Powertooling with Heide Hatry

 

Heide Hatry at the School of Visual Arts (New York)

 using her Fein Multimaster

 

 

There are many reasons to admire the German-born artist Heide Hatry. 

 

In no particular order, these might include:

(i) She's talented ...

 

(ii) She's intelligent ...

 

(iii) She's good-looking ...

 

(iv) She wears interesting footwear ... 

However, I think the thing I love the most is that she seems genuinely excited by her discovery of the Fein Multimaster; an oscillating power tool for cutting, sanding, and grinding [1].

 

In a recent post on Instagram, Heide gushes that the Fein Multimaster "opens up thousands of new possibilities" and thrills at the fact that it vibrates at a speed of up to 20,000 oscillations per minute! She even includes a short video of herself using the Fein Multimaster to create one of her smuggler bibles: click here.

 

Whether we might characterise Hatry's fascination with the Fein Multimaster as fetishistic is, of course, debatable; as far as I know she doesn't identify as a mechanophile and doesn't have a kinky attraction to machines, nor gain sexual satisfaction using hand tools. 

 

But she might do: although, even if she does, that would hardly be something unusual within a culture wherein everybody is enframed by technology and besotted with mechanical devices to a greater or lesser degree. 

 

Of course, it might be that I'm the one with the fetish; not so much for machines and power tools - I hate DIY, and my idea of Hell involves wandering for all eternity inside a giant B&Q - but for women operating machines and wielding power tools. 

 

Partly, it's a class thing; I've always been attracted to factory girls, particularly those of the 1940s, like Rosie the Riveter. 

 

But it's mainly due to the controversial music video for Benny Benassi's debut single 'Satisfaction' [2], featuring six sweaty young women in skimpy outfits in what is essentially a pervy ad for a range of power tools: click here.  

 

 

 [3]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] C. & E. Fein GmbH is a manufacturer of high-end power tools located near Stuttgart, Germany. Founded in 1867 by brothers Wilhelm Emil Fein and Carl Fein, the company invented the hand-held electric drill in 1895 and was responsible for many other innovations. Fein became best-known, however, for its Multimaster, the original oscillating multi-tool. 

      Readers who wish to do so can visit their website by clicking here. Or for more information specifically on the Multimaster, click here.  

 

[2] Italian DJ and record producer Benny Benassi is widely regarded as a pioneer of electro house, a genre brought into the mainstream with his 2002 summer club hit "Satisfaction", taken from the album Hypnotica (2003).  

      Initially, a music video was made featuring three men and a woman and consisted of one three-second take of the four people turning to face the camera and smile, played in slow-motion to match the length of the song. Various animations were overlaid, including close-up pictures of the lips of a man and a woman singing along to the song. It was rarely shown and is now barely remembered. Nevertheless, anyone interested in watching can click here.

       The second - and some would say infamous - video, directed by Dougal Wilson, and featuring the models Jerri Byrne, Lena Franks, Rachel Hallett, Natasha Mealey, Thekla Roth, and Suzanne Stokes, is, however, firmly lodged in the pop cultural (and pornographic) imagination.

 

[3] This collage features Rosie the Riveter, a model advertising the Fein Multimaster, and an actress from the music video for Benny Benassi's 'Satisfaction'. 

 

 

On Football and the (Lost) Art of Time-Wasting

 

Today, we live in an era of universal Fergie time; one impatient of stoppages 

and which threatens to extend a 90-minute game indefinitely.

 

 

I.

 

I don't like football. I used to, when I was a child, in the '70s. Back then, I used to love playing football on the green and watching big match highlights on TV. But not now. I suppose I've changed. But so too has football changed. As one commentator writes:

 

"The sport that we loved so much as children no longer exists. It has been replaced with a Narrative of Football; a new game deeply entrenched in analysis, code, writing, superfluous discourse, and orchestrated controversy." [1]

 

This is football in the age of hyperreality and hypercapitalism. And it's also football played at such a manic pace that it has lost all sense of sporting rhythm; hyperactivity has destroyed the ebb and flow of the game and that most vital (and complex) aspect known as time-wasting. 

 

II.

 

In an excellent piece for The Guardian, Barney Ronay describes how in the latest version of what was once the beautiful - often boring and profoundly frustrating - game, everything is now micro-engineered to produce maximum effective playing time. 

 

Referees, argues Ronay, are now no longer present "simply to keep the mechanics of the game working, to understand handball and fouls and offside, but to police how football should feel and look, to decide what exactly can be deemed entertainment" [2]. 

 

This is the referee as television floor manager - that is to say, as the one who ensures that a TV production goes smoothly and that everyone involved in the on-field action - players, managers, supporters - knows exactly what they have to do and when they have to do it. Keep the ball moving! Keep the noise levels high! Ensure there are plenty of talking points for the pundits to analyse! And above all, don't ever forget the cameras are rolling!

 

This season, referees have been empowered (and instructed) to take aggressive action against time-wasting. And Ronay is right to say this is "a profound and quietly sinister little tweak, a value judgment taken without any broader consultation on what the game should look and feel like, with some deeply undesirable implications" [3]. 

 

Of course, on the face of it, this is an entirely reasonable change to make; in fact, the laws of the game have always discouraged (and allowed referees to punish) time-wasting. But, what is going on here is really something quite radical, driven by purely commercial considerations: 

 

"As ever, follow the money. The drive to increase active 'game time' (itself a vapid, ill-defined concept) comes directly from Fifa. And Fifa is essentiality a TV rights distributions agency, its entire model based around increasing screen revenues. What we have here is the laws of the game being employed as a tool to doctor the perceived TV entertainment value of the product ..." [4] 

 

If it risks player fatigue or injury, never mind! If it risks pissing off the fans in the stadium, who understand how the art of time-wasting is an intrinsic part of the game, who cares? The people who count are the big name sponsors and the punters who pay to watch the match live on TV - and they won't tolerate dead air. 

Ronay concludes:  

"Football is not a gameshow. This is not choreographed entertainment. The reason this thing has survived and flourished is precisely because it is messy and feverish, made up of both piano and forte, moments of fury interspersed with interludes of vital, brain-mangling boredom. And yes, time-wasting is part of the game, an ugly, maddening part, but a source of beauty in its referred effects; not to mention an entirely legitimate tactic in a 90-minute game." [5]

Unfortunately, however, football is now choreographed entertainment; played by millionaires, owned by billionaires, and watched by a global TV audience who expect non-stop action and plenty of goals, i.e., exactly the same kind of idiots who think one-day cricket is superior - because faster and more sensational - to test match cricket and want to see six after six after six.  

Ronay's hope that in this burnout society we will once again allow sport to catch its breath, is, sadly, in vain ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Luke Alex Davis, 'Football Is Dead' (3 April 2022), on the website Playrface: click here. 

 

[2-5] Barney Ronay, 'Time-wasting in football is ugly, maddening - and absolutely vital', The Guardian (17 August 2023): click here. Those who are interested in this topic might also like to read: Cameron Carter, 'Football has elevated time-wasting into a sophisticated art form', The Guardian (19 Oct 2022): click here.  

 

 

For a related post to this one on football as a global televised spectacle, click here.

A Statue of One's Own: Notes on Laury Dizengremel's Sculpture of Virginia Woolf

Bronze sculpture of Virginia Woolf seated on a riverside bench 

in Richmond Upon Thames by Laury Dizengremel (2022) 

Photo by Maria Thanassa (2023)|

 

They made a statue of us / And they put it by the riverside / Now tourists come and sit with us  

Blow bubbles with their gum / Take photographs of fun, have fun [1]

 

 

I. 

 

When plans were first announced to place Laury Dizengremel's sculpture of Virgina Woolf on a bench overlooking the Thames, concerns were raised by members of the Richmond Society who, recalling details of her death [2], feared it was not only insensitive, but  also potentially triggering [3].

 

Richmond Council, however, were not persuaded and supported the siting of the statue, where it would be encountered by far more people than if it were tucked away on a residential street (although whether it encourages discussion of mental health issues, feminism, and sexuality, is debatable).

 

The £50,000 bronze sculpture was finally unveiled in November 2022. Speaking at the unveiling ceremony, Woolf's great-great niece, Sophie Partridge, said critics of the project were narrow minded and insisted that Woolf should be celebrated for her work, not defined by the way she died.   

 

 

II.

 

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend the above ceremony. However, I finally got to see the work up close and personal this week, when I took the Little Greek on a literary tour of Richmond to celebrate her name day.  

It's not bad: certainly better than the barefoot bronze of D. H. Lawrence by Diana Thomson, that stands in the grounds of Nottingham University; or Danny Osborne's reclining Oscar Wilde Memorial Sculpture, in Merrion Square, Dublin. 

 

At any rate, Dizengremel's life-size figure wasn't irritating and didn't immediately make me want to smash it. But neither did it make me want to sit down and take a selfie, which, apparently, is the aim. For Dizengremel believes art should be accessible and encouraging of interaction. And she is keen to make lofty literary figures like Woolf not only relatable, but touchable. 

 

'It is my hope', she says, 'that Virginia will be rubbed raw ...'

 

I have to say, I imagine that Woolf would have been horrified at the thought of being pawed (one might even say molested) in this manner by members of the public; of becoming public property. Personally, I think people should show more respect, not less, to great figures and learn to keep their hands to themselves. 

 

It would be preferable, in other words, if people remained a little afraid of Virginia Woolf - her intelligence, her demeanour, her sapphic superiority and disdain for the masses and modernity - rather than emboldened by a bronze figure to the point where they sit and put an arm around her shoulders in an act of gross overfamiliarity.

 

Finally, let me ask those who think this sculpture is a victory for feminism: How is turning a remarkable woman into an object and plaything in this manner challenging stereotypes?

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] With apologies to Regina Spektor, whose lyrics to the song 'Us' I have slightly reworked here. 

      'Us' was a 2006 single release from the studio album Soviet Kitsch (Sire Records, 2004). To listen to the track and watch the official video, dir. Adria Petty, on YouTube, click here. 

[2] On 28 March 1941, Woolf, aged 59, drowned herself by filling her coat pockets with stones and then calmly walking into the River Ouse near her home in East Sussex. 

      Woolf had been troubled by mental illness throughout her life; she was institutionalised several times and attempted suicide on at least two other occasions. Some commentators trace this back to the sexual abuse she (allegedly) suffered a the hands of her two much older half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth, about which I have recently written: click here. 

[3] The group's chairman, Barry May, rather ludicrously suggested that the sculpture 'might distress anyone who knows her story and is in a vulnerable state of mind'. One suspects he had ulterior motives in opposing the siting of the work by the river; perhaps he suffers from automatonophobia, or perhaps he's just afraid of Virgina Woolf.   

Virginia and the Duckworth Boys

 

"Nothing has really happened until it has been described ..."

 

 

I.

 

I have to admit, until very recently my knowledge of Gerald Duckworth was extremely limited. Essentially, I knew he published some of D. H. Lawrence's early work, including Sons and Lovers (1913), and that Lawrence thought him a decent chap. 

 

But I didn't know that Duckworth also published books by Henry James and John Galsworthy. Nor did I know that his middle name - de l'Etang - was the surname of one of his mother's ancestors, Antoine de l'Etang, a page to Marie Antoinette; or that he died whilst on holiday in Milan, in 1937.

 

And I certainly didn't know that Gerald was accused by his much younger half-sister, Virginia, of molesting her as a child; a claim that Woolf first made in a speech at the Bloomsbury Memoir Club in 1920 and which has long been the subject of controversy within literary and feminist circles [1].

 

According to Woolf, Gerald physically picked her up one day, plonked her onto a table, put his hand under her skirt, and then proceeded to fondle her genitals. To Virginia - who was only six years old at the time - this was a shocking incident; one which she never forgot, even if she forgave Gerald and did not accuse him of any further violations (or indiscretions, as commentators who wish to trivialise this incident prefer to write).  

 

Woolf provides a graphic description of what happened in a posthumously published piece of autobiographical writing: 

 

"As I sat there he began to explore my body. I can remember the feel of his hand going under my clothes; going firmly and steadily lower and lower, I remember how I hoped that he would stop; how I stiffened and wriggled as his hand approached my private parts. But it did not stop. His hand explored my private parts too." [2]  

 

Of course, it may well be that Gerald regarded his younger sister more as an object of sexual curiosity, rather than sexual desire. And doubtless such things as this are common in family homes up and down the land. But, even so - perhaps due to the twelve-year age difference between the two parties - this incident makes for uncomfortable reading and it was certainly one that deeply affected Woolf.

 

Indeed, those far more knowledgeable about the impact of childhood sexual abuse than I argue that even a single incident such as this can have such powerful long-term consequences that it's impossible to fully understand Woolf's later life, as a woman and as an artist, without acknowledging what happened to her as a child at the hands of Gerald - and, indeed, his elder brother George, who was (allegedly) a far more serious sex pest ...

 

 

II. 

 

According to Woolf, she and her sister were repeatedly abused over a period of many years by their half-brother George Duckworth. This abuse began when she was aged thirteen; Vanessa sixteen; and George twenty-eight. 

 

Virginia would write of his violent passion and brutish behaviour and the implication was given that he had attempted to establish an incestuous relationship with her and Vanessa (although neither Woolf nor Bell ever accused him of rape, as such). 

 

In '22 Hyde Park', she discloses how, one night, as she lay undressed and stretched out on her bed trying to sleep, George came creeping into her room. When she sat up and cried out he instructed her not to be frightened - and not to turn on the lights. Then, according to Woolf, George flung himself on the bed beside her and took her in his arms [3].  

 

For George Duckworth's defenders, these allegations are not only unproven, but unfounded; some even describe them as far-fetched and suggest that Woolf concocted an imaginative drama out of little more than erotic horseplay, which, whilst not entirely innocent, was neither something to make a fuss about.

 

Ultimately, we have no way of knowing the truth of what happened: but I doubt very much that Woolf invented or fantasised the abuse. On the other hand, however, it's probably wise to retain a degree of skepticism concerning claims that are made without any supporting evidence (particularly claims made by imaginative artists who are often unreliable narrators of their own lives and prone to embroider actual events).   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Although many Woolf scholars today don't question whether the abuse happened, disagreement persists about the nature and extent of the abuse and what effect it may have had on the rest of her life. I think we can agree, however, that Woolf's speaking out on this subject was a courageous and highly unusal thing for a woman at that time to do.

      

[2] Quoted from Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being, ed. by Jeanne Schulkind, (Sussex University Press, 1976). 

      This collection of posthumously-published autobiographical essays was first discovered in the papers of her husband, Leonard Woolf, and used by Quentin Bell in his biography of his aunt Virginia, published in 1972. In 1976, the essays were edited for publication by Jeanne Schulkind; a revised and enlarged second edition was published by the Hogarth Press in 1985; the most recent edition, introduced and revised by Hermione Lee, was published by Pimlico in 2022.   

      The title was a phrase used by Woolf to describe those rare moments (not necessarily positive or beneficial) in which an individual directly experiences reality, in contrast to the states of non-being which separate us from reality or serve to protect us from its tragic (or traumatic) nature. Arguably, an incident that scars the individual for life - such as a sexual assault in childhood - might be construed as just such a moment. 

 

[3] This essay, '22 Hyde Park', can be found in Moments of Being, op cit.

 

 

Readers interested in learning more about this topic will find the following essay by Lucia Williams helpful: 'Virginia Woolf's History of Sexual Victimization: A Case Study in Light of Current Research', Psychology, Vol. 5, No. 10, (August 2014), pp. 1151-1164. Click here to read online.  

 

On the Daughters of God

Portrait of Tammi of Nazareth

the onion.com

 

"And I sayeth unto thee: Look upon mine eyes, which rest within mine head; 

not upon mine bosom, wherein no wisdom dwells."

 

 

I. Truth, Justice, Mercy, and Peace

 

A friend of mine, who happens to be a specialist in medieval religious art and literature, recently gave birth to her third daughter and joked: 'I just need one more and God's people can be restored!' I sort of smiled at this, but, at the time, had no idea what on earth she meant by this.

 

However, after thinking about it - and doing a bit of biblical research - I realised that she was referring to Psalm 85 - and the so-called Four Daughters of God who loved nothing better than meeting up and exchanging kisses [1].

 

Of course, these four daughters were allegorical; they personified the virtues of Truth, Justice, Mercy, and Peace and their uniting in Love signified the triumph of God and the fact that mankind was forgiven its sins and redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ. 

 

Attempts to pornify the motif - which was extremely popular in medieval Europe - by imagining scenes of incestuous lesbianism, are uncalled for, as the kisses were given in innocence [2]. At any rate, most people had become thoroughly bored with the idea by the end of the 17th-century, though some, like William Blake, remained fascinated by the Four Daughters. 

    

II. Tammi of Nazareth

  

In September 2010, The Onion published a piece under the headline 'New Evidence Suggests God Also Had Incredibly Busty Daughter' [3], according to which:

 

"In a discovery that biblical scholars say could alter our most fundamental understanding of Christianity, recently unearthed manuscripts suggest that in addition to His Son, Jesus Christ, God also had a daughter with absolutely humongous breasts." 

The article goes on:

"The documents, found in a cave near the Jordanian-Israeli border and estimated to have been composed circa A.D. 200, recount the life, teachings, and death of Jesus' well-endowed twin sister, Tammi of Nazareth."

And it continues in much the same comic-blasphemous (breast-obsessed) vein throughout. 

 

It's juvenile, certainly, but it is also amusing to read that whilst Tammi "promulgated similar ideas as her sibling, and appeared to possess the same miraculous powers", she found it difficult to preach the gospel as followers were only interested in gaining "a better vantage point from which to observe her 'heavenly radiance'" hidden beneath a thin linen vestment. 

 

 

III. Jane

 

Funny enough, Larry David anticipated this idea of a comely daughter born of God in a season 5 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, first broadcast in October 2005 ... [4]

 

In a now classic scene, Larry's Christian father-in-law (played by Paul Dooley) has purchased a nail used in the movie The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004) - not a film that Larry much cares for, wishes to watch, or discuss. And so he quickly changes the subject and takes the conversation in an irreverent (some might say sacrilegious) direction:

 

Larry David: 'You're nuts about this Jesus guy, aren't you?'

 

Cheryl's Father: 'Yeah. Well, I have a personal relationship with Christ.'

 

Larry David: 'Really? See, I could see worshipping Jesus if he were a girl, like if God had a daughter ... Jane. I'll worship a Jane. But, you know, to worship a guy ... like a little kinda, you know, it's a little gay, isn't it?'

 

Although his wife, Cheryl, attempts to shut him up at this point, Larry is determined to expand upon the idea:

 

Larry David: 'I would worship Jane, if he had a daughter Jane, I could have a relationship with a Jane.'

 

Cheryl's Father: [Increasingly annoyed and irritated] 'He didn't have a daughter!'

 

Larry David: 'It's a shame it wasn't a girl. That's all I have to say.'

 

Cheryl's Father: [Disgusted] 'Ugh!'

 

Larry David: 'Good looking woman ... Zaftig ... Good sense of humor ...'

 

Cheryl David: [Exasperated] 'Okay, that's fine.'

 

Larry David: 'If he had a daughter, everybody - everybody - would worship Jane. That's all I'm saying.'

It's an interesting point, as Jules would say. 

 

And I think Larry is on to something: we don't need a pale and sickly looking Jesus with his crown of thorns - or even a weeping Virgin - for our saviour; we need a voluptuous woman who knows how to laugh (and make laugh) - more Marilyn than Mary [5].          

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Psalm 85:10 (KJV): "Mercy and Truth are met together; Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other." 

      This psalm is a community lament, probably written during the period of Israel's return from Babylonian exile. The people seek forgiveness from God for their unfaithfulness and restoration of their former status and power. The closing section expresses confidence that salvation will come.

 

[2] The Hebrew word for kiss in Psalm 85 doesn't refer to an erotic act per se, but, rather, to something exchanged by near relatives when greeting one another. In medieval Europe, where the visual motif of Justice and Peace kissing was first introduced, such an act was even more widespread than in the ancient Jewish world. However, because (male) artists have a penchant for nude (female) figures, renditions of Justice and Peace kissing were often (inappropriately) sexualised.

 

[3] 'New Evidence Suggests God Also Had Incredibly Busty Daughter', The Onion, (23 September, 2010): click here to read online. 

 

[4] Curb Your Enthusiasm, S5/E3, 'The Christ Nail' (2005), dir. Robert B. Weide, written by Larry David. Click here to watch the scene on YouTube.

 

[5] Thanks to the season 5 finale of Curb, we know that not only does Larry look forward to meeting Monroe in heaven, but that the latter is also a big fan of Seinfeld. See 'The End', S5/E10, dir. Larry Charles, written by Larry David, (2005). Marilyn is played in the episode by Susan Griffiths. 

 

Reflections on Gauguin's La Vague (1888)

Paul Gauguin: La Vague (1888)

Oil on canvas (60.2 x 72.6 cm)

 

"As they neared the shore each wave rose, heaped itself, broke and swept a thin veil of white water 

across the vermillion sand. The sea paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper 

whose breath comes and goes unconsciously." [1]

The Little Greek is right: Gauguin's painting La Vague is an astonishing work ...

Painted whilst living in Brittany, Gauguin was as captivated by the primeval character of the North Atlantic coastline as D. H. Lawrence was during his time in Cornwall, from where he wrote the following magnificent passage:

"It is quite true what you say: the shore is absolutely primeval: those heavy, black rocks, like solid darkness, and the heavy water like a sort of first twilight breaking against them, and not changing them. It is really like the first craggy breaking of dawn in the world, a sense of the primeval darkness just behind, before the Creation. That is a very great and comforting thing to feel [...] I love to see those terrifying rocks, like solid lumps of the original darkness, quite impregnable: and then the ponderous cold light of the sea foaming up: it is marvellous. It is not sunlight. Sunlight is really firelight. This cold light of the heavy sea is really the eternal light washing against the eternal darkness, a terrific abstraction, far beyond all life, which is merely of the sun, warm. And it does one’s soul good to escape from the ugly triviality of life into this clash of two infinites one upon the other, cold and eternal." [2]

 

Having found himself an interesting vantage point from which to work [3] - one which could only be accessed during low tide - Gauguin probably made a number of preliminary sketches, before beginning the actual canvas at his lodgings. 

 

Whilst Guaguin's abiding fascination with Japanese prints is clearly evident in La Vague, he was also inspired by a young artist called Emile Bernard, who was working nearby and buzzing with creative ideas. Through his discussions with the latter, it became clear to Gauguin that it was vital to find a new (post-impressionistic) form of expression; one that was more subjective, more primitivist, more visionary, and, above all, anti-naturalist. He and Bernard would call their new conception synthétism. 

 

Gauguin was now free to experiment and to dream. No longer under any obligation to simply copy what he saw, he could reimagine the landscape as he deemed necessary; in La Vague, for example, the third rock (in the upper-left corner) is an invention added purely for visual effect. 

 

And, most outrageously of all in the minds of those who demand realism, Gauguin painted the sandy beach an unearthly shade of martian red, affirming his increasingly idiosyncratic sense of colour. Further to this, the bright redness of the beach also relates to an optical phenomenon that Gauguin cleverly introduced into his work:  

 

"Detectable in the surging, foamy surf, is a prismatic phenomenon, in which the water appears to separate the reflected sunlight into its component chromatic wavelengths - pale violet, blue, green, and yellow - which, completed by the vermilion sand, yields a curving, rainbow-like effect along the upper edge and right-hand side of the painting." [4]

 

Finally, perhaps the thing I most admire about Gauguin's picture (as an object-oriented philosopher) is the addition of two tiny female figures, fleeing the incoming waves which threaten to overwhelm them and possibly carry them out to sea. This just intensifies the brutal elemental power of the painting; the ancient rocks and crashing waters care nothing about human bathers, or the warm softness of their flesh. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] A slightly modified couple of lines from the beginning of Virginia Woolf's 1931 novel The Waves. 

      I don't know if Woolf borrowed the title of her book from Gauguin - just as he took the title for his canvas from Hokusai’s famous woodcut The Great Wave of Kanagawa - but I do know that Roger Fry's introduction to Britain of works by Post-Impressionist painters, including Gauguin, had a significant impact on Woolf's own thinking and that The Waves might best be regarded as a work of literary abstractionism; a synthesis of poetic myth and external realism. 

      For an interesting essay on this, see Bernadette McCarthy; 'Denying the Dichotomy: Word Images in The Waves', in Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens, 64 (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier, 2006): click here. 

      Readers might also be amused by a post entitled 'Virginia Woolf as Gauguin girl' (27 Dec 2013), published on Paula Maggio's blog - Blogging Woolf - which relays the tale of how Virginia and her sister, Vanessa Bell, attended a party thrown in conjunction with Roger Fry’s 1910 exhibition of Post-Impressionist painters at the Grafton Galleries, dressed as figures from Guaguin's Tahitian paintings: click here.

  

[2] These beautiful lines are in a letter written by Lawrence to J. D. Beresford, dated 1 Feb 1916. See The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 519-520. 

 

[3] Commenting on the peculiar nature of Gauguin's vantage point, an anonymous critic writing for the British auction house Christie's notes: 

      "Gauguin often composed landscapes from elevated and other unusual vantage points, allowing him to dispense with a stabilizing horizon [...] Instead of gazing into the typically broad expanse of the landscape format, the viewer in La Vague experiences a vertiginous plunge into vertical depth, the psychological effect of which is like peering into the inner recesses of one's own emotional self." 

      Readers who are interested, can click here to read the full essay on the Christie's website. 

 

[4] Lot Essay on the Christie's website: click here.

 

 

This post is for Maria Thanassa (MLG).

On Georg Simmel's Sociology of Secrecy and Secret Societies

Georg Simmel (1858 - 1918)

 

 

I. 

 

One of the founders of German sociology at the beginning of the 20th-century, Georg Simmel mainly interests today for his concept of purposeful concealment - a concept via which he attempts to revalue the notion of secrecy.

 

According to Simmel, when conceived in a positive and profound sense, secrecy enables life to unfold on an imaginatively far more complex plane than it otherwise would and this makes secrecy one of the "greatest accomplishments of humanity" [1]. 

 

Simmel also argues that what most characteristically defines (and differentiates) human social structures is the degree of mendacity (and ignorance) operating within them. The concealment of truth, therefore, is perhaps more vital than its exposure; secrets and lies are what hold us together (this is true even for married couples who like to believe otherwise).   

 

Anticipating Byung-Chul Han, Simmel recognises that complete transparency between individuals - if such a thing were ever to be possible - would not, therefore, be particularly desirable; it would certainly not be without consequence, radically changing how people relate to one another and live collectively [2].

 

In an essay published in 1906, Simmel also offers some fascinating remarks on the attraction of the Geheimgesellschaft ...  

 

 

II.

 

 

We can define a society as secret when its activities, inner functioning, and membership are all shielded from public scrutiny. Secret societies may even attempt to conceal their very existence, for, as Simmel notes, invisibility is an effective protective strategy. 

 

If readers are wondering why individuals might feel the need to take such measures, it's worth noting that secret societies often emerge "as a correlate of despotism" [3] and one of their key functions is to offer protection against the State for dissidents and heretics of all kind. 

 

As well as teaching how to become-imperceptible, secret societies are also highly effective at instructing members on the art of silence, which is a good thing in my view (indeed, I think it would be an excellent idea if our schools taught children how to sit still, sit straight, and stay silent; i.e., taught self-discipline, rather than encourage self-expression) [4].

 

Having said all this, Simmel is aware that some secret societies that start out as countercultural, ironically end up reproducing the oppressive structures and institutions of the wider society that forced them into the shadows or underground in the first place.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Georg Simmel, 'The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies', in the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Jan. 1906), pp. 441-498. The line quoted from is on p. 446. The essay is available on JSTOR: click here.

 

[2] See my three-part post on Byung-Chul Han's book The Transparency Society (2015): part one can be accessed by clicking here. 

[3] Georg Simmel, 'The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies' ... p. 472. 

 

[4] Three cheers for Katharine Birbalsingh, founder and head teacher of the Michaela Community School, Wembley. 

 

 

Essentially, this post might be seen as a kind of preview to a paper entitled 'In Defence of Isis Veiled and in Praise of Silence, Secrecy, and Shadows', that will be presented at Treadwell's bookshop - 33, Store Street, London, WC1 - on Thurs 7 September. Further details can be found on the Torpedo the Ark events page: click here. 

    

Readers are also reminded of a related post entitled 'In Memory of Anne Dufourmantelle: Risk Taker Extraordinaire and Defender of Secrets' (14 May 2023): click here. 

 

 

In Memory of Jamie Reid

 Jamie Reid (16 January 1947 – 9 August 2023) 

 

"Radical ideas will always get appropriated. The establishment will rob everything they can, 

because they lack the ability to be creative. That's why you always have to keep moving."

 

 

Although never entirely on board with his far-left politics - and rather uncomfortable with his mystical-hippie beliefs (and appearance) - the fact remains that Jamie Reid's artwork for the Sex Pistols (almost) means more to me than the records they were intended to promote. 

 

As Malcolm rightly said, his design for the single 'God Save the Queen' in 1977, based on a Cecil Beaton photograph, was National Gallery standard [1].

 

I think it's also probably fair to say that, along with Winston Smith, whose graphic designs in collaboration with Jello Biafra for the Dead Kennedys were equally essential, Reid defined the punk aesthetic. 

 

And so I was sorry to discover earlier today that the only sure method of leaving the 20th century sadly involves making a terminal exit ... RIP Jamie Reid.      

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This now (ironically) iconic portrait of Her Majesty - as well as several other of Reid's provocative punk designs - can be found on Torpedo the Ark: click here.    

 

 

D. H. Lawrence and the Cashless Society

gbnews.com

 

 

I. 

 

As is well-known, D. H. Lawrence regarded mankind's money-mania as a collective form of insanity: "Money is our madness, our vast collective madness." [1]

 

And his proposed solution to this madness (which he elsewhere describes as a perverted instinct which rots the brain and corrupts the soul) is to terminate the present financial system: "Kill money, put money out of existence." [2]

 

Society, he says, must establish itself upon a different (revolutionary) basis from the one we have now; for endlessly chasing a fistful of dollars results in vicious competition and turns us all into fiends [3].    

 

Whilst these tiny snippets, taken from Lawrence's 1929 poetry collection Pansies, might not constitute a comprehensive political critique of capital - might, in fact, simply be the musings of a romantic poet dreaming of a socialist utopia in which food, housing, and heating would be free for everyone [4] - they do at least make it clear that Lawrence hated having to earn, save, and spend money. 

 

 

II. 

 

The question that arises, however, is this: would Lawrence have welcomed a cashless society of the type presently evolving and being promoted by many politicians and bankers? 

 

I doubt it: for clearly the so-called cashless society only allows those who govern us and run the financial system to exercise still more power and control; to strangle us ever-tighter in their octopus arms [5]. It's not a return to the a world prior to notes and coins, where barter was the system of exchange, but a slide into a (dystopian) future where money has been digitalised (i.e., turned into a form of electronic information or data).    

 

I know all the arguments made in favour of a cashless society - it's quick and convenient, it's safe and secure, it prevents crime, lowers business costs, and even reduces the transmission of disease [6] - but I'm also aware of the dangers that threaten from a society founded upon total surveillance of the individual and the complete control over their money (their savings and financial transactions).   

 

It's not just a loss of privacy that concerns - but a loss of freedom. There's also the question of what happens to those who don't have (or might not want) bank accounts; will millions of people effectively become non-citizens and be despised and discriminated against as such? 

 

In sum, I don't want to belong to a cashless economy and certainly don't welcome the idea of a central bank digital currency, allowing that coldest of all cold monsters, the State, to monopolise the cashless payment system. Thus, whilst I'm sympathetic with Lawrence's call to kill money, I'm (paradoxically) supportive of those, such as Nigel Farage, who are working to ensure the survival of cash [7].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Money-madness', The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 421. 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Kill money', The Poems, Vol. I, p. 422. 

[3] See the poem 'Wages' in the above volume, p. 452. 

[4] See the poems 'Money-madness' and 'Kill money' once more. In the latter, Lawrence writes: "We must have the courage of mutual trust. / We must have the modesty of simple living. / And the individual must have his house, food and fire all free like a bird." 

[5] See the poem 'Why?' in The Poems, Vol. I, pp. 391-92.  

[6] We should, I think, interrogate all of these alleged advantages of going cashless. Just to take the last of these claims, for example, whilst it's true that dirty old banknotes and grubby coins can carry disease-causing organisms (such as Salmonella, E. coli, and Covid-19), cash has been found to be less likely to transmit disease than commonly touched items such as card terminals and PIN pads. 

 

[7] Readers who also wish to protest the move towards a cashless society in the UK may like to support the GB News campaign - 'Don't Kill Cash' - which Farage is spearheading: click here. 

 

 

This post was inspired by a remark made by David Brock in a recent email, for which I am grateful.

 

 

Express Yourself: On How Individualism Becomes Socially Corrosive

Madonna performing in the video for 

her 1989 single 'Express Yourself' [1]

"Expressive individualism holds that each person has a unique core of feeling 

and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realised." [2]

 

 

I. 

 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that individualism as a moral and political philosophy is intimately connected to capitalism, which is why Marx spoke of it as a bourgeois form of abstraction, heaping scorn on liberal thinkers who conceived of men and women existing prior to, outside of, or free from social relations and insisted that these individuals had a fundamental right to express themselves and their desires.

 

Of course, one needn't be a Marxist to find such an idea problematic. Indeed, there are many on the right of the political spectrum who oppose such thinking, arguing that if you deny or dissolve the bonds that hold a people together by sanctioning individual rights and modes of conduct over and above their duty to (and kinship with) others, then you threaten social stability. 

 

Nietzsche, for example, brands liberal capitalism as political degeneracy; a form of anarcho-nihilism in disguise [3]. For Nietzsche, the sovereign individual is the supreme product of culture and society, like a beautiful (but quickly fading) flower. Without the latter providing nourishment and vital support, the former would never blossom.

 

Further, it's worth recalling that Nietzsche values the individual for their power of self-stylisation and self-mastery - i.e., not the fact they express an authentic, pre-supposed self, but, rather, that they create and shape out of chaos an identity via discipline and cruelty. This is what he designates as a great and rare art [4].    

 

II.

As one might suspect, individualism vs. collectivism is a common dichotomy in cross-cultural research. 

 

Comparative studies have found that the world's cultures vary in the degree to which they value personal freedom over conformity to social norms. Since, as we have indicated, individualism is strongly correlated with liberal capitalism, the cultures of more economically developed regions tend to be the most individualistic in the world. 

      

Despite this, there are still some on the radical left who insist - like Oscar Wilde - that only with the abolition of private property and the triumph of socialism, will we witness the emergence of a true, beautiful, and healthy individualism. 

      

In his famous essay, 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism', Wilde went on to equate individualism with art, arguing that the crucial value of such is that it disturbs the "monotony of type, slavery of custom, and tyranny of habit" and saves man from being reduced to the "level of a machine". 

 

Many other artists and philosophers have also argued in favour of individualism - indeed, as a youth, I was all for a punk form of anarchic individualism too. But that's a long time ago and now and I'm no longer quite so seduced by those who insist on their absolute right to lead an aberrant and unconventional lifestyle regardless of how this impacts on others.

 

Thus, for example, when presented with Joseph Brodsky's proposition that the "surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism" [5], I would now ask what protects us from the latter when it has itself become malevolent?    

 

And surely there is little doubt that we are now living in an age of what we might term toxic individualism; i.e., a form of individualism in which self-expression has given way to narcissistic (and solipsistic) self-obsession. 

 

I don't quite want to say that TikTok threatens the future of civil society, but it's undeniable that a culture's understanding of the notion of selfhood and individual rights has broad (ethical and political) implications and is at the heart of many of the issues being contested today. 

 

My concern is, if you raise a generation in which each individual is convinced of their own uniqueness and their absolute right to live how they like (in the name of authenticity and in accord with their feelings), then that's probably not going to end well (unless you think the atomisation of society a good thing). 

 

In sum: this is obviously a large and complex topic - one way beyond the scope of a post such as this. However, the all-pervasive spread of toxic individualism and the consequences of this (i.e., the dissolution of traditional institutions and structures) are increasingly obvious. As Marx predicted long ago, with the triumph of bourgeois modernity all that is solid melts into air ... [6]       

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The music video was directed by David Fincher. The single was taken from the album Like a Prayer (Sire Records, 1989). 

      In an interview, Madonna explained what the ultimate message behind her song was; namely, that if you don't express yourself, you will remain "chained down by your inability to say what you feel or go after what you want". See Mick St. Michael, Madonna 'Talking': Madonna in Her Own Words, (Omnibus Press, 2004), p. 59.

      If interested in watching the video and listening to the song on YouTube, click here.   

 

[2] Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart, (University of California Press, 1996), pp. 333-334.

 

[3] See the post entitled 'Nietzsche and Capitalism' (4 Oct 2013): click here. 

 

[4] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §290. 

[5] Joseph Brodsky, speaking in his commencement address at Williams College (1984), quoted by Robert Inchausti in Thinking through Thomas Merton: Contemplation for Contemporary Times, (SUNY Press, 2014), p. 110.  

      To be fair to Brodsky, he came to this conclusion after living for thirty odd years in a regime in which individual rights were not exactly top of the agenda. In 1963, his poetry was denounced as pornographic and anti-Soviet. This resulted in continuous state harassment until he finally left Russia for the United States in 1972. Not only were his papers confiscated, but he was twice confined in a mental institution, and eventually charged with social parasitism. For this latter crime, Brodsky was sentenced to five years hard labour, although his sentence was commuted in 1965 after protests by prominent cultural figures, including Jean-Paul Sartre. Little wonder then that he became such a strong advocate of individualism. 

[6] This is a famous line from the first chapter of The Communist Manifesto (1848), trans. Samuel Moore (1888).