A Brief Note on the Queer Gothic, etc.

Margarita Dadykina: Cathy's Ghost (2019) 

Sculpted figure (58 x 20 cm)

I. 

 

Sometimes, a literary genre and a theoretical framework can become so inextricably entwined that it is difficult to discuss the one without reference to the other. Thus it is, for example, that next month sees the publication of a new collection of essays exploring the gothic from a queer perspective [1].   

 

This notion of the queer gothic was one that I dipped in-and-out of over ten years ago, producing three papers presented at Treadwell's Bookshop; the first on Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891); the second on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850); and the third on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) [2]. 

 

Anyway, in anticipation of the Edinburgh Companion, here are some remarks I made back in 2014 in an attempt to (loosely) define what I understood by gothic queerness (as well as related terms, including the uncanny and the perverse) ... 

 

II. 

 

My concern with the gothic relates to a form of fiction that emerges during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. I'm not concerned with Germanic tribes migrating about early Europe causing trouble for the Romans, or spiky-forms of medieval architecture (even if the ruins of the latter often provide a setting for many a gothic tale). 

 

Primarily, then, it's to a bizarre, yet, in some ways, rather conventional literary genre I refer when I use the term gothic, whilst happily acknowledging that elements of this have infected many other cultural forms and fields of inquiry, including queer studies. Indeed, such is the level of intimacy between queer studies and gothic studies that many scholars promiscuously drift back and forth from discussing the politics of desire, gender and sexual nonconformity to issues within hauntology and demonology. 

 

Obviously, this is facilitated by the fact that not only do gothic fictions and queer theories have common obsessions, but they often rely on a shared language of transgression to explore ideas. It has even been suggested that the gothic imaginatively enables queer and provides an important historical model of queer politics and thinking [3].

 

We can certainly never overestimate the role that gothic fiction played in the unfolding history of sexuality. For not only does it anticipate the later codification and deployment of sexualities, but it also participates in what Foucault terms the perverse implantation of these new forms of subjectivity [4]. 

 

If it is generally accepted that Horace Walpole's Castle of Ortanto is the first gothic novel - published in 1764 - it is also usually agreed that by the publication of Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer in 1820, the popular craze for gothic fiction had already peaked. 

 

Nevertheless, the genre continued to flourish and mutate at the margins of more respectable literature in the decades that followed. Indeed, many of the works now most commonly associated with it were written in the late-Victorian period: this includes Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). 

 

However, whilst slowly changing in form, content, and setting over the years, many things remained the same within the gothic text to the point of cliché; not least of all the continued narrative fascination for perverse sexual practices and abnormal individuals. In this, it is similar to pornography. Both types of writing share a compulsive and "seemingly inexhaustible ability to return again and again to common tropes and similar situations" [5]. 

 

Indeed, some critics argue that, like pornography, gothic fiction might ultimately serve a conservative function in that it perpetuates stereotypes and thus ultimately re-inscribes the status quo. And it's true that gothic tales often conclude with the moral order restored and reason triumphant (though rarely with a happy ending). However, at the same time, gothic horror seems to possess an uncanny ability to pass "beyond the limits of its own structural 'meaning'" and in this manner transform "the structure of meaning itself" [6]. 

 

And so, whilst gothic literature might often be predictable, it's never boring. It constantly opens up new worlds of knowledge and provides an opportunity to explore the pleasures of socio-erotic transgression; incest, rape, and same-sex desire are all familiar themes within the genre, not to mention paedophilia, necrophilia, and spectrophilia. 

 

Arguably, Sade takes things furthest in his One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom (written in 1785, but not published until 1904), his masterpiece of torture-porn often described as a gothic novel, even though the Divine Marquis himself rejected the term on the grounds that there was nothing supernatural about the horror and sexual violence in his books [7]. 

 

So, to conclude this briefest of brief introductions to the gothic, let me make clear that what excites about the genre is not that it simply causes gender trouble or allows for things to go bump in the night. More than this, it challenges (and in some cases overturns) many of our ideas about what it is to be human - and, indeed, of how to be human. This gives it broader philosophical importance than those who sneer at ghosts and ghouls might appreciate. 

 

And if, at times, gothic fiction fails as art due to its overreliance on sensational and supernatural elements, it nevertheless more often than not succeeds as a form of resistance to conventional thinking and the heteronormative status quo. And it is this, as indicated, which qualifies it as queer [8]. 

 

And what do I mean by queer?  

 

Well, let me stress that I'm certainly not using the term queer or the concept of queerness as synonymous with either homosexuality or gayness [9]. Indeed, I vigorously object to those who conflate ideas in this manner and use queer as an overarching and unifying label for what are distinct forms of practice, behaviour and identity (often with nothing queer about them). 

 

For me, the appeal of queerness is twofold: 

 

Firstly, it is not a positivity or subject position. It's a transpositional negativity - i.e., a mobile and ambiguous concept that resists any fixed categorical definition and remains permanently at odds with all forms of legitimacy and identity. Queer, ultimately, doesn't refer to anyone or anything; it's a form of non-being "utterly inimical to [...] authentic existence, ontological or natural" [10]. 

 

Secondly, it subsumes and dissolves all forms of dualism; not only sexual and gender oppositions, but also that model of thinking which would keep life and death as absolutely distinct and separate categories. Ultimately, it's this thanatological project that I most wish to further, even if that involves unfolding it within a spooky sexual context. This project, which is both morbid and material, picks up on Nietzsche's contention that life isn't categorically different from or opposed to death; that being alive is, in fact, simply a rare and unusually complex way of being dead [11].

 

Death, we might say, is the material kingdom of the actual and vital signs, although real, are but an epiphenomenal effect of matter. Or, to put it another way, life is a momentary stabilization of solar energy that upon death is released from its molar entrapment back into unformed chaos and an infinite process of molecular disintegration [12]. This becomes important when arguing that there can't really be any serious philosophical objections to romancing corpses or getting it on with ghosts - even whilst there may well be legitimate moral, social, and cultural reservations. 

 

Moving on, we must of course mention the perverse ... 

 

The perverse might be thought of as a more aggressive and transgressive form of queerness; one that takes us to the very heart of a game involving desire, deviation, and damnation. Historically, perversion is tied to political insurrection and involves straying or being diverted from a path, destiny, or objective which is understood as natural or right. To those who live their whole lives on the straight and narrow it is obviously an abhorrent concept. But, personally, I think it’s a good thing to stray off the path; just as it's preferable to fall into sin, rather than fall into line [13]. 

 

Figures like Heathcliff or Dorian Gray are irresistibly drawn towards the perverse. Which is to say they are intellectually predisposed towards evil and that which is unnatural or anti-natural. The former, for example, knowingly engages in practices such as necrophilia and spectrophilia. And there's the rub; Heathcliff is fully aware of what he's doing and what he wants to do. It's the perversion of free will that leads to transgression, says Augustine. And it is transgression that brings death into the world. 

 

But it is also that which brings understanding and gives pleasure and we should never forget or underestimate the pleasure of perversion. As Freud was led to conclude, it's the perversions alone that ultimately make happy [14].

 

Finally, there's one more term which we simply must mention; one made famous by Freud in his 1919 essay Das Unheimliche ...

 

The uncanny is, arguably, also a form of queerness. But in designating the sinister, gruesome, and lugubrious it moves beyond sexual strangeness and gender troubling. The uncanny is more likely to give us the creeps than excite our desire. Wuthering Heights is, for me at least, the greatest of all uncanny novels; familiar, yet alien, seductive, yet repulsive; a book in which even the mortal status of the lovers is never fixed.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Queer Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, ed. Ardel Haefele-Thomas, (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). 

      There seems to be some interesting material in this 368 page book divided into three main sections - Queer Times, Queer Monsters, and Queer Forms - although, having said that, it does seem slightly old hat (though maybe I'm just miffed that I wasn't invited to contribute to the book). 

 

[2] 'Elements of Gothic Queerness in The Picture of Dorian Gray' was presented at Treadwell's on 18 May, 2011. This was followed by 'The Scarlet Letter: An Earthly Story with a Hellish Meaning' on 4 July, 2013 (advertised as 'A Slice of American Gothic for American Independence Day'). 

      As for the paper entitled 'Spectrophilia and Other Queer Goings On in the Tale of Wuthering Heights', this was due to be presented at Treadwell's on 7 October, 2014, but unfortunately had to be cancelled due to unforeseen (and unrecalled) circumstances. 

      Together, these essays formed part of a wider project to do with perverse materialism.

 

[3] See George E. Haggerty, Queer Gothic, (University of Illinois Press, 2006).

 

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

 

[5] George E. Haggerty, Queer Gothic, p. 9. 

 

[6] Ibid., p. 10. 

 

[7] Sade did admire at least one gothic novel, namely Matthew Gregory’s The Monk: A Romance (1796), a work in which every attempt was made to outrage readers in as many explicit, violent, and perverse ways as possible. 

 

[8] I don't want to overstate the case or make too wide a claim here. Haggerty is right to carefully resist the temptation to uncritically celebrate the gothic and its literary-cultural significance. As he points out, the genre was always somewhat marginal and semi-legitimate and never succeeded in challenging the dominant mainstream fiction of the age, which remained rigidly straight and heteronormative. 

      Also, if it provided alternative (queerer) ways to think through the politics of desire, it was ultimately powerless to prevent the "imposition of sexological thinking at the end of the nineteenth century". At best, the gothic continued to cast a shadow across the bright new world of scientia sexualis. See Queer Gothic, p. 19. 

 

[9] Elisa Glick is a Marxist critic guilty of this; see p. 11 of her book Materializing Queer Desire (SUNY Press, 2009), where she rather weakly explains her reasons for wanting to employ (and I would say misuse) the term queer synonymously with gay, lesbian, and homosexual. 

 

[10] Jonathan Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence, (Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 140. 

      I’m tempted, in fact, to drop the term queer altogether here and use instead a notion of the uncanny, which is closely related but without the sexual overtones. 

 

[11] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), III. 109, p. 168. 

 

[12] Those who attended Treadwell's regularly in 2006 will perhaps remember my six week course on thanatology in which these ideas were discussed in detail and at length. The work can be found in The Treadwell’s Papers, Vol. II, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). 

 

[13] Even such a trite and common expression as the straight and narrow - thought of as the one true path into the future - reveals something crucial about Western metaphysical thinking; note the linkage of truth with linearity and teleology. People think they are strolling along this path naturally or by choice, but in fact they march along it by arrangement and coercion. 

 

[14] Freud made the attainment of (non-functional, non-reproductive) pleasure central to his theory of perversion and stressed that it is the perversions that make happy; their repression which causes suffering and neuroses. Freud also understands that this is why many normal individuals strongly dislike queers who dare to manifest and flaunt their perversity; not only do they find them monstrous and threatening, but also seductive and this places them in the uncomfortable position of having to overcome a secret envy of those who enjoy illicit pleasures. 

      Note too how Freud compares the perversions to the grotesque demons used to illustrate the temptation of the saints. This is precisely how such images and descriptions continue to function within gothic literature; i.e. as uncanny manifestations and queer embodiments of the perverse; a threatening excess of difference and deformity. See his Three Essays on the Theory of Human Sexuality, (1905). 

 

On Suzy Kendall, Tuesday Weld, and the Curious Sex Appeal of Dudley Moore

Dudley Moore, Suzy Kendall & Tuesday Weld

 

"Dudley possessed a pagan, almost Pan-like ability to attract women." 

                                                                               - Jonathan Miller

 

I. 

 

Other than the fact that he was funny and highly talented, the thing I admire about diminutive Oxford-educated Essex boy Dudley Moore [1] was that he had an excellent eye for the ladies - four of whom he even married, including two that I'd like to speak of here: Suzy Kendall and Tuesday Weld ... [2]

 

II.

 

Suzy Kendall is one of those beautiful blonde British actresses best known for her film and TV roles in the late 1960s and early 1970s [3]. 

 

I remember her fondly, for example, as Kay Hunter in an episode of The Persuaders! entitled 'The Man in the Middle' (dir. Leslie Norman, 1971), which also co-starred Terry-Thomas as Brett's cousin Archibald Sinclair Beachum: click here to watch her first scene alongside Roger Moore and Frank Maher. 

 

Born in Derbyshire in 1937, Kendall was an art student turned fabric designer turned photographic model, before finally becoming established as an actress - not just in the UK, but in Italy also, where she appeared in several giallo films [4]. 

 

Kendall married Dudley Moore in 1968 and although they divorced just four years later, she remained close friend's with Moore until his death in 2002; she even hosted his memorial service.    

 

Having retired from acting in 1977, Kendall made a return to the big screen in 2012 as a special guest screamer in the (giallo-inspired) psychological horror film Berberian Sound Studio, directed by Peter Strickland and set in a 1970s Italian horror film studio.

 

 

III.

 

Tuesday Weld is a beautiful blonde American actress, born 1943, who began acting as a young girl and progressed to adult roles in the 1950s. The name Tuesday - which she officially adopted in 1959 - was an extension of a childhood nickname (Tu-Tu) and doesn't reflect the fact she's full of grace.

 

Weld often played impulsive and reckless young women acting out sexually; at least that's how I remember her - as a bit of a rock 'n' roller, with curves and attitude [5]. Danny Kaye, who played her father in The Five Pennies (1959), described her as 'fifteen going on twenty-seven' and so she was perfectly cast the following year as Jody in the classic comedy Sex Kittens Go to College (1960) [6].

 

Interestingly, like Suzy Kendall, Weld once acted alongside Terry-Thomas [7]. But the main thing these two women had in common was that they both accepted a proposal of marriage from Dudley Moore; Weld tied the knot with the latter on 20 September, 1975, and they had a son the following year. Sadly, they divorced in 1980 (though Weld received a generous financial settlement, plus alimony and child support). 

 

Newly single, Weld enjoyed the attentions of some of Hollywood's leading male actors including Al Pacino, Omar Sharif, Richard Gere, and Ryan O'Neal, before eventually marrying husband number three, in 1985 (an Israeli violinist and conductor whom she divorced in 2001). 

 

Meanwhile, away from the romantic rollercoaster she seemed trapped upon, Weld's acting career continued to blossom and she won the critical acclaim of her peers throughtout the 1970s and 80s [8]. She retired from acting in 2001, having given over 45 years of her life to the profession (which is long enough to give to anything). 

 

IV.

So, returning to Dudley Moore ... What was it about him that women such as Suzy Kendall and Tuesday Weld found so attractive? 

For Moore was a man acutely aware of his own inferiority; the fact that he was only 5' 2" tall and had a club foot was something about which he remained self-conscious throughout his life. But he was still regarded as a sexually charismatic figure and perhaps this demonstrates that if you are intelligent and can make a woman laugh, then physical limitations don't matter ...?

 

Or perhaps it shows that if you combine confidence with a certain vulnerability - and then openly profess a desire and a need to be loved - you'll soon have women eating out of your hand ...?

 

But then again, it could simply be that having international movie stardom and millions of dollars in the bank pretty much enables you to fuck whoever you want ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Dudley Moore (1935-2002) was an English actor, comedian, musician and composer, who first came to prominence (alongside Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, and Peter Cook with whom he formed a hugely popular and influential double act) as a leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s. He later achieved big-screen success in Hollywood; including a role in one of my favourite Goldie Hawn pictures, Foul Play (dir. Colin Higgins, 1978), about which I have written here. 

 

[2] Moore was married (and divorced) four times: to actresses Suzy Kendall (1968-1972); Tuesday Weld (1975-1980); Brogan Lane (1988-1991); and Nicole Rothschild (1994-1998). In writing here of only the first two women, I mean no disrespect to Lane and Rothschild. 

 

[3] Other actresses who might be categorised in this manner include Susan George and Juliet Harmer - both of whom, like Kendall, appeared in an episode of The Persuaders!

 

[4] In Italian cinema parlance, giallo refers a genre of murder mystery movie combining elements of sex, horror, and psychological suspense in order to create a unique form of violent thriller. The genre developed in the mid-1960s and peaked in popularity during the 1970s. It was a predecessor to - and a significant influence upon - the later American genre of film known as the slasher movie.  

 

[5] Weld played alongside Elvis in Wild in the Country (dir. Philip Dunne, 1962) and had a brief off-screen romance with Presley.

 

[6] Click here to watch the official trailer. Stanley Kubrick was so impressed by her performance in Sex Kittens Go to College, that he selected Weld as his first choice for the role of Lolita in his 1962 film adaptation of Nobokov's notorious novel. Weld, however, turned the offer down, explaining that she was already living the part so didn't need to play it on screen.  

 

[7] Weld and Terry-Thomas star together in Bachelor Flat (dir. Frank Tashlin, 1962).

 

[8] Weld was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in the 1972 movie Play It as It Lays (dir. Frank Perry); for an Academy Award for her role in the 1977 movie Looking for Mr. Goodbar (dir. Richard Brooks); and, finally, for a BAFTA for her role in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984). 

 

 

On the Flintiness of Language in D. H. Lawrence's The Daughter-in-Law

Ellie Nunn as Minnie Gascoyne in D. H. Lawrence's 

The Daughter-in-Law (Arcola Theatre, 2018)  

 Photo by Idil Sukan

 

 

Read almost any review or commentary on D. H. Lawrence's The Daughter-in-Law (1913) and you'll be struck by the repetition of the following claims: 

 

(i) the play is a much neglected and underrated tour de force of English theatre ... 

 

(ii) Lawrence is superior to Chekhov as a dramatist and storyteller ... 

 

(iii) the language used has not only great lyrical beauty, but also an elemental potency best described as flinty ...

 

The first of these points can be swiftly dealt with. For whilst it's true that Lawrence never saw this work performed in his own lifetime and that the text of The Daughter-in-Law wasn't even published until 1965, ever since Peter Gill's celebrated production at the Royal Court Theatre two years later, it has been staged - and positively received - on numerous occasions. 

 

Most recently, for example, a 2018 production at the Arcola Theatre in London, directed by Jack Gamble, was described by Michael Billington writing in The Guardian as "arguably the best account of working-class life in British drama" [1]. 

 

It has also been adapted for radio and filmed for television and its reputation has, as Lawrence biographer John Worthen correctly says, gone from strength to strength. So it’s really something of a myth or popular misconception that The Daughter-in-Law remains neglected and underrated: we've all seen it and we all agree; it's a masterpiece of twentieth-century English drama. But it's certainly not unsung. 

 

As for the subsequent claim that Lawrence is a superior playwright to Chekov and that The Daughter-in-Law pulls feathers from The Seagull (1895) and flattens The Cherry Orchard (1903), well, that's a matter of opinion. Lawrence himself was rather fond of the Russian author and found in his work something new and important. Personally, however, I think Chekov even more boring than Ibsen and find almost anything preferable to his sub-textual theatre of mood. 

 

As for the third point; the flintiness of Lawrence's dialogue, we might ask what it even means to describe language in this manner ...

 

Flint is a hard, sedimentary, cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz and is categorized as a variety of chert. It is chiefly found in rock such as chalk and limestone and is usually dark grey or black in colour, often having a smooth, rather waxy surface. 

 

But when critics like Charles Spencer, writing in The Telegraph, refer to the "marvellously flinty vernacular" used in The Daughter-in-Law [2], they don't mean that Luther and Minnie sound as if they belonged like Fred and Wilma to the Stone Age (although, the Midland’s mining community they inhabited is, to us, over a hundred years on, almost as alien and far-off as that of Bedrock). 

 

Rather, they mean that their speech has a down-to-earth solidity and directness. 

 

Further, I think they also wish to imply that the words have an elemental potency and/or some kind of primordial authenticity. This is particularly true of the almost incomprehensible words and phrases spoken in dialect which, if Lawrence is to be believed, directly articulate the body and its strange forces and flows; not so much as signifying units of meaning, but as units of sound. 

 

Thus it is that, in The Daughter-in-Law - as in the novel Son and Lovers (1913) to which it is closely related - Lawrence skilfully combines elements of naturalism, kitchen sink realism, and his own often transgressive philosophy. Like Nietzsche, he attempts to write in blood and doesn't want to be simply read, so much as passionately experienced. 

 

For whilst Lawrence often regarded the emotions as counterfeit, he always believed in and attempted to solicit the genuine feelings of those who bothered to engage with his work. And, like Heidegger, Lawrence seemed to think it was his duty to safeguard the power of the most elementary words. For, just like our favourite Nazi, Lawrence was prone to a form of linguistic mysticism in which certain words and phonemes have greater essential value than others. 

 

Such a belief is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, which posits that the earliest form of language was that spoken by Adam in the Garden of Eden. Whether this language was also used by God to address Adam and is therefore divine in origin, or whether it was invented by Adam in order to name all things, including Eve, is open to debate. Either way, this notion of a forgotten, sacred language has fascinated many occultists, poets, and philosophers, including Lawrence and Heidegger, both of whom seemed to suffer from a kind of nostalgia for a time when we didn't speak words, but, on the contrary, they spoke us. 

 

Rightly or wrongly, Lawrence seemed to imagine that via a use of dialect, regional slang, and archaic terms he might somehow tap into this language of Paradise, thereby expressing mankind's deepest feelings and highest hopes. It's not without reason that the Cambridge edition of his plays contains a fifteen page glossary of such terms. 

 

Amusingly - and controversially - by the time he came to write his final novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, (1926), Lawrence had added several expletives to his elementary vocabulary in order to startle us out of what he calls our mob-selves. 

 

Now, if I'm honest, there was a time when, like many Lawrentians, I happily bought into this idea of a flinty, obscene ur-language of the feelings inscribed in our hearts via which we might speak the truth and not merely pass the word along. Keith Sagar, for example, never abandoned his faith in words such as sluthering and slikey to be sufficiently powerful to not only charge Lawrence's dialogue with magical force, but also re-vitalise audience members. 

 

Now, however, I have certain doubts and reservations about this - although, fortunately, these doubts and reservations needn't get in the way of one's enjoyment of The Daughter-in-Law as a rip-roaring piece of theatre [3].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Michael Billington, 'The Daughter-in-Law review - is this the best British working-class drama?', The Guardian (29 May 2018): click here to read online. 

 

[2] Charles Spencer, writing in a piece for The Telegraph in September 2006, after watching a performance of The Daughter-in-Law (dir. Kirstie Davis) at the Watford Palace Theatre. Spencer went on to argue that Lawrence was, in fact, a far finer playwright than novelist (or, at any rate, that his plays have lasted rather better than his novels). 

 

[3] This post is an edited version of a review of the opening night performance of The Daughter-in-Law, directed by Kirstie Davis, at the GBS Theatre, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, on 5 Feb, 2014, and featuring five final year students: Eliza Butterworth as Mrs. Gascoigne; Tom Varey as Joe; Anna Krippa as Mrs. Purdy; Lianne Harvey as Minnie; and Joe Blakemore as Luther - all of whom were excellent.

      Indeed, for such young actors, they seemed more than capable of rising to the challenge of the often complex and intense nature of the play's sexual politics and class concerns and even managed to make what are not particularly likeable characters seem sympathetic. That's the magic, I suppose, of having youth, beauty, and talent on your side.

      Finally, mention should also be made of Isobel Power Smith for her set and costume design; Peter Small (lighting design); Harry Butcher (sound); and dialect coach Helen Ashton - although I couldn't really tell (and didn't really care) how authentic the East Midland's accents were on the night.       

Headscarves and Headlines

Luke Perry: The Strength of the Hijab (2023)

 

An inscription at the base of the above sculpture reads: 

 

"It is a woman's right to be loved and respected whatever she chooses to wear. 

Her true strength is in her heart and mind."  

 

 

News just in ... 

It seems that Iranian MPs have approved the trial implementation of a new mandatory hijab law; a law under which women who refuse to wear the headcovering can face harsh punishments, including a lengthy prison spell of up to ten years. 

 

However, as the authorities point out, most women who flout or break the new law, will probably just receive a fine - and possibly a flogging, to ensure future compliance.  

The same authorities warn businesses of closure and other serious consequences if they are found to be providing services to women dressed in an improper manner. Patrols by the so-called morality police are to be stepped up, so that a close eye can be kept on shopkeepers who might dare to sell an unveiled woman some figs. 

 

Iranian authorities are also investing heavily in smart cameras that use facial-recognition technology, according to women's rights activists inside the country.

This comes one year after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been detained for allegedly wearing the Islamic headscarf incorrectly. Her death - after allegedly being beaten by police - led to a wave of popular unrest in Iran.

 

Even the UN are describing the new law - which was vetted by Iran's Guardian Council, a powerful body comprising of twelve men and headed by a recently re-elected 97-year-old cleric - as an attempt to forcibly implement gender apartheid. 

 

Now, I'm no Islamic scholar, but I think we can agree that this is not a great idea in practice, for either men or women. 

 

 

Meanwhile, in other news ...

 

A new sculpture - believed to be the first of its kind anywhere in the world - will be unveiled in the Smethwick area of Birmingham next month, celebrating women who wear hijabs. 

 

Designed by the English artist Luke Perry, the monumental (rather grim-faced) five metre tall steel piece is entitled Strength of the Hijab. 

 

Without any trace of irony, Perry has declared the work will empower the veiled woman by making her more visible. It will also, apparently, help her to feel happy and heroic, as well as more confident and comfortable with her own identity.

 

While Perry acknowledged that his new sculpture could be viewed as controversial for many different reasons, he dismissed these as invalid and said critics of his work simply wished to deny difference and divide communities.

 

Now, I'm no art critic, but I think we can all agree that Mr. Perry is an idiot. 

Release the Hounds! (With Reference to Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights)

 

Sayuri as Brandy the Pitbull in Quentin Tarantino's  

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

 

 

Those who have seen the Quentin Tarantino film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood will recall that the movie ends in an orgy of violence, at the centre of which is a ferocious pitbull, called Brandy, who attacks two members of the Manson Family on the command of her master, stuntman Cliff Booth [1]. 

 

Anyway, re-watching the above on TV the other night, made me think of the equally harrowing scenes involving savage dogs in Emily Brontë's queer-gothic masterpiece, Wuthering Heights ... [2]

 

Dogs appear throughout Wuthering Heights and, as critics have pointed out, they not only help us to better understand personality traits of the main human characters, but are also used to presage events about to unfold in the novel. And, of course, they add an extra element of violent horror (as if such were needed in a book which is, in some respects, far more shocking and transgressive than any of Tarantino's movies).  

 

Although poor Lockwood [3] isn't the only victim of a vicious dog attack, the first chapter scene in which he first visits his landlord Heathcliff is the one that immediately comes to mind. Sitting surrounded by snarling dogs with curled lips, including a huge, liver-coloured bitch pointer and a pair of grim-shaggy sheep-dogs, Lockwood attempts to remain calm. 

 

But when Heathcliff goes down into the cellar to fetch some wine and Lockwood is left alone with the dogs, his anxiety levels are significantly raised. Foolishly, he winks and makes faces at the animals and the bitch becomes so infuriated, that she leaps onto his knees. 

 

This, in turn, arouses the other flea-bitten curs lurking about the house and before he knows it, Lockwood is being attacked by half-a-dozen four-footed fiends, who bite at his heels and tear at his clothing. In fear for his life, he picks up a poker from the fireplace in order to try and fend them off. 

 

Brontë thus cleverly reveals that even in a domestic setting, danger and violence are never far from the surface. 

 

Despite the profoundly unsettling nature of his experience, Lockwood returns to Wuthering Heights on a snowy afternoon in chapter two, only to be attacked once more by two hairy monsters named Gnasher and Wolf, who leap at his throat and knock him to the ground when he attempts to leave the remote moorland farmhouse:

"Fortunately, the beasts seemed more bent on stretching their paws, and yawning, and flourishing their tails, than devouring me alive; but they would suffer no resurrection, and I was forced to lie till their malignant masters pleased to deliver me ..."

 

Later, in chapter six, it's a young Catherine Earnshaw who has the misfortune of being attacked by a dog; this time a bull-dog called Skulker. The devil latches onto her fair ankle, preventing her from fleeing and inflicting a nasty bite. 

 

Despite the pain, Cathy doesn't yell out and, fortunately, Heathcliff is with her. Picking up a large stone, the boy thrusts it between the dog's jaws and tries to shove it down its throat. Eventually, a servant arrives on the scene and he pulls Skulker away, half-throttling the animal whose huge purple tongue hangs out of a mouth that drools with a mixture of blood and saliva.   

Finally, it should be noted that not all dogs in the fictional world of Wuthering Heights - or, indeed, in real life - are aggressive: Isabella Linton's little dog, Fanny, is a harmless creature who tragically falls victim to human cruelty; the poor thing being hanged by her abusive husband, Heathcliff, in an attempt to reveal his true nature, stripped of all deceitful softness (see chapter fourteen).  

 

 

An lllustration by Fritz Eichenberg for the 1943 Random House edition 

of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

 

 

Notes

 

[1] So convincing was professionally-trained dog Sayuri in her role as Brandy, that she was the recipient of the Wamiz Palm Dog Award for Best Canine Performance. The award was accepted on her behalf by Tarantino, who said he was honoured to do so and described Sayuri as a great actress who gave a great performance. 

      The final fight scene from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), featuring Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth, Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton, and Sayuri as Brandy, can be watched on YouTube by clicking here. 

 

[2] Wuthering Heights was initially published under Brontë's pen name Ellis Bell in 1847. It is rightly considered to be one of the greatest novels written in English, even though early commentators were appalled by its depictions of mental and physical cruelty and its repeated transgression of Victorian morality. One reviewer writing for Graham's Lady Magazine wrote: "It is a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors."

      Lines quoted here from Wuthering Heights are from the Project Gutenberg eBook: click here.   

 

[3] Mr. Lockwood is initially the tale's narrator. He rents a property from Heathcliff - Thrushcross Grange - in order to retreat from society (although soon decides society is far preferable to a life on the North Yorkshire Moors). After chapter four, the main narrator, Nelly Dean - having worked as a servant to three generations of the Earnshaws and two of the Linton family - picks up the story. I'm not going to give further character notes here, assuming that most readers will be familiar with the novel. 

 

For a post on a vaguely similar theme to this one, please click here.  

 

 

On American XL Bully Dogs and Ancient Greek Hounds

An American XL bully and the Ancient Greek hell-hound Cerberus 

as imagined by William Blake (c.1824-27)

 

 

 I. 

 

There are a lot of stories in the news at the moment about American XL bullies and, apparently, the breed will be banned in the UK as of the end of this year under the Dangerous Dogs Act (1991). 

 

Clearly, that's a good thing, although, in my opinion, it doesn't go far enough and there should be no certificates of exemption issued to owners no matter how fit and proper they are deemed to be. 

 

You can't have ultra-aggressive mutts with stocky, muscular bodies and powerful jaws running rampage on the streets and in the parks, causing serious injury to people and other canines. Six of the ten fatal dogs attacks in the UK last year were due to these illegally bred beasts.       

 

However, if you think the XL bully living next door is a nightmare and genuine threat to the safety of your children, then probably best you don't read the next section of this post in which we discuss a three-headed hound of Hades ...

 

 

II. 

 

According to ancient Greek mythology, guarding the gates of the Underworld is a monstrous, raw flesh-devouring dog named Cerberus, whom you really don't want to mess with (i.e., if you're dead, it's probably best to accept the fact and not attempt to leave). 

 

Cerberus was the polycephalic offspring of Typhon and Echidna and described as having a serpent for a tail and snake-heads protruding from multiple parts of his body, ensuring that his bite was infinitely worse than his bark. 

 

Thanks to his superhuman strength - and a wooden club - Heracles was just about the only one who could handle him, but, even then, I wouldn't have granted a dog license to this demi-god, nor allowed him to arrogantly parade Cerberus on a chain leash through the streets of Greece.       

 

A ravenous animal like Cerberus belongs in Hades ensuring the dead don't come back to extract their revenge upon the living. Alternatively, let him guard over the gluttons who inhabit the Third Circle of Hell [1], giving them a few hard bites in order to encourage them to repent of their sins and eat less. 

 

 

III.      

Finally, just to end on a slightly happier, more dog-friendly note, let me remind readers of another mythological mutt from ancient Greece; one much-loved by Odysseus and called by the name Argos ... 

 

According to Homer [2], after fighting in the Trojan War and battling monsters for twenty-odd years, Odysseus finally made it home to Ithaca. But as he approached his palace, he noticed an old dog lying on heaps of mule and cattle dung piled up outside the front gates. The poor creature was in a terribly neglected state, infested with fleas and other parasites. 

 

Nevertheless, when Argos heard a familiar human voice, he raised his tired head and pricked up his ears. As soon as he was sure it was his master, he wagged his tail in excitement, but lacked the strength to get to his feet and greet Odysseus properly.  

 

Seeing this - and touched by the fact that his dog clearly still remembered him after such a long time - Odysseus wiped away a tear, although, in his heart, he was angry that Argos had not been properly cared for in his absence and had fallen on hard times.

 

Tragically, having witnessed his master's homecoming, the loyal dog passed into the darkness of death - but what a good boy he was!

 

 

Argos and his master Odysseus [3]

Print by Frederick Stacpoole after Briton Rivière (1885)

Notes

 

[1] The third circle of hell, as depicted in Dante's Inferno, is reserved for the punishent of those who have committed the sin of gluttony; a realm of freezing mud which, just to make matters worse, is also inhabited by the three-headed hound Cerberus, who torments the excessively greedy by tearing at their flesh.

 

[2] See Homer's Odyssey, Book 17, lines 290-327. My paraphrased account is based on various English translations and MLG's recollection of the tale, particularly with reference to Argos.

       

[3] Print by Frederick Stacpoole, after Briton Rivière (1885); held in the collection of the British Museum under the title Ulysses and Argus. Click here for more information.

 

 

For a follow-up post to this one on a related theme, please click here. 

Three Extracts from The Whip and the Wand (Paper VI in the 2005 Treadwell's Series Sex/Magic)

Artwork by Stephen Alexander for the Treadwell's Paper 

'The Whip and the Wand' in the Sex/Magic series (2005)

 

 

As an essay over 7000 words in length, 'The Whip and the Wand' is unfortunately too long to reproduce in full.

 

However, following publication of a recent post in which I mentioned this text [1], I thought it might be a good idea to offer three extracts from the opening sections on the perverse nature of witchcraft ... 

 

Extract 1: The Malleus Maleficarum is clear on one thing above all else: Witchcraft results from insatiable carnal lust and is a form of sexual depravity as well as religious heresy. 

 

 

It was widely accepted in the early modern period that witches consorted and copulated with demons and that their rituals involved obscene and unnatural acts including naked dancing, masturbation, bestiality, anal sex, and feasting on the flesh of infants. Via a combination of sodomy and sorcery, the witch threatened to subvert the very foundations of the moral and political order of society and this made her not only sinful, but dangerous. 

 

But what of twentieth century witchcraft à la Gerald Gardner and company? Alas, if Doreen Valiente is to be believed, then it has become a depressingly tame affair in comparison: "There is no doubt that witchcraft has evolved considerably […] Few covens now insist upon ritual nudity, or practice the more controversial rites involving sex or flagellation". [2] 

 

Thus, far from being an opportunity to form an erotic relationship with the divine and daemonic and indulge in a wide range of perverse pleasures, witchcraft is now merely the chance for personal development and an exploration of the "hidden powers of the human mind" [3]. 

 

Whether Valiente really believes this, I cannot say. But, happily, it's not quite true. In fact, modern pagan witchcraft remains inherently perverse, involving as it does many elements that the masochist and fetishist would instantly understand and appreciate ... 

 

 

Extract 2: The Erotic (and Kinky) Aspects of the Great Rite

 

Any list of the essential activities performed during the Great Rite would have to include the following: undressing, scourging, binding, kissing, dancing, chanting, touching, drinking, feasting, and fucking. And any list of the necessary paraphernalia involved would have to include: an altar, a whip, a wand, a length of cord, a knife, a sword, a bowl of water, a chalice of wine, a dish of cakes, some salt, and some incense to burn. 

 

If these objects have magical symbolic significance, then, likewise, the above activities in which they are used are invested with great ritual importance. But here, however, I'd like to examine some of the more erotic (and kinky) aspects of the Great Rite ...

 

To begin, all members of the coven - with the exception of the high priestess and the high priest - position themselves around the perimeter of the magic circle, each facing the centre; the priestess and priest stand facing each other in the middle of the circle. The latter then proceeds to give the former the five-fold kiss, which is actually a series of eight kisses beginning with the feet and then working up the body to the lips, via the knees, genitals, and breasts. 

 

The high priestess then lies down on her back, her arms and legs outstretched in order to form the pentagram, whilst the priest fetches a veil with which he covers her naked body. He then kneels between her ankles and delivers an invocation that begins: 

 

Assist me to erect the ancient altar, at which in days past all worshipped ... 

And the sacred place was within the centre of the Circle, 

the origin of all things. 

 

Following this hymn to her - or more precisely, to her reproductive organs - the rest of the coven leave the circle so that the high priest and priestess can fuck in what the Farrar's call "the dignity of privacy" [4], thereby betraying the bourgeois morality not only of their own vocabulary, but at the heart of modern pagan witchcraft. 

 

As for the idea of the body of the priestess serving as a living altar, I must confess I rather like this; it reminds me of Minski's furniture in Sade's Juliette, or the sculptures by Allen Jones. But it's not really an ancient idea, so much as one developed by 17th-century occultists as part of their Black Mass and simply borrowed by Gerald Gardner who, of course, made a fetish of nakedness and insisted upon it within his own neo-paganism. 

 

The Farrar's, unsurprisingly, are having none of this, however; they insist that whilst the Great Rite invocation "specifically declares that the body of the woman taking part is an altar, with her womb and generative organs as its sacred focus […] this has nothing to do with any 'Black Mass'" [5]. They continue: "The Black Mass was a Christian heresy, using perverted Christian forms […] in which the living altar was used to desecrate the Christian Host. Such obscenity is of course utterly alien to the spirit and intent of the Great Rite." [6] 

 

To which we can only say - what a pity! 

 

But there you go; Wicca, say the Farrar's, belongs to a tradition of "sincere and honourable pagan religions" [7] and is not performed by sophisticated degenerates who only know how to corrupt forms, symbols, and rituals. So concerned are the Farrar's that pagan witchcraft and its practitioners not be thought of as in any way perverse, that they call upon dear old Doreen Valiente in order to defend the fact that the Great Rite culminates in an act of ritual sexual intercourse. 

 

Such an act, asserts the latter, is "'obviously […] the very opposite of promiscuity'" [8], because it takes place between carefully selected partners at the right time, in the right place, and in the right way. "'It is love and only love that can give sex the spark of magic'" [9], dribbles Valiente in a manner which surely would have left witches of old helpless with laughter. 

 

 

Extract 3: The Whip and the Wand

 

Apart from the act of intercourse, Gardner's Great Rite also, crucially, involves plenty of ritual scourging and bondage as the following description makes clear: 

 

The priestess sits on a throne holding a knife in one hand and a whip in the other. The priest kneels before her and begs purification. The priestess then fetches a cord and ties his hands securely behind his back. The ends of the cord are tied in front of the throat and the priest is led by this around the circle like a slave. Following this, the priest kneels facing the altar once more, to which he is tied by his lead. His knees and feet are also firmly bound. If he complains of too great a level of discomfort, his bonds may be loosened slightly, whilst remaining tight enough so as to ensure absolute helplessness. 

 

Next, "the priestess fetches the scourge and gives him three light strokes with it" [10] before the roles are reversed; i.e. the priest ties and whips the priestess. Then, for good measure, she ties and whips him once more. Finally, once both parties have been purified in this manner, they are ready to engage in sexual intercourse.

 

As described earlier, this involves the priestess lying down and allowing the priest to adore and to kiss her body, whilst masturbating himself to erection. Following the act of intercourse, post-coital thanks to the Lords of the Watchtowers are offered and the rest of the coven rejoin their high priestess and priest for a celebration. 

 

What, then, are we to make of this? 

 

Firstly, I must say that the ludicrously affected language used throughout the ceremony is neither convincing, nor poetic as intended. To describe the phallus, for example, as the miraculous spear or lifted lance, is absurd and betrays a level of humiliating coyness rather than a sense of mystery. But what it also reveals is just how fetishistic and masochistic modern pagan witchcraft is. The above scene between high priestess and priest is replicated in bedrooms and dungeons all over London between the Illicit Lover and his Mistress. 

 

Ronald Hutton rightly points out that Gerald Gardner gave great importance to flagellation and it soon becomes obvious to any reader of the Book of Shadows that the whip "represents the essential component of the rituals" [11]. Even the Farrar’s cannot deny this, although it is clearly something that makes them uncomfortable and, claiming to never use the whip themselves during their own rituals, they then seek to justify Gardner's usage: 

 

"Some witches hold that Gardner was too fond of ritual scourging and many of his detractors maintain that he had a psychologically unhealthy addiction to flagellation. Quite apart from the fact that such a […] gentle person as Gardner is most unlikely to have had such leanings, all this is based on a complete misunderstanding. The technique of not-too-tight binding and gentle monotonous scourging is not even a symbolic 'suffering to learn' as it is in the first and second degree rites; it is a deliberate and traditional method […] to 'gain the Sight' by influencing the blood circulation." [12]

 

Now, I don't deny the second part of this at all; scourging undoubtedly has a stimulating effect on the blood and I've no doubt that visions can be induced via a wide range of ascetic techniques involving discipline and punishment. Even Christian mystics and penitents know this. 

 

However, it's what is said in the first part of the above passage - and the manner in which it is said - that troubles me. The Farrar's seem to share the same virulent hatred of dissident sexuality and fear of queerness that is found in Dion Fortune's writings of the 1920s, where she described masturbation as an activity which undermines health and "condemned homosexuality, sadism, and masochism as perversions" [13] - branding the first of these in particular as an infectious mental disease. 

 

Obviously, Gardner was not a typical flagellant: "Nor are the operations involved in the rituals standard acts of sado-masochism" [14]. But Gardner does at least admit the erotic aspect of what he calls the virtue of bonds. He writes: "'It has been found that this practice doth often cause a fondness between aspirant and tutor, and it is a cause of better results if this be so … [15]'" 

 

They may not like it, but the Farrar's are reluctantly obliged to admit that the longest non-ritual passages in the Book of Shadows concern ritual bondage and scourging, all carefully explained in meticulous detail (a sure sign of the ardent fetishist). Nevertheless, they repeat their by now familiar line: 

 

"The purpose of the not-too-tight binding and the deliberately light scourging is plain: to help bring about [… an] expansion of consciousness […] or communion with the Goddess […] To distort this into an allegation that Gardner himself had an unhealthy urge to flagellation, whether sadistic or masochistic […] is nonsense." [16] 

 

Actually, it's this denial of the perverse aspect of sex magic which is the only nonsensical thing. To deny the sado-masochistic elements of ritual witchcraft is almost in itself perverse. But the Farrar's are not alone in making this denial and Doreen Valiente is ever-on-hand to support them in this: "'The reason we used the scourge is a very simple one - it works!'" she exclaims, before adding: "'Perhaps it has become associated with kinky sexual matters; but long before that it was part of ancient mystical and magical practices'" [17]. 

 

Personally, I cannot understand this determination to make an absolute distinction between the erotic and the sacred and it seems at odds with Wicca's own philosophy; doesn't the Goddess demand ecstasy both of the spirit and of the flesh? Even Starhawk, to her credit, declares the relationship between witches and the divine to be "erotic, sensual [and] carnal" [18] - even if she mistakenly suggests this to be a perfectly natural relationship, rather than a perverse one. 

 

The fact is, in all the great pagan cultures of the past, sex is esteemed as a sacrament and the orgy is the great religious festival and celebration par excellence. Prostitution, too, was a sacred institution; in the Babylonian temples of Ishtar, for example, young girls known as the ishtaritu devoted themselves to the service of their goddess by indulging in sexual congress with any male worshipper who wished for the blessing of the latter (and was able to make the necessary financial offering). Why then do the Farrar's find the inherent kinkiness of modern pagan witchcraft so difficult to accept? 

 

It's left to Ronald Hutton to admit that Gardner's rituals "possess certain idiosyncrasies which seem particularly suited to his own tastes and views" [19], and by this we assume he refers to Gardner's own sexual dispositions. I would argue that these are crucial to Wicca and should be accepted, affirmed, and developed as such; not shamefully glossed over, explained away, or rejected outright. Better Gardner and his love of naked women, sharp knives, and bondage than the moral fanatics who have come after him and turned witchcraft into a form of therapy, or just another liberal theology. 

 

Gardner - the pervert and religious fanatic who declares that to do magic, one must be in a state of frenzy - is an infinitely more interesting figure than either of the Farrar's. And the magic circle as a sacred space in which to consort with demons and dance naked round the bonfire, is a much more exciting prospect than the coven as self-help centre for the disappointed and disillusioned.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The post to which I refer is 'On the Whip and the Wand: A Response to Joanne Pearson' (17 Sept 2023): click here.

 

[2] Doreen Valiente, An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present, (Robert Hale, 1994), p. xi. 

 

[3] Ibid. 

 

[4] Janet and Stewart Farrar, The Witches' Bible, (Phoenix Publishing, 1996), p. 49. 

 

[5] Ibid. 

 

[6] Ibid. 

 

[7] Ibid., p. 50. 

 

[8] Doreen Valiente, quoted by Janet and Stewart Farrar in The Witches' Bible, p. 49. 

 

[9] Ibid. 

 

[10] Janet and Stewart Farrar, The Witches' Bible, p. 36. 

 

[11] Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon, (Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 234-35. 

 

[12] Janet and Stewart Farrar, The Witches' Bible, pp. 34-5. 

 

[13] Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon, p. 182. 

 

[14] Ibid., p. 235. 

 

[15] Gerald Gardner, quoted by Janet and Stewart Farrar in The Witches' Bible, p. 58. 

 

[16] Janet and Stewart Farrar, The Witches' Bible, p. 60. 

 

[17] Doreen Valiente, quoted by Janet and Stewart Farrar in The Witches' Bible, p. 60. 

 

[18] Miriam Simos (aka 'Starhawk), Dreaming the Dark, (Beacon Press, 1982), p. xii. 

 

[19] Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon, p. 239. 

 

 

On the Whip and the Wand: A Response to Joanne Pearson

Artwork by Stephen Alexander for the Treadwell's Paper 

'The Whip and the Wand' in the Sex/Magic series (2005)

 

 

According to the academic author Joanne Pearson, the use of a whip or scourge as a magical tool within the context of (post)modern spirituality, including pagan witchcraft - or Wicca, as many of its adherents prefer to call it - has elicited little debate and ritual flagellation tends to be a largely concealed practice. 

 

She writes: 

 

"Techniques associated with BDSM in the public imagination [...] tend to be ignored, sidelined, dismissed, and whitewashed, both by Wiccan practitioners and by academic studies of Wicca, rather than being explored as mechanisms by which boundaries might be transgressed through the infliction of pain, exercised on the body, eliciting religious experience from skin and flesh." [1] 

 

However, that's not quite true: way back in 2005, for example, I presented a six-part series of lectures at Treadwell's Bookshop on Sex/Magic, at the behest of Christina Harrington, a respected authority on all things esoteric and the store's founder and presiding spirit.  

 

These talks discussed a variety of topics from a philosophical perspective, including masturbation, anal sex, nakedness and - in the final paper of the series, entitled 'The Whip and the Wand' - fetishistic aspects of modern pagan witchcraft [2].

 

The lectures were eventually published in 2010 by Blind Cupid Press as Volume I of The Treadwell's Papers. 

 

Of course, to be fair to Pearson, this is not something widely known; the talks were attended only by a handful of people and neither filmed so as to be uploaded to a social media platform, nor livestreamed online as so many events are today. 

 

Similarly, the two Blind Cupid books of Treadwell's Papers - each consisting of twelve essays - were produced in an extremely limited number and those not sold via Treadwell's were left in the philosophy sections of several other London book stores for anyone who came across them to freely acquire [3].

 

Having said that, however, as a scholarly researcher and writer in this area, it's surely incumbent upon Pearson to be aware of this and not mistakenly assert that no one - other than her good self - has ever been bold enough to investigate the links between Wicca and BDSM [4].

 

Notes

[1] Joanne Pearson, 'Embracing the lash: pain and ritual as spiritual tools', Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, Vol. 23, (2011), pp. 351-363.

      See also Pearson's earlier essay: 'Inappropriate Sexuality? Sex Magic, S/M and Wicca (or Whipping Harry Potter's Arse!)', Theology & Sexuality, Vol. 11, Issue 2, (Sage, 2005), pp. 31-42.   

 

[2] For full details of the Sex/Magic series - as well as all other papers presented at Treadwell's between 2004 and 2012 - click here. 

[3] Apparently, these books sometimes turn up online described as rare collectors items and selling for laughably exorbitant prices.

[4] I suspect that Pearson has sought to gain a little speaker's benefit by positioning herself in this manner; i.e., as the only one who dares to speak openly about the prohibited and the perverse, thereby challenging the established order and its taboos. 

      To her credit, however, Pearson began exploring the common conceptual ground between Wicca and BDSM several years before I thought of it; first presenting a paper on this at a conference at the University of Glasgow entitled 'Dangerous Sex: Contesting the Spaces of Theology and Sexuality', in 2002. But her later claims about the continued attempt to deny or overlook the kinky aspects of Wicca need some (retrospective) qualification. 

 

 

Readers who are inerested can read three extracts from 'The Whip and the Wand' by clicking here.  

 

Was D. H. Lawrence a Primitive Communist?

Top: Quetzalcoatl by Hunt Emerson in Dawn of the Unread (Issue 7)

Bottom: Communist red flag with classic hammer and sickle design

 

 

I.

The concept of primitive communism is often credited to Marx and Engels and advances the idea that hunter-gatherer societies were traditionally based on egalitarian social relations and the common ownership of resources, distributed in accordance with individual needs. 

 

It seems that Marx and Engels took the notion from the pioneering anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan - best known for his work on kinship and social structure amongst the native peoples of North America (particularly the Haudenosaunee) - although it might be argued that the idea of primitive communism can also be traced back to Rousseau and his celebration of the noble savage.    

 

Wherever they picked up the idea, it obviously excited the imagination of Marx and Engels and they developed it broadly, applying it, for example, not only to wild hunter-gatherer societies and indigenous peoples, but to barbarian societies formed by the ancient Germanic tribes beyond the borders of the Roman Empire.

 

Marxist scholars and theorists - perhaps embarrassed by the romanticism of all this - attempted to downplay the significance of primitive communism in the work of their idols [1]. 

 

However, the madmen of the Khmer Rouge, looking to build on the revolutionary fantasies of Marx and Mao, really ran with the idea. Indeed, the party's General Secretary was so impressed with the self-sufficient manner in which the mountain tribes of Cambodia lived that he relocated the urban population to the countryside and forced it to work on collective farms. This resulted in approximately a quarter of Cambodia's population dying from malnutrition and disease, but at least he gave it a go.   

 

Still, never mind Pol Pot - what about D. H. Lawrence? Was he too someone seduced by the fantasy of primitive communism?

 

II. 

 

According to John Pateman, The Plumed Serpent can be read as an allegorical work that isn't so much concerned with ancient Aztec gods as promoting a political vision of a possible future Mexico based upon a model of primitive communism. 

 

For Like Marx, argues Pateman, Lawrence was interested in how human development might involve a radical return to pre-modern social relations. Thus, the hymns which Lawrence writes for his fictional neo-pagan religious movement should be heard as a revolutionary call to action, comparable to The Communist Manifesto (1848).

 

I have to say, I think there are problems with this reading of Lawrence's novel. And, push comes to shove, I'm with the German hotel manager who describes Ramón's Quetzalcoatl movement as another form of national socialism - not primitive communism [2].  

 

However, as I don't have advance access to the paper that Pateman is due to present to the D. H. Lawrence Society next month, I shall refrain from offering any criticisms here and now. Instead, let me just remind readers of my own readings of The Plumed Serpent, which can be found in several posts, including here, here, and here. 

 

In sum: The Plumed Serpent is - for me at least - Lawrence's rather frantic attempt to create what Deleuze and Guattari would call neo-territorialities based upon old fragments of code and the invention of new forms of jargon and myth [3]. 

 

Unfortunately, such neo-territorialities are, at best, artificial and archaic and, at worst, fascistic and malignant. As Kate's dead husband once told her: "Evil is lapsing back to old life-modes that have been surpassed in us." [4]  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] There was very little research into primitive communism among Marxist scholars and would-be revolutionaries beyond the 1844 study by Engels until the 20th century when some, like Rosa Luxemburg and the anarchist Peter Kropotkin, took up the idea and developed it. 

      Non-Marxist scholars of pre- and early-history did not take the term seriously, although it was occasionally examined if only then to be swiftly dismissed; for it soon became clear that Morgan's work was flawed (to say the least). 

      Today, there are still those who insist that we could learn much from (matriarchal) societies that practice economic cooperation and communal ownership, but they rarely (if ever) use the term primitive communism. For such thinkers, it is the dominant culture's bias against any alternative to capitalism (and the patriarchy) that is the problem - and if it hadn't been for Western colonialism and imperialism, we'd still find many peoples living happily and peacefully in a non-alienated manner.   

 

[2] See D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent, ed. L. D. Clark, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 103. 

      It's interesting to recall that Kate, the middle-aged Irishwoman at the centre of the novel, refuses to accept this estimation of Ramón and his followers; for her, they were real men who wanted something more than modern pettiness: "She would believe in them. Anything, anything rather than this sterility of nothingness which was the world, and into which her life was drifting", writes Lawrence. But this, surely, is one of the great dangers of nihilism (and helps explain the attraction of fascism); one searches desperately for something or someone to cling on to. Even the most dangerous political invalids and the most fanatic of religious lunatics can suddenly seem attractive and find their ideas taken seriously - something that Nietzsche explicitly warns of.   

 

[3] See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, (The Athlone Press, 1994), p. 257.

      Of course, it wasn't just Lawrence who oscillated from one pole of delirium to another and it's not just fascist society that works in this way. For as Deleuze and Guattari go on to point out, liberal capitalist societies - born of "decoding and deterritorialization, on the ruins of the despotic machine" - are also "caught between the Urstaat that they would like to resuscitate as an overcoding and reterritoriaizing unity, and the unfettered flows that carry them toward an absolute threshold." [260]

      In other words: "They are torn in two directions: archaism and futurism, neo-archaism and ex-futurism, paranoia and schizophrenia [...] They are continually behind or ahead of themselves." [260]

      Having said that, sometimes  an unexpected force of radical change can erupt "even in the midst of the worst archaisms" [277], whilst, on the other hand, a revolutionary line of flight can quickly lead into a black hole of some kind. Thus, we can never say in advance with absolute certainty where a literary experiment or political revolution might take us.    

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent, p. 137.

      In a sense, this was also Lawrence's conclusion: you can't go back or cluster at the drum. See 'Indians and an Englishman', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde, (Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 119-120. 

 

 

Musical bonus: Killing Joke, 'Primitive', from the debut studio album Killing Joke (E. G. Records, 1980): click here for the remastered version (2005).