Reflections of a Former Eco-Pagan

Pagan: The Magazine of Blood-Knowledge

'The Green Issue' (Issue XXIX, Sept 1989)

 

 

I. 

 

I know that for many people the attempt to combine ecopolitics with some form of religious faith is something new and exciting, but I was working in this (dangerous) area thirty-five years ago, during a time when I identified as a pagan of a distinctly dark green variety and called for countercultural revolution and Lebensreform.

 

Not only was I member of the Green Party in 1989, but Pagan Magazine was enthusiastically advocating a kind of Year Zero primitivism that might have made even Pol Pot uncomfortable. In issue XXIX, for example, I cheerfully called for halving the UK population and praised the blood and soil philosophy of senior Nazi Party official Richard Walther Darré [1].

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, looking back, I'm mortified by my own moral idealism and fanaticism which, somewhat ironically, I was only able to overcome via an intensive reading of Nietzsche and D. H. Lawrence during 1994-2000; two of the authors who had led me to the edge of the Abyss in the first place.   

 

Nevertheless, I don't regret the fact that I explored the mad political and religious fantasies that I did during the mid-late '80s and early 1990s. 

 

It's because of my own background in ecospirituality and ecofascism, that I understand perfectly what motivates radical activists such as Roger Hallam; co-founder of the environmental movement Extinction Rebellion, who is currently serving a five year jail sentence for causing a public nuisance [2].  

 

And it's why I understand also what attracts people to charismatic conspiracy theorists such as David Icke, whose obsession with New Age philosophies didn't prevent him from becoming a national spokesman for the Green Party at around the same time I was working in the press office of their London HQ [3].       

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Darré was one of the leading Blut und Boden ideologists and served as Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture. Not only was he a high-ranking functionary in the Nazi Party, but he was also a senior commander in the SS. It is important to recall that in 1933 many environmentalists and conservationists in Germany welcomed Hitler's regime and praised the Nazis for creating nature preserves, championing sustainable forestry, curbing air pollution, caring about animal welfare, etc. 

      Readers who are interested in knowing more should See Anna Bramwell's Blood and Soil: Walther Darré and Hitler's Green Party (Kensal Press, 1985). Her later work, Ecology in the 20th Century: A History (Yale University Press, 1989) is also recommended.

 

[2] Readers who visit Hallam's website will note that a blog containing an archive of his writings since 2017 has a whole section entitled 'Sprituality', exploring dark nights of the soul and ecstasies of being. Hallam also reveals why, for him, Jesus is still the Man: click here.

 

[3] Icke and myself were both forced to resign roles within the Green Party at around the same time; he because of a penchant for wearing turquoise shell-suits and me for favouring traditional Tyrolean jackets. Admittedly, there were other factors apart from fashion choices that contributed to our leaving; for example, he went on Wogan in April 1991 and claimed to be the Son of God and I was openly contemptuous of the leadership of the Party (and most of the members).    

 

 

Björnjakt

 

"But leaden death is at his heart, / Vain all the strength he plies. 

And, spouting blood from every part, / He reels, and sinks, and dies." [1]

 

 

The ancient peoples of Northern Europe revered the brown bear for its strength and some regarded it as the animal ancestor of mankind; others believed that bears formed a bridge between the natural world and that of the gods (Odin and Thor were both said to take the form of a bear when visiting Midgard).

 

Even in modern times, the name Björn - meaning bear - is still common and respected across Scandinavia, particularly in Sweden,  a nation whose penal code makes cruelty to animals - be it intentional or due to gross carelessness - a criminal offence punishable with a large fine and/or imprisonment. 

 

Protection is thus afforded to all animals capable of suffering, including bears ...

 

And so it was surprising as well as distressing to read this morning in The Guardian [2] that Swedish hunters have already slaughtered 150 brown bears in the opening two of days of the annual bear hunt and that the government has authorised the shooting of a further 336 bears, thereby reducing the overall population by 20%, and placing the future of the animal in serious jeopardy.

 

Obviously, this annual bear hunt is a controversial event and has attracted opposition: but still it continues, with the hunters afforded full police protection, and still these magnificent beasts are killed for no reason other than to satisfy the blood-lust of a few individuals who call what they do sport and insist it's part of their cultural heritage. 

 

Last year saw a record-breaking cull of 722 bears (and let's not mention the fact that large numbers of wolves and lynx are also killed in similar authorised hunts). 

 

This is further depressing due to the fact that brown bears were only recently brought back from the edge of extinction in Sweden; their numbers recovering to a peak of 3,300 in 2008. Since then, thanks to the licensed annual hunts, that number has been reduced by 30% to around 2,400. 

 

At this rate, it won't be long before the number of bears is once again believed to be too small to maintain a viable population, not just in Sweden, but in neighbouring regions across the border with Norway. Appeals by the Norwegians to rethink the number being killed fell on deaf Swedish ears, however.   

Where, one wonders, are the EU officials who are supposed to ensure that the EU directive prohibiting the hunting or killing of a strictly protected species (such as the brown bear) is adhered to? Why are they turning a blind eye to the hunting of large carnivores, not just in Sweden, but in other European countries, including Romania and Germany, for example? 

 

Could it be because the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen - and note the cruel irony of her first name (meaning she-bear) - wants to appease the powerful farming lobby and has had it in for wild beasts ever since a wolf killed her pet pony in 2022 ...? [3]

 

 

Notes 

[1] Abraham Lincoln, 'The Bear Hunt', in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I, ed. Roy P. Basler, Marion Dolores Pratt, and Lloyd A. Dunlap (Rutgers University Press, 1953), pp. 386-89. Click here to read on the Poetry Foundation website.

 

[2] See Beata Furstenberg, 'Swedish hunters kill more than 150 brown bears in first days of annual cull', The Guardian (23 August, 2024): click here. I'm grateful to the author of this article for many of the details in this post.

 

[3] See Louise Guillot, 'Von der Leyen is campaigning hard - against the wolf', on politico.eu (6 June, 2024): click here. 

 

Readers who are concerned about what's happening in Sweden might like to visit the website of Sweden's Big Five - a carnivore protection project that provides information and images on resident populations of lynx, wolf, bear, wolverine, and human being: click here. 

 

Have the German People Sacrificed Their Soul?

Elon Musk's Tesla Gigafactory (Grünheide)

 

 

Once upon a time, there was a land stretching north of the Rhine all the way to a far-off northern sea and which, south of the mighty river, was covered by a vast impenetrable forest of dark fir and pine-trees, home to deer and elk and wild-boar, to grey shadowy wolves and growling brown bears.

 

"This Hercynian forest created the greatest impression on the Roman imagination. No one knew how far it stretched. [...] A great silence pervaded everywhere, not broken by the dense whisper of the wind above." [1] 

 

And the blue-eyed people who lived in this ancient land worshipped the trees that were so strong in life and nailed the heads of their enemies to them. The sap-conscious trees provided them with shelter and strength and fed their souls. The enormous inhuman power of the forest was greater even than that of the Roman army. 

 

"The true German", writes D. H. Lawrence, "has something of the sap of trees in his veins even now: and a sort of pristine savageness [...] He is a tree-soul, and his gods are not human." [2]  

If that's the case, however, then how do we explain the fact that the German government has allowed construction of a Tesla gigafactory - i.e., a factory producing large numbers of batteries for electric vehicles - resulting in the destruction of over 500,000 trees? [3]

 

In the name of Net Zero and the so-called green economy, hat das deutsche Volk seine Seele geopfert?

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, Movements in European History, ed. Philip Crumpton (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 45. 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 87.

[3] Satellite images of the site in the Berlin-Brandenberg area show that over 800 acres of forest were cut down between March 2020 and May 2023: that's almost three times the size of Kew Gardens. 

 

 

Notes on (Not) Being Nice

Louis Balfour: Presenter of Jazz Club

(Played by John Thomson)

 

 

I. 

 

According to a book published in 2017 by Alain de Botton and his fellow eggheaded idealists at The School of Life [1], niceness is something that needs to be rediscovered; for niceness is, they say, a hugely important quality and one of the highest achievements of humanity. 

Conceding that the Latin root of the word nice - nescius - means ignorant and that niceness is often equated with being weak, poor, boring, and sexless, those who affirm it as a virtue insist that to be nice is not only to be more pleasing and agreeable, but also to be more charitable and forgiving; more patient and willing to listen to others. 

 

However, I think this is to conflate niceness with kindness, despite the Stoic insistence on keeping these things distinct [2]. 

 

 

II. 

 

D. H. Lawrence, of course, would have none of Botton's bullshit. He mocks those who pride themselves on being nice and insist upon others being likewise. 

 

Particularly the English who, he says, are so awfully nice that they probably qualify as the nicest people in the world: "And what's more, they're very nice about being nice" [3]. It's their niceness that makes them superior. 

Unlike the puppeteer in Walter Wilkinson's novel The Peep Show (1927), Lawrence is offended by those who are too nice to him. 

 

Thus, whereas the former refuses to be embittered by his experiences and is determined to remain cheerful in the belief that, on the whole, most people are nice to him, the latter says he would "spit on such niceness" [4]. 

For Lawrence thinks it naive to retain faith in an ideal of niceness when "the world is not altogether a nice place to show puppets" [5] and is full of people who are mean and vulgar and callous beneath their niceness. 

 

Because I think that's true, I would echo Lawrence's prayer: "God save me from the nice ordinary people" [6] - and from having to be nice!

 

   

Notes

 

[1] Alain de Botton is a Swiss-born British author and pop-philosopher who co-founded The School of Life in 2008. The book - On Being Nice - was published by The School of Life in 2017. 

      For the record: I don't like Botton and I don't like his School. I also agree with Lisa Levy who dismissed an earlier series of self-help books published by the School as consisting of jargon "pitched somewhere between the banal banter of daytime talk shows and the schedule for a nightmarish New Age retreat".        

      See her essay 'How to Think More (But Not Better): Alain de Botton's School of Life', in the Los Angeles Review of Books (11 May, 2013): click here.

[2] If I'm not mistaken, in Stoic philosophy whilst kindness involves treating others fairly and is therefore an aspect of justice (one of the cardinal virtues alongside wisdom, courage, and moderation), niceness is not seen as fundamental to human goodness (and might even be thought to be simply the appearance of kindness; one might behave nicely in order to seem good).   

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'The English are so nice!', The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 568-569. The line quoted is on p. 569.

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Review of The Peep Show, by Walter Wilkinson', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 321-327. The line quoted from is on p. 326.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., p. 327. 

D. H. Lawrence and the Wandervögel

Wandervögel [1] by H. M.Brock [2]

 

"And they tramped off to the forests with sturdy youths bearing guitars, twang-twang! They sang the Wandervogel songs, and they were free. Free! That was the great word. Out in the open world, out in the forests of the morning, with lusty and splendid throated young fellows, free to do as they liked, and, above all, to say what they liked." - D. H. Lawrence [3]

 

 

In his 1924 'Letter from Germany', D. H. Lawrence briefly mentions the queer gangs of youths and maidens carrying rucksacks, he has observed in Heidelberg. They strike him as strange and somewhat primitive; "like loose roving gangs of broken, scattered tribes" [4], full of a new kind of faith born of the silent forest and the unalterable German soul.

 

Later, whilst in flowery Tuscany in the spring of 1927, Lawrence is stirred to comment on two German youths striding purposively southwards toward the sun. And this time he even names them for what they are:

 

"Yesterday, in the flood of sunshine on the Arno at evening, I saw two German boys [...] They were dark-haired, not blondes, but otherwise the true Wandervogel type, in shirts and short trousers and thick boots, hatless, coat slung in the rucksack, shirt-sleeves rolled back, above the brown muscular arms, shirt-breast open from the brown, scorched breast and the face and the neck glowing sun-darkened as they strode into the flood of evening sunshine, out of the narrow street. They were talking loudly to one another in German, as if oblivious of their surroundings [...] And they strode with strong strides, heedless, marching past the Italians as if the Italians were but shadows." [5]  

 

Emphasising the uncanny, almost inhuman, but nontheless wonderful aspect of their presence, Lawrence continues:

 

"In spite of the fact that one is used to these German youths, in Florence especially, in summer, still the mind calls a halt, each time they appear and pass by. If swans, or wild geese flew honking, low over the Arno in the evening light [...] they would create the same impression on one. They would bring that sense of remote, far-off lands which these Germans bring, and that sense of mysterious, unfathomable purpose."  [6] 

 

For whatever strange reason, the Wandervögel "make a startling impression" [7] on Lawrence in a way that other youths tramping about - including the English - do not. Watching them, transports him back in time and "Germany becomes again to me what it was to the Romans: the mysterious, half-dark land of the north, bristling with gloomy forests, resounding to the cry of wild geese and of swans, the land of the stork and the bear and the Drachen and the Greifen" [8]. 

 

There's nothing ridiculous about the Wandervögel: they are simply extraordinary and one is left not quite knowing what to think or feel about them; genuinely other, they seem to belong to an unknown race and far-off land. 

 

Perhaps that's why having been sent to Dresden as teenagers in order to complete their education, both Hilda and Constance Reid gave the "gift of themselves" [9] to sturdy German youths with whom they talked, and sang, and camped under the trees; for there's nothing as exciting as loving "creatures from the beyond, presaging another world" [10].

 

Notes

 

[1] The Wandervögel were members of a bourgeois anti-bourgeois youth movement or subsculture that existed in Germany between the years 1896 and 1933 and who subscribed to an eco-völkisch philosophy that rejected many aspects of modern urban-industrial civilisation. 

      Mostly, they went hiking in the woods, sang songs, sunbathed, and dreamed about reviving old Teutonic pagan values. They might be thought of as a more radical version of the Boy Scouts, although some commentators, such as Gordon Kennedy, prefer to regard them as proto-hippies. At its peak, the movement - which was divided into three main national groups - had up to 80,000 members. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the movement was outlawed and members were absorbed into the Hitler Youth or, if female, into the League of German Girls.      

 

[2] Henry Matthew Brock (1875 - 1960) was a British illustrator. Many works of Victorian and Edwardian fiction contained his drawings. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 6-7.

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Letter from Germany', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 151. 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Flowery Tuscany', in Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Smonetta de Filippis (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 239.

 

[6] Ibid.

 

[7] Ibid., p. 240.  

[8] Ibid. 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover ... p. 7.

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, 'Flowery Tuscany', in Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, p. 241. 

 

 

Eye of the Tiger

Thou hast no speculation in those eyes ...[1]

 

 

It's disconcerting enough when Phoevos the cat sits and stares at me, particulary if naked like Derrida [2], so it must be almost unimaginably awkward (and significantly more frightening) to be caught in the gaze of a tiger ...

 

I'm told that thanks to a mirror-like structure behind the retina called the tapetum lucidum their night vision is far superior to ours, but that they don't see such a wide range of colours. It's movement that catches their attention and shape that they focus on; not hues, tints, and tones. But then, tigers are primarly concerned with stalking prey, not admiring the chromatic splendour of their environment. 

 

According to D. H. Lawrence, who knows a good few things on the subject of animal vision, the tiger is, in a sense, almost blind to the rest of the world, absorbed as it is in its own fullness of being:

 

"The eyes of the tiger cannot see, except with the light from within itself, by the light of its own desire. Its own white, cold light is so fierce that the other warm light of the day is outshone, it is not, it does not exist. So the white eyes of the tiger gleam to a point of concentrated vision, upon that which does not exist. Hence its terrifying sightlessness." [3]   

 

The tiger, inasmuch as it sees us at all, sees nothing but a rather insubstantial meal. The superior being which we like to think we are, is rendered null and void; we are almost hollow in his eyes, like animated scarecrows, or, at best, creatures that have lost their healthy animal reason [4]:

"It can only see of me that which it knows I am, a scent, a resistance, a voluptuous solid, a struggling warm violence that it holds overcome, a running of hot blood between its teeth, a delicious pang of live flesh in the mouth. This it sees. The rest is not." [5]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 3, scene 4, line 94.

 

[2] See Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, trans. David Wills (Fordham University Press, 2008). 

      In this work, Derrida discusses his experience of being stared at by his cat, Logos, whilst undressed. He describes a sense of discomfort - even shame - of being gazed upon in his all too human nakedness and all too naked humanity. 

      See also the post on TTA dated 5 Jan 2018 entitled 'When I Play With My Cat ... (Notes Towards a Feline Philosophy)': click here.  

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Twilight in Italy and Other Essays, ed. Paul Eggert (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 118.

 

[4] I'm thinking here of a famous section in Nietzsche's, The Gay Science (III. 224), where he writes: 

      "I fear that the animals consider man as a being like themselves that has lost in a most dangerous way its sound animal common sense; they consider him the insane animal, the laughing animal, the weeping animal, the miserable animal." 

      This is Walter Kaufmann's translation of the original German text (Vintage Books, 1974), p. 211. 

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, Twilight in Italy ... p. 118.

      Readers interested in what else Lawrence writes about tigers, might like to see the post on TTA dated 4 Oct 2023: click here. Although not one of Lawrence's totemic animals, nevertheless the tiger often appears within his work and held an important place in his philosophical imagination as one of the great realities of reality; i.e., a living thing that has come into its own fullness of being.

Punk's Dead Knot: Reflections on an Essay by Ian Trowell - Part 2: On Big Flavour Wraps and Vicious Burgers

You pays your money and you takes your choice ...

 McDonald's Big Flavour Wraps (2016) [a]

Vs Jamie Reid's Vicious Burger (1979) [b]

 

 

I. 

 

In the second part of Ian Trowell's dead knot essay, he discusses a 2016 TV ad by the "multinational fast-food franchise" [c] McDonald's for a new summer range of Big Flavour Wraps:

 

"Whilst not all of my observations and suggestions will be intentional on the part of the creative teams associated with the instigation and production of the commercial, my own intentions are to examine the ubiquitous, neutralized and atemporal representations of punk that resonate within the images and actions." [189]

 

Having established that, let's go ...

 

 

II. 

 

Via a detailed, imaginative, and theoretically-informed analysis of each scene, Trowell is very good at relaying the anachronistic tension present in an ad that seems designed to appeal to old punks on the one hand and disorientate them on the other: 

 

"How are we meant to feel, how did we used to feel, what has changed?" [190] 

 

Of course, the assimilation of punk began a long, long time before 2016: what is The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) if not a brutal exposure of the way in which big business indecently exploits young flesh and rapidly co-opts, commodifies, and mythologises groups like the Sex Pistols? 

 

Anyone who felt genuinely shocked and outraged by "such an unholy alliance between McDonald's and punk" [195] - or by Virgin Money's issuing of Never Mind the Bollocks and 'Anarchy in the UK' credit cards the year before [d] - clearly wasn't paying attention to what McLaren and Reid were warning about in the Swindle and clearly hadn't read their Guy Debord [e].

 

Punk - and the very word is already a misunderstanding - may have initially wished to "disrupt cultural, social and historical forms and habits through a multitude of methods" [195], but it didn't take long before the majority of punk performers were looking to build long-lasting careers in the music business. 

 

If rock 'n' roll died when Elvis joined the US Army in 1958, then perhaps we can say punk died when John Lydon decided to trust a hippie and sign an eight album deal with Virgin. McLaren and Reid fought a kind of resistance campaign operating behind enemy lines in those months following the breakup of the group - and, personally, I think the work produced in 1978-79 is some of the most provocative and amusing - but the game was basically up.         

Ultimately, no matter how much some of us wish it were otherwise, the majority of Brits like their Big Flavour Wraps [f]. And, as Trowell rightly notes, for all the faux outrage expressed from some quarters when the McDonald's 2016 campaign was launched, what we didn't hear were the voices of "disgruntled and disgusted [...] customers outraged at the linking of punk and the safe, normative environment of McDonald's" [195].

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The McDonald's Big Flavour Wraps campaign (2016) was devised by the American advertising company Leo Burnett - the home of so-called populist creativity. It featured ersatz punk imagery and also incorporated the Buzzcocks' 1978 single 'What Do I Get?', written by Pete Shelley, into a TV ad. Morrissey, like many other old punks, was not best pleased. 

      To watch the 30 second TV ad, dir. Jason Lowe, click here. For further details of the people who worked on the campaign, please click here. 

 

[b] Jamie Reid's promotional poster for the Sex Pistols' single 'C'mon Everybody', released from the soundtrack of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979), featuring a photo of vocalist Sid Vicious by Bob Gruen. For more details see the V&A Jamie Reid Archive: click here. 

      The Vicious Burger was just one of many imaginary products featured in a fake cinema ad in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980): "Feeling uptight, violent, or tense? Why not take it out on a sizzling Vicious Burger; the gristle ball that gives as good as it gets!"

 

[c] Ian Trowell, 'Punk's dead knot: Constructing the temporal and spatial in commercial punk imagery', Punk & Post-Punk, Volume 5, Number 2 (2016), pp. 181-199. Page references given in the post refer to the essay as published here. 

 

[d] See the post of 12 June 2015: click here. 

[e] Debord used the term récupération to refer to a process by which politically radical ideas and subversive art works are defused, incorporated, and commodified within mainstream culture (usually with the full collaboration of the media). See the post of 26 June 2023, in which I discuss this idea: click here. 

 

[f] According to statista.com, 96% of Brits were aware of McDonald's as a brand in 2023 and 60% not only liked to eat there, but expressed loyalty to the company.

 

  

Musical bonus: Buzzcocks, 'What Do I Get?', (United Artists, 1978): click here for the remastered 2001 version that appears on Singles Going Steady (Domino Recording Co., 2003). And for the official video, which Trowell provides a nice reading of in his essay (pp. 191-92), click here.

To read part one of this post, click here. 

Punk's Dead Knot: Reflections on an Essay by Ian Trowell - Part 1: I Got You in My Camera ...

 

Sex Pistols on Carnaby Street 

Photo by Ray Stevenson (1976)

 

I. 

 

Ian Trowell's dead knot essay [a] provides a fascinating insight into how time and space are encoded in punk imagery and demonstrates how a photograph, for example, is not simply an objective or neutral representation of reality, but an artefact that is both constructed and constructive of the world as we know it.    

 

The essay analyses two visual artefacts: a photograph of the Sex Pistols from 1976 and a 30-second TV commercial for McDonald's from 2016. Here I shall reflect on the first of these, whilst in part two of this post I shall discuss the latter. 

 

 

II.

 

Ray Stevenson's famous photo of the Sex Pistols strolling along Carnaby Street in the spring of 1976 still makes smile almost fifty years later, due mostly to what Trowell terms the performative iconoclasm and punk theatricality that is here captured and preserved on film; a second of their lives ruined for life, as Rotten might say [b]. 

 

According to Trowell, whilst Paul Cook is perfectly content to eat his grapes purchased from Berwick Street Market and remain not only partially obscured but as anonymous as the brown paper bag containing his fruit - and whilst Steve Jones and Johnny Rotten are both happy to clown and pose for the camera - Glen Matlock looks uncomfortable and out of place:

 

"His comportment is akin to Wittgenstein's multi-stable rabbitduck illusion in that he is both relaxed and not relaxed at the same time. He has taken the relaxed pose of a pop star going through the motions of a publicity photograph but it clearly seems that he is out of step with the posed anti-comportment of the rest of the band." [183]

 

Matlock, with his buttoned-up jacket and persona, doesn't quite fit in with a band safety-pinned together or with the wider punk aesthetic and ethos; he's just a little too smart and sensible; the slightly nervous observer of the scene, always hanging back and looking on: 

 

"It is a disorienting picture since he appears to know his time is running out, but at the same time he gives the impression of lingering with admiration and anticipation, an adumbration of what is to come evidently with or without him." [184]

 

If, due to Rotten's "hogging of the frame" [185], locating the picture's true point of magic is made difficult, neverthless, for Trowell, it's not Rotten's ugly mug but the fastened button on Matlock's jacket that forms the pictures punctum - i.e., that troubling detail that disturbs and distracts from the more general field of interest (the photo's studium); that which pricks our attention and often moves us with a certain poignant delight [c]. 

 

 

III. 

 

Glen Matlock's button and Wittgenstein's duckrabbit aside, Trowell gives us many other interesting ideas to consider; about Carnaby Street as a subcultural epicentre; about the staging of photography; and about Rotten's performance for the camera.

 

He suggests, for example, that "Stevenson's photograph bears an uncanny resemblance to Roger Fenton's 1855 photograph Valley of the Shadow of Death" [184]. I don't quite see it myself, however, and might just as easily imagine the Sex Pistols "photoshopped into the immediate foreground" [184] of many an image containing a tapering path. 

 

For instance, here's Jones and Rotten following the yellow brick road:

 

 

 

I wasn't entirely convinced either by Trowell's suggestion that we might consider Stevenson's photograph as "a precisely posed document with the four punk musicians reminiscent of the generic crouched figures of Captain Kirk and his original Star Trek crew materializing on a hostile, alien planet with their phasers at the ready to deal with the subcultural detritus that might turn on them at any moment" [186], although it's certainly an original reading.  

 

These things aside, for the most part one agrees with Trowell's interpretations and marvels at his insights. Rotten's captioning of Stevenson's photo as forced fun at Malcolm's behest is pithy, but one needs Trowell's essay to provide the theoretical and cultural context without which it's just another snap. 

 

The band may never have had much clue as to what was going on or what was at stake, but Malcolm knew exactly what he wanted to do and how he wanted the band to look: "The photograph tries to set out McLaren's deliberate positioning of punk as against the process of accumulation of all music genres and stylistic connotations and manifestations that have gone before." [188]

Obviously, in due course every image loses its power and becomes just another stock photo filed away in an archive: cultural fodder, as Trowell puts it. Some truly great pictures, however, retain their abilty to shock or seduce or to scandalise for decades; others, like this one, now mostly rely on Matlock's button to provide a point of interest.

 

Ultimately, argues Trowell, even the Sex Pistols "cannot escape time and space" [188] just as punk cannot escape being co-opted and commercialised by the forces of capital, as McLaren and Reid conceded in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980).

   

 

Notes

 

[a] Ian Trowell, 'Punk's dead knot: Constructing the temporal and spatial in commercial punk imagery', Punk & Post-Punk, Volume 5, Number 2 (2016), pp. 181-199. Page references given in the post refer to the essay as published here.  

[b] Somewhat surprisingly, Trowell doesn't refer us to the following lines in the Sex Pistols' song 'I Wanna Be Me': 'I got you in my camera / a second of your life, ruined for life'.

      He does, however, refer us to John Berger who argues that the true content of a photograph is invisible as it "derves from a play not with form, but with time ... it isolates, preserves and presents a moment taken from a continuum". See Understanding a Photograph (Penguin, 2013), p. 20. 

[c] Barthes's concept of the punctum raises a problem discussed by commentators such as Michael Fried and James Elkins; if it calls forth a highly idiosyncratic response on behalf of an individual viewer, then how can that experience ever be communicated and theorised? In other words, can Matlock's button ever intensely move anyone other than Trowell himself? I might understand what he says and appreciate what he writes, but is his experience of pleasure (as of pain) not uniquely his own?  

 

 

Musical bonus: Sex Pistols, 'I Wanna Be Me', b-side to 'Anarachy in the UK' (EMI, 1976): click here.  

 

Part two of this post can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

Why I Don't Believe in the Ruins

Buenaventura Durruti (1896-1936)

 

 

Whilst, philosophically, I am opposed to ideas of Wholeness or those structures - be they narratives, cathedrals, or classic rock albums - which would enframe us within the Absolute, as a political thinker I have never believed in the ruins with the same degree of fervour as the Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruti who famously declared in an interview:

 

"We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth and we carry a new world here, in our hearts." [1]

 

Such idealism - based on the Christian-moral conviction that one day the powerless shall triumph [2] and the utopian dream of a better future - always seems to end in a good deal of misery and suffering for those it promised to liberate, precisely because it's always easier to smash the old world and remain living among the ruins than it is to build up new habitats.  

 

Thus, whether it's the Khmer Rouge calling for Year Zero in Cambodia in the 1970s, or Keir Starmer's mission-driven Labour government presently promoting Net Zero here in the UK, I do not trust the zealotry that lies behind such thinking and suspect that A believer in the ruins is happy to pull the house down providing he can rule over the rubble ... [3]   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] It now seems certain that the interview with the Dutch-Canadian journalist Pierre van Paassen in which Durruti is reported as having said this - published in the Toronoto Star on 18 August 1936 - never took place and that Van Paassen either imagined it entirely, or drew upon remarks made to other reporters and published in other articles.

       Thus, amusingly, the most famous utterance of Spain's most famous anarchist is a romantic fiction. Nevertheless, as one commentator says, "it has resonated across the decades as a summation of revolutionary anarchist politics, a poetic and highly quotable paraphrasing of Bakunin, which was presumably Van Paassen's source material when formulating his most celebrated passage". 

      See Danny Evans, 'A Pile of Ruins? Pierre van Paassen and the Mythical Durruti' (12 Oct 2022) on theanarchistlibrary.org - click here.  

 

[2] See Matthew 5:5. I am aware that the Greek term πραεῖς [praus] which appears in the New Testament is usually translated as 'meek' in English, but I'm happy to go along with scholars, such as John Nolland, who argue that powerless is a more accurate interpretation. 

 

[3] According to the fact checking site truthorfiction.com, the line that I paraphrase here - 'An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes' - is misattributed to the Chinese philosopher and military strategist Sun Tzu. Nevertheless, that hasn't prevented it from being widely shared on social media during the last four years. 

 

     

Deadnaming (With Reference to the Case of Mara in the Book of Ruth)

Don't Deadname (after William Blake) 

Stephen Alexander (2024) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Perhaps because I have myself used and been known by several aliases, I'm somewhat sympathetic to those (often transgender or non-binary) individuals who object to what is termed deadnaming ...

 

That is to say, the sometimes unintentional, sometimes deliberate act of referring to a person by a name they no longer identify with or wish to be called, even if that name is the one that appears on their birth certificate and other official documentation and is deemed to be not only their legal name, but their real name referring to their true self (an assumed alias is invariably seen as suspicious; an attempt to conceal or deceive). 

 

Although the verb deadnaming is of recent origin - the OED dates it to 2013 - the insistence by others on calling an individual by an old name is not without historical - and indeed biblical - precedent ...

 

 

II. 

 

Readers with knowledge of the Old Testament will be familiar with the Book of Ruth and the story of how Naomi, having been forced by circumstances to leave Bethlehem and live in the land of Moab, has the tragic misfortune of losing her husband and both sons. 

 

Grief-stricken and near destitute, she decides to return to her homeland and is accompanied by her daughter-in-law, Ruth, at the latter's insistence; the Book of Ruth essentially describing the struggles of the two women to survive in a patriarchal society and in the face of much hardship. 

Of most interest to me, however, is the fact that when Naomi returns and is greeted by those who remember her, she tells them: "Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me".

 

Obviously, she refers at one level to the fact that God has left her bereft and in poverty. But her remark also indictes that the bitterness she is experiencing is so profound that it is transitional if not indeed transformational: she no longer feels herself to be the same woman upon her return to Bethlehem as the woman who left ten years earlier. 

 

If this is for the most part a psychological change, we can probably assume that she has also been physically aged by time and sorrow. Thus, it's perfectly understandable, I think, that she would wish to be known by a new name; a name more indicative of the woman she now recognises herself to be; i.e., one born of and shaped by bitterness. 

 

For whereas her old name, Naomi, means sweet-natured and pleasant of disposition, her new self-chosen name of Mara means bitter (although it might be noted that this name in Hebrew also implies strength; for just as hatred can itself become creative, so too can bitterness harden and make stronger).

 

The point is this: we all, like Mara, have the right to become-other and not to be deadnamed by those who value fixity over fluidity and would forever tie us to the past.   

 

 

Notes

[1] This image is based on Blake's print 'Naomi entreating Ruth and Orpah to return to the land of Moab' (1795), full details of which can be found on the V&A website: click here.