How to be an Idle Cunt

Is the writer Tom Hodgkinson the most despicable human being in the world? Perhaps not. But his book, How to be Idle (Penguin Books, 2005), remains the most offensive publication I have ever read: snobbish, sexist, racist, banal and moralistic, it was of course critically acclaimed by his chums in the media.   

One might have expected far more from a man who openly boasts of his knowledge of the "philosophy, fiction, poetry and history of the last three thousand years" [P] than to be told that the working class are gullible and too stupid to delegate or live life according to their own rules. But that, pretty much, is the central message.

He still loves them of course, for he's a man of the people who, when not hiring nannies for the children or contributing articles to The Daily Telegraph, likes nothing better than to listen to the Clash. Tom might have purchased his idleness at the expense of others - those "office girls with lots of make-up" and "immigrants with hard hats" [14] that he refers to - but he's still a punk revolutionary at heart.

Tom loves the homeless too. And, without wanting to over-romanticize them, he thinks it a real shame that they are seen as unfortunates in need of help, rather than  happy souls who "do not want a job ... do not want to become middle class ... do not want to keep fixed hours and spend their surplus income in department stores and theme parks" [108]. Tom knows this, because it says so in a song by the Monkees. But is it not peculiarly insulting to be told this by a man who, whilst working at The Guardian on the homes-and-interiors supplement, came up with the line 'staying in is the new going out'?

However, next time a homeless young person approaches, rather than mumble about not having any change, I shall take the opportunity to inform them that they "represent an ideal ... of pure living in the moment, of wandering without destination, of freedom from worldly care" [110].

No need then for more temporary accommodation to be made available, or new houses to be built. No need for hospitals either, because, according to Tom, it's a good thing to be sick: "bodily suffering  can improve the mind" [69]. Instead, what we should do is open more pubs and tobacconists: because alcohol makes us into "thinking, feeling, laughing, independent human beings" [113] and smoking "transforms the common man into something more heroic, more complete" [137]. Perhaps the latter is true; but if completion involves developing malignant tumours, I for one would prefer to remain incomplete.

Tom also supports the opening of legalized brothels, because the "quest for liberty" is tied to "the pursuit of sexual freedoms" [194]. In practice, this seems to mean fucking prostitutes, masturbating with pornography, and being raped: "Oh, to lie back and be used and abused! This is surely the secret wish of every sexual slacker" [198].

Not that he advocates too much debauchery as he slips happily towards respectable middle-age. For one thing, he doesn't have enough "energy (or staff!) to get blasted all the time" [222]. And besides, his real pleasure now is getting plenty of sleep in order to "restore body and mind to a comfortable condition" [222]: his bourgeois default setting.

In fact, it was whilst innocently day-dreaming that Tom came up with the idea of starting his own business and forging a successful writing career so that he might have his ideal life. Good for him! But whilst dreaming might be free, one might wonder where he found the capital needed in order to do these things: his professed frugality and thriftiness perhaps? Or was it from his wealthy parents, his famous friends, or his business partner and old school pal, Gavin Pretor-Pinney?

I don't know and I don't really care. But I would like to know why it is Tom Hodgkinson's model of idleness has to involve such naked ambition and colossal conceit. He's not the most despicable human being in the world. But ...  
 

Hand Partialism

There's something deeply affecting about the poster campaign for the new perfume from YSL. It's not the gaze of the actress modelling which transfixes; rather, it's the fact that attention is drawn to her hands which have been dipped in purple paint. 

I suddenly see why Baudrillard insists that the slender and lively hands of women are of greater symbolic and seductive beauty than their eyes or hidden sexual organs. 

I suppose that's why nothing gives greater pleasure than to stroll hand-in-hand, or be gently masturbated by a girl with delicate fingers.     

Life's a Drag

'A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor a man wear women's clothing, 

for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.'

                                                                                           
                                                                                          - Deuteronomy, 22: 5                                             

Really? I mean what's the problem here: why is God so troubled by everything?

I suppose it's because the simple pleasure of cross-dressing creates an element of uncertainty and causes the poles of male and female to vacillate via an abolition of differential opposition. 

Cross-dressing demonstrates how the signs of sex can easily be separated from biology. In other words, it reveals gender and sexual identity to be nothing but a playful and performative game involving clothes, hair and cosmetics; a question of style, rather than a fateful combination of anatomical fact and metaphysical essence.

Personally, I have always found something enchanting about 'men dressed as women' and 'women dressed as men'. Like Wilde, I am of the view that wherever there is loveliness of appearance, then there is no fraudulence. 

And besides, as Judith Butler points out: we are all transvestites. 

The Perfect Shoe

Following a recent post in which I mentioned the importance of  footwear, I have been asked to describe what might constitute - for me at least - the perfect men's shoe. 

Fortunately, thanks to the creative genius of the designers at Prada, this isn't difficult. For the perfect shoe already exists: the Levitate is an insanely beautiful mash-up between the old school formality of the brogue and the urban cool of the Nike Air sports shoe - topped off with a golf fringe as an almost ludicrous addition just for the hell of it.  

Malcolm would always speak of the three things that matter most in fashion: sex, style, and subversion. These shoes possess all these elements. Are they comfortable? Who cares. Are they practical? Again, who cares! Do you imagine Cinderella's sister's were thinking of comfort and practicality when they mutilated their feet in order to squeeze into her magical glass slippers?

By wearing these shoes, your life will be instantly transformed for the better; for they make heroic and they make fabulous. As Marilyn Monroe once said: 'Wear the right shoes and you can conquer the world'.  

   

Ants and the Spirit of Christmas

Teeny-tiny little red spider-ants have taken up residence in my electric kettle: which is kind of annoying and a little inconvenient. I should probably kill them. 

But it's Christmas day and I don't have the heart to do it. Peace and goodwill to all mankind - but why not extend this to insects and arachnids? 

It's not that I think Christ the Saviour was born to redeem them of their sins too, but because it seems to me that this is just as much their world as it is mine.

Nevertheless, tomorrow, when I wake up and want a cup of tea, then I know that I'll reach for the poison spray, or squash them under thumb.

And this, in a nutshell, was why Jesus ended up nailed to a cross.

The Case of Jacintha Saldanha

Potlatch is an archaic form of economic exchange, based on the notion of giving a gift of such value that the receiver is thereby humiliated and at the same time obligated. This can include the gift of life.

For it is not only possible to shame and to challenge an enemy via a spectacular display of wealth, but also by a senseless and violent act of sacrifice, including self-sacrifice or suicide.

And so we come to the case of Jacintha Saldanha: the nurse who killed herself after falling victim to a prank telephone call made by two Australian DJs who thought it funny and inconsequential to make a fool of someone. Now they know better.

For what this proud and honourable woman has done is turn the tables on those who would make her look naive and gullible in the eyes of the entire world. She has effectively rendered them speechless and powerless by making of her own life a sacrificial offering that has to be accepted with deep sorrow and regret, but which can never be returned. 

In refusing to be a figure of fun and by making exchange impossible, Jacintha Saldanha has extracted the object's revenge.

So who's laughing now? Certainly not Michael Christian or Mel Greig. 

American Psycho and the Slave Revolt in Morals

Patrick Bateman is one of the great fictional figures within contemporary culture, even though the question of his identity remains ambiguous and his reliability as a narrator suspect. Stylish,  charming, and with a dandy's eye for detail, he's a postmodern Dorian Gray living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.      

However, it's clear that the author of American Psycho doesn't wish for his readers to admire Patrick Bateman. On the contrary, Bateman is someone we should repudiate; a man trapped in a world that lacks depth, meaning, and reality and his story serves as a warning about the dangers of surrendering one's soul to Mammon. This is why Ellis opens the novel with a line from Dante - 'Abandon all hope ye who enter here' - an allusion to the hell that awaits those who choose to lead a life lacking in firm moral foundation and worry more about looking good than being good. 

Thus, for all the protests from various concerned quarters that greeted publication of the book, American Psycho is above all else a moral fable and not a celebration of schizo-psychosis, or a nihilistic advocacy of murder and mayhem. Its central teaching is one subscribed to by all good Christians: love of money is the root of all evil. Ellis even goes so far as to imply there might be a causal connection between serial consumption and serial killing. 

And this is why as much as I admire the work as a piece of writing, I despise it for reinforcing the great conceit of the poor and badly dressed: namely, that whilst the rich and powerful might have money and lead superficially fabulous lives, they are all unhappy and corrupt and heading towards eternal damnation. This resentment-ridden philosophy of secret envy and hatred is what underlies slave moralities everywhere and it ends not merely with contempt for material well-being and good fortune, but with an apocalyptic desire for worldly destruction. For as Lawrence writes:

"It is very nice, if you are poor and not humble - and the poor may be obsequious, but they are almost never truly humble, in the Christian sense - to bring your enemies down to utter destruction ... while you yourself rise up to grandeur." 

- Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, (CUP, 1980), p. 63.

American Psycho is meant to scare us back onto the straight and narrow path that leads to heaven. We are asked to accept that salvation belongs exclusively to those who are honest and hard-working; i.e. those who think their meekness and self-restraint is a voluntary achievement or accomplishment, rather than simply a sign that they lack the power to act.

Sadly, not only do lies turn impotence into virtue, but they make us suspect and despise those things which the heart needs even more than love: splendour, pride, good shoes, and expensive-looking business cards.
   

Fragments of Glass (2006)

Dromeas (1994), glass and iron sculpture by Costas Varotsos, Athens, Greece

Crash!

And suddenly, with a crash, I find myself 
thrown like Alice into another world.

A world in which self, day, and window lie shattered
on the floor in a sparkling chaos of glass, blood and
sunshine.


In the Confrontation with Glass 

In the confrontation with glass,
flesh is rarely the winner.

For whilst the former shatters,
the latter bleeds and knows
pain.

Which is the secret of life's
victory over death.


At the Hospital in Athens 

As my doctor displayed her skill with a needle
on gashed head and wounded knee, I found
comfort in the thought that we are born to
embody our scars.


Poppies

We had only the day before been looking at wild poppies
staining the roadside, admiring their obscenity of colour -
'little hell-flames' indeed.

But shocking all the same to discover how the body too
is capable of producing it's own poppy-redness - look!
as drops of blood flower on shards of broken glass.


The Vengeance of Objects

Glass is so unforgiving,
so cruel, so ... sharp!

It cuts and slices the flesh without
mercy or hesitation, or the warm
softness of sand.

As it shatters one can almost hear laughter
and every blood-stained splinter seems to
smile.


On Which Side is Wonderland?

On one side of the glass lives she who offers
love and the prospect of a life together.

And on the other is she who dreams of
an elaborate suicide.

And I have crashed through the window not knowing
on which side I've landed.


I Love Everything That Flows

There is nothing more beautiful than blood
when it flows and carries life away with it.

Nothing more disgusting than when it begins
to coagulate; to clot and to curdle.

There's something shameful about scabs.
 

Haemostasis

For Lawrence, who subscribes to a libidinal materialism in which 'touch' is of crucial importance, the physical handling of an object brings us much closer to a true understanding of it than any abstract theory of the thing. Via frequent contact and usage, we gain what he terms 'blood-knowledge' and by which he means an intuitive, sensual, and pre-cognitive way of relating to the material world.

Although he often claims that he is not an opponent of mind and doesn't advocate an acephalic humanity, Lawrence clearly privileges some form of primal consciousness that he locates in the lower-body and which delights in doing the washing-up. One of the reasons he dislikes Kant is because the latter only thought coldly and critically with his head and never darkly and desirously with his blood: and he never did the dishes!

Real thought, says Lawrence, is an experience and requires the establishment of a 'peculiar alien sympathy' with the otherness of things that lie external to our selves and exist mind-independently. Idealism marks the death of all this: it is a negation of the real and of the great affective centres within the body wherein the pristine unconscious is located. If we are to be happy and vital creatures, then we must, says Lawrence, get back into vivid relationship with the cosmos; i.e. get back into touch and know once more not in terms of apartness (which is rational and scientific), but in terms of togetherness (which is religious and poetic).

What are we to make of all this? At one time, I would have subscribed to this vision and affirmed Lawrence's libidinal materialism without hesitation. And, in fact, I still think there is much to be said for the latter and believe it may hold a fundamental key to the development of an object-oriented ontology. Ultimately, Lawrence plays for me much the same role that Heidegger plays for Graham Harman and he remains a major influence on my thinking.

However, I now have some reservations and find much of what Lawrence writes here, as elsewhere, problematic. Thus, the idea that the physical handling of a mundane object such as a tea-pot, or the frequent use of a tool such as a hammer, somehow brings us closer to it than we might ever be to those things of which we have only a theoretical understanding - such as molecules, black holes, or electromagnetic waves - seems dubious.

In fact, it seems to be based on an entirely false (although common) distinction made between theoretical and non-theoretical forms of knowledge, in which the former are presented as artificial, speculative, and parasitic upon the latter which is the warm-blooded body of true human  understanding. As Paul Churchland points out: "That these specious contrasts are wholesale nonsense has not prevented them finding expression and approval" in the writings not only of artists and poets like Lawrence, but also in the work of many philosophers. Churchland continues:

"Upon close inspection the various contrasts thought to fund the distinction are seen to disappear. If viewed warily, the network of principles and assumptions constitutive of our common-sense conceptual framework can be seen to be as speculative and as artificial  as any overtly theoretical system. ... Comprehensive theories, on the other hand, prove not to be essentially parasitic, but to be potentially autonomous frameworks in their own right. In short, it appears that all knowledge ... is theoretical; that there is no such thing as non-theoretical understanding. Our common-sense conceptual framework stands unmasked as being itself a theory, or a battery of theories. And where before we saw a dichotomy between the theoretical and non-theoretical, we are left with little more than a distinction between freshly minted theory and thoroughly thumb-worn theory whose cultural assimilation is complete."

- Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind (CUP, 1979), pp. 1-2.

In other words, Lawrence's blood-knowledge is simply another term for doxa - or that which can be passed off as true without question simply because it has already been widely accepted as such in advance. Thus Lawrence, the arch-opponent of the cliche and stereotype, is here exposed as trading in such; just as he panders to prejudice and reinforces reactionary ignorance with his lazy and disappointing dismissal of modern science. 

     

On the Philosophical Importance of Making Lists

Writing in the above work, Ian Bogost suggests that we might use the term ontography to refer to an inscriptive strategy that gives a snapshot of the world and the wealth of objects that constitute it, without necessarily providing a wider context of meaning. At its simplest, this would take the form of a list: "a group of items loosely joined not by logic ... but by the gentle knot of the comma" [38].

Lists are something we regularly come across in the work of object-oriented ontologists. Critics might say they take the place of argument, or are simply a form of bad writing. But that's unfair and it seems to me that lists can and do serve real philosophical importance. Further, at their best, they also have a stylistic charm that borders on being poetic. 

Lists matter because, as Francis Spufford says, they allow the things that compose them to retain their independence and uniqueness by refusing 'the connecting power of language, in favour of a sequence of disconnected elements' [quoted by Bogost, 40]. This idea of things as autonomous things in themselves is crucial to OOO and it offers a welcome alternative to the now tedious idea of Deleuzean becoming with its preference for continuity and underlying monism. 

As Bogost argues, the notion of becoming this, that, or the other,  ultimately suggests "comfort and compatibility in relations between units" [40]. In contrast, his own model of alien phenomenology assumes radical incompatibility and disjunction, instead of harmonious flow. His use of lists, therefore, reminds us that "no matter how fluidly a system may operate, its members nevertheless remain utterly isolated" [40] and alien to one another. 

In other words, lists don't just challenge the connecting power of language, but serve to remind us of the ontological claim that being is not one and undivided, but made up of a multiplicity of objects that may or may not relate to one another, but which never fully reveal or give themselves away.