Who is Mencius Moldbug?

Photo of Curtis Yarvin 

By David Merfield (2023) 

 

'It is much easier to delude others if at the same time you delude yourself.'

 

 

I. 

 

Curtis Yarvin is one of those shadowy intellectuals who looks a little creepy and in fact is a little creepy (all that long-flowing hippie hair doesn't help).

 

Unfortunately, he isn't someone who can just be dismissed as a creep or ignored as a crank; not when he seems to have the ear of some powerful figures in the incoming Trump administration, including vice president elect J. D. Vance [1], who has spoken approvingly of some of Yarvin's ideas. 

 

Steve Bannon, who briefly served as the White House's chief strategist during Donald Trump's first administration, (before being unceremoniously fired by the President), is also a Yarvin fan.    

 

 

II. 

 

Also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, Yarvin (b. 1973) is an American writer (ironically from an educated secular liberal background) who - along with the British philosopher Nick Land - is credited as being the founder of the neo-reactionary movement (NRx) or so-called Dark Enlightenment - about which I will be speaking at Kant's Cave next month [2].  

 

In brief, Yarvin argues for a post-liberal, non-democratic America led by a powerful individual who is somewhere between an old-fashioned monarch and a tech-savvy corporate CEO. If you can imagine Elon Musk dressed in ermine, you pretty much get the picture.

 

Yarvin's early influences include those libertarian thinkers associated with the Austrian School of Economics, such as Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, although he's taken their ideas in an increasingly authoritarian direction.

 

In 2007, he started a blog - Unqualified Reservations - in which he set out his (formalist) political vision and announced his aim of destroying progressive ideas and illusions. This blog - which influenced Nick Land's thinking - was formally abandoned in 2016. 

 

As of 2022, Yarvin blogs on Substack under the page name Gray Mirror, where he continues his assault upon the Cathedral (his name for the liberal elite who determine what passes for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful today via the media and higher education) and advocates for a hard reset of society along neo-cameralist lines.  

 

III. 

 

Ultimately, whilst some may be seduced by Yarvin's utopian vision of Singapore or Shanghai über alles, I'm not. Nor am I convinced that Yarvin really believes what he says and he's clearly not above trolling and provocation for its own sake (which is not to say that we shouldn't take him seriously).

And, given the choice, I'd sooner go down the pub with Old Nick than Mr Moldbug. 

 

Partly, that's for old time's sake - Land was briefly my co-supervisor at the University of Warwick, in the 1990s, when working on my Ph.D. - but it's also because there are significant philosophical differences between the two that incline me towards the former.     

 

As Elizabeth Sandifer rightly says:

 

"The differences between Land and Moldbug, however, are vast. Moldbug is at his heart a utopian, his vision of neoreaction rooted in a Silicon Valley-style idealism that clever people can just engineer solutions to everything. Land, on the other hand, gave his big essay on the matter the deliciously gothically overripe title 'The Dark Enlightenment' and peppers his work with imagery of tentacled horrors and grim eschatology." 

 

Sandifer continues: 

 

"Indeed, what's really interesting about Land is that he presents his take on neoreaction as a logical extension of his earlier work. To him, the point is not so much that neoreaction is 'correct' in any sense, but rather a sort of cynical pragmatism that views reactionary tendencies as an inevitable force that can be harnessed productively for his larger goal of accelerating towards the bionic horizon where we all grow face tentacles." [3] 

 

In other words, Yarvin seems to retain a certain American optimism; whilst Land is a nihilist at heart and thinks that nothing human will make it out of the near-future ... [4]  

  

Notes

 

[1] See Jason Wilson's profile of Yarvin in The Guardian (21 Dec 2024): click here.

 

[2] Essentially, this post is a teaser for my upcoming paper on the Dark Enlightenment: see the TTA Events page for details: click here. Alternatively, visit the Philosophy for All website and go to the section on Kant's Cave: click here. 

      The paper is based on a four-part series of posts published on Torpedo the Ark back in July 2024: 1: On the Politics of Hate; 2: On Exiting the Present; 3: On the Zombie Apocalypse; 4: On Rejecting Universalism.  

 

[3] Elizabeth Sandifer, 'Haunt the Future', Art Against Art, Issue 3 (Winter 2016/17): click here to read online.  

 

[4] See Land's essay 'Meltdown' on the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit website: click here.  

Authorial Insouciance contra Editorial Zeal

What do I care if "e" is somewhere upside down?

 

 

I. 

 

I was amused to see John Worthen's 'Corrections to the Cambridge Edition of the Works of D. H. Lawrence' in the latest Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies [1] ...

No one can deny that it is a remarkable feat of editorial hard labour and Lawrence scholars owe Professor Worthen an enormous debt of gratitude for his tireless efforts to ensure that Bert's books are as close as they possibly can be to what he intended. 

 

The fact that Worthen continues to feel such peculiar responsibility - his phrase - not just for the volumes he worked on, but for the entire Cambridge Edition published between 1980 and 2018, is admirable and also rather touching [2]. 

 

 

II. 

 

However, whilst I agree entirely with Worthen's own assessment that the Cambridge Edition was a wonderful achievement, I don't share his sadness at the fact that the above contains minor errors (of spelling and punctuation, for example) and correcting typos is never going to be something that I'll have his unflagging enthusiasm for.

 

Ironically, that's in large part due to Lawrence, who expresses his unconcern for first or last (or most textually accurate and authoritative) editions of books; objects which, whilst often containing strange voices and beautiful visions, should never be allowed to 'disturb the haze of autumn' or 'blot out the sunflowers' and whose printed appearance didn't concern him in the least: 

 

'What do I care if "e" is somewhere upside down, or "g" comes from the wrong fount? I really don't.' [3]

   

 

Notes

 

[1] Volume 7, Number 1 (2024), ed. Susan Reid (published by the D. H. Lawrence Society).

 

[2] Worthen edited three volumes in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of D. H. Lawrence, co-edited five others, and was closely involved with the last three books. In total, there are forty volumes, published between 1980 and 2018. In addition, there are eight volumes of Lawrence's letters published by Cambridge University Press and a three-part biography, the first volume of which - D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years 1885-1912 - was written by Worthen (CUP, 1991). 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Bad Side of Books': introduction to A Bibliography of the Writings of D. H. Lawrence, edited by Edward D. McDonald, in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 75. 

Zen Fascism on the London Underground (Don't Be Kind - Be Cruel!)

Toby Triumph and one of his posters produced for 

Transport for London's #TravelKind campaign 

tobytriumph.com

 

 

I. 

 

Transport for London is the local government body with a multi-billion pound budget responsible for most aspects of the capital's transport network. 

 

The management board is appointed by the Chair (and Mayor of London) Sadiq Khan - or, as he doubtless now likes to be referred to, Sir Sadiq Khan [1]. It's the board's job to ensure Khan's transport strategy is implemented, whilst a Commisioner and several chief officers oversee day-to-day operations.

 

TfL likes to promote a caring corporate identity concerned with promoting and protecting various rights and ensuring that their customers (i.e., passengers) eat healthily (in 2019 Khan introduced restrictions on the advertising of foods and drinks high in fat, salt, or sugar). 

 

Some would describe this as a form of wokeness, but coming as I do from a punk background indebted to the Dead Kennedys, I prefer the term zen fascism [2].    

 

 

II. 

On 13 November 2017, TfL launched a new campaign - #TravelKind - which encouraged customers (i.e. passengers) on trains and buses to consider others and help make public transport a more enjoyable experience for everyone. 

 

The campaign is still running today and includes a series of posters designed by the illustrator Toby Triumph; a hippie originally from North Yorkshire, but who now spends his time betweeen London and New York. 

 

Working with the wonderful guys at the advertising agency VCCP [3], Triumph produced nine posters for use across the TfL network, all designed in his colourful 1960s and early '70s influenced style: smiley faces, peace signs, rainbows, etc.

 

Obviously, I'm not a fan: nor of TfL; nor of VCCP; nor of Sadiq Khan; nor of Toby Triumph; nor of hippie idealism; nor of corporate wokeism; nor of zen fascism. 

 

Indeed, one is almost tempted to channel the spirit of '68 and put a big black X through the injunction BE KIND on the poster that hangs at a nearby bus stop and replace it with the words SOYONS CRUELS! [4].   

 

Notes

 

[1] Khan was awarded a knighthood in the New Year Honours List (2025) in recognition of his achievements and extraordinary service. Whether he deserved such - and whether he should have accepted such (and thereby open himself up to the charge of gross hypocrisy) - is debatable.

 

[2] The phrase - Zen fascist - is used in the band's debut single 'California Über Alles' (Alternative Tentacles, 1979) and is one that I have incorporated in several posts on Torpedo the Ark. 

      What Jello Biafra says of Jerry Brown I think we can also say of Sadiq Khan; he too is a left-leaning moral authoritarian who enjoys exercising power just a little too much, whilst insisting that all Londoners wear a happy face and share his vision of a diverse multicultural, multi-ethnic, net-zero city. To play the song, click here.   

       

[3] Founded in 2002, VCCP describe themselves as a global integrated communications agency that creates innovative and exciting advertising designed to transform brands. Their founding principles include being happy and unprecious.

 

[4] Soyons cruels! was a slogan painted on the walls of the Sorbonne during the student uprisings in Paris, in May 1968. 

      This might seem an outrageous and offensive statement to many people today. However, if you remember your Nietzsche and Foucault - and know something of the politics of the period, infused with the ideas of the Situationists - then the injunction takes on a certain philosophical character.

      James Miller suggests some interesting readings of what being cruel might mean in practice in his essay 'Carnivals of Atrocity: Foucault, Nietzsche, Cruelty', in Political Theory, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Sage Publications, August 1990), pp. 470-491. Click here to access on JSTOR.

 

 

Bee Consciousness: the Latest Buzz from the World of Melittology (and How D. H. Lawrence Stung First)

Lars Chittka: The Mind of a Bee (Princeton University Press, 2022)

Stephen Buchmann: What a Bee Knows (Island Press, 2023)

 

I. 

 

According to Lars Chittka - a man who, after thirty-odd years of pioneering research, knows more (and cares more) about insect intelligence than most people - bees are sentient beings that deserve our respect and affection.

 

Not only can they count, recognise human faces, and learn simple tool use, for example, but Chittka's studies suggest that bees have a distinct sense of self, experience emotions, and conceptualise the world around them in abstract terms [1].

 

 

II. 

 

Stephen Buchmann, another insect-loving academic and author, has also arrived at the conclusion that bees have complex feelings - ranging from fear and frustration to joy - and, despite being small-brained, are far more mindful than even he imagined three decades ago [2].    

 

This, of course, raises ethical questions about how we treat bees, who play a vital role in food production (many fruits, nuts, and vegetables rely on bees for pollination). Presently, they are subject to shameful exploitation and abuse by an agricultural industry that makes billions of dollars from their intensive labour. 

 

Whilst the phenomenon of colony collapse disorder is often blamed on emerging diseases, the use of pesticides, and/or climate change, Buchmann and others concerned with this issue argue that the shocking decline in bee numbers is also due to the physical and psychological stress caused by the practices of industrialised agriculture; billions of bees are literally worked to death each year so vegans can pour almond milk on their organic cornflakes and feel virtuous [3].       

 

 

III. 

 

Like Buchmann and Chittka, I hope that things will change if enough people accept the fact that bees are sentient creatures - and can therefore suffer - and not merely tiny living machines [4].

 

And like both men, I am filled with a sense of wonder when I consider the mysterious, alien mind of a bee. 

 

However, coming as I do from an intellectual background heavily influenced by D. H. Lawrence, it does not surprise me in the least to discover that what is often called instinct in creatures such as bees, is the working of a primary mind - i.e., a form of spontaenous consciousness arising directly from the body, centeralising in the blood and nervous system.

 

Lawrence writes: 

"When a bee leaves its hive and circles round to sense the locality, it is attending with the primary mind to the surrounding objects, establishing a primary rapport between its own very tissue and the tissue of the adjacent objects. A process of rapid physical thought takes place [...] That is, there is a rapid sensual association within the body of the bee, equivalent to the process of reasoning; sensation develops sensation and sums up to a conclusion [...] which we may call a sensual concept." [5]

 

It's amusing, to me at least, how scientists, such as Buchmann and Chittka, have arrived at similar conclusions with reference to bee consciousness more than a century after Lawrence - who was a novelist and poet, not a zoologist, ethologist, or entomologist - wrote this astonishing passage.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lars Chittka is Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary University of London and author of The Mind of a Bee (Princeton University Press, 2022). 

      Not only has Chittka carried out extensive academic research on bees and their relationship with flowers, but he has been involved in a number of creative projects involving bees. For example, in 2006 he worked with installation artist Julian Walker to evaluate what bees think of Van Gogh's Sunflowers - click here - whilst in 2019 he and fellow members of the alternative rock band Killer Bee Queens released an album entitled Strange Flowers, which explores the world of bees and hopes to raise awareness of their fascinating biology. 

      Click here to play the first track on the album, entitled 'The Beekeeper's Dream'. The video uses footage from David Blair's surreal sci-fi documentary film Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees (1991).

 

[2] Stephen Buchmann is a pollination ecologist specializing in bees and an Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Entomology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. See his book, What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees (Island Press, 2023). 

 

[3] Unfortunately, as Annette McGivney points out in an article in The Guardian (2 April, 2023), finding a method to mass-produce crops whilst at the same time reducing the pain and suffering of bees is not going to be easy: "If vegetarians and vegans who avoid eating animals for ethical reasons were to apply the same standards to foods pollinated by bees, they would have very little on their plates." Click here to read McGivney's piece in full. 

 

[4] Presently, there are no animal welfare laws protecting insects in a lab setting and experiments are often deliberately designed to fatally stress bees in order to determine out how much the insects can tolerate when working in the fields.  

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Nathaniel Hawthorne', chapter VII of the First Version (1918-19) of Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 241.

 

 

On Herman Melville's Moby-Dick & Larry David's Mopey Dick

Leon Black / Herman Melville / Moby Dick

 

 

I. 

 

A friend of mine, Anja, has decided to read Melville's epic novel Moby-Dick (1851) between now and the end of May (she plans to digest a chapter a day for the next 135 days).

 

It's not a book that I've read: I've tried, but have never managed to get through more than a few pages. For some reason, I find it irritating. And this, despite the fact that Lawrence describes it as "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" [a].

 

Indeed, in his chapter on the book in Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), Lawrence also insists that Moby-Dick is "the greatest book of the sea ever written" [146]; a work whose profound symbolism inspires him with a mixture of fear and wonder. 

 

And, let me assure you, that's rare praise coming from Mr. Lawrence, who doesn't often gush about books or their authors. But Melville is, for him, the greatest poet of the sea:

 

"His vision is more real than Swinburne's because he doesn't personify the sea, and far sounder than Joseph Conrad's, because Melville doesn't sentimentalise the ocean and the sea's unfortunates." [122] [b]

      

Perhaps that's because, according to Lawrence, Melville has "the strange, uncanny magic of sea-creatures, and some of their repulsiveness" [122] - i.e., something not quite human. 

 

But never mind Melville, let's focus on the huge white sperm whale, Moby Dick, and discuss what it is that Lawrence finds so fascinating (and yet so terrifying) about these magnificent mammals whose commercial hunting began in the 18th-century and only came to an end in the 1980s [c].   

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, Lawrence being Lawrence, he is more interested in Moby Dick as a symbol. Although, like Melville, Lawrence is not quite sure what the warm-blooded whale symbolises. 

 

But that doesn't prevent him from declaring Moby Dick to essentially be a phallic symbol; "the deepest blood-being of the white race [...] our deepest blood-nature" [146]. 

 

And the fact that he is so cruelly and relentlessly hunted "by the maniacal fanaticism of our white mental consciousness" [146] symbolises the fact that we are motivated by a kind of death drive: 

 

"We want to hunt him down. To subject him to our will. And in this maniacal  conscious hunt of ourselves [...] is our doom and our suicide." [146]   

 

Lawrence continues:

 

"The last phallic being of the white man. Hunted into the death of upper consciousness and the ideal will. Our blood-self subjected to our own will. Our blood-consciousness sapped by a parasitic mental or ideal consciousness.

      Hot-blooded sea-born Moby Dick. Hunted by monomaniacs of the idea." [146]

 

A tragic fate. But one that Lawrence accepts: 

 

"Ah well, if my day is doomed, and I am doomed with my day, it is something greater than I which dooms me, so I accept my doom as a sign of the greatness which is more than I am." [146]    

 

 

III.

 

Of course, there are some fates worse than the collective doom of a people; worse even than having your leg torn off at the knee, or being drowned at sea. 

 

For example, one can be so heart-broken following a painful separation from a loved one, that one takes to one's bed, depressed, and lacking the energy to do anything. This form of spiritual impotence is what Leon Black famously describes as mopey dick [d]. 

 

Whether the cure for this psycho-physiological condition involves inserting a gerbil into one's anus remains, please note, highly controversial.  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] D. H. Lawrence, 'Herman Melville's Moby Dick', in Studies in Classic American Literature (Final Version, 1923), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 145. 

      Future page references to this text - and to the preceding chapter, 'Herman Melville's Typee and Omoo' - will be given directly in the post. 

 

[b] Despite his admiration for Melville the artist, Lawrence can't help taking a pop at Melville the man; "a rather tiresome New Englander of the ethical-mystical-transcendentalist sort" [134]; someone often clownish and clumsy as a stylist who writes in sententious bad taste. 

 

[c] Commercial hunting led to the near-extinction of large whales, including sperm whales. The International Whaling Commission only granted the species full protection in 1985 (although hunting by Japan in the northern Pacific Ocean continued until 1988). Recovery has been slow, but remaining sperm whale populations are now large enough that the species is no longer listed as endangered. 

 

[d] See the season 6 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, entitled 'The Bat Mitzvah', dir. Larry Charles, written by Larry David, and first broadcast on 11 November 2007: click here. The character Leon Black is played by J. B. Smoove.

 

 

Torpedo the Ark Post 2399 on SCP-2399

SCP Foundation logo

 

 

According to the SCP Foundation [1], there's a complex alien superstructure (known as a Malfunctioning Destroyer) located beneath Jupiter's Great Red Spot [2] capable of causing an end-of-the-world event. 

 

It has been designated with the Special Containment Procedure number 2399, although it's really just knowledge of this object that has been suppressed. For due to SCP-2399's location and very nature, it can neither be physically contained nor destroyed at this point in time, as we simply do not have the technological means to do so.  

Where it originated and how it travelled to our solar system are unknown. However, electromagnetic-based commands seem to be being sent to SCP-2399 from the Triangulum Galaxy, approximately three million lights years away. 

 

Fortunately, SCP-2399 seems to be severly damaged, so currently presents no direct threat to life on Earth. 

 

Unfortunately, SCP-2399 also seems to possess an unlimited power supply and be programmed to self-repair using a series of drones to complete the necessary work. And so, in a few decades time, we might be in trouble.

 

For now, however, we can relax and endeavour to have a happy new year (and worry more about how to pay the energy bill than some made-up machine of extraterrestrial origin stranded on Jupiter).

 

Notes

 

[1] The SCP Foundation is a fictional secret organisation featured in texts created by contributors on a wiki-based collaborative writing project known as SCP Wiki: click here. It is primarily concerned with mysterious phenomena known as anomalies and its mission is to secure and contain these anomalies so as to protect humanity from them. 

 

[2] Located in Jupiter's lower atmosphere, the Great Red Spot is a persistent high-pressure region responsible for the largest anticyclonic storm in the solar system. According to those who belong to the SCP Universe, SCP-2399 uses highly advanced anti-matter technology to create this 10,000 mile-wide spacial voretx.

Philosophy on the Catwalk: In Praise of an Exterminating Angel Dressed in Lambskin

Model wearing an Emilio Parka and Ezio Trousers by Loro Piana

loropiana.com [1]

 

It takes a lot of courage to sail gaily, in super-soft shearling, 

right in the teeth of dreary convention. [2]

 

 

Nobody denies that we wear clothes for three very obvious reasons: firstly, to cover up our nakedness; secondly, to protect us from the elements and, thirdly, for purposes of ornamentation. 

 

But these aren't the only reasons and only those with very practical minds who always wear sensible shoes and keep their spending in line with their income, would fail to appreciate that dressing up is "an act of meaning beyond modesty, ornamentation, and protection" [3]. 

 

In other words, wearing clothes is a signifying activity and that's where its importance and real interest lies - particularly when the clothes in question are haute couture, rather than merely mass produced and ready-to-wear [4].

 

For within the world of high-end fashion, the frenzied play of signifiers is taken to the extreme; i.e., to the point of enchantment at which systems of reference begin to break down. In this manner, writes Baudrillard, the very logic of the commodity is abolished and there is "no longer any determinacy internal to the signs of fashion, hence they become free to commute and permutate without limit" [5]. 

 

This rupture of referential reason goes beyond the collapse of all values into the market and the sphere of commodities. When fashion becomes an art, then it transports us into another world entirely; one in which nihilism is consummated and we become (as Nietzsche would say) like the ancient Greeks; i.e., superficial out of profundity and full of the courage to remain at the surface, the fold, the skin; to adore appearance and believe in forms [6].    

 

Those who fail to appreciate this - who don't enjoy the absurdity of fashion; the frivolity and immorality "which at times gives fashion its subversive force (in totalitarian, puritan or archaic contexts)" [7] - will never understand why a young flâneur strolling through Soho in an outrageously expensive outfit made of shearling possesses the beauty an exterminating angel ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Loro Piana is an Italian luxury fashion brand, founded in 1924 by Pietro Loro Piana, and based in Milan. Initially known for its cashmere, vicuña, linen, and merino fabrics, the company has expanded to design knitwear, leather goods, footwear, fragrance and related accessories. Since 2013, the company has been majority-owned by Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the French multinational fashion conglomerate.

      If any wealthy readers fancy sending me the money, I will happily make the outfit pictured here my winter look for 2024/25. The hay-coloured Emilio Parka, crafted from shearling, costs £10,755; whilst the matching Ezio Trousers, in a creamy cashmere colour but also made from finest lambskin, are priced just over £7,000.        

 

[2] I'm paraphrasing a line by D. H. Lawrence, in 'Red Trousers' (1928). See his Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 138.

 

[3] Roland Barthes, 'Fashion and the Social Sciences', in The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford, ed. Andy Stafford and Michael Carter, (Berg, 2006), p. 97.

 

[4] I'm using the term haute couture in a broader contemporary sense, rather than with its strict 19th-century French definition; i.e., to refer to exclusive creations by the world's leading designers, made with high-quality, rare fabrics and crafted with meticulous attention to detail by skilled artisans, but not necessarily made to order by private clients or stamped with the official seal of the Paris Chamber of Commerce.

 

[5] Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, by Iain Hamilton Grant, (SAGE Publications, 2007), p. 87. 

 

[6] Nietzsche, Preface (4) The Gay Science (1887).  

      We might note that Baudrillard is sceptical about this. For whilst he speaks of the charm and fascination of fashion and welcomes the resurrection of forms, he dismisses fashion's revolution as innocuous and rejects the idea that it recovers the superficiality that Nietzsche discovered in the ancient Greeks: "Fashion is only a simulation of the innocence of becoming, the cycle of appearances is just its recycling." Symbolic Exchange and Death (2007), p. 89.

      In other words, fashion's passion for artifice and for empty signs and cycles - for making the insignificant signify - may be genuine, but it lacks symbolic radicality and only announces the myth of change. 

 

[7] Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death (2007), p. 94. 

The Vivienne Westwood Story: Will It All End In Tears?

Palace X Vivienne Westwood (Autumn 2024)

Click here and/or here for more details. 

Photo by Shoichi Aoki.

 

 

I. 

 

It's exactly two years ago today that the 81-year-old British fashion designer (and cultural icon, etc., etc.) Vivienne Westwood died, peacefully surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London [1].

 

But it didn't take 24 months for the (all-too-predictable) falling out between the Vivienne Westwood label in the red corner and, in the blue corner, the Vivienne Foundation, as the former's commercial interests and the latter's values soon came into conflict.

 

 

II. 

 

According to the Foundation - a not-for-profit organisation established to protect the legacy of Dame Westwood and to create a better society [2] - the fashion label based designs for a sell-out collection in collaboration with the uber-trendy skateboard brand, Palace [3], on her extensive archive without any consultation [4].

 

The row, which erupted in October of this year, resulted in Cora Corré - Westwood's granddaughter - resigning her role as campaigns manager at the fashion label, claiming that her grandmother would not be happy with the way the company was being run and calling for the removal of the CEO, Carlo D'Amario, after Westwood's close and trusted friend, British designer Jeff Banks, was forced out of his role as a director of the company in July [5]. 

 

What Cora and her father (Joe Corré) now think of Andreas Kronthaler, Westwood's (third) husband and long-time design partner - a man who supported the ousting of Banks whilst securing his own position as creative director at the fashion brand and personally approving the collaboration with Palace - I don't know (and wouldn't like to speculate).  

 

As to what I think ... 

 

Well, to be honest, I'm almost beyond caring and can't take either the Vivienne Foundation or the Vivienne Westwood fashion label very seriously. Indeed, one is almost tempted to echo Shakespeare's Mercutio and wish a plague on both their houses!

 

For ultimately, I find the manner in which Malcolm McLaren has had his seminal role downplayed in the official Westwood history more of a concern [6].       

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See my personal recollection of Westwood, published on 30 December 2022, to mark her passing: click here. 

 

[2] How does one create a better society? Well, according to the Vivienne Foundation, one must: halt climate change; stop war; defend human rights; and protest capitalism. 

 

[3] Palace is a London-based skateboard brand established in 2009, founded by Lev Tanju and Gareth Skewis, and very popular within the urban streetwear community. The collaboration with Vivienne Westwood was born, apparently, from the subversive spirit that both brands share and has culture and humour at its heart.

 

[4] Westwood transferred all of her creative design and property rights to the Vivienne Foundation, which she established in collaboration with her sons and granddaughter, in 2019.  

 

[5] In a post published on Instagram (22 Oct 2024), Ms. Corré writes: 

      

"There has been much confusion around my current role within the Vivienne Westwood company. Although, the company bares my grandmother's name, I do not feel at this time that it reflects her values.

      

Vivienne taught me to always stand up for what is right and I want to stay true to that. She created the Foundation in 2019 to pursue her activism outside of the constraints placed on her by the managing director of the company. 

       

Due to a breakdown in relations between the Vivienne Westwood company and the Vivienne Foundation, my role within the company has become untenable.

      

Moving forward, I will focus my energy on honouring my grandmother's legacy through the Vivienne Foundation and continue the work that was so important to her." 

 

[6] McLaren rightly felt that his contributions to fashion history were overlooked or downplayed. 

       One might remind readers, for example, that he was not properly credited for his work on the V&A Westwood retrospective in 2004 and that his name is often removed from archival documentation and photos. Even after taking legal action to correct omissions and inaccuracies, the official V&A catalogue remains an unreliable record of events from the days when he and Westwood were partners. 

      Sadly, the fact is that the fashion industry and media almost entirely buy into the idea that Vivienne was the creative visionary and Malcolm merely an entertaining charlatan of some kind; similarly, there are those within the music business who maintain that Johnny Rotten was the gifted genius behind the Sex Pistols and that McLaren was merely a manager.       

Jean Baudrillard: the Marmite Philosopher

Love Him or Loathe Him ... Here's Jean Baudrillard - 

the Marmite Philosopher 

(SA/2024)

 

 

I. 

 

In response to my Boxing Day post - click here - an anonymous correspondent writes:

 

Even a plate of cold turkey leftovers is more digestible than the turgid (if for a time fashionable) nonsense that Baudrillard passed off as philosophy and which only pretentious idiots - such as yourself - continue to take seriously. 

      Sokal and Bricmont were spot-on to describe Baudrillard and those figures often associated with him - I won't designate them as thinkers - as intellectual imposters whose confusions, fantasies, and postmodern jargon for a time brought philosophy into disrepute and damaged the minds of generations of students. 

      As the above rightly conclude: 'When all is said and done, one wonders what would be left of Baudrillard's thought if the verbal veneer covering it were stripped away.' [1]  

 

If this email is anything to go by, it would seem that the Christmas spirit doesn't last long; one wonders what would remain of my correspondent's argument if the vitriolic veneer were stripped away. 

 

 

II.

 

Of course, the above - aligning himself with the unfunny double act of Sokal & Bricmont - is not the first and won't be the last person to be triggered by Baudrillard, who is, we might concede, something of a Marmite philosopher; i.e., a divisive and polarising figure and thus something of an acquired taste.

 

Indeed, even those thinkers who emerged out of the same philosophical background - and with whom he is often categorised - often found his vision of contemporary culture as cynical and overly pessimistic; i.e., one that offered no critical solutions and seemed to render direct (political) action impossible.

 

He was, they said, merely a bleak fatalist trapped inside his own ideas and, according to Sylvère Lotringer, during the mid-late 1970s Deleuze quietly let it be known around Paris that he considered Baudrillard to be the shame of French intellectual life [2].  

 

Despite this, here we are at the fag end of 2024 and I find that just as I prefer cool memories to cold turkey, so I'd sooner spend time reading Baudrillard than M. Deleuze; a philosopher whom everyone seems to love and have acquired a taste for these days (apart from my Sokal & Bricmont quoting correspondent of course).     

 

Notes

 

[1] My correspondent is referring to the book by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures (Profile Books, 1998). The line quoted is the closing sentence of the chapter specifically written on Baudrillard (chapter 8). The book was first published in French as Impostures Intellectuelles (Editions Odile Jacob, 1997). 

 

[2] See Sylvère Lotringer, 'On Jean Baudrillard', in the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 6, Number 2 (July, 2009): click here. 

      Lotringer explains how the publication of Baudrillard's Forget Foucault (1977) not only anatgonised the subject of the essay, but Foucault's close friend Gilles Deleuze and that whilst the work made Baudrillard (in)famous on the one hand, it got him excommunicated from French intellectual circles on the other.

 

Boxing Day with Baudrillard

Cold Turkey with Jean Baudrillard 

(SA/2024)

 

 

Boxing Day or not, if given the choice between a plate of cold turkey and a book of cool memories, I think I prefer the latter. 

 

In other words, better fat-free Baudrillardian fragments and scattered thoughts, each existing perfectly in its own singular and symbolic space, than Christmas day leftovers. 

Note: Click here for a follow up post addressing a criticism of this one ...