On Smoothness

Jeff Koons: Rabbit (1986) 

Stainless steel sculpture [1]

 

 

I. 

 

D. H. Lawrence famously contrasted the shape and surface of a peach with that of a billiard ball; privileging the former, velvety and wrinkled with secrets, over that of the latter, so round and finished but lacking in voluptuous beauty for all its smooth perfection [2].  

 

Clearly, for Lawrence, this is an erotico-aesthetic issue; he doesn't like the look or feel of the billiard ball as an object and regrets that it doesn't have the indentation or groove of the peach running along its body; the ripple down the sphere with the suggestion of incision [3].

 

 

II.

 

Byung-Chul Han is another writer who doesn't much care for smoothness and he not only perceives a connection between Brazilian waxing, the iPhone, and the sculptures of Jeff Koons, but objects to all these things on politico-philosophical grounds. 

 

Speaking in conversation with Niels Boeing and Andreas Lebert in 2014, Han explained why he sees similarities between these things and why the ideal of smoothness troubles him:

 

"The commonality isn't that difficult to see: it is the smooth. Smoothness is characteristic of our present. Do you know the G Flex, a smarthone by LG? This smartphone has a special covering. If it gets scratched, the scratch quickly disappears. That is, it has a self-healing skin, almost an organic skin. The smartphone therefore remains perfectly smooth. I ask myself: What is the problem with an object getting a few scratches? Why this striving for a smooth surface? And straightaway a connection opens up between the smooth smartphone, smooth skin, and love." [4] 

 

Han continues: 

 

"The smooth surface of the smartphone is a skin that cannot be damaged, that can avoid any injury. And isn't it the case that today we seek to avoid any kind of harm in love as well? We do not want to be vulnerable; we shy away from hurting and from being hurt. [...] 

      [...] Even art  seeks to avoid injury. There is no damage to be found on a Jeff Koons sculpture - no tears, no fault lines, no sharp edges, no seam either. Everything flows in soft and smooth transitions. It all appears rounded, polished, smoothed out - Jeff Koons's art is dedicated to the smooth surface." [5]    

 

 

III. 

 

What, then, do I think of this? 

 

Well, on the one hand, I quite agree that it's often the irregularities and imperfections that make things (including people) lovable and longtime readers will know that I subscribe to a gargoyle aesthetic [click here, or here, for example], which means I challenge all ideas of wholeness, or completion, or smooth perfection. The devil - which is to say the seductive charm - is always in the detail.    

 

On the other hand, I've also indicated in past posts that I'm a fan of the work of Jeff Koons [click here, or here, for example], have written on the beauty and genius of the iPhone [click here], wear spectacles with anti-scratch lenses, and prefer girls with legs that are silky smooth, rather than rough and hairy [6]. 

 

So let's just say I'm a little more ambivalent on this question than Han ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Koons had three identical stainless steel rabbits made in 1986. One of these figures sold for over $91,000,000 in May 2019, making it the most expensive work sold by a living artist at auction. 

 

[2] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Peach', in The Poems, Vo. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 232. The poem can be found on the Poetry Foundation website: click here. 

      I'm aware of the fact that were one to closely examine a billiard ball one would find that it is neither perfectly round nor perfectly smooth, despite being machine manufactured and cast in resilient plastic materials. It might look (to the naked eye) and feel (to the poet's fingertip) absolutely smooth, but there are numerous micro pits, bumps and scratches on the surface of a billiard ball. 

[3] One is reminded reading this that, for Lawrence "fruits are all of them female" and that he cannot help relating the body of the fig, peach, or pomegranate to the body of woman and her sexual organs. See The Poems Vol. I, p. 229. 

      This metaphorical comparison between fruit and sex is of course long established in the arts; it is, in fact, something of a cliché for (predominantly male) poets and painters to compare breasts to melons, nipples to dark cherries, and moist cunts to ripe figs showing crimson through the purple slit, as D. H. Lawrence would have it. I comment at greater length on this elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark; click here for example, or here.

 

[4] Byung-Chul Han, 'I Am Sorry, But These Are the Facts', in Capitalism and the Death Drive, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2021), pp. 125-26. 

 

[5] Ibid., p. 126. 

      Note that Byung-Chul Han sets out his thinking on smoothness (in relation to the body and to aesthetics) in Saving Beauty, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2018). See the first three chapters in particular. 

[6] Having said that, in one of the earliest posts on this blog (8 Jan 2013), I wrote with regret about the universal Brazilianization of women obliged by porno-social convention to wax or shave their pubic region and recalled the words of Henry Miller to the effect that a hairless cunt lacks mystery and resembles a dead clam (one assumes that Byng-Chul Han would agree with this). Click here if interesed in reading the post in full.  

On Human Nakedness as Seen by Animals

Giovanni Lanfranco:  

Giovane nudo sul letto con un gatto (c. 1620-22)

Oil on canvas (112 x160 cm)

 

I often ask myself who I am at that moment when I'm caught naked

by the silent gaze of an animal; for example, the eyes of a cat ... [1]

 

 

Do animals understand that we are wearing clothes? Or, to put it another way, do they know when we are naked? 

 

D. H. Lawrence suspected his favourite brown hen would, if she could, address him as Mr. Skinflappy: 

 

"Skin-flappy, of course, would refer to my blue shirt and baggy cord trousers. How would she know I don't grow them like a loose skin!" [2]

 

How indeed, being only a chicken? 

 

But what about a cat? For I'm assuming that a cat is more insightful than a chicken when it comes to this question [3] and must surely sense the difference between skin and cloth and know when its human is in the nip? 

 

Didn't Derrida discover this for himself when his cat [4], having wandered into the bathroom, exposed the philosopher's nakedness and caused him to experience a feeling of embarrassment or shame? [5]

 

As Derrida points out, at such moments we are transported back to that moment in Genesis [3:7] when, post-Fall, Adam and Eve know themselves to be naked not only in the eyes of God and each other, but the serpent and all the other animals that inhabited the garden (and so quickly cover themselves with fig leaves). 

As Nietzsche concludes, when the animals look at man - particularly as he stands naked before them on two bare legs - they do not see a creature that is separate and superior; rather, they see "a being of their own kind which has in a most dangerous manner lost its sound animal reason" [6] and is physically maladapted to the world (lacking in speed, in strength, in sharp teeth and fur). 

That's man: the mad animal, the vulnerable animal, and the naked animal ill at ease in its own skin ...

   

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm quoting from memory (so have doubtless not quite got it right) a line by Jacques Derrida in 'The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)', trans. David Wills, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 28, No. 2, (The University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 369-418. Click here to access on JSTOR.

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Him With His Tail in His Mouth', in Refections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 316. 

 

[3] Actually, my love of cats might be causing me to be unfair to chickens. For according to a study into their intelligence by a professor at Bristol University in 2013, chickens can not only outperform cats and dogs in several tests of cognitive and behavioural ability, but even four-year-old children.

 

[4] Like Foucault and Deleuze, Derrida had a much-loved feline companion; see my post from January 2018 - 'When I Play With My Cat' - click here. In 'The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)', Derrida is at pains to stress that when he speaks of a female cat staring at his nakedness in the bathroom, he is referring to an actual creature in all its unique singularity: 

      "I must make it clear from the start, the cat I am talking about is a real cat, truly, believe me, a little cat. It isn't the figure of a cat. It doesn't silently enter the room as an allegory for all the cats on the earth, the felines that traverse myths and religions, literature and fables." [374]  

 

[5] Again, see Derrida's 'The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)', op. cit., where he confesses: 

      "I have trouble repressing a reflex dictated by immodesty. Trouble keeping silent within me a protest against the indecency. Against the impropriety that comes of finding oneself naked, one's sex exposed, stark naked before a cat that looks at you without moving, just to see. The impropriety [malséance] of a certain animal nude before the other animal [...] the single, incomparable and original experience of the impropriety that would come from appearing in truth naked, in front of the insistent gaze of the animal, a benevolent or pitiless gaze, surprised or cognizant. [...] It is as if I were ashamed, therefore, naked in front of this cat, but also ashamed for being ashamed." [372]

 

[6] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III, §224. This is my translation of the line. The section, entitled Kritik der Thiere ['Critique of the Animals'], reads in full and in the original German:

      "Ich fürchte, die Thiere betrachten den Menschen als ein Wesen Ihresgleichen, das in höchst gefährlicher Weise den gesunden Thierverstand verloren hat, - als das wahnwitzige Thier, als das lachende Thier, als das weinende Thier, als das unglückselige Thier." 

 

 

Beijing Über Alles: On the Western World's Becoming-Chinese in the Age of Coronavirus

Xi Jinping: General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party

President of the People's Republic of China

世界皇帝   

 

 

I.

 

However you wish to term it, Sinofication - i.e., the insidious process by which non-Chinese societies come under the influence of China (be it economically, politically, or culturally) - is an issue of real concern today here in the West [1].

 

Shamefully, however, it is European leaders themselves who - in the name of public safety and protecting their creaking healthcare systems - are actively dismantling liberal democracy and replacing it with an authoritarian model of society obsessed with bio-surveillance inspired by the People's Republic of China: Build Back Better, as they like to say.

 

Thus, for example, the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, has recently called for appropriate discussions concerning the compulsory vaccination of all EU citizens against Covid-19 (or what Donald Trump still insists on calling - with some justification considering where it originated - the Chinese virus). 

 

This comes after incoming chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, announced he too was in favour of mandatory vaccinations and extending use of digital health passes and face coverings, and following Austria's decision to implement forced Covid vaccination from February next year. In Greece, meanwhile, according to Athens-based commentator Maria Thanassa, monthly fines of  €100 will be issued to all over-60s who remain unvaccinated after the end of this month.

 

I mean, this isn't even something we might smile at any longer, is it? Byung-Chul Han is absolutely spot on to warn: "The last man does not necessarily prefer the liberal system. He is, for instance, quite happy to live under a totalitarian regime." [2]

 

The idea that, as a fateful consequence of the coronavirus pandemic, the West is drifting towards a Chinese-style regime of biopolitical sureveillance is one that Han develops in a recent essay entitled 'The End of Liberalism' that I would like to discuss below ... 

 

 

II. 

 

One of the many things I admire about Han is that he doesn't sit on the fence. Thus, he opens his essay by bluntly - and I think accurately - declaring:

 

"It is almost a matter of the inexorable logic of the pandemic that society will be transformed into a permanent security zone, into a quarantine station in which everyone is treated as though they are infected." [3] 

 

And that effectively spells the end of Western liberalism based on the freedom (and right to privacy) of the individual. It's not the past lockdowns that should trouble us, but the "truly fateful insight [...] that only a biopolitics that allows for unlimited access to the individual" [4] can prevent future lockdowns and economic collapse.

 

Today, it's not California über alles which threatens, but Beijing's 21st-century model of disciplinary society that makes possible "the complete biopolitical surveillance and control of the population" [5]. 

 

Who knows the truth of how Covid-19 became a global pandemic, but the virus has entirely transformed the rules of the game and in the name of survival we will willingly sacrifice "everything that makes life worth living: sociability, community and proximity" [6].   

  

 

Notes

 

 [1] It might be noted that European humanity's becoming more Chinese was something that Nietzsche had already identified as a danger in the 1880s; see section 12 of the first essay in the Genealogy, for example. 

      One hundred years later, and it was Prince Philip expressing his concern that Westerners might become slitty-eyed if they succumb to too much Chinese influence.  

 

[2] Byung-Chul Han, The Palliative Society, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2021), p. 56. 

      As Han goes on to write: "As a survival society, the palliative society does not necessarily depend on liberal democracy. In the face of the pandemic, we are drifting towards a regime of biopolitical surveillance." [57]   

 

[3] Byung-Chul Han, 'The End of Liberalism: The Coronavirus Pandemic and Its Consequences', in Capitalism and the Death Drive, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2021), p. 85. 

[4] Ibid., p. 86. 

[5] Ibid., p. 87. 

      Of course, those zen fascist hippies in Silicon Valley will happily support the Sinofication of society; for them it's a kind of digital utopia that allows for total transparency and demands the level of absolute obedience to authority (as mandated by heaven) that Confucius advocated in his political philosophy.    

[6] Byung-Chul Han, 'COVID-19 Has Reduced Us to a "Society of Survival"', a conversation with Carmen Sigüenza and Esther Rebollo of EFE, the Spanish International News Agency, in Capitalism and the Death Drive, p. 120. 

The Great Beast is Dead (In Memory of Aleister Crowley)

 

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947)

 

"We must conquer life by living it to the full, 

and then we can go to meet death with a certain prestige."

 

 

On this day, December 1st, in the year of our late Lord 1947, the self-styled Great Beast and wickedest man in the world, Aleister Crowley, died, at a guest house in the seaside town of Hastings on the English south coast, of myocardial degeneration (aggravated by pleurisy and chronic bronchitis), aged 72. 

 

One suspects that financial hardship and heroin addiction didn't much help matters, healthwise, either. But there you go: and besides, isn't it better to die poor but still chasing the dragon, than rich and with your feet up, hoping for a peaceful end after a quiet, uneventful life ...?

 

To be honest, Crowley's magickal writings don't particularly excite my interest. But I do admire his outrageous nonconformity and the fact that he subscribed to the view that it is better to be a spectacular failure in this life, than any kind of benign success; and better to be hated than loved.*    

 

Crowley's funeral was held at a Brighton crematorium on the afternoon of Friday, December 5th. Around a dozen people attended, and various excerpts from his works, including The Book of the Law (1909) - the sacred text of Thelema - were read.

 

Naturally, the death of England's most notorious occultist generated press interest and some of the tabloids insisted on describing Crowley as a Satanist and his funeral service (somewhat absurdly) as a Black Mass. 

 

His ashes were sent to his successor, the German occultist Karl Germer, new head of the OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis) in the United States, who buried them, rather quaintly, in his garden in Hampton, New Jersey.  

 

And may he rest in Holy Chaos ...

 

 

* Note: Malcolm McLaren, born a year before Crowley died, would also subscribe to this philosophy of spectacular failure and often mentioned the latter in conversation. McLaren also possessed a silver ring with occult markings that had once been owned by the Great Beast, but threw it into the ocean one day having become convinced that it was bringing him bad luck (or at least that is what he told me when I asked him why he had stopped wearing it). Paul Gorman mentions this ring in his excellent biography, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 416.  

The SynBio Revolution

'We can redesign you. We have the biotechnology. 

We have the capability to make the world's first synthetic human.

Better than before; better, stronger, faster.' - Oscar Goldman

 

 

I.

 

People who think the World Economic Forum's Great Reset initiative is simply about restructuring capitalism, have failed to realise the scope of their vision. For central to their ambitious plan to build back better is the radical development of synthetic biology; i.e., the redesigning of organisms for what are designated as more useful or productive ends. 

 

According to articles and reports on the WEF website, the future of life on earth - including human life - can no longer be left to evolutionary chance and the process of natural selection. Due to climate change, environmental degradation, and the pressures exerted by a rapidly growing population, it's time for scientists to step in and open the way towards a bioeconomy that incorporates (and coordinates) all sectors that rely upon the exploitation of biological resources (and that pretty much includes every major industrial sector).         

 

II. 

 

Synthetic biology - or SynBio as proponents and those working within the field like to call it - is a multidisciplinary area of research that aims to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems already found in nature; a rapidly expanding world where genetic engineers meet computer engineers, and evolutionary biology meets big business [1]. There are now hundreds of companies around the world actively investing resources in synthetic biology and hoping to make (billions of dollars profit from) new and improved life forms.       

 

Now, whilst, I'm usually all for medical and scientific advances - who doesn't want clean energy and new drugs to fight disease? - I have to admit that increased state control over the bodily autonomy of the individual during the coronavirus pandemic has made me slightly anxious about where things are heading. 

 

Mandatory masks and vaccines are bad enough, but synthetic biology opens up a whole new can of worms and ethical issues and I'm not sure I want governments, organisations like the WEF, or giant tech companies, redesigning the natural world and reprogramming the human genome in the name of healthcare, enhancement, or sustainability. 

 

And it seems that there are an increasing number of people who feel the same and who are calling for a global moratorium (if not an outright ban) on the creation and commercial use of synthetic organisms until more robust regulations (or biosafety measures) are put in place. These people don't just include all the usual suspects - ecofascists, religious lunatics, conspiracy theorists, etc. - but even some leading scientists who are particularly concerned about the creation of so-called designer babies [2].   

Do Klaus Schwab and his billionaire friends promoting the Davos Agenda not understand that Brave New World was a dystopian science fiction novel and not a social blueprint for the 21st-century?  

 

Notes

 

[1] Despite the fact that the phrase biologie synthétique has been around for over a century (coined by the French biologist Stéphane Leduc in 1910), there is no fixed and agreed definition of synthetic biology. Essentially, it's an expanded (and far more elaborate) form of what used to be called biotechnology, with the ultimate goal of being able to design and engineer live biological systems that process information, manipulate chemicals, fabricate materials and structures, produce energy, provide food, and maintain and enhance human health. The first international conference for synthetic biology - SB1.0 - was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004. 

 

[2] See the article by Ian Sample - 'Scientists call for global moratorium on gene editing of embryos' - in The Guardian (13 March 2019): click here.  

 

 

Suggested further reading: 'The Bio Revolution: Innovations transforming economies, societies, and our lives', a McKinsey Global Institute report by Michael Chui, Matthias Evers, James Manyika, Alice Zheng, and Travers Nisbet, (May 13, 2020): click here to read online. 

In Praise of the Praying Mantis and Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno

Isabella Rossellini as a male mantis in Green Porno

Photo: Sundance TV

 

 

I. From Whence Arrived the Praying Mantis?

 

To speak in the singular is always misleading when referring to a group of insects and this certainly holds true of the Mantodea [1], an order which contains over 2,400 known species divided up into approximately 460 genera and around 30 families, the largest and best known of which is the mantis family who are found living all over the world in both tropical and temperate habitats. 

 

Although sometimes confused with stick insects [Phasmatodea], or other insects with elongated bodies - such as grasshoppers [Orthoptera] - mantises are more closely related to termites and cockroaches [Blattodea]. However, they have a much better reputation amongst humans than the latter and are commonly kept as pets [2]. 

 

Why that should be, I don't know; perhaps we like their triangular shaped heads and bulging compound eyes, or perhaps we genuinely think them devout (although we might question to what god they are praying when, with spiked forelegs bent and pressed together, they sit in perfect silence and perfect stillness).

 

 

II. L'amour sera cannibale ou il ne le sera pas du tout 

 

One group of artists who were particularly fascinated by mantises and their alien good looks, were the Surrealists. 

 

The fact that ancient peoples believed mantises to possess supernatural powers certainly helped excite their interest, but, first and foremost, the Surrealists were aroused by the knowledge that these insects practice sexual cannibalism; the females sometimes eating their mates during or after copulation, usually starting with the head [3].

 

As one commentator writes:

 

"The praying mantis became a central iconographic preoccupation for the Surrealists and their circle primarily as a result of its extraordinary mating ritual [...] the Surrealists found this insect's cannibalistic nuptial a compelling image for the potential for erotic violence lurking in the darker recesses of the human mind." [4]

 

André Breton, Paul Éluard, André Masson, and, of course, Salvador Dalí, were all mad about la mante religieuse and the same critic, William L. Pressly, is spot on to conclude:       

 

"The preying mantis proved to be a compelling metaphor for the Surrealists in their exploration of eroticism. Its instinctive and voracious sexuality offered a natural expression of the demonic potential of man's repressed unconscious. The female was depicted as a bestial femme fatale, alluring, detached, and deadly, who destroyed her lover in the very act of mating. Yet this insect's diabolical reflexes led to a divine union, for both its sexual cannibalism and its mimetic pantheism suggested a release from finite boundaries. The Surrealists felt an intoxicating desire to participate in the total communion of love's fatal embrace with its promise of a liberating absorption. The mantis, then, could also represent the miraculous transformation that occurs in the complete fusion of the artist with the primary external source of inspiration - the beloved." [5]  

 

However, as interesting as this all is, it's not Surrealism which I wish to discuss in closing here. Rather, it's the series of short films conceived, written, and directed by Isabella Rossellini and entitled Green Porno ...

 

 

III. From Blue Velvet to Green Porno

 

In the original series of eight films that aired in 2008 on what was then the Sundance Channel [6], Rossellini enacted the perverse mating rituals of invertebrates, including the dragonfly, spider, earthworm, and mantis, using paper costumes, cardboard cut-outs and foam-rubber sculptures.  

 

If Rossellini's primary aim was to comically entertain (and perhaps scandalise) she also wanted the films to educate people about the small creatures with which we share the world and might commonly encounter in our daily lives.      

 

The films proved extremely popular [7] and can now conveniently be found on YouTube where they have had millions of views: click here to watch the 'Preying Mantis' episode (dir. Jody Shapiro and Isabella Rossellini). 

 

Arguably, this is Rossellini's most powerfully disturbing performance since she played Dorothy Vallens in Blue Velvet (1986), and most hilarious since playing Lisle von Rhuman in Death Becomes Her (1992) ... 

 

Notes

 

 [1]  The name Mantodea is formed from the ancient Greek words μάντις [mantis], meaning prophet, and εἶδος [eidos] meaning form or type. It was coined in 1838 by the German entomologist Hermann Burmeister.

 

[2] Mantises are among the insects most widely kept (and bred) as pets. As entomophiles point out, it's really no weirder to keep a praying mantis in a glass tank than a goldfish in a bowl. Further, mantises cause very little trouble and require very little effort to look after. They might not provide the same level of companionship and affection as a cat, but they don't scratch the furniture.

 

[3] Sexual cannibalism is the norm among most predatory species of mantises. However, it's interesting to note that whilst in natural populations only about a quarter of male-female sexual encounters result in the male being eaten by the female, in captive populations this tragic outcome is far more common. Quite why mantises engage in this grisly practice is debatable, but it did inspire Aldous Huxley to reflect philosophically on the nature of death in his final novel Island (1962).    

 

[4-5] William L. Pressly, 'The Praying Mantis in Surrealist Art', The Art Bulletin, vol. 55, no. 4, (Taylor & Francis, Ltd. / College Art Association, 1973), pp. 600-15. This illuminating (and generously illustrated) essay can be found on JSTOR: click here. 

     

[6] The Sundance Channel was launched on February 1st, 1996. It was rebranded as Sundance TV in 2014. Whilst it's an extension of Robert Redford's non-profit Sundance Institute, the channel operates independently of both the Institute and the Sundance Film Festival. 

     

[7] The original season of films on the Sundance Channel was followed by two more. Over the course of the three seasons the focus of the show shifted somewhat. Thus, whilst season one dealt exclusively with invertebrates, the second season focused on sea creatures. The short third season adopted an environmental theme and looked at the mating habits of animals commonly eaten by humans as food. This final season was given significant multimedia promotion, with all four episodes premiering at the Toronto Film Festival (Sept 11, 2009). A Green Porno book containing full-colour photos was published to coincide with (and supplement) the new season.

      Rossellini has since worked on other film projects to do with animals in the style of Green Porno and, with the help of the French filmmaker and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, created a 70-minute monologue (and live performance piece) that expands upon the philosophy behind the films. Rossellini debuted her stage version of Green Porno at the Adelaide Festival of Arts on 15 March 2014. 

 

 

Ouch! Another Brief Note on Pain and The Palliative Society

Haroshi: Agony Into Beauty from the solo exhibition Pain

StolenSpace Gallery, London (Oct 10th - Nov 3rd 2013)
stolenspace.com

 

 

According to Byung-Chul Han, algophobia - a generalised fear of pain - is one of the key features of what he terms the palliative society: 

 

"The consequence of this algophobia is a permanent anaesthesia. All painful conditions are avoided. Even the pain of love is treated as suspect. This algophobia extends into society. Less and less space is given to conflicts and controversies that might prompt painful discussions. Algophobia also takes hold of politics. The pressure to conform and to reach consensus intensifies." [a]  

Now, as a reader of Nietzsche, I am of course aware that whilst one of the defining achievements of the modern age has been to vastly improve human health thanks to unparalleled advances in medical science, there has nevertheless been a peculiar softening of the species and what might be called a loss of spirit [b].

 

People used to be able to endure - and inflict - great suffering and regarded pain as a form of passion; now they immediately reach for the paracetamol if they even think they might have a headache coming on. Ironically, as our direct experience of severe pain has lessened, our horror of it has increased and intensified.   

 

However, even as one who affirms the tragic fact that life bleeds and is prone to disease and mortal decay, I don't wish to idealise pain, for fear that, in doing so, one ends up returning either to the foot of the Cross or to Romanticism.

 

I'm not sure, however, that this particularly troubles Byung-Chul Han. For he's someone who believes that art "must be able to alienate, irritate, disturb, and, yes, even be painful" [6], and celebrates the Christian mystic Teresa of Ávila for demonstrating how pain "deepens the relationship with God" [21]. 

 

Ultimately, the main difference between Han and myself is that he desperately wants pain (and everything else) to be meaningful, whereas the "persisting meaninglessness of life" [24] doesn't trouble me in the least. 

 

I don't think pain is an incarnation of truth - no matter what Viktor von Weizsäcker might say [c] - and, as a matter of fact, I like the "morality-free, and ostentatiously decorative" [4] art of Jeff Koons ...   

 

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, The Palliative Society, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2021), p. 1. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the post. 

 

[b] See §48 of The Gay Science, for example, wherein Nietzsche reflects on how nothing separates human beings or ages from each other more than their experience of pain.

 

[c] German physician and physiologist Viktor von Weizsäcker (1886-1957) was a pioneer in the fields of psychosomatic medicine and Gestalt psychology. Weizsäcker argued that if you wish to reliably distinguish between what is genuine and what is fake in this life, then trust to pain; only pain allows us to know what's what, give structure to our life, and find love. 

      Byung-Chul Han discusses Weizsäcker' essay 'Die Schmerzen' in chapter 6 of The Palliative Society, concluding that pain not only evokes reality, it is reality.    

 

This post is a companion piece to an earlier brief note on pain (written whilst waiting to see the dentist): click here.  

A Brief Note on Pain (Whilst Waiting to See the Dentist)

La douleur n'est pas mon fort ...       

 

Sitting here, with toothache, waiting to see the dentist, one recalls the line by Ernst Jünger with which Byung-Chul Han opens his new study: "Tell me your relation to pain, and I will tell you who you are!" [1]

Well, my relation to pain is a mixture of indifference and irritation. I don't share the universal algophobia that characterises our society today, but, unlike many artists and intellectuals, neither do I fetishise pain or regard suffering as the most crucial aspect of life. 

 

Thus, whilst I have a relatively high pain tolerance level and very rarely resort to painkillers, I don't think that this makes courageous or morally superior to those who reach for the paracetamol at the earliest opportunity and opt for drug-induced relief.

 

Pain, says Han, purifies. By which he means it has a cathartic effect. It should thus be recognised as a genuine passion. Which sounds suspiciously Christian to me and I remember Lawrence's remark made in a letter: "Jesus becomes more unsympatisch to me, the longer I live: crosses and nails and tears and all that stuff! I think he showed us into a nice cul de sac." [2] 

 

Lawrence's view contrasts nicely with the remark by Walter Benjamin which Han chose as an epigraph for The Palliative Society: 

 

"Of all the corporeal feelings, pain alone is like a navigable river which never dries up and which leads man down to the sea. Pleasure, in contrast, turns out to be a dead end, wherever man tries to follow its lead." [3]

 

This characterisation of pleasure as a dead end and affirmation of pain is simply a form of ascetic idealism, is it not? Again, far it be from me to reify pleasure, but I think we might challenge the idea that when pain is suppressed, happiness is attenuated and becomes merely a form of dull contentment. Or that those who are "unreceptive to pain close themselves off from deep happiness" [4].    

 

It may be Nietzschean to think like this - to give pain metaphysical significance and project it into the symbolic order (to speak of the art of suffering, etc.) - but when a tooth is troublesome who really cares about what this might (or might not) mean? At such times, we all rub our jaw and fall silent like Monsieur Teste ... [5] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Byung-Chul Han, The Palliative Society, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2021), p. 1. Han is quoting from Ernst Jünger's On Pain, (Telos Press, 2008), p. 32. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 322. Letter number 3516 [26 Oct 1925], to John Middleton Murry. 

      

[3] Walter Benjamin, 'Outline of the Psychological Problem', Selected Writings, Vol. 1, (Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 397.

[4] Byung-Chul Han, The Palliative Society, p. 13. 

[5] With reference to the figure of Monsieur Teste, Byung-Chul Han writes: 

      

"Paul Valéry's Monsieur Teste represents the modern, sensitive bourgeois subject who experiences pain as meaningless, as purely physical agony. He has completely lost the Christian narrative [...] and thus also the ability to alleviate pain symbolically. [...]

      For Monsieur Teste, pain cannot be narrated. It destroys language. Where the pain begins, his sentences break off. [...] 

      Confronted with pain, Monsieur Teste falls silent. Pain robs him of his language. It destroys his world, traps him in his mute body." [19-20] 

 

 

For another brief note on pain and the palliative society, click here.

     

Survival in the Age of Coronavirus

Button badge designed by Inspirer et Motiver 

zazzle.com

 

 

I. 

 

I'm pleased to see that the philosopher and cultural critic Byung-Chul Han addresses the coronavirus pandemic within the context of his work on what he terms the palliative society (i.e., society characterised by a generalised fear of pain - or, indeed, any form of negativity that might possibly cause suffering or distress) [a].   

 

Pleased, not only because I think what he says is insightful, but because I think it important that heretics [b] speak up and challenge the prevailing Covid orthodoxy which governments, medical bodies, and the mainstream media are all promoting in order to justify the destruction of individual rights and liberties in the name of public health. 

 

 

II.

 

According to Han, Covid-19 reveals what kind of society we belong to; one in which survival has become an absolute value and where all forces are marshalled "for the prolongation of life" [14] at any cost. 

 

He writes:

 

"In the pandemic, the bitter fight for survival is subjected to a viral intensification. The virus enters the palliative zone of well-being and turns it into a quarantine zone in which life is completely paralysed into survival. The more life becomes survival, the greater the fear of death. Algophobia is utimately thantophobia. The pandemic makes death, which we had carefully repressed and set aside, visible again. The prominence of death in the mass media makes people nervous." [14]

 

That's true: there are people who terrify themselves reading the latest daily updates on infection levels, hospitalisations, and deaths; not just in their local area, but nationally and even globally. They seem to have lost all sense of perspective or context and treat even a tiny rise in the number of people dying with (and not necessarily of) coronavirus as if it were the end of the world, rather than the end of a few individual lives (mostly aged over 80 and very often with serious pre-existing health conditions).  

Han writes:

 

"The society of survival has no sense of the good life. Even enjoyment is sacrificed in the pursuit of health as an end in itself. [...] We are prepared to sacrifice everything that makes life worth living for the sake of survival. In the face of the pandemic, even the restriction of fundamental rights has been accepted without so much as a question being asked. We comply willingly with the state of exception that reduces life to bare life." [14-15]     

 

Bare life: i.e., a socially distanced existence in which we lock ourselves up at home or creep about in masks, regard strangers (and even our own relatives) as potential vectors of disease, and constantly self-test for signs of infection. It is a life divested not only of pleasure, but of all meaning (i.e., lacking in any meta-physical dimension). 

 

We become, in effect, zombies: "A society that is gripped by the mania for survival is a society of the undead [...] too alive to die, and too dead to live" [17].   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See Byung-Chul Han, The Palliative Society, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2021). All page numbers given in the post refer to this work.  

      Byung-Chul Han, of course, is not the first author to inveigh against this will to survive. Nietzsche was keen to stress that the will to power was more than merely a will to life and could, in fact, have aims contrary to the wellbeing and survival of the organism. D. H. Lawrence also wrote at length against the unappeased rage of self-preservation; see, for example, his 'Study of Thomas Hardy', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 3-128.  

[b] For a recent post on heresy (as/and philosophical idiotism), click here. Like Han, I conceive of the heretic as a figure of resistance opposing the violence of consensus and the commonly accepted values of their era. 

On Heresy and Philosophical Idiotism

 

Detail from a poster designed by Maciej Hibner 

for the film The Idiot (dir. Ivan Pyryev, 1958)

 The idiot has no soul: he is like a flower - an existence open to sunlight ... Botho Strauss

 

 

I. 

 

Derived from the ancient Greek term haíresis [αἵρεσις], heresy originally meant choice and thus implied the exercise of free will. 

 

And so one will readily understand why the heretic - he who chooses to hold views which are at variance with the orthodox position or party line - is so despised by those whose authority is challenged. 

 

For formal heretics deliberately cause division and sow discord and, according to the Church, are spiritually cut off from the Truth, even before they have been officially excommunicated (or burnt at the stake). 

 

Their sin is obstinancy rather than error; a persistent adherence to falsehood.  

 

 

II. 

 

Now, whilst I share certain traits with heretics, I'm not sure I would count myself among their number. 

 

For one thing, when presented with the blackmail of choice (either/or), I choose not to choose and affirm neither/nor. For some, this makes me an idiot, like Bartleby, but as we'll see below, that might not be so terrible.

 

Secondly, whilst a heretic may not subscribe to dogma, in choosing to believe something else, they remain persons of faith and often as fanatic in their belief (and their hatred) as those who accuse them of heresy - Martin Luther is a good example of this [1].     

 

Having said that, I sympathise with Byung-Chul Han's call for a form of heresy - based on what he terms idiotism - that might challenge the New World Order: 

 

"Today, it seems, the type of the outsider - the idiot, the fool - has all but vanished from society. Thoroughgoing digital networking and communication have massively amplified the compulsion to conform. The attendant violence of consensus is suppressing idiotisms." [2] 

 

Han continues: 

 

"In light of compulsive and coercive communication and conformism, idiotism represents a practice of freedom. By nature, the idiot is unallied, un-networked, and uninformed. The idiot inhabits the immemorial outside [...] 

      The idiot is a modern-day heretic. [...] As a heretic, the idiot represents a figure of resistance opposing the violence of consensus. The idiot preserves the magic of the outsider. Today, in light of increasingly coercive conformism, it is more urgent than ever to heighten heretical consciousness." [3]

 

That's a nice expression. And I do like this vision of an idiot, veiled in silence, refusing to identify himself or bow down to the neoliberal demand for total self-exposure. Today, the only way to resist the world is via silence, secrecy, and solitude. 

 

And it is philosophical idiotism alone which "erects spaces for guarding silence [...] where it is still possible to say what really deserves to be said" [4].

 

 

Notes 

[1] Nietzsche's changing view of Luther is interesting. He began as an admirer, but his favourable attitude undwent radical revision after Human, All Too Human (1878) and in his late writings Nietzsche offers a scathing denunciation of Luther as a moral fanatic. Essentially, for Nietzsche, Luther is the man who in reforming Christianity restores it to power and thereby terminates the hope of a neo-pagan Europe which the Renaissance had tantalisingly held out.  

[2] Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, trans. Erik Butler, (Verso, 2017), p. 82.

      Clearly, Han is not using the term idiot in its modern sense (i.e., to refer to a stupid person). Rather, he's returning to the ancient Greek term from which it derives - idiōtēs [ἰδιώτης] - which refers to a private individual who prefers to think their own thoughts rather than simply subscribe to common sense or public opinion (even at the risk of appearing ignorant or foolish). For Han, "the history of philosophy is the history of idiotisms" [p. 81].

 

[3] Ibid., p. 83. 

 

[4] Ibid., p. 84.

      Han acknowledges that this politics of silence was already being called for by Deleuze thirty years ago. See 'Mediators', in Negotiations 1972-1990, trans. Martin Joughin, (Columbia University Press, 1995), pp. 121-34, where Deleuze writes: 

      "It's not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don't stop people from expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying." [129]