 

and the proper store of meal for the longest journey. 

 

Oh, from out of your heart 

provide for your dead once more, equip them 

like departing mariners, lovingly. 

 

For a related post to this one, please click here.

 

With thanks to Erica Buné and Tina Johnson for all their help and kindness arranging my mother's funeral.

Notes on Young Kim's 'A Year On Earth With Mr. Hell' (Part 2)

A Year on Earth With Mr. Hell (Fashion Beast Editions, 2022) 

ft. Miss Young Kim and Mr. Richard Hell

 

 

To read part one of this post, which offers a series of opening remarks and notes on subjects including amorous gifts, dirty handkerchiefs, cunnilingus, and the politics of fashion, please click here. 

 

May I also remind readers that page numbers given below refer to the Fashionbeast edition of A Year on Earth With Mr Hell (2022). 

 

 

Random Notes on Young Kim's A Year on Earth With Mr. Hell (cont.)

  

On (In)Fidelity 

 

Miss Kim is irritated by Mr. Hell's feeling guilty about the fact that he is cheating on his girlfriend: "I think the truth is, as unconventional and wild as Richard is [...] he is hampered with a puritanical streak." [153] 

 

He is, she says, an absurd and puerile coward, ashamed of his own polyamorous nature. 

 

But is this the truth? Or could it not be that "the profound instinct of fidelity in a man" is "just a little deeper and more powerful than his instinct of faithless sexual promiscuity"? [j]

 

After all, even Lady Chatterley's lover ultimately desires the peace that comes of fucking [k] and recognises that his underlying passion is for constancy, not to endlessly chase skirt - particularly as, like Mr. Hell, he is no longer a young man [l]. 

 

"'What a misery to be [...] impotent ever to fuck oneself into peace'", writes Oliver Mellors [m]. And what a misery also to remain, in Kim's own words, a "hapless adolescent in trouble with too many women" [160]. 

 

No wonder that by the end of the book Mr. Hell is looking "sad and torn and guilty and weary" [223] and eventually tells Miss Kim that he can't continue the affair: "'I have to go. I feel terrible doing this to my girlfriend. Being two-faced. My head hurts.'" [223] 

 

 

On Lurking 

 

Like Mr. Hell, I too prefer to wait outside a bar or restaurant when meeting someone, rather than sit passively (and anxiously) inside; a practice that Miss Kim finds curious and bizarre, though explains it to herself by deciding that he must like to anticipate and observe the arrival of his date - "like a predator waiting for its prey" [44].

 

That's possible: but I think there's another reason why Mr. Hell likes to stay lurking in the shadows for as long as possible. For is there anything worse than to be seen looking lonely at a bar or table, waiting for someone who may or may not arrive; one feels not only exposed, but emasculated. 

 

Only a masochist would find pleasure in this; in their subordination and being kept in a state of suspense by another. 

 

 

On Name Dropping 

 

Whilst at the Knickerbocker Bar and Grill, Miss Kim and Mr. Hell both name drop like crazy in order to assert their own status and, presumably, find common cultural territory with one another by identifying shared acquaintances and inspirations: Picasso, Agnes Martin, Francis Picabia, René Clair, Ian Fleming, Ian McEwan, Allen Ginsberg, Karen Blixen, Carole Bouquet, Peter Beard, Russ Meyer, are all casually alluded to over oysters. 

 

I know this will infuriate some people, but I found it kind of funny, rather than a sign of snobbery or narcissism. And besides, isn't name dropping a function of basic human interaction; don't we all do it, to some extent - even those whose only connection to famous names is via a box of chocolate liqueurs. 

 

 

On Punk Anthems 

 

According to Miss Kim, Richard Hell's 'Blank Generation' is "the ultimate nihilistic punk anthem" [9] [n]. But that's debatable. And, in fact, I have already discussed this song (and found it wanting) in contrast to the far more provocative (if less poetic) 'Pretty Vacant', by the Sex Pistols: click here. 

 

 

On Sex 

 

Ultimately, Miss Kim comes to the conclusion that sex is sex [169] - i.e., a fixed and never-changing reality which in some way provides the great clue to being. But we can't let this metaphysical notion pass without comment ... 

 

Like Foucault, I tend to see sex as a complex type of agency formed by regimes of power unfolding within time and place, or history and culture, rather than as an ideal anchorage point supporting various manifestations of what we term sexuality. The belief that it somehow eludes and resists power and resides deep within us over and above the material reality of bodies and possessing its own intrinsic properties and laws, is simply a piece of modern romance. 

 

Of course, this isn't to deny that the convenient fiction of sex hasn't proved to be extremely useful; or that it will cease to function in the immediate future. It seems certain that sex will continue to be thought of as a great causal principle long after novelists and lovers have abandoned older ideas of the soul as mere superstition. 

 

For the fact is, a very great number of men and women - including Miss Kim and Mr. Hell - have made their very intelligibility dependent upon their sex and it provides them with their most precious forms of identity. Which is why they talk about and think about sex endlessly and desire to "have access to it, to discover it, to liberate it, to articulate it, to formulate it in truth" [o]. 

 

Despite the popular belief that there have been centuries of repressive silence and shame surrounding the subject, sex has in fact been the most obsessively talked about thing of all. What is peculiar about modern societies, suggests Foucault, is not that they kept sex locked away in darkness, "but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret" [p]. 

 

In other words, what really distinguishes the world we live in is a polymorphous and increasingly pornographic incitement to discourse about sex. Those who are genuinely interested in libidinal pleasures might do best not to vainly attempt to extract further confessions from a shadow, but show how sex is - and has always been - a purely speculative element within the historical process of human subjectification. 

 

In a postmodern future - that is to say, in a time after the orgy - people will be unable to fathom our sex mania. And they will smile, says Foucault, when they recall that there were once people such as Miss Kim and Mr. Hell who believed that in sex resided a truth "every bit as precious as the one they had already demanded from the earth, the stars, and the pure forms of their thought" [q]. 

 

 

On Sexism and Gender Difference

 

Miss Kim is annoyed when her steak arrives well done, having "clearly specified rare" [44]. Surprisingly, she interprets this as an act of overt sexism rather than incompetance or poor service: "Do they think only men like bloody steaks?" [44] 

 

However, she still expects and considers it normal that Mr. Hell pay for the meal. Why? Because Miss Kim believes in male gallantry and thinks it "only fair that the man pay for the experience [of dinner] when a woman spends a fortune maintaining her appearance" [89].

 

Woe betide any man who dares to go Dutch: 

 

"When the bill came, I put down my credit card before I went to the bathroom. I was curious to see what he'd do. It was a test. It wasn't a big tab, but I'd saw he split the check in two. That was the last nail in the coffin." [68] 

 

In fact, Miss Kim - who openly declares herself a non-feminist (even whilst complaining that, as a single woman, she is often shown little respect by men) - subscribes to many traditional ideas and stereotypes concerning gender and sexual difference: 

 

"A man thinks so differently from a woman" [79] ... 

 

"Men are wonderfully bestial" [106] ... 

 

"Men never grow up" [177] ... 

 

And - my personal favourite -  "Men are strange" [181].

 

Amusingly, however, by the end of the book Kim realises that she's not merely like a man in many respects, but, thanks to all the hardship she's lived through, has in fact "become a man" [230]. 

 

By which she means that at times of crisis or emotional stress she enjoys watching a lot of TV. 

 

 

On Smell 

 

"Smell is a surprisingly powerful sense - far more powerful than sight and touch" [110], says Miss Kim. And whilst unable to remember it, there is, she insists, a "scientific reason for this" [110].

 

That's probably true. But there's also an interesting pollyanalytic reason which D. H. Lawrence outlines in Fantasia: 

 

"The nostrils are the great gate from the wide atmosphere of heaven to the lungs. [...] But the nostrils have their other function of smell [...] delicate nerve-ends run direct from the lower centres, from the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion [...] There is the refined sensual intake when a scent is sweet. There is the sensual repudiation when a scent is unsavoury." [r] 

 

One recalls also something said by the narrator of Patrick Süskind's fabulous novel Perfume (1985): 

 

"Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally." [s] 

 

I smiled to see Young Kim not only informing her readers that she always wears the same perfume - "pomegranate, from Santa Maria Novella" [111] - but that her vaginal fluid has a "distinctively sweet smell" [211] - although I accept that some might find that a little too much information. 

 

 

On Spanking 

 

Miss Kim writes: 

 

"I stretched myself out over his lap, he slapped my ass hard, but not hard enough to truly hurt, several times, maybe four. The slaps were surprisingly loud, crackling through the air, which made me uncomfortable, in case anyone heard. Then, his fingers explored my pussy and my asshole for a bit before his hand came down harder several times more [...] What fun." [122] 

 

The English vice, as it is known - and which includes all varieties of corporal punishment (caning, flogging, spanking, etc.) - remains ever-popular within the world of lovers. As a form of sensual discipline it is an ascetic practice which has a restorative effect on the soul. 

 

That is to say, if carried out with genuine passion, then chastisement establishes a circuit of polarized communication and produces as powerful a flash of interchange between parties as an act of sexual intercourse. It should, therefore, be regarded as a natural form of coition which makes a violent readjustment in the flow between lovers, allowing, like a thunderstorm, for a fresh start and a new feeling. 

 

Ultimately, corporal punishment is a vital necessity because man does not live by love and kindness alone and human culture is inscribed and cut into the flesh. To paraphrase Lawrence: As long as men and women have bottoms, they must surely be spanked ...

 

 

Notes

 

[j] D. H. Lawrence, A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover, in Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 318.   

 

[k] I have written on this key idea in Lawrence's late work in a post entitled 'Chastity' (19 Dec 2021): click here. 

 

[l] Age is always a significant issue - certainly for 67-year-old Mr. Hell, concerned he'll not be able to sexually satisfy a much younger woman. But when Richard tells Young that it would best if she forgot him, as he was too old, she dismisses the idea. Later, however, she wonders why it is she doesn't meet younger people, closer to her own age, with whom to form romantic relations, concluding she belongs to the wrong generation (see p. 141).

      Finally, note how when Mr. Hell breaks up with Miss Kim and expresses guilt over his infidelity, he again reminds her of his age: "'Next month I'll be sixty-eight! And I'm doing all this?!'" [229]

[m] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, op. cit., p. 301.

 

[n] Later, Kim describes 'Blank Generation' as a "powerful piece of poetry, art, and emotion packed like dynamite into a catchy paean" [215]. Which is fair enough, but I still prefer 'Pretty Vacant'. 

 

[o] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 1998), p. 156. 

 

[p] Ibid., p. 35.

[q] Ibid., p. 159.

 

[r] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 100. 

 

[s] Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, trans. John E. Woods, (Hamish Hamilton, 1986), p. 82. 

 

 

Notes on Young Kim's 'A Year on Earth With Mr. Hell' (Part 1)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Aujourd'hui, Maman est morte

Last photo of my mother on her 96th birthday 

(10 July 2022)

 

 

My mother died today. Unlike Meursault, however, I'm pretty certain of that. 

 

Because today also happens to be my birthday and I'm accepting her death as a kind of final gift: a chance to live again and re-enter the world from the same woman who bore me sixty years ago. 

 

Funny how, at such a time, one thinks of a short French novel published 80-odd years ago (L'Étranger) and of a fictional character indifferent in the face of death, or, perhaps more precisely, accepting of la tendre indifférence (or absurdity) of the universe in which life unfolds and then quickly closes.    

And funny how one also (rather shamefully) recalls the words written by Schopenhauer following the death of a Putzfrau to whom he had been paying a monthly sum by court order after an altercation in which she was injured: Obit anus, abit onus ('The old woman dies, the burden is lifted').

But mostly I just remember the final lovely smile my mother gave me as she found the strength to say my name one last time.

For a follow up post to this one, please click here. 

Some Do the Deed With Many Tears and Some Without a Sigh: On Matricide

John Singer Sargent: Orestes Pursued by the Furies (1921):

This is what happens when you kill your mum ...

 

 

I. 

 

A recent piece by Yvonne Roberts in The Guardian on the subject of child to parent violence and abuse (CPVA), detailed the dramatic rise in the number of (often elderly) women murdered by their sons since 2016 [1]. 

 

Rarely spoken about and often misunderstood, matricide, it seems, is the crime du jour ...

 

 

II.

 

Now, whilst I'm no expert in this area and have only the vaguest familarity with the growing body of research, I have been caring full-time for my mother - who is in her 90s and has Alzheimer's - for the past seven years and this gives me, I would argue, a degree of insight into the subject based upon actual experience.      

 

The fact that I can comment upon the subject from a philosophical perspective informed by a reading of Nietzsche, also allows me to bring something different to the discussion - although not necessarily something that people might want to hear ...

III.

For example, I think that rather than view matricide as a gendered crime to be explained in terms of toxic masculinity, we might better understand it as often an ironic consequence of care; this is why Nietzsche warns against pity and describes it as more harmful than any vice. 

 

The fact is, being in the presence of the old, the weak, the sick, the demented and severley disabled for a prolonged period of time when one is still relatively young, healthy and strong, is not advisable; one eventually becomes infected with their misery and is driven towards atrocity. 

 

If this sounds like victim blaming [2], that's because, in some sense, that's precisely what it is. I know I've behaved monstrously towards my own mother at times. But I also know that she (inadvertently) gave birth to this monstrous me, just as she gave birth to a loving son. 

 

Nietzsche says that the only healthy response to the wretched of the earth is nausea (not pity). For nausea is a protective instinct; one that causes us to fear and move away from that which (and those whom) sicken us. Nausea keeps us safe and, also, it protects the one who repulses from our contempt and anger, by ensuring a safe distance between us and them.      

 

 

IV.

 

It has been suggested that one of the reasons that so many elderly women are being abused and killed by their sons is because there's a chronic lack of social care and a shortage of affordable housing; the latter end up living at home and having to provide care for the former, 24/7. 

 

Unable to go anywhere, do anything, see anyone - and unable even to think or breathe at times - is it any wonder violent - even murderous - thoughts arise?

 

Like Paul Morel, I can vouch for the sense of helplessness and horror that one feels when obliged to watch over one's mother, slowly dying (and choking) on a bed [3]. It's not easy, nor is it in any sense edifying; it is, rather, demoralising and distressing and it very often leads to the secret wish that the burden of providing palliative care is lifted sooner rather than later. 

 

Ultimately, says Nietzsche, the first principle of his charity is allowing the terminally sick to die - and assisting them in this [4]. Euthanasia, however, is illegal in the UK and only a very few will have the courage to actually do what needs to be done, thereby risking not only pursuit by the Furies (i.e., a lifetime of grief and guilt), but criminal prosecution for murder.

 

And so, most do nothing - until the crack-up - and then a very small number commit mad and terrible deeds; such as burning the bloody house down with their grey-haired mother locked inside, or frenziedly stabbing the latter over a hundred times with a kitchen knife. 

 

Not that I imagine Nietzsche approving of such actions ... 

 

Indeed, for Nietzsche the only human beings who are of any concern to him are those who manage to endure in the face of terrible hardship and suffering; individuals who learn to overcome perhaps even their own nausea and remain stoical in the face of adversity; individuals whose kindness and compassion is the mark of their own self-conquest.  

 

Ultimately, Nietzsche's is a tragic philosophy - but not a murderous one. And it is because Zarathustra deems his followers capable of committing every evil - including matricide - that he most demands goodness from them ... [5]

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Yvonne Roberts, '"You had better be careful in your bed tonight": shock rise in women killed by their sons', The Guardian (15 Jan 2023): click here.

[2] Victim blaming is the act of holding the victim of a crime or misdeed either entirely or partially responsible for the harm that befell them. Adorno regarded it as characteristic of the fascist mindset, but I tend to agree with Roy Baumeister that blaming the victim is not necessarily always fallacious and that the fantasy of the wholly innocent victim and entirely malicious evil-doer lacks moral complexity. 

      See Baumeister's Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, (St. Martin's Press, 2000).

 

[3] Paul Morel is the protagonist of D. H. Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers (1913). His mother is dying of cancer and in great pain. So Paul is overly generous with the amount of morphine he puts in her milk one evening. I have written about this in a post entitled 'Sons and Killers' (17 Sept 2016): click here.

      See also the related post - 'In Praise of Euthanasia as a Practice of Joy before Death' (16 Sept 2016): click here. 

 

[4] See Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, §2. 

 

[5] See the section entitled 'On Those Who Are Sublime' in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where Nietzsche writes: 

 

"When power becomes gracious and descends into the visible - such descent I call beauty.

      And there is nobody from whom I want beauty as much as from you who are powerful: let your kindness be your final self-conquest. 

      Of all evil I deem you capable: therefore I want the good from you. 

      Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.

      You shall strive after the virtue of the column: it grows more and more beautiful and gentle, but internally harder and more enduring, as it ascends."

 

This is one of the loveliest - and most crucial - passages in Nietzsche's work, particularly for those who are concerned with his ethical philosophy. 

      I am quoting from Kaufmann's translation of Zarathustra, which can be found in The Portable Nietzsche, (Penguin Books, 1976).

 

 

Aloha! Should Johnny Rotten Mind His Language?

Johnny singing his heart out on The Late Late Show Eurosong 2023 Special 

RTÉ Television Centre, Dublin (3 Feb 2023)

 

 

I. 

 

Sadly, Johnny Rotten has failed in his bid to emulate Johnny Logan and will not be representing Ireland in this year's Eurovision Song Contest. Somewhat ironically, the 67-year former Sex Pistol and his post-punk outfit Public Image Ltd., were defeated by a group calling themselves Wild Youth.    

The song that Rotten safety-pinned his hopes on - 'Hawaii' [1] - is described as a love letter to his 80-year-old wife, Nora, who - as he never tires of telling us - has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. 

 

Whilst the track with its refrain of remember me, I remember you, is certainly touching, one can't help but find it a rather feeble response to his wife's condition when compared, for example, to the ferocious song written in response to the cancer that killed his 46-year old mother, Eileen, in 1978.

There's nothing nostalgic or sentimental about 'Death Disco', as Rotten rages in despair at the dying of the light in his mother's eyes and watches as she lies choking on a bed, surrounded by rotting flowers [2].

 

His Eurovision entry, by contrast, is much more accepting that all journeys end and that all one is ultimately left with are memories of happier times - if one's lucky, that is, and dementia doesn't rob you of the past as well as aggressively restrict your ability to think and carry out everyday activities in the present.     

Perhaps, being generous, we might say that 'Hawaii' is the song of a more mature and reflective songwriter, whereas 'Death Disco' was the composition of a young man almost insane with anger. 

 

However, for all its poignant charm, 'Hawaii' still wasn't selected for Eurovision: in fact, it finished fourth out of the six songs competing and was given a lukewarm reception by the judges. But then, the Irish have never really accepted London-born Lydon as one of their own; he was even arrested in Dublin once, in 1980, and spent a weekend in Mountjoy prison on a trumped up charge. 

 

Still, maybe it's for the best that PiL didn't win the vote. For in this age of political correctness, certain voices have been raised in woke circles about the problematic use (or appropriation) of the word aloha by non-Hawaiian speakers like Lydon ...

 

 

II.  

 

In a recent article publised in USA Today, David Oliver suggests that it's time to stop using culturally sensitive words out of context [3]. Just because you can say hello in Hawaiian, writes Oliver, that doesn't automatically give you the right to do so. 

 

For aloha isn't merely a simple greeting. It has a profound (some might say sacred) meaning for native speakers, referring to a spiritual force that might be described as love, peace, or compassion; a force that is fundamental to existence. Aloha means recognising this force in oneself, in others and in all things.

 

I suppose a Heideggerian might identify aloha as an elementary term - i.e., one that speaks Being [4] - and it might be argued that it is devalued when coming from the mouth of a tourist, or someone who uses it simply to add a little exotic colour to a song lyric.

 

Personally, I wouldn't want to take this argument too far. However, I can agree that we all need to be cautious and respectful when using words that we don't fully understand and which speak others in their otherness; i.e., we all need to mind our language, as it were - even Mr. Rotten.      

 

 

Notes

[1] 'Hawaii', by Public Image Limited (John Lydon / Bruce Smith / Lu Edmonds / Scott Firth), will be released on vinyl as a limited edition 7" single later this year. To watch the official promo video, click here. Or to watch the band performing the song on The Late Late Show, click here. 

[2] 'Death Disco', by Public Image Limited (John Lydon / Keith Levene / Jah Wobble / Jim Walker), was a single release in June 1979 on Virgin Records: click here for the official video. An alternative version entitled 'Swan Lake' can be found on Metal Box (Virgin Records, 1979).  

 

[3] David Oliver, 'Is it time to stop saying "aloha" and other culturally sensitive words out of context?', USA Today (13 Jan 2023): click here. 

 

[4] For Heidegger, the ultimate task of philosophy is to preserve the force of the elementary words in which Dasein expresses itself. See Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Blackwell, 2001), p. 262.