Russ Bestley: 'Turning Revolt Into Style' (2025): Notes on the Introduction

Russ Bestley: Turning Revolt Into Style 

(Manchester University Press, 2025) [a]

 

 

I. 

 

Russ Bestley is Reader in Graphic Design & Subcultures at London College of Communication (UAL) and someone who knows more - and has written more - over the last thirty years about punk, graphic design, and popular culture than Monsieur Mangetout has had odd dinners [b]. 

 

And so, if one is only ever going to read one book on the process and practice of punk graphic design, I would recommend it be Bestley's latest work, Turning Revolt Into Style - a solidly written and nicely illustrated book about which I'd like to share a few thoughts here and in a series of posts to follow.

 

 

II. 

 

Just to be clear at the outset, I don't have a background in graphic design or the visual arts and most of the names mentioned by Bestley mean nothing to me.  

 

However, I've always regarded Jamie Reid as an important member of the Sex Pistols (referring to the wider gang, rather than merely the four-piece group consisting of Cook, Jones, Rotten and Vicious) and a strong case could be made that his designs for the record sleeves are at least as important and as powerful as the black shiny discs they enclose [c].  

 

In other words, the art (fashion and politics) of punk probably means more to me than the music [d], so Bestley's book was always going to attract my attention; especially with a title which both echoes George Melley's celebrated 1970 study of the music business [e] and a line from 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais' (turning rebellion into money) [f].  

 

 

III.

 

Bestley wisely limits his study to the UK punk scene in the late 1970s and early '80s, even whilst acknowledging that punk is now a global phenomenon with a long history behind it; books that try to encompass everything and speak to everyone invariably fail. 

 

And besides, the core elements of the punk aesthetic - or what Bestley likes to call punk's visual language - were formed very early on by the "extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars" [g] who hung around at 430 King's Road. 

 

The book addresses two key questions: "how did a generation of young, punk-inspired graphic designers navigate the music graphics profession in the late 1970s and early 1980s?" and "how did significant changes in printing technology, labour relations and working practices in the design profession impact their work during that period?" [1-2] 

 

Whilst the second question is doubtless important, it doesn't really excite my interest as much as the first question. 

 

And so, whilst I will certainly read what Bestley says in relation to the latter and offer some commentary, for the most part my remarks here will focus on the answer he provides to the former (even at the risk of thereby missing the point of the book, which is to situate punk's visual aesthetic both within cultural history and the technological, professional, and political contexts that materially shaped it).  

 

 

IV. 

 

Punk, says Bestley, "is a phenomenon that is difficult to define in simple terms" [4]. 

 

And whilst I know what he means, one is tempted to suggest that the word itself has always been a misunderstanding and one that Rotten wisely rejected when asked about by it in a pre-Grundy TV interview with Maggie Norden [h].    

 

At best, the word punk acts as a point of cultural consistency within the chaotic flow of difference and becoming; it does not refer to some kind of essence upon which a stable identity can be fixed (i.e., it's a superficial marker; a convenient fiction). 

 

Personally, I would encourage individuals to break free from the term so as to enter into an anonymous and nomadic state of pure potentiality. Unfortunately, however, the world is full of idiots who identify with the term and spend their days declaring punk's not dead.   

 

Ultimately, the word punk refers to the process by which the radical ideas and images born at 430 King's Road were recuperated by mainstream culture and bourgeois society; the process by which the Sex Pistols were neutered, disarmed, and commercially commodified in exactly the manner parodied in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) and illustrated by Reid on the cover of Some Product: Carri On Sex Pistols (1979) [i].  

 

V. 

I know Rotten includes a line in E. M. I. about not judging a book by its cover - unless you cover just another - but I've never liked this idiomatic piece of moralism. As D. H. Lawence says, it is born of our dread of intuitional awareness and "if you don't judge by appearances, that is, if you can't trust the impression which things make on you, you are a fool" [j].    

 

So, I smiled when Bestley seemed to lend support to the idea that whilst design "may offer an aesthetically pleasing or appropriately functional window to content" [8] it is seldom the focal point and there are very few people who would "purchase a book or record purely for its cover" [8]. 

 

And I smiled too when he wrote: "books are to be read, records to be listened to" [8]. Because there are some books, such as Deleuze and Guattari's Mille plateaux (1980), which encourage readers to play them exactly as one would a record; starting with your favourite track or chapter, skipping the ones you don't much like, etc. [k]       

 

 

VI.

 

Finally, let me just say that the section within Bestley's Introduction for which I'm most grateful is the one which provides a punk design historiography. It really is an astonishing overview that is immensely useful to one such as myself who knows very little of the literature produced on this topic. 

 

In fact, of all the books mentioned here, the only two I know well are Jon Savage's England's Dreaming (1991) and Griel Marcus's Lipstick Traces (1989); the latter of which Bestley describes as "deeply flawed - and unfathomably influential" [13][l], although I know that Malcolm always loved the book (Rotten, predictably, less so).   

 

  

Notes

 

[a] All page numbers given in the post refer to this text.  

 

[b] Bestley is also Lead Editor of the academic journal Punk & Post-Punk, Series Editor and Art Director for the Global Punk book series published by Intellect Books, a founding member of the Punk Scholars Network, and head of the Subcultures Interest Group at UAL. His research archive can be accessed at hitsvilleuk.com. 

 

[c] For a post in memory of Jamie Reid who, sadly, died a couple of years ago, click here.

      Bestley is right to say that cover art "in many cases plays an intrinsic part in the cultural significance of 'iconic' albums". Never Mind the Bollocks, for example, would not be Never Mind the Bollocks, were it not for Reid's cover. It's the fluorescent pink and yellow cover that offers "special insight into the philosophy and character" of the Sex Pistols and which has a unique appeal "separate from the music" and over and above mere branding. See p. 7 of Turning Revolt Into Style.     

 

[d] Bestly recognises the tension beween "punk as attitude and ideology and punk as a new and distinct form of popular music" [5]. For McLaren, the music was the least important thing and a band that can't play is far more interesting and exciting than one who can. One of the final slogans used by Jamie Reid for his work with the Sex Pistols was: 'Music prevents you thinking for yourself.' 

  

[e] Melly, of course, borrowed the phrase revolt into style from a poem written by Thom Gunn about Elvis and published in his second collection of verse The Sense of Movement (1957). Quoting from memory, Gunn says that Presley peddles 'hackneyed words in hackneyed songs' and 'turns revolt into a style'. 

 

[f] '(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais' is a single by the Clash, released by CBS Records in June 1978. It got to number 32 in the UK charts.  

 

[g] This wonderful description of McLaren and company - the SEX shop people - was coined by Peter York in an article entitled 'Them' which appeared in Harpers & Queen (October 1976) and was quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329.  

 

[h] The interview I refer to was broadcast on the BBC1 show Nationwide on 12 November 1976. Rotten insists that the word punk was imposed on the band by the press. For my discussion of the word, see the post published on 13 March 2025: click here.

      When I describe the term punk as a misunderstanding, I'm thinking of what Nietzsche writes of the word Christianity; namely, that it is a term derived from a system of beliefs based on a fundamental misinterpretation of the Gospel. In this case, punk is a huge failure to grasp the concept of the Sex Pistols - and this failure becomes nowhere more laughable than in the attempts to somehow sanitise their story and "shoehorn it into a retrosectively 'progressive' narrative that belies its original complexity and inherent contradictions" [4]. 

 

[i] For me, this process of recuperation began - and was completed - much sooner that I think it was for Bestley. He notes, for example, that by the year 2000 the punk movement had been "largely recuperated and institutionalised" and was "ripe for exploitation" [12]. I would date this at least twenty years earlier. 

      But arguing over dates as to when punk 'died' has always been a bit tiresome, so I'll not make a big deal of this and I agree with Bestley that this process of recuperation was largely achieved via the "cementing of a set of visual and musical tropes that could be picked up and regurgitated in the affectation - if not the performance - of a generic 'punk' identity" [235].    

 

[j] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 192. 

      In Chapter 2 of his book, Bestley refers us to the cover of the XTC album Go2 (Virgin Records, 1978) which states that anyone who buys (or doesn't buy) an album 'merely as a consequence of the design on its cover' is FOOLISH. For the record, they were precisely the kind of band riding the crest of the new wave that I very much despised at the time. See Turning Revolt Into Style, pp. 86-87.   

 

[k] In a Foreword to his translation of this text, Brian Massumi, writes: 

      "How should A Thousand Plateaus be played? When you buy a record there are always cuts that leave you cold. You skip them. You don't approach a records as a closed book that you have to take or leave. Other cuts you may listen to over and over again. They follow you. You find yourself humming them under your breath as you go about your daily business." 

      See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, (The Athlone Press, 1988), p. xiii-xiv.

 

[l] Later in the work Bestley will say: "Greil Marcus attempted (and largely failed) to make connections between the Sex Pistols, Dada, Surrealism and the philosophies of much earlier political agitators" [57]. That might be true, but it's often the case that we learn more from such failed attempts to form rhizomatic connections than we do from successful, self-contained books based on arborescent models that are proud of their own organic interiority, etc. 

      See what Deleuze and Guattari have to say on this in their Introduction to A Thousand Plateaus, pp. 3-25. 

 

 

The following post in this series - Notes on Chapters 1 & 2 - can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

Bloodstains on the Cobbles of Soho

 

Bloodstains on the Cobbles of Soho

(SA/2025) 

 

 

If you look closely at the above photo you'll see a few tiny drops of bright red blood. 

 

One wonders what a forensic scientist would make of these tell-tale marks were they subject to a blood pattern analysis.

 

Would they be able to determine if there had been a murder, a suicide, or merely an accident? 

 

Probably.

 

Would they be able to extract DNA evidence from the dried stains and thus tell us something bio-factual of the person who had shed their blood on a cobblestoned street in Soho? 

 

Perhaps.

 

But what they couldn't speak of is my horror at seeing you fall on a street where, many years ago, we were once young and in love ...   

 

Candid Camera (Notes on Secret Photography)

Monday 22 September, 2025, 11:31 

Stratford Station, London, England 

(SA/2025)

'The photographer is ... the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. 

Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world picturesque.' [1]

I. 

 

Candid photography is the capturing of images that, in a sense, have suggested themselves to the camera; spontaneous snaps of a scene, an event, or an anonymous subject that reveal the world in its randomness and objective innocence. 

 

If there is any hint of a pose - or any indication that the photographer is attempting to frame things aesthetically or ideologically, for example, and thereby impose their ideas or values on the image - then the picture is immediately robbed of its candid nature [2].

 

However, that's not to say candid photography reveals the truth of the world, even if it offers a glimpse of the world as is. And one must always be aware of the fact that no representation is ever really honest; the camera always lies and the world, no matter how exposed it may appear, is always fundamentally in darkness.  

       

 

II. 

 

The image used above is, I think, a good example of a candid (and covert) snapshot. It was taken yesterday, at Stratford Station, in East London, and shows a young woman standing on platform 8 waiting for an Elizabeth line train to Shenfield. 

 

I was standing opposite on platform 9 waiting for a Greater Anglia train to Liverpool Street. I thought it was unusual to see someone isolated on what is often a very busy platform and she struck me as very much a contemporary London girl; carrying a tote bag, holding an i-Phone in one hand and a coffee cup in the other, tattoed legs and green dyed hair. 

 

I've no idea who she is, but I like to imagine she's a student at the London College of Fashion; or a jewellery designer who has a studio in Hackney. Similarly, I like to think that, should this image ever come to her attention, she'll be fine with my having taken it and then publishing it here [3]. 

 

In a sense, a silent and secretive act - committed whilst in a shared public space and which involved what Baudrillard terms the photographic gaze (i.e., one that does not seek to probe or analyse or master reality, but, with a sort of insouciance, non-intrusively capture the apparition of objects) [4] - has brought us into initimate complicity. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1]  Susan Sontag, On Photography, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), p. 55.  

 

[2] Obviously, this is the ideal. In practice, it's very hard to take a purely candid photograph, if only because even the most naive and amateur of photographers - i.e., one such as myself who knows very little about composition and the technical aspects of taking a picture - still views things with an intelligent eye and cannot resist retrospectively imposing a narrative or philosophically-informed interpretation on the image. 

      I'm also vaguely aware of the history of photography and the important place of candid images within that history; so radically different from the traditional posed pictures. 

      However, as far as possible, I have snapped candidly by sticking to my one snap and one snap only rule, never trying to capture the same image twice, or make a technically superior version; if I miss the decisive moment well, that's too bad (there'll be others).   

 

[3] Whilst I don't have full knowledge of the law, I believe that in the UK one doesn't require explicit consent to take someone's photo if they are in a public space, especially if, as in this case, the image is reproduced solely for editorial and artistic purpose and is not being used commercially. I think France has much tighter laws around this whole area to do with image rights and personal privacy.   

 

[4] See Jean Baudrillard, 'Photography, Or The Writing Of Light', trans. Francois Debrix in Baudrillard Now (22 April, 2023): click here to read online.  

      This essay was originally published in French as 'La Photographie ou l’Ecriture de la Lumiere: Litteralite de l’Image', in L'Echange Impossible (Éditions Galilée, 1999), pp. 175-184. An earlier translation into English, by Chris Turner, can be found in Impossible Exchange (Verso, 2001), pp. 139-147, where it is entitled as 'Photography, or Light-Writing: Literalness of the Image'.

      I am aware, of course, that Baudrillard hates the digitilisation of photography as an art form and would not acknowledge my image taken on an i-Phone to be a photograph in the sense he understands it (lacking both sovereignty and punctual exactitude). See section IX in part 2 of the post on Baudrillard's 'Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?' (16 September 2025): click here.

 

Punk History is for Pissing On: Notes on PZ77 by Simon Parker

PZ77: A Town A Time A Tribe (Scryfa, 2022) 

by Simon Parker

 

'Ah, those days... for many years afterwards their happiness haunted me. 

Sometimes, listening to music, I drift back and nothing has changed.' [1] 

 

 

I. 

 

Conceived, designed, narrated, and edited by Simon Parker - and published by an independent co-operative he established in 1996 to celebrate and promote contemporary Cornish writing - PZ77 is "a unique story of time, place, friendship, community, and an almost obsessive passion for making music" [2]. 

 

The book features more than ninety personal accounts, across 392 pages, from old punks like himself who grew up in a place "others came for their holidays" (Penzance) [3].      

 

It's not the kind of book I would normally read (for reasons we'll come to shortly). 

 

However, as a 40 page extract from the work - the first five tracks - is the chosen text for discussion by the Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) [4] this coming week - a group with which I'm associated - I thought I'd take this opportunity to assemble (and share) some thoughts in advance ...

 

 

II. 

There are, as Russ Bestley reminds us, now hundreds of books on punk in the mid-late 1970s, and it sometimes feels as if everyone and their dog who was in any way connected to the scene has now had their say on the subject or shared their memories of the time. 

 

For those over a certain age, punk nihilism has now given way to punk nostalgia; the chaos of a life lived blissfully in the moment (now/here) has been replaced with a comforting and conformist vision of the past. 

 

In other words, instead of going with the flow of events and strange becomings that carry them beyond the constraints of a fixed identity, many old punks now prefer to relive the past as best they can at the Rebellion Festival [5] and produce narratives which reinforce the mythology of punk by "re-articulating variations of the same story, often through a nostalgic lens centred on personal experience and memories" [6].  

 

 

III.   

To be fair to Parker, PZ77 might be read as an attempt to give a voice to many punk fans whose stories and memories of the time might otherwise have gone unrecorded, thereby expanding our understanding of punk (certainly as it unfolded in Corwall in 1977).  

 

As Bestley rightly points out, "punk's standard narrative has become so deeply embedded, its cultural and historical position so neatly summarized, that there is a desperate need for alternative perspectives that might sustain a sense of engagement and highlight new contributions to knowledge within a tired and over-familiar field of study" [7]. 

 

However, from what I've read of the work, I don't like it ... 

 

And the reason I don't like it is because, as a Deleuzian - and as a member of the extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars [8] - I don't like writing that attempts to impose a coherent and conventional linguistic form on lived experience and I don't like writing that is merely a form of personal overcoding; i.e., an opportunity for an author to give whatever it is they write about a familiar face that somehow resembles their own. 

 

Any form of writing that is heavily reliant upon the recounting of youthful memories is usually not only bad writing but dead writing; for as Deleuze says, literature dies from an excess of autobiography just as surely as from an overdose of emotion or imagination [9].   

 

Rather than transport us away from Oeidpal structures towards a zone of indiscernibility where we might lose ourselves, PZ77 attempts to take us back to a better time where we might rediscover our passions and dreams, renew old friendships, etc. 

 

Whereas I still believe in the ruins, Parker believes in building a sense of community. The interviews with participants in his project indicate a level of acceptance that punk has become part of mainstream culture; nice people, performing nice gestures, and leading nice lives, etc. 

 

 

IV. 

Ultimately, I was never going to like a book written by an obsessive Ramones fan: they may have been Sid's favourite band, but they were never my favourite band. 

 

And whereas Parker, a grammar school boy from a Methodist fishing village who likes to see the good in people is, by his own admission, "always thinking about music" [10], I don't care about the music; to paraphrase Malcolm, if punk had just been about the music it would have died a death long ago.   

  

It's his best mate, Grev Williams, however, who really irritates me. Thinking back to the Summer of Hate, he ponders just how important the period was to him: 

 

"Punk bursting into our lives was hugely invigorating and inspiring [...]  but I'd be lying if I said I found any expression of my inner self in it [... and] the idea that I was revolting against my background and community would be wholly false. I was blessed with the strength of knowing where I came from, I didn't want to smash it up - I loved it. Punk wasn't a spit-filled, nihilist cul-de-sac for me, it was a launch pad. As a budding musician it provided opportunities and informed my attitude, not my taste. [...] Anyway, long story short and truth be told, I didn't hate or revolt against much [...] [11]

 

Whilst aknowledging the benefit of his experiences in 1977, Williams has to ask himself whether he was ever really a 'punk': "As with so much, I'm really not sure." [12]

 

It's not, of course, my role to help him decide the matter. 

 

But I would say, given his confession above - every aspect of which (apart from his uncertainty) I find objectionable - that whilst he may or may not have been a punk, he was clearly not a Sex Pistol as I understand the term; i.e. in a manner largely shaped by McLaren's description in the Oliver Twist Manifesto (1977) - click here - and the ideas developed in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980). 

 

I look forward to discussing this with other members of the SIG, including Russ Bestley [13]. 

 

However, I won't be buying a copy of Parker's PZ77. For those who like this sort of thing, as Miss Brodie would say, this is the sort of thing they like: but, for me, punk history is for pissing on ...    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] J. L. Carr, A Month In The Country (Harvester Press, 1980). 

      This quote was used as an epigraph to PZ77. It should be noted, however, that the narrator of the novel goes on to ask himself would he have always remained happy had he somehow been able to stay in the same time and place. And the answer is: "No, I suppose not."  

 

[2] I'm quoting here from the Scryfa website: click here. 

 

[3] Ibid. 

 

[4] The Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) is an informal collective operating out of the University of the Arts London (UAL), concerned with what we might briefly describe as the politics of style and offering resistance to temporal colonisation; i.e., the imposition of a perpetual present in which it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a future (or remember a past) that is radically different. 

      I have published several SIG-themed posts here on Torpedo the Ark, which can be read by clicking here.    

      

[5] For those who don't know, Rebellion is the biggest independently run punk festival in the UK, that takes place each summer in the historic Winter Gardens, Blackpool. I haven't been and I don't want to go to this family-oriented event which celebrates Punk in all its forms with the blessing of the local council. For further information, click here. 

 

[6] Russ Bestley, 'Going Through the Motions: Punk Nostalgia and Conformity', in Trans-Global Punk Scenes: The Punk Reader Vol. 2. (Intellect Books, 2021), pp. 179-196. 

 

[7] Ibid. 

 

[8] This wonderful phrase was coined by Peter York to describe the denizens of 430 King's Road (i.e., the SEX people). It was used in his article 'Them' that appeared in Harpers & Queen (October 1976) and is cited by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329.

 

[9] See the post dated 30 August 2013 entitled 'A Deleuzean Approach to Literature' - click here. 

 

[10] Simon Parker, PZ77: A Town A Time A Tribe (Scryfa, 2022), p. 11.

 

[11] Grev Williams quoted by Simon Parker in PZ77 ... pp. 38-39.

 

[12] Ibid., p. 41.

 

[13] Russ Bestley's own review of Simon Parker's PZ77 can be found in Punk & Post-Punk, Volume 12, Issue 1 (Feb 2023), p. 131 - 134. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to gain free access to this text online, so couldn't discuss it here.    

 

 

In the Beginning Was the Word, But That Word Was Not a Meaningless Miaow: A Guest Post by Phoevos the Cat

Phoevos the Cat giving his opinion of Sam Austen's  

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (For Your Cat)

(The Meow Library, 2023)

 

 

I. 

 

As a cat, I would like to make it clear that I possess a wide and sophisticated range of vocalisations, including purrs, chirps, and hisses, which I use to communicate with humans. In fact, we cats have a more developed and complex vocal repertoire than most other meat-eating mammals - including man's best friend, the dog! [1]. 

 

And so, whilst I may often miaow - when requesting food, or expressing a desire to go out, for example - that is certainly not the only sound used to convey my needs and feelings and, as Mildred Moelk, one of your own kind, noted many years ago, there are several variations of meow, so even that isn't just a single sound [2]. 

 

Thus, to deliberately create the impression that I am, as a cat, essentially monoverbal is not only insulting, but sadly reflective of an all-too-common and all-too-casual form of speciesism (i.e., the assumption of animal inferiority on the part of humans that leads to their exploitation and abuse). 

 

I miaow because, like other cats, I have learnt that this is the most effective way of gaining the attention of those lacking tails and whiskers who are neither sensitive nor intuitive enough to pick up on more discreet non-verbal signals and scents. I rarely miaow to communicate with my fellow felines, because I have no need to do so.     

 

 

II. 

 

Let me now offer a few remarks about Sam Austen, a so-called feline linguist and professor of feline psychology [3], who founded The Meow Library with the aim of translating every major work of Western literature into language that can be 'understood and appreciated by the common housecat', including the text I have in front of me now, a feline-friendly version of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  

 

Firstly, there's no such thing as a common housecat. We may be prevelant in human communities worldwide - there are hundreds of millions of us living alongside you - but each cat is a rare and refined being to whom the ancient Egyptians accorded semi-divine status, recognising them as magical creatures. 

 

Secondly, the favoured spelling of the word miaow is miaow and not meow: this mid-19th century Americanism may now be the predominant spelling, but the traditional British spelling is the one that the majority of cats prefer to use and which is closest onomatopoeically to the sound we make for the benefit of unmuscular (and half-deaf) human ears [4]. 

 

Thirdly, to claim that one is translating a work of human literature into language that can be understood and appreciated by a cat by simply repeating the word meow on the page tens and thousands of times, over and over again, is - once more - a sign of speciesism which betrays a contempt for the intelligence of cats bordering on the ailurophobic.      

 

Some humans may find it funny - though surely even for most of them the joke soon wears very thin - but I do not. Far from 'shattering the boundaries of human language', it merely empties the word meow of any power, any meaning, or any poignancy that it may possess [5].   

 

It's a shame and something of a missed opportunity, because Nietzsche undoubtedly does have something to say to cats and other intelligent non-human species. For Nietzsche was one of the first philosophers to call into question the traditional privileging of the human over other animals and thus to place man back amongst their number. 

 

In other words, for Nietzsche, man is certainly not the high-point of evolution; rather, he is the most depraved of all beasts. Which is to say, man is the animal that has strayed furthest from its sound instincts; "the insane animal, the laughing animal, the weeping animal, the miserable animal" [6]. 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] As a matter of fact, cats have a much greater number of vocalisations than dogs; capable as we are of producing over a hundred different sounds compared to just ten made by the average dumb mutt who has very little to say about anything.   

 

[2] Moelk claimed that cats have six different forms of meows, signalling friendliness, confidence, dissatisfaction, anger, fear, and pain. 

      See Mildred Moelk, 'Vocalizing in the house-cat; a phonetic and functional study', in The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 57, No. 2, (University of Illinois Press, April 1944), pp. 184-205. 

      Her study, the first of its kind, concluded that a cat's vocalising is not a symbolic language, but is rather a somatic response which has a functional relation to certain situations in the cat's life. It can be read online via JSTOR: click here.

 

[3] Austen also hosts Meow: A Literary Podcast for Cats, which reviews and contextualises the work of contemporary authors for cats and cat-adjacent humans. This weekly podcast is available on Spotify: click here. 

 

[4] Acceptable spellings and pronunciations also include the French (miaou) and German (miauen). As a kitten born on the streets of Athens, I will also allow the Greek variant (νιάου νιάου). 

 

[5] This phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to become detached from meaning and become merely an unintelligible sound is known as semantic satiation. Perhaps that is something Sam Austen is interested in exploring in his work, but, knowing very little about him, I cannot say that for certain.

 

[6] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Vintage Books, 1974), Book III, §224, p. 211.  

      See also the post written by Stephen Alexander and published on 8 November 2013 - 'Nietzsche's Animal Philosophy' - click here.   

 

On the Politics of the Mob

The angry mob confront the Monster (played by Boris Karloff) 

in Frankenstein (dir. James Whale, 1931)

 

'Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, peoples, 

and ages, it is the rule.' [1]

 

 

I. 

 

The term mob was a late-17th century slang abbreviation of the Latin phrase mobile vulgus, referring to an excitable and disorderly crowd of people who would often seek out a target or scapegoat on whom they could vent their fury and frustration over some matter or other.    

 

Even as a young child, long before I knew anything about mass psychology, I had an instinctive aversion to the mob. 

 

I remember, for example, watching Frankenstein for the first time and - without feeling particularly sorry for the Monster - intensely disliking the torch-bearing villagers who formed an angry mob in order to hunt him down [2].    

 

I may not have had the language at ten-years-old to articulate how I felt, but I could see there was something far more frightening - far more monstrous - about mob justice (i.e., vengeance) than about the Creature in all his otherness.     

 

 

II. 

 

And today, when I do possess the language (and know a fair bit about mass psychology), I still don't like to see any individual - whatever crimes they are accused of - being intimidated and, on occasion, torn limb from limb or burnt alive by the mob (again, this doesn't necessarily mean my sympathies lie with them). 

And that's why I cannot support any populist political movement or join in with any act of indecent bullying. As D. H. Lawrence writes, any man or woman who would affirm their own starry singularity must refuse to identify with the baying mob. It is not sentimentalism: it is just abiding by one's own feelings no matter what [3]. 

 

It's unfortunate, therefore, that today politicians on all sides seem intent on making an appeal to the masses (manipulating their concerns, their fears, their insecurities, etc.) and, on account of this intention, are compelled to "transform their principles into great al fresco stupidities" [4] and start waving flags (which, to my mind, belong in the same category as burning torches and pitchforks).  

 

To paraphrase Voltaire: As soon as the mob gets involved, then all is lost ... [5]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1990), Pt. IV, §156, p. 103.  

 

[2] The famous scene of Frankenstein's monster being chased by an angry mob of peasants (eventually being trapped and burned alive inside an old windmill) belongs to the 1931 cinematic adaptation of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel; such a scene does not occur in the book.

      To be fair to the villagers, the Creature was responsible for the drowning of a young girl, Maria, whom he throws into a lake (albeit in playful innocence rather than with murderous intent). Click here to watch the formation of the mob. And here for the terrible conclusion to mob justice (what Jean-François Lyotard terms paganism).  

 

[3] See the famous 'Nightmare' chapter of Lawrence's 1923 novel Kangaroo in which the protagonist Richard Somers refuses under any circumstances to acquiesce in the vast mob-spirit that prevailed during the years 1916-19 when, in his view - thanks to the War - so many lost their individual integrity. 

      The Cambridge edition of this work, ed. Bruce Steele, was published in 1994. The long 'Nightmare' chapter is on pp. 212-259.     

 

[4] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1986), Vol. I, Pt. 8, §438, p. 161.

[5] The actual line written by Voltaire reads: Quand la populace se mêle de raisonner, tout est perdu. It can be found in his Collection des lettres sur les miracles, Vol. 60D of his Œuvres complètes, ed. Olivier Ferret and José-Michel Moureaux (Voltaire Foundation / University of Oxford, 2018). 

      The original work of this title - a 232 page volume composed of various short writings from the period - was published in 1766.   

 

Notes on Jean Baudrillard's 'Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?' (Part 2: Sections VI - XII)

Cover of the paperback edition 

(Seagull Books, 2016)

  

This is a continuation of a post the first part of which can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

VI.

 

The human subject - that product of power, knowledge, and history - with its free-willing moral agency, is also, says Baudrillard, disappearing today, but leaving "its ghost behind, its narcissistic double, more or less as the Cat left its grin hovering" [27].

 

Freed from an actual subject, this ectoplasmic remnant of subjectivity is to be found everywhere today (just like sexuality, freed from the biological reality of sex, is found everywhere but in bodies); enveloping and transforming everything; remaking the world in its own image, ensuring that there's no outside, no otherness, no objective world.  

 

Consciousness has been smashed to smithereens and dispersed into "all the interstices of reality" [28] producing a smart world of interconnected systems and artificial intelligence; a digital utopia. And in such a world, who needs human subjects in the old-fashioned sense? They have become superfluous and so may as well disappear ...

 

 

VII. 

 

But again the question will be raised: have there not been some positive disappearances? Certain diseases, for example, and other threats to human health and safety. 

 

Well, yes, that's true - although it should be remembered that things we thought had gone for good often come back with a vengeance; "we know", writes Baudrillard, "that everything repressed or eliminated [...] results in a malign, viral infiltration of the social and individual body" [30-31] sooner or later.  

 

Disappearance is never the end of the matter any more than appearance is the beginning of the matter: things come and go and eternally return and life itself is nothing other than this vital game of appearance, disappearance, and reappearance [g].

 

 

VIII. 

 

Moving on, Baudrillard brings the discussion around to the image, behind which, he says, something has always and already disappeared: "And that is the source of its fascination" [32]. 

 

In other words, it's not virtual reality that excites us - is anything more boring at last? - it's the fact that behind it lies a vital dimenson of existence, albeit one that is withdrawn and concealed. It's the real - or, more precisely, the disappearance of the real - that excites everyone. 

 

(Baudrillard often seems at pains to stress the total ambiguity of his own position on this issue, which throws up paradox after paradox and "cannot, in any way, be resolved" [32].) 

 

 

IX. 

 

The destiny of the image is to make the revolutionary move from the analogical to the digital. Baudrillard thinks of this as an irresistible process which leads to a world which "no longer has need of us, nor of our representation" [34]; for when "software wins out over the eye" [37] who needs the photographer?  

 

When the photograph is liberated "from both the negative and the real world" [34], this has consequences for objects too; who needs them to be present when they can now be digitally generated (and erased) by AI? 

 

Baudrillard writes:

 

"The traditional photograph is an image produced by the world, which, thanks to the medium of film, still involves a dimension of representation. The digital image is an image that comes straight out of the screen ..." [ 37] [h] and lacks punctual exactitude. 

 

Again, for anyone who cares about the art of photography - "conceived as the convergence of the light from the object with the light from the gaze" [38] - this is not merely an advance in technology, it's a disaster; "the sophistication of the play of presence and absence, of appearance and disappearance" [38] is abolished with the arrival of the digital age. 

 

The world - "and our vision of the world" [39] - is changed forever. It seems you cannot liberate photography via digitalisation, only destroy it with violence inflicted upon the "sovereignty of images" [59], subjecting them to a single perspective.   

 

Now, non-photographers might shrug their shoulders and ask so what. But what is happening in the world of photography is "just one tiny example of what is happening on a massive scale in all fields [...] The same destiny of digitalisation looms over the world of the mind and the whole range of thought" [39-40], so philosophers had better beware too!

 

 

X. 

 

When you replace the "entire symbolic articulation of language" [40] with an endless flow of information, then there are no silences or spaces suspended between illusion and reality in which to pause and think. 

 

Just as photography is about more than the proliferation and circulation of images, thinking is about more than word processing and fact checking - and the further we advance in the direction of digitalisation the further we shall be from "the secret - and the pleasure - of both" [43]. 

 

The brain is not a type of computer. And AI is not a form of thinking and knows nothing of the intelligence of evil [i]. 

 

 

XI. 

 

Should we save silence? 

 

Obviously, as someone who has argued that silence, stillness, secrecy, and shadows should be central to the practice of occultism in an age of transparency - click here - I'm going to answer yes to this question. 

 

But I also think we should preserve the absence; i.e., the nothingness that lies at the heart of the world and which is "as essential to life as are air and wind to the flight of the dove" [j]. 

 

 

XII. 

  

However else we might describe Baudrillard's thinking on the triumph of the machine, it's certainly pessimistic. 

 

Human beings, he concludes, may now be free to "operate within an integral individuality, free from all history and subjective constraints" [62], but it comes at a price: "it is clear that mankind exists only at the cost of its own death" [62]. 

 

In other words, our immortality is achieved only via our own technological disappearance and our "inscription in the digital order (the mental diaspora of the networks)" [92]. 

 

Lawrence would agree: Heidegger would agree: Byung-Chul Han would agree: and I think, ultimately, I agree too (even though I like taking snaps on my i-Phone - many of which end up here on TTA).  

 

And who knows, perhaps if we push the process of digitalisation all the way to its outer limits something surprising will happen and all that has disappeared will reappear in brutal solidity once more (just as impressionism's escape into pure light and colour gave way to post-impressionism and the return of great lumpy bodies and landscapes that made one nostalgic for mud and substance [k]).    

 

Perhaps objects will rediscover their singularity and we'll rediscover our analogue duality on the other side of digital integrity; i.e., the most radical - most demonic - element of human being that is also the most necessary and from which we derive our antagonistic vitalism.  

 

For as Zarathustra said, "'man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him'" [l].  

 

  

Notes 

 

[g] Any Heideggerians reading this might be mumbling the word Unverborgenheit to themselves at this point and I suppose that Heidegger's concept might be borrowed (and adapted) in order to discuss the appearance (disclosure) and disappearance (concealment) of beings and worlds, although Baudrillard makes no such attempt to do so.

 

[h] Later in his text, Baudrillard will describe CGI as an ultimate form of violence committed against the image; one which "puts an end even to the imagining of the image" [45]. 

 

[i] For Baudrillard, the intelligence of evil is a dualistic principle of reversability which underlies the world operating outside of moral reason and challenges the integral reality (and hegemony) of the digital world. In other words, it's a force of instability and conflict that reveals the cracks and contradictions in a system which thinks itself whole and perfect. 

 

[j] Jean Baudrillard and Enrique Valiente Noailles, Exiles from Dialogue (Polity Press, 2007), pp. 134-35.

      This line is quoted by François L'Yvonnet in his Foreword to Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? and he reminds readers that this is a reference to (and rejection of) Kant's idea that a bird would fly even faster and higher were it free of all resistance. For L'Yvonnet, nihilism isn't the affirmation of nothingness, but the forgetting (or negating) of nothingness in order to bring everything to full presence.  

 

[k] I'm paraphrasing D. H. Lawrence writing in 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 182-217. See pp. 197-199 in particular for Lawrence's analysis of impressionism and post-impressionism. 

 

[l] See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann (Penguin Books, 1976), p. 330. The line comes from the section entitled 'The Convalescent', in Part 3 of Zarathustra.  

 

 

Notes on Jean Baudrillard's 'Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?' (Part 1: Sections I-V)

Seagull Books (2009)

 

 

I. 

 

Every day, one reads of yet another plant or animal facing extinction, or of natural resources rapidly being depleted [a].

 

But extinction, of course, is a natural phenomenon; just as the exhaustion of reserves is a physical process, whereas disappearance - at least in the sense that Baudrillard uses the term with reference to human beings - is something very different.    

 

For Baudrillard, just as reality vanishes into the virtual, man disappears as a result of his own idealistic transformation of the world: 

 

"The human species is doubtless the only one to have invented a specific mode of disappearance that has nothing to do with Nature's law. Perhaps even an art of disappearance." [b]   

 

II. 

 

Whilst our mode of disappearance may perhaps be an art, nevertheless the modern transformation of the world into something that can be unambiguously known, was accomplished via science and technology. 

 

It's one of those ironic things that just as we create a world of value and meaning for ourselves, a world over which we can exercise mastery with our minds and our machines, we set the stage for our own disappearance.   

 

"But doubtless we have to go back even further - as far as concepts and language. By representing things to ourselves, by naming them and conceptualising them, human beings call them into existence and at the same time hasten their doom, subtly detach them from their brute reality." [11]

 

Things - objects - do not like to be dragged into the light and subject to human analysis; it is their nature to withdraw into ontological darkness and thus retain a reality that always exceeds their relations to other objects (including us) [c].

 

The moment a thing is identified - "the moment representation and concepts take hold of it" [12] - that's the precise moment when it begins to lose its volcanic vitalism and begins its disappearance. 

 

Just as, on the other hand, the moment concepts or ideas (but also fantasies, dreams, and desires) achieve their realisation, the game is up and they begin to dissolve before your very eyes. That's why one should be careful of what one wishes for ...

 

 

III. 

 

One should also be careful not to achieve one's full potential. 

 

For despite what the American psychologist Abraham Maslow and his followers teach, "what is proper to human beings is not to realise all their possibilities" [15], but, rather, recognise their limitations, celebrate their imperfections, and hold on to those negative traits that we need to exist as mortals (only God doesn't cast a shadow). 

 

Self-actualisation - driven by "an impulse to go as far as possible" [19] in the expression of all one's power and potential  - may promise a type of immortality, but this extreme endeavour results ultimately in the "virtual disappearance of the human species" [19]. 

 

In other words, the dream of defeating death and becoming immortal results in a fate that is arguably worse than death. 

 

 

IV. 

      

Having said that, Baudrillard at this point makes a sort of U-turn and suggests we might, after all, conceive of disappearance differently: "as a singular event and the object of a specific desire, the desire to no longer be there, which is not negative at all" [21]. 

 

In staging our own disappearance as a material art (beyond aesthetics), we might be able to "see what the world looks like in our absence [...] or to see, beyond the end, beyond the subject, beyond all meaning, beyond the horizon of disappearance, if there is still an occurrence of the world, an unprogrammed appearance of things" [21] [d].  

 

In other words, is it possible to see the world as it is and not as the real world (which is only ever a world of representation)?

 

It's an interesting question ... Perhaps one that only those artists who know how to "play on their disappearance, make use of it as a living form, exploit it by excess" [22] will find the answer to [e].

 

The trick, ultimately, is "to disappear before dying and instead of dying" [25]; not to artificially survive.

 

 

V. 

 

This is important: "nothing just vanishes; of everything that disappears there remain traces" [25] (my italics). 

 

Think of the Cheshire Cat, for example, "whose grin still hovers in the air after the rest of him has vanished" [25]. Or think of God - he's been dead for ages, but, his shadow, as Nietzsche says, will still be seen for thousands of years (and I wonder if mankind will ever have done with his judgement) [f].  

 

Baudrillard writes:

 

"We may thus suppose that everything that disappears - institutions, values, prohibitions, ideologies, even ideas - continues to lead a clandestine existence and exert an occult influence, as was said of the ancient gods who, in the Christian era, assumed the form of demons. Everything that disappears seeps back into our lives in infinitesimal doses, often more dangerous than the visible authority that ruled over us." 

 

That's true: we are masters at internalising everything and allowing the invisible souls of the dear departed to find a home within us; the dead they do not die and, ultimately, nothing ever disappears.   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The International Union for Conservation of Nature currently has over 47,000 species on their Red List of Threatened Species: click here. 

      The United Nations Environment Programme produced a 2024 report on the manner in which the global economy is consuming ever more natural resources, at an ever faster rate: click here.   

 

[b] Jean Baudrillard, Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?, trans. Chris Turner, with images by Alain Willaume (Seagull Books, 2009), p. 9. Future page references to this book will be given in the post itself.  

      This text - one of the last that Baudrillard wrote before his death in March 2007 - was originally published in French as Pourquoi tout n'a-t-il pas déjà disparu? (L'Herne, 2007). 

      When I first read this little book fifteen years ago I wasn't sure I understood it. In fact, I'm not sure I correctly understand it even now, so readers are advised that the notes assembled here may give a mistaken interpretation of (or false gloss to) Baudrillard's thinking.   

 

[c] Graham Harman has discussed this at great length and in great detail in his work; see, for example, his 2018 book Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (Pelican Books). 

      I have discussed this book in a post dated 24 March 2018: click here. And for another post discussing Harman's philosophy, click here.  

 

[d] Later on, Baudrillard writes: "Have we not always had the deep-seated phantasy of a world that would go on without us? The poetic temptation to see the world in our absence, free of any human, all-too-human will?" [52]. 

      One thinks of Rupert Birkin's dream of a post-human world of nothing but grass and the odd hare sitting up in D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love (1920). 

 

[e] Baudrillard remains sceptical about the role that art will play. He writes:

      "Art itself in the modern period exists only on the basis of its disappearance - not just the art of making the real disappear and supplanting it with another scene, but the art of abolishing itself in the course of its practice [...] It was by doing this that it constituted an event, that it was of decisive importance. I say 'was' advisedly, for art today, though it as disappeared, doesn't know it has disappeared and [...] continues in its trajectory in a vegetative state." [22]

      The same, of course, might be said of politics today.  

 

[f] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III, §108. 

 

 

Part 2 of this post (sections VI-XII) can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

A Brief Note on the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

 Charlie Kirk and the man accused of his murder Tyler Robinson

  

One of the great ironies of politics today - noted by Jean Baudrillard on more than one occasion in his writings [1] - is that whilst those on the paleoconservative right claim to be Christians and to represent moral values, it is actually those on the radical left who most faithfully (and fanatically) subscribe to the moral distinction good/evil (as opposed to the non-moralistic distinction good/bad) [2].  

 

And it's because of this that whilst the former tend to think their political opponents mistaken (and possibly a little naive, foolish, or crazy), the latter are prone to believe anyone who doesn't share their worldview must be a Nazi; i.e., irredeemably evil and thus not someone with whom one can reason or debate but, rather, someone who, like Charlie Kirk, must be killed (and deserves to die) [3]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See, for example, what Baudrillard writes in his essay 'A Conjuration of Imbeciles' (1997), which can be found in The Conspiracy of Art, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, trans. Ames Hodes (Semiotext(e), 2005), pp. 30-35. 

      In brief, Baudrillard attempts to address the question of why it is "everything moral, orthodox and conformist, which was traditionally associated with the right, passed to the left?" (p. 30), whilst, on the other hand, all the political and intellectual vitality once associated with the latter has moved to the far right, allowing figures like Charlie Kirk (and his hero Donald Trump) to come to the fore and gain huge followings.

      Readers who are interested might like to see the post published on 10 November 2016 in which I discuss this: click here.     

 

[2] Nietzsche famously analysed this crucial first step in what he terms the slave revolt in morals in the first essay of the Genealogy (1887).

      Unlike those strong natures confident enough to affirm themselves as good and who only feel the need to ascribe the term bad to others as a kind of afterthought, those who identify as marginalised or victimised in some manner and who seek revenge (or what they call social justice), define themselves as good only having first demonised others as evil and by cancelling all ideas that do not fit into their moral-ideological conception of the world. 

 

[3] We see this in some of the shameful videos uploaded to social media by those who think it acceptable to openly celebrate his murder.  

      Whilst we don't yet know the suspect's motivation for shooting Kirk, investigators say there's evidence to suggest he may have been politically radicalised online and sympathetic to Antifa, a far-left movement with members who are not opposed to violent direct action.

      This evidence includes inscriptions and symbols made on unfired shell casings, one of which had lyrics from the anti-fascist resistance song 'Bella Cioa' which honours Italian partisans who fought against Nazi German occupiers during the Second World War. 

      One is almost tempted to wonder whether Robinson - despite not being Jewish - saw himself as some kind of Basterd, i.e., a member of the fictional black ops commando unit led by Lt. Aldo Raine in Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglorious Basterds who were tasked with "doin' one thing, and one thing only - killin' Nazis". 

      (I'm quoting from page 19 of Tarantino's script to the film, which is available via scriptslug.com to down load as a pdf: click here.)   

 

Thoughts on The World Without Women and the Elimination of Otherness

The Dial Press (1971) [a]

I. 

 

I recently came across the above novel by the Italian writer Virgilio Martini (1903-1986); a work which, when originally published in Fascist Italy in 1936, was soon banned on the grounds of blasphemy and obscenity.  

 

It tells the story of the last woman of childbearing age on earth, after a homosexual plot to exterminate the fairer sex with a deadly virus almost succeeds. 

 

I don't know if the author was genuinely plagued by fears of a gay planet, or if he just thought this would make an amusing piece of satirical science fiction, but, either way it's a curious work that even many ardent fans of the SF genre haven't read (or even heard of). 

 

However, one person who was familiar with Martini's novel was Jean Baudrillard, who references the work in Le crime parfait (1995) [b] ...

 

 

II. 

 

For Baudrillard, the perfect crime is the murder of reality and the vital illusion of the world. 

 

But Baudrillard is not simply interested in solving this crime (in finding clues, for example, that might reveal the identity of the perpetrator); he's a philosopher, not a private detective and, ultimately, he's more concerned with what happens after the event (i.e., on the other side of the crime) than in lamenting the disappearance of the Real. 

 

It's man's entrance into the era of the Virtual that really excites his interest; an era born of the liquidation of the Real (and the referential), but which is characterised by the extermination of the Other and all forms of otherness - including the feminine principle.   

 

Describing the novel's central idea as a terrifying allegory for what we ourselves are now experiencing, Baudrillard predicts that, as in Martini's novel, "no science will be able to protect us" [111] from the fate that awaits us: 

 

"Though, for the moment, this virus does not affect the biological reproduction of the species, it affects an even more fundamental function, that of the symbolic reproduction of the other, favouring, rather, a cloned, asexual reproduction of the species-less individual. For to be deprived of the other is to be deprived of sex, and to be deprived of sex is to be deprived of symbolic belonging to any species whatsoever." [112] 

 

It's this idea of "a world given over entirely to the selfsame" [112] that is truly terrifying. 

 

It might mark the end of alienation, but, whereas in the past many saw this as an ideal goal, today "we can see that alienation protected us from something worse: from the definitive loss of the other, from the expropriation of the other by the same" [112].

Why's that so dreadful? 

 

Well, because to be dispossessed of the other results in an irrevocable and fatal destabilisation of the self. 

 

Think of what happens, for example, when the lamb lies down with the wolf; Christians might believe that to neutralise predators will bring about a future of universal peace and safety, in which even natural adversaries live in harmony (see Isaiah 11:6-9), but Baudrillard recognises that this results only in a tragic destiny for both animals. 

 

And it's the same for us:

 

"The best strategy for bringing about someone's ruin is to eliminate everything which threatens him, thus causing him to lose all his defences, and it is this strategy we are applying to ourselves. By eliminating the other in all its forms (illness, death, negativity, violence, strangeness), not to mention racial and [sexual] differences, by eliminating all singularities in order to radiate total positivity, we are eliminating ourselves." [113] 

  

 

Notes

 

[a] This first English edition was translated by Emile Capouya; dustjacket by Paul Bacon. The original Italian edition of Martini's novel - Il mondo senza donne - was published in 1936.

 

[b] See Jean Baudrillard, 'The Laying Off of Desire', in The Perfect Crime, trans. Chris Turner  (Verso, 1996), pp. 111-114. Page references to this work will be given directly in the post.