Putting the Hap Back into Happiness: Notes on Sara Ahmed's Killjoy Feminism

saranahmed.com / feministkilljoys.com

 

'My name is Sara Ahmed. I am a feminist killjoy. It is what I do. 

It is how I think. It is my philosophy and my politics.'

 

 

Sara Ahmed has long been interested in feminism and the question of happiness and last year saw publication of The Feminist Killjoy Handbook in which she conveniently brought together many of her ideas and insights gathered over the years on this topic. 

 

In a nutshell, Ahmed wishes for her readers to suspend their belief that happiness is a good thing and to conceive of feminist history as essentially a struggle against happiness; the latter understood as a way in which oppressive social norms are made to seem natural, desirable, and innocent. To paraphrase Nietzsche, in happiness all that is unjust is pronounced joyous and absolved by laughter [1]. 

 

In a society which she regards as sexist, racist, and homophobic, the queer woman of colour - such as herself - has a duty to be unhappy and to defiantly declare herself to be a killjoy, which means, for example, refusing to laugh at unfunny jokes [2] and pointing out the things that systemically divide people; exposing the lies that are said to constitute common sense. 

 

 

II. 

 

On the one hand, I can see the logic of her argument and sympathise with her position. There are very good reasons why we can't all just get along and I've always liked the idea of reclaiming negative stereotypes and epiphets (the humourless feminist; the angry black woman; the unhappy queer). 

 

It's perfectly valid - and probably crucial - to expose the ironic fact that a conventional (and almost compulsory) model of happiness can have very unhappy consequences for some. 

 

On the other hand, however, I fear that Ahmed's joy killing ideology quickly becomes a form of the political asceticism that Foucault warned against in his preface to Anti-Oedipus: "Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable." [3] 

 

I don't know, maybe I'm more under the spell of French theorists than Ahmed; that I still hear, for example, the laugh of the Medusa and still affirm a practice of writing which is above all else joyful and premised upon the idea that revolution begins with a smile and does not necessitate the turning of warm flesh into cold stone, or the hardening of hearts [4]. 

 

Ultimately, when I start reading Ahmed the words of Emma Goldman also come to mind: 'If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution' [5]. 

 

 

III.

 

Having said that, readers are encouraged to make up their own minds and can do so by clicking here and accessing one of the concluding sections of her handbook, entitled 'A Killjoy Manifesto', and which, amongst other things, attempts to show how feminist principles are born of adversity and bumping up against a world that does not live in accordance with feminist principles. 

 

If you are: 

 

(i) unwilling to make happiness your cause ...

 

(ii) willing to cause unhappiness to others ...

 

(iii) keen to support others who are willing to cause unhappiness ... 

 

then you might just be the kind of committed, grumpy, ungrateful, bond-snapping killjoy that Ahmed celebrates and wishes to form a community with. 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Book III, 'The Seven Seals', section 6. 

 

[2] Principle 4 of 'A Killjoy Manifesto' is: I Am Not Willing to Laugh at Jokes Designed to Cause Offense. In it, Ahmed asserts that humour is "a crucial technique for reproducing inequality and injustice". She also admits that the killjoy "exists in close proximity to the figure of the oversensitive subject who is too easily offended". 

      See The Feminist Killjoy Handbook (Allen Lane, 2023), pp. 261-262. I provide a link to this concluding section of Ahmed's book (pp. 251-268) later in the post. 

 

[3] Michel Foucault, Preface to Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. xiil. 

 

[4] I'm referring here to the famous essay by Hélène Cixous. Originally written in French as Le Rire de la Méduse (1975), a revised version was translated into English by Paula Cohen and Keith Cohen as 'The Laugh of the Medusa' the following year. See my short post on this essay published on 24 June 2013: click here. 

 

[5] Although this line is frequently attributed to anarcho-feminist Emma Goldman, it never actually appears in any of her work. It was invented by the American anarchist Jack Frager in 1973 for a series of t-shirts and rather nicely transforms a much longer paragraph from the first volume of Goldman's two-volume autobiography into a memorable slogan: 

      "At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it." 

      - See Emma Goldman, Living My Life, Vol. 1 (Alfred A. Knopf, 1931), Ch. 5, p. 56. 

 

 

Bonus: those who are particularly interested in this topic might like to click here to watch a book launch event for The Feminist Killjoy Handbook at The People's Forum (NYC), with Sara Ahmed & Mona Eltahawy in conversation (3 Oct 2023).

 

 

Objects Make Happy

Taffy From the Objects Make Happy series

 (SA/2024) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

At the heart of Graham Harman's object-oriented philosophy is the notion of allure.

 

Allure, says Harman, is something that "exists in germinal form in all reality, including the inanimate sphere" [2] and is the key to all causation. 

 

Allure is the way that objects - which are fundamentally withdrawn  - signal to one another from across the void: "Allure is the presence of objects to each other in absent form." [3] 

 

I love that sentence and love this (rather ghostly) theory. 

 

We may never be able to know an object in itself (i.e., in the fullness of its reality), but we can still come into touch with them and they can still affect us in a variety of ways, not always positively or in a manner that is beneficial to us; I have written elsewhere about the malevolent aspect of objects and what Byung-Chul Han terms the villainy of things [click here]. 

 

But, more often than not, they make happy, which is why when I think of happiness I think of objects [4].  

 

 

II.

 

The feminist writer and critical theorist Sara Ahmed - author of The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004) - has a fascinating take on happiness and objects in terms of affect theory. 

 

According to Ahmed, there is a sustained (and sticky) connection between our emotions and objects and it's important to realise that happiness, for example, "starts from somewhere other than the subject" [5]. 

 

In other words, to feel happy is to be randomly (but intimately) touched by something; it comes from outside; it's an inner state triggered by external objects (which may include other people, or cats, but which also includes plants, stars, and ideas). Ultimately, happiness is contingent, not essential [6].

 

Of course, as Ahmed points out, as we change over time - as our bodies age, for example - "the world around us will create different impressions" [7] and what makes happy one day may no longer be experienced as so delightful the next; Locke famously talks of the man who loves and then no longer loves grapes [8].

 

Having said that, some objects hold our affection and bring joy across an entire lifetime; I can't imagine a time when Taffy, pictured above, wouldn't make me feel happy. 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] This charming clay figure, about 9-inches in height, is one I inherited from my mother and whom she named Taffy (presumably because the hat reminded her of traditional Welsh dress). Originally, it contained a small candle which, when lit, illuminated the eyes and mouth in the darkness. It made her happy and it makes me happy. 

      Of course, some will suggest that it's because the object belonged to my mother and reminds me of her that this is why it makes happy. However, whilst this certainly adds to its affective value, I don't think that's the whole story.

 

[2] Graham Harman, Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things (Open Court, 2005), p. 244.  

 

[3] Ibid., p. 246.

 

[4] All too often, cultural theorists and philosophers like to investigate negative feelings such as shame, disgust, fear, hate, etc. But it's surely just as valid - and just as vital - to investigate more positive feelings, such as happiness. I agree with Nietzsche's counter-Christian teaching that ethical behaviour is the result of happiness (not vice versa) which is why it makes sense to surround oneself with the objects (be they beautiful or otherwise) that make happy.

 

[5] Sara Ahmed, 'Happy Objects', The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 29-51. The line quoted is on p. 29. 

 

[6] As Ahmed reminds us, "the etymology of 'happiness' relates precisely to the question of contingency: it is from the Middle English 'hap', suggesting chance". See 'Happy Objects', The Affect Theory Reader, p. 30. 

 

[7] Sara Ahmed, 'Happy Objects', The Affect Theory Reader, p. 31. 

 

[8] See John Locke, 'Of Modes of Pleasure and Pain', Chapter XX in Book II of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (dated 1690 but first pubished in 1689).

 

How Beautiful Yellow Is

 

Vincent van Gogh: The Yellow House (1888) 

Oil on canvas (72 cm x 91.5 cm)

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam 

 

Apparently, yellow is not a popular colour amongst 21st-century Europeans and Americans who, when surveyed, placed it way behind blue, red, and green. In fact, more people named it as their least favourite colour than their best-loved.

 

That surprises me, as I've always liked the colour yellow and all the things that are coloured yellow; from stars to sunflowers, ducklings to daffodils. 

Painters too have always had a thing for yellow and it was one of the primary colours used in prehistoric cave art; the yellow horse of Lascaux was painted 17,000 years before Franz Marc gave us his famous blue horses. 

 

If the English Romantic painter Turner was one of the first 19th-century artists to use yellow to suggest moods and emotions, it's the great Dutch post-Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh who is probably the painter most associated with the colour. 

 

During his period in the South of France (1888-1899), Van Gogh celebrated yellow in all its shades, from pale lemon to bright sulpher yellow. He even famously lived in house painted yellow and - it is believed by some - once attempted suicide by consuming yellow paint.

 

I don't know if that's true; and nor do I know if Van Gogh suffered from a rare medical condition - xanthopsia - which can alter perceptions of colour and give the world a yellowish glow. I doubt it. And I prefer anyway to think that Van Gogh, who was well-versed in colour theory, simply loved yellow for its emotional intensity (its joy and vitality). 

Perhaps, in the end, too much yellow - like too much sunlight and too much reason - can become overwhelming and end in madness. But a world without yellow would be immensely poorer and duller. 

 

And so that's why I'm going to paint my kitchen yellow ... 

A Lick of Yellow Paint 

 (SA/2024)

 

What Was I Thinking? (29 April)

Images used for the posts published on this date in 

2013, 2018, and 2022

 

 

Sometimes - especially those times when, like today, I can't think of anything else to write about - it's convenient to be able to look back and see what one was thinking on this date in years gone by; voyeurs, naughty nurses, female nipples, and circus elephants, apparently ... 

 

 

The Voyeur / Ooh Matron!

 

I suspect that way back on 29 April 2013, I was also stuck for new ideas, because both of these posts on Torpedo the Ark were essentially lifted from the queer little book Whores Don't Fuck between the Bed-Sheets: Fragments from an Illicit Lover's Discourse (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). 

 

I assembled this text after finishing my PhD in 2000, but it has it's origins in work that can be traced back to the the late 1980s, when I first began to collect the cards left by prostitutes in London phone boxes and was concerned with issues to do with sexuality and the subject [1]. 

 

In the first of these fragments, I examined the way in which the imperial male gaze is taken to its erotic conclusion by the voyeur: By watching others fuck, he exercises his power to probe and master bodies, assigning meaning to otherwise insignificant sexual activity.

 

An often solitary figure, the true voyeur crucially has no desire to join in: For his pleasure derives exclusively from the fact that, like a god, he has mastered the art of immaculate perception. In other words, he can look at life and love without his tongue lolling out. 

 

In the second of these fragments, meanwhile, I disussed how the figure of the nurse plays an important role within the pornographic imagination, where she is usually conceived either as a kindly angel who administers some form of erotic relief, or as the cruel representative of strict and punishing authority delighting in needles and cold latex gloves. 

 

For the British, however, reared as they have been within a Carry On culture, the figure of the nurse also plays an important role within the comic imagination and so it's virtually impossible to take the sexual stereotype seriously for long: fetishistic medical fantasies are invariably undermined by fond memories of Hattie Jacques. 

 

 

On the Politics of the Female Nipple 

 

Five years later, and I was now concerned with the female nipple as the site of socially constructed meaning and a politics of desire: 

 

For whilst the male nipple is just as sensitive to certain stimuli and can also be erotically aroused, it isn't subject to the same pornographic fascination or taboo within our culture and so can be freely displayed in a way that the female nipple cannot. 

 

However, if I was sceptical with the Free the Nipple campaign back in 2018, I'm still not on board with it here in 2024. For it seems to me that what I wrote then is still a valid reason for concern now; there's a naivety in this campaign which fails to consider the law of unintended (or unforeseen) consequences:

 

Consider, for example, what happens when famous singers, actresses and models jump on board and start posting images of their perfect breasts and super-perky nipples. It doesn't result in a great leap forward for womankind; it leads, unfortunately, to greater insecurity and a new trend in plastic surgery - so-called designer nipples. 

 

For it turns out that many women don't want to free their nipples; at least not straight away. They want first to have botox fillers injected into their areola so that their nipples might look like those of their favourite celebrities. Only when they have permanently erect-looking and symmetrical on-trend nipples do they feel confident enough to wear sheer dresses or see-through tops and make themselves subject to the world's gaze. 

 

Thus, ironically, an attempt to emancipate women, make them proud of their bodies and further equality, ends in lining the pockets of already very rich and invariably male cosmetic surgeons. Idealism, it seems, always collapses into gross materialism; for such is the evil genius of the world. 

 

 

On D. H. Lawrence and Circus Elephants 

 

There's a number of elephants lumbering throughout Torpedo the Ark, with posts on wild elephants, zoo elephants, ceremonial elephants, and, as in this post from 2022, circus elephants, as poetically imagined by D. H. Lawrence.

 

For Lawrence, it wasn't the clowns, the acrobats, or the showgirls on horseback wearing their sparkling costumes and feathers that most thrilled him when he went with Frieda to the circus in Toulon (France) in December 1928: it was the elephants. 

 

Whilst the magnificent tusker elephants in Kandy certainly left their impression on Lawrence, it was the circus elephants plodding around the ring and performing their tricks that inspired a series of short verses that he termed pansies. 

 

As verses go, they're amusing enough. But I was rather surprised that Lawrence wasn't more sympathetic to these ancient pig-tailed monsters; that he seemed to be of the view that elephants not only look old and worn out, but belong to a prehistoric world or time gone by, as if they were relics or living fossils, who have nothing more to offer than entertainment value (and ivory). 

 

And I was disappointed that he would suggest that performing beasts are having fun:

 

For whilst I'm not an expert in elephant psychology and welfare, I very much doubt they enjoy exposing their vast bellies or find it amusing to balance on a ball or drum. Nor - I imagine - do they want to plod or shuffle around a ring, or crawl on their knees in utmost caution. Does anyone really believe that the strange postures and poses they are forced to take up come naturally? Or that training doesn't involve cruelty and the brutal use of bull-hooks, whips, and electric prods? And let's not even mention the physical and emotional abuse these poor creatures are subjected to when they are not in the spotlight; confined and chained for hours on end, or transported from town to town in the back of trucks and boxcars.  

 

I would conclude now as I concluded two years ago: 

 

Even if Lawrence was writing a hundred years ago and so can't be expected to share a contemporary view of zoos and circuses in terms of so-called animal rights, it's strange that a writer who was acutely sensitive to animals in all their wild otherness or mystery - and who hated the attempt by mankind to impose its will over the natural world - should have not been angered or outraged by the indecent sight of an elephant performing on command. 

 

Notes

 

[1] I reflect on this book - its aims and necessity, etc. - in a post published on 1 October 2018: click here. 

 

 

Horses, Horses, Horses, Horses!

Horses, horses, horses, horses! [1]

I.

 

Yesterday morning, I was in a central London café sipping a mint tea when, suddenly, from the other end of the street, a commotion was generating ... 

 

I looked at my companion, who wanted to run. But we stayed sitting as a pair of terrified horses - including a white horse drenched in blood - galloped past, causing chaos as they collided with vehicles and shocked observers [2].

 

And not only did I hear Patti Smith singing from out of the remote past, but I remembered also something D. H. Lawrence once wrote: "While horses thrashed the streets of London, London lived." [3]

 

 

II.

 

Today, still upset at seeing such noble beasts in obvious distress, I ironically went with a friend to the Horse Hospital, to take another look at the artwork of Gee Vaucher, which, to be fair, is better than I first thought (even if the overtly political nature of the work does get a bit tiring).

  

However, the thing that really caught my attention was a nude female mannequin, posing provocatively, wearing a horse's head mask and standing before a large red plastic bin at the top of the ramp that leads to the first floor ... 

 

As my friend, a longtime member of the kink community who was distinctly unimpressed by Vaucher's work amusingly remarked: I may not know much about art, but I know what I like.

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Fig. 1: Patti Smith photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe on the cover of her album Horses (Arista Records, 1975): click here to listen to the three-part track 'Land' (part one: "Horses" / part two: "Land of a Thousand Dances" / part three: "La Mer(de)"). 

      Fig. 2: A mannequin with a horse's head was one I took at the Horse Hospital earlier today.

     Fig. 3: Quaker (the dark horse in the foreground) and Vida (the white horse bleeding profusely), taken in central London yesterday.  

 

[2] This sounds as if I'm recounting a nightmare, but it actually happened. Apparently, five military horses were spooked and bolted when building materials were dropped from height at a construction site in Belgravia, next to where they were on a training exercise. For a BBC news report, click here.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 102. 

 

 

Further Remarks on the Case of Gideon Falter

Gideon Falter: chief executive of the 

Campaign Against Antisemitism

 

In response to a recent post [1] in which I stuck up for the right to cross the road - be one a proverbial chicken or an openly Jewish individual - I had a charming email from someone telling me I'm a Zionist stooge at best and an apologist for genocide at worst. 

 

Surely you realise that Gideon Falter is an activist and provocateur and that the whole thing with him being stopped by the police was staged for the cameras?

 

Well, yes, okay - but that's not really the issue, is it? 

 

Even Rosa Parks [2] had pre-planned with others in the NAACP her courageous act of civil disobedience on that fateful day in December 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama. And she was perfectly happy to be photographed being fingerprinted when arrested for a second time, in 1956, one month into the Montgomery bus boycott that her initial arrest had sparked.

 

The fact that Parks might also be described as an activist and provocateur who understood the power of symbolic protest and how to use the media to get her point across, doesn't detract from the rightness of her actions in exposing the shameful reality of segregation.   

 

Similarly, the fact that Falter exposed that on a spring day in central London, in April 2024, a man can be stopped from going about his peaceful and perfectly lawful business and walking where he wishes to walk on the grounds that his openly Jewish appearance - he was wearing a yarmulke - would antagonise a pro-Palestinian crowd to such an extent that his safety couldn't be guaranteed by the Met police, is what matters here. 

 

At least that's what matters to those of us who value the freedom of the individual above that of a vitriolic and potentially violent mob seeking to intimidate; in other words, I don't care that it was a manufactured incident.       

Notes  

[1] See: 'Openly Jewish' (22 April 2024): click here. 

[2] Rosa Parks (1913 - 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. 

On the Triumph of Karaoke Culture and Punk Pantomime

Poster design for Pretty Vacant - The Story of Punk & New Wave 

(Not exactly Jamie Reid, is it?)

 

 

I. 

 

Shortly before he died in April 2010, Malcolm McLaren bemoaned the fact that artistic creativity (which is a chaotic phenomenon that often ends in failure) was increasingly becoming impossible within what he described as a karaoke world - i.e., an ersatz society, that only provides us with an opportunity to safely revel in the past achievements of others; a life lived by proxy [1]. 

 

And, whilst I'm a little uneasy with his use of words like authenticity, McLaren was making an important (though hardly original) point: Britain's got talent; but it's lost its soul. 

 

And so it is, fifteen years on, the Dominion Theatre in London's West End and numerous other venues around the UK and Ireland are planning to stage Ged Graham's Pretty Vacant - The Story of Punk & New Wave ...   

 

II.

 

Ged Graham is a 62-year-old Irish writer, musician, actor, podcaster and producer; what my mother would call a jack of all trades, but, let's be generous, and say he's a multi-talented and versatile individual with a great many passions and ideas. The sort of person who, when you speak with them, always has another project in the pipeline. 

 

The sort of person also who claims to have lived through punk as a teenager and now, à la Danny Boyle, wants to turn this event into a musical stage show; a combination of pantomime, karaoke, and nostalgia for those who want to sit down and enjoy an evening's entertainment. As Graham says in an interview: 

 

"At sixty-two you don't want to be in a nightclub, watching a band on stage. You want to be sat down with a glass of wine or an £8 bottle of beer in a theatre. The old knees just don’t want to do the standing up gigs anymore ..." [2] 

 

That may be true: but not all of us have come to the conclusion that punk is now simply a family-friendly narrative that provides an opportunity to reminisce and have a good singalong; some of us don't wish to be taken on a rollercoaster ride by an incredibly talented cast of musicians, singers and dancers; some of us seriously doubt that the punk attitude can be recreated on stage (even if it can be mimicked, just as punk fashions can be knocked up by costume designers).   

 

Graham may insist in a promotional statement that Pretty Vacant is "not just a show - it's a rebellion against the ordinary!" [3] - but that, as Steve Jones would say, is a load of old bollocks.  

I don't know if Malcolm will be spinning in his grave at this latest development, or looking on with Sid and laughing. But I do know that members of the following bands who - along with many, many more - presumably gave permission for their music to be used should hang their heads in shame:

 

Sex Pistols

The Clash

Blondie

The Damned

Ramones

Buzzcocks

Sham 69

The Undertones

Tom Robinson Band

Ian Dury and the Blockheads

The Police

The Jam

Generation X

Siouxsie and the Banshees

The Pretenders

Joy Division

The Stranglers

The Rezillos [4]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Readers who are interested can click here to watch McLaren deliver his final public talk at the Handheld Learning Conference (2009). Originally entitled 'Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Txt Pistols', the talk is now better known by the title it appears under on ted.com - 'Authentic creativity vs. karaoke culture'. 

[2] Interview with Ged Graham by Kevin Cooper on UK Music Reviews (5 March 2024): click here. 

[3] Click here to read this statement in full on the Pretty Vacant website. You can also buy tickets, visit a picture gallery, sign up to a mailing list, or watch a trailer for the show on the website. The latter can also be found on YouTube: click here.  

 

[4] Obviously, I am disappointed with some of these bands far more than others.    

Openly Jewish (This is the Nine O'Clock News in London 2024)

An unidentified policeman prevents Gideon Falter 

from crossing the road 

 

 

I have to admit, I was never a fan of the BBC satirical sketch show Not the Nine O'Clock News (1979-82); too smug and Oxbridgey for my tastes I'm afraid [1].

 

And apart from the sketch featuring Pamela Stephenson in a white bra inviting an American Express card holder to rub her tits [2] - and the one featuring Rowan Atkinson as Gerald the gorilla (Wild, I was absolutely livid!) [3] - there is really only one other memorable sketch ...

 

And that's the one in which Atkinson plays a police inspector questioning Griff Rhys Jones's constable Savage, who has repeatedly brought ludicrous and trumped up charges against a Mr Winston Kadogo, on the grounds that he possessed "curly black hair and thick lips" [4].     

 

I thought of this sketch skewering police racism when I heard an officer (outrageously) threaten to arrest a man in central London for being openly Jewish ... [5]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The three male performers in Not the Nine O'Clock News - Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith, and Griff Rhys Jones - were all public school boys who went on to study at Oxbridge. Most of the writers on the show, including Andy Hamilton, Clive Anderson, and Richard Curtis, were also graduates of these elite universities.     

[2] Series 2, episode 3 (1980): click here.

[3] Series 2, episode 5 (1980): click here.

[4] Series 3, episode 2 (1980): click here.

[5] Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, was prevented from going about his lawful business and threatened with arrest for potentially antagonising members of a pro-Palestinian march by his very Jewishness (Aldwych, Sat 13 April, 2024): click here.  

 

 

For a follow up post to this one, in response to an angry (and I would say antisemitic) email, click here.  

     

 

 

Where History and Crime Intersect: On the Philosophical Fascination for Murder with Reference to the Case of Prado

Prado (aka Count Linska de Castillon)

L'homme le plus intéressant du monde

"Crime is glorified, because it is one of the fine arts, because it can be the work only of exceptional natures, because it reveals the monstrousness of the strong and powerful, because villainy is yet another mode of privilege."  - MF

 

 

I. 

 

I mentioned in a recent post how the artist Paul Gauguin was fascinated by the trial of the Spanish-born thief and murderer known as Prado, and how he (and 200 other famous faces) witnessed the execution of the latter on 28 December, 1888; an event which - along with Van Gogh's self-mutilation a few days earlier - inspired his brutal ceramic self-portrait in the form of a jughead [1].

 

But what I didn't discuss was why it is so many artists and intellectuals have a fascination with crime and seem to feel a sense of affinity with violent criminals. So I thought I'd do that here, with particular reference to the Prado case, which Nietzsche mentions in his brief correspondence with the prolific Swedish writer August Strindberg, shortly before his collapse in the first week of January 1889.  

 

 

II.

 

Whilst it is known that Prado was (i) born in Spain; (ii) brought up in the large coastal city of Gijón; (iii) had already travelled the world before turning sixteen; and (iv) twice married, history doesn't record his real name - and he chose never to reveal it. 

 

Ending up in France, Prado lived by his wits; which is to say by stealing and poncing off the girls who thought he loved them. 

 

In January 1886, he cut the throat of one of these girls - Marie Aguetant - who was believed to support herself (and him) by working as a prostitute. After being eventually caught and put on trial, Prado was sentenced to to death by guillotine at La Roquette Prison, Paris [2].

 

For some reason, his story captured the imagination of press and public alike, including members of the cultural elite, who regarded him as an intrepid adventurer. He was even said by some to be the most interesting man in the world.       

 

 

III. 

 

As mentioned, even Nietzsche, writing to Strindberg in late 1888, praises Prado and claims that he wrote Ecce Homo in the manner of the latter. It is, he says, in his nature to love such individuals and, as a philosopher, he prides himself on the fact that he has become familiar "with more evil and more questionable worlds of thought than any one else" [3].   

 

Strindberg is clearly a little taken aback by this and is not convinced that there's anything to admire or imitate in those who live outside the law: 

 

"It appears to me that in your liberality of spirit, you have to some degree flattered the criminal types. If you regard the hundreds of photographs which illustrate Lombroso's types of criminal, you will be convinced that the felon is a low sort of animal, a degenerate, a weakling who does not possess the necessary faculties to enable him to evade the more powerful laws which oppose themselves to his will and power. Just observe how stupidly moral most of these brutes really appear!" [4]

 

Nietzsche replies to this in a letter written in Turin, dated 7 December:      

"There is no doubt that the hereditary criminal is decadent, even feeble-minded. But the history of criminal families, for which a vast amount of material has been collected by Galton in his Hereditary Genius, always leads us back to some individual who happened to be too strong for some particular stratum of society. The last great trial of the criminal Prado gives us a classical example. Prado was superior to his judges and his lawyers in self-control, spirit and audacity." [5]

 

This attraction felt by artists and philosophers for criminals is discussed in an excellent essay by Lisa Downing, who examines Michel Foucault's fascination with those who have a penchant for murder; an event of prime interest where, the latter argues, history and crime intersect ...

 

 

IV.

 

Alonside the homosexual and the pervert, the figure of the criminal appears in Foucault's work as one of the quintessential modern subjects produced by the various discourses of the medical and legal professions. 

 

Whilst he seems to have sympathy (and affection) for anyone deemed abnormal, it's the murderer whom he finds particularly attractive, thereby following in a Romantic tradition that associated art and rebellion with evil, and imagined that the writing of literature was itself an act of criminal transgression. 

 

Foucault is an original thinker, but it's difficult to imagine his work in this area without referring back to that of Sade, Nietzsche, and Bataille, all of whom were intrigued by the relationship between words and deeds, the socio-linguistic construction of criminality, and the manner in which truly sovereign individuals might express their sovereignty.      

 

Foucault isn't concerned with the motivations of a murderer, but, rather, "the historical, epistemic conditions - the cultural preoccupations, fantasies, fears, norms, and power struggles for authority - that conditioned the production of the crimes and shape our understanding" [6]. 

 

Which is fair enough. 

 

However, whilst commenting on the aesthetic rewriting of crime which occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries: 

 

"Foucault at times seems to fall prey to the very fascination he describes. The terms in which he discusses the act of murder are often ambiguous and ambivalent: they occupy a place somewhere between describing an attitude and embodying it." [7]

 

As evidence of this, Downing quotes a passage from I, Pierre Rivière ... [8]:

 

'Murder is the supreme event. […] Murder prowls the confines of the law, on one side or the other, above or below it; it frequents power, sometimes against and sometimes with it. The narrative of murder settles into this dangerous area; it provides the communication between interdict and subjection, anonymity and heroism; through it infamy attains immortality.' [9]

 

As Downing rightly asks, wtf is Foucault doing here: is he "mimicking the popular hyperbolic fantasy of the act of murder as rebellious gesture of social contestation, committed by the 'outsider'", or is he (unwittingly or otherwise) "glorifying it, reveling in it?" [10].

 

For Downing, Foucault has the hots for Rivière with his beautiful reddish-brown eyes, and this erotic-aesthetic aspect of his writing on criminals strikes a discordant note to say the least. That said, it should also be noted, of course, that "the pleasure Foucault finds in Pierre Rivière’s confession" [11] is first and foremost of a textual nature. 

 

Downing concludes that what Foucault's (slightly kinky) fascination with criminality suggests most compellingly "is the extent to which, just as none of us can step outside of power, so none of us are entirely separate from the tastes and seductions of our own cultural moment" [12] - even if we are philosophers ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post entitled 'A Tale of Two Toby Jugs' (19 April 2024): click here. 

 

[2] On the morning of his execution, Prado showed no emotion and even laughed at the priest who had come to comfort him for being more nervous than he was. He also requested that the priest didn't waste his breath speaking of God, or walk beside him to the scaffold. All of which is, if true, extremely admirable.  

 

[3] Nietzsche writing to August Strindberg, quoted by Herman Scheffauer in 'A Correspondence between Nietzsche and Strindberg', The North American Review, Vol. 198, No. 693 (August 1913), pp. 197-205. This essay can be read on JSTOR: click here.

 

[4] Letter from August Strindberg to Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted by Herman Scheffauer in the essay cited above.

 

[5] Letter from Nietzsche to Strindberg, quoted by Herman Scheffauer, op. cit.

 

[6] Lisa Downing, 'Foucault and true crime', in Lisa Downing (ed.), After Foucault: Culture, Theory and Criticism in the 21st Century (Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 185-200. I am quoting from the online version of this essay: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316492864.014 

 

[7] Ibid.

 

[8] I, Pierre Riviére, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother: A Case of Parricide in the 19th Century, is a study by Michel Foucault, trans, Frank Jellinek (University of Nebraska Press, 1982). 

 

[9] Lisa Downing, quoting Foucault from I, Pierre Riviére ... in 'Foucault and true crime' (op. cit.)  

 

[10-12] Lisa Downing, 'Foucault and true crime' ...

 

  

A Tale of Two Toby Jugs

Fig. 1: Paul Gauguin: Jug Self-portrait (1889)

Fig. 2: Friar Tuck character jug made in England (mid-20thC)

 

I. 

 

The 19th-century French artist, Paul Guaguin, was an interesting and influential figure who produced some astonishing work in a number of mediums, including ceramic; first during the period 1886-1888 (a couple of months of which he spent living in Arles with his friend Vincent Van Gogh) and then again from 1893-1895 (after returning to Paris from his first trip to Tahiti).  

Whilst there are thought to be around sixty of Gauguin's ceramic pieces still surviving, the one that is perhaps best known is a self-portrait in the form of a jug made shortly after his famous bust-up with Van Gogh, in early 1889. 

 

Whilst being threatened with a razor and then having to deal with a madmen cutting off part of his left lughole would undoubtedly be unsettling, Gauguin also witnessed a second traumatic event a few days later; the beheading of a notorious Spanish murderer, Prado, in Paris [1].

 

These two things clearly influenced his macabre and grisly ceramic self-portrait, in which coloured glaze is used to suggest blood running down the side of his face and congealing at his neck. If one looks closely, one sees that an ear is missing. The closed eyes, meanwhile, suggest a death mask. 

 

It's a brilliant - if brutal - work, reproductions of which largely fail to convey both the brilliance and brutality.

 

 

II. 

 

Having said that, I still wouldn't swap the Friar Tuck Toby jug [2], pictured above, which was one of my mother's most treasured possessions and which she kept in the cupboard by the gas meter for over seventy years.  

 

For despite the fact that this object used to frighten me as a small child and lacks the artistic, cultural and finacial value of Guauguin's piece, it means far more to me. Walter Benjamin insists that a mass manufactured object lacks aura - but that, I find, is simply not true. 

 

Or, even if it is true, I don't care; my mother's Friar Tuck Toby jug has a magical presence for me (as well as sentimental value, which certain intellectuals like to sneer at and find indecent, although Roland Barthes appreciated its importance).        

 

Notes

 

[1] Prado had murdered a prostitute. Gauguin - like Nietzsche - thought his sentence unjust and the execution profoundly disturbed him; not least because, according to his account, it was botched and it took two attempts to decapitate the prisoner. 

      Prado was executed on 28 December, 1888. Van Gogh, with whom Gauguin had discussed Prado's case, mutilated his ear on 23 December. Thus, it was anything but a merry Christmas that year for Gauguin. 

 

[2] I'm sure a collector or an expert in this area will tell me that what I have is not, in fact, a traditional Toby jug, but rather a character jug - the difference being that the latter only features the head and face and not the full body. Be that as it may, my mother always called her piece a Toby jug and I grew up referring to it as such and don't intend to stop calling it a Toby jug now.