On Suffragettes and the British Union of Fascists

Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Having received a number of emails from readers responding to my last post on Sadiq Khan and the Suffragettes - most of which expressed shock and disappointment to discover that the latter were more than happy to use violent means to achieve their political ends - I thought it might be interesting to say a bit more about these insufferable women to whom history has granted heroic victim status [2]. 

 

Deeds Not Words - this is the slogan of many an ascetic militant or armed revolutionary. And it usually means that someone somewhere is about to be shot, blown up, stabbed, or beheaded in the name of some higher cause or greater good. In other words, such murderous actions are justifiable when they are committed in the name of freedom, justice, or God, for example. 

 

In addition to smashing shop windows and setting fire to all kind of buildings, including theatres and churches, not just government offices, the suffragettes were also prepared to kill politicians, judges, and members of the public. In 1912, one of these deranged harpies even threw an axe at then Prime Minister Herbert Asquith (it missed him, but injured another MP, almost slicing off his ear) [3]. 

 

If only a handful of people were actually killed as a result of the suffragette terror campaign, there were dozens severely injured. But that's not really the issue: the issue is whether such violence can ever be acceptable [4]. I don't mind if someone answers yes to this question, but then I don't expect them to complain about the violence that invariably befalls them or start squawking about their human rights. 

 

If you live by the sword ...

 

 

II. 

 

The fact is, Pankhurst, her daughter Christabel, and the rest of her criminal gang, essentially revelled in the violence and the chaos caused - dismissing those women who called for patience and peaceful protest. It's little wonder, therefore - and this too will come as a shock to some readers - that many of the most militant suffragettes eventually drifted into the sweaty embrace of the black-shirted strongmen of the British Union of Fascists ...  

As the British historian Martin Pugh points out [5], Oswald Mosley's paramilitary movement drew all kinds of cranks and crackpots, including Mary Richardson, the former suffragette notorious for slashing The Rokeby Venus in 1914, who ran the Women's Section of the BUF (est. 1933), after Mosley's mother gave up the role.

 

When asked what attracted her to Mosley and the BUF, Miss Richardson explained that she saw in the Blackshirts the same courage, dedication, and loyalty that she had known in the Women's Social and Political Union. The fact that the BUF were ultranationalists who wanted to make Britain great again and keep Britain for the British, also appealed to her extreme brand of patriotism.         

In the interwar period, votes for women was no longer the burning issue it once was for women like Richardson and Christabel Pankhurst [6]. In fact, they now repudiated the entire parliamentary system and advocated total obedience to a supreme leader. They also regarded feminism as a form of decadence and openly sneered at women such as Nancy Astor, the first female member of Parliament.

For these women in their black blouses, black berets, and grey skirts it was fascism which uniquely offered a true form of feminism and promised an escape from the twin evils of domesticity and democracy and they enthusiastically gave the BUF their full support.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This image was used to illustrate an article by Martin Pugh entitled 'Why Former Suffragettes Flocked to Fascism' (14 April 2017), in the online magazine Slate: click here. The article was excerpted from Pugh's book Hurrah for the Blackshirts!: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars, (Pimlico, 2006).

 

[2] There are even memorial statues of Emmeline Pankhurst, founder of the Women's Social and Political Union (1903), in London and Manchester. 

[3] Readers might also find it interesting to know that future PM Winston Churchill was also assaulted by a suffragette using a horse-whip, whilst on a platform of Bristol railway station, in November 1909. The woman was arrested for assault, but was simply found guilty of disturbing the peace. 

 

[4] For me, the acts of terror and political violence perpetrated by the suffragettes are objectionable on several grounds, including the fact that they betray class privilege and indifference to the suffering of those deemed social inferiors. These ghastly women simply didn't care if a policeman, or a postal worker, or a train driver, was injured or killed, because they didn't know any such people personally and were most unlikely to have family members employed in such roles.

      A bit like the Just Stop Oil protestors today, they also knew they were unlikely to be subject to the full force of the law as they came from posh backgrounds and had friends and supporters in postions of power and influence.  

 

[5] See note 1 above. I am indebted to Pugh for his published work in this area. 

 

[6] During 1916-17, the House of Commons Speaker chaired a conference on electoral reform which recommended limited women's suffrage. Then, in 1918, the Representation of the People Act was passed which allowed women over the age of 30 (who met a property qualification) to vote. Although 8.5 million women met this criteria, it was only about two-thirds of the total population of women in the UK. It was not until the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 that all women over 21 were finally able to vote. This act increased the number of women eligible to vote in UK elections to 15 million. 

 

 

For a follow-up post on two speeches by Emmeline Pankhurst, click here.  

Sadiq Khan and the Insufferable Suffragettes

A group of Suffragette terrorists pictured in 1913

 

 

That human weasel posing as London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has come up with a way to waste millions more of tax payers' money: a rebranding of six Overground lines with names said to celebrate the city's diverse history and culture. 

 

In other words, it's another attempt to impose a pernicious ideology and for Khan to virtue signal his own wokeness to the world. 

 

But there's a certain irony, of course, in naming the Gospel Oak to Barking Riverside route the Suffragette Line. 

 

For as readers who have read the history of this women's organisation from the early part of the 20th-century will know, their activism included an orchestrated bombing and arson campaign in the years 1912-14 that was described as terrorist in nature by the authorities and admitted as such by leaders of the movement, including Emmeline Pankhurst, whose daughter Christabel directed militant actions from the safety of exile in France.

 

Their radical slogan Deeds Not Words meant targeting not only government officials, but members of the public, with the aim being to make every aspect of English life insecure and unsafe. 

 

On 25 October 1912, this involved setting fire to a train carriage as it pulled into Harrow station. Fortunately, nobody was hurt in this incident - but they certainly could have been. Which is why, as I say, there's an irony in naming a train line in honour of these fanatics. 

 

One wonders if a hundred years from now they'll accord the same honour to the Islamist suicide bombers who targeted commuters travelling on London's public transport network in July 2005 ...? 

 

 

For a follow-up post to this one on the suffragettes and the the British Union of Fascists, click here. 

 

For a follow-up post on two speeches by Emmeline Pankhurst, click here.

 

 

Cara Love and the Mutant Wolves of Chernobyl

Dr Cara Love and a grey wolf 

Images via caranlove.com 

 

 

I. 

 

Since it's Valentine's Day, I thought it might be appropriate to give a shout out to Love - Cara Love, that is, a post-doctoral research fellow at Princeton University who specialises in the ecological and evolutionary consequences of anthropogenic stressors in a variety of species worldwide, but who has recently been in the news due to her work with the grey wolves of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) ... 

 

II.

 

As many readers will know, ever since the nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power plant exploded back in the spring of 1986, a 1000 square-mile exclusion zone has been maintained in order prevent the evacuated residents from returning to an area where radiation levels remain dangerously high.   

 

This hasn't, however, stopped many forms of wildlife - including wolves, horses, bears, bison, and wild boar - from occupying the zone and multiplying in a contaminated but, crucially, human-free environment.   

 

Whilst there are several scientific studies involving the wolves who live at the heart of the exclusion zone, and most of these are being conducted in the hope that they may enable researchers to better assess the impact of radiation levels on the health of the animals, it seems to be Dr Love who is being credited with the amazing discovery that Chernobyl's wolves - after generations of exposure to radioactive particles - seem to have developed resistance to cancer.    

 

Love and a team of researchers visited the CEZ in 2014 and have been monitoring a number of wolves fitted with radio collars since then. They discovered that the animals were exposed on a daily basis to a level of radiation more than six times the legal safety limit for people. 

 

Dr Love also found that the wolves have altered immune systems similar to cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment, but, more significantly, she identified specific parts of the wolves' genome that seemed resilient to increased cancer risk. In other words, the wolves have genetically mutated in a manner that is beneficial to their survival.

 

Unfortunately, recent events - the Covid pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine - have prevented Dr Love and her colleagues from returning to the CEZ in recent years. Nevertheless, she felt able to present her findings so far to a meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology in Seattle, Washington, last month.

 

The hope is that Love's work with mutant grey wolves will one day help to prevent (or treat) cancer in human beings. But my concern, however, is that this will inevitably lead to cruel experimentation on the wolves (and doubtless other mammals) currently inhabiting a radioactive paradise ...  

 

 

Birthday Reflections

 

 

I. 

 

February 13th is a day of quiet reflection for me now: the day I was born (1963) and the day my mother died (2023).

 

In the Bhagavad Gita it is written: Learned is he to whom the mystery of birth and death is revealed. [1]

 

But I'm not a Hindu and don't particularly wish to be learned in the religious sense indicated here. For I remain sceptical of the idea that there is a mystery to be revealed. And even if there is, I prefer that Isis remain veiled and keep her secrets. 

 

 

II. 

 

Not that the idea of reincarnation is much of a mystery any longer. For it's common knowledge that Hindus believe that the salvational goal is to fully realise the self as some kind of pure, unchanging spiritual essence following a series of material and transient incarnations.

 

Birth and death are facts of little real importance, according to Hindu teaching. What matters is liberating the soul from this cycle so that it may achieve lasting perfection in the great sea of Being that lies beyond life and death.   

 

Thus we can say of the great Hindu gurus what Lawrence says of Buddha, Plato, and Jesus; namely, that these grand idealists were utter pessimists, teaching that Truth lay in "abstracting oneself from the daily, yearly, seasonal life of birth and death and fruition, and in living in the 'immutable' or eternal spirit" [2]. 

 

Personally, I don't want to move from the known world to the unknown world; from the visible to the invisible; from the seen to the unseen. I know, as Lawrence knew, that such abstraction brings "neither bliss nor liberation, but nullity" [3].

 

I'm happy to live and die and be endlessly reincarnated in the flesh like a karma chameleon forever changing colour, shape, form, etc., and I don't want to lose myself in the infinite completeness of the Whole thank you very much. 

 

If that means never being free from desire, pain, anxiety, and delusion - never obtaining supreme wisdom or eternal peace - well, again, that's fine with me. 

 

When holy fools tell me I must learn not to identify with the objects of the world I immediately wish to bring one of these objects crashing down on their heads; when they tell me not to become attached to my body I want to give them a kick up the arse. 

To conclude, if I may, with another quotation from Lawrence: 

 

"For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh." [4] 

Notes 

 

[1] The Bhagavad Gita ('Song of God') is a 700-verse Hindu scripture, which forms chapters 23-40 of Book 6 of the epic Mahabharata called the Bhishma Parva. The work is dated to the second half of the first millennium BC.

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', published together with Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 330.

 

[3] Ibid., p. 331.

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 149. 

 

 

This post is for all those who were born (like me and Kim Novak) or who died (like my mother and Richard Wagner) on this day. 

Galliano's Auntie

John Galliano and Auntie (2021) [1]

 

I. 

 

By his own confession, the British fashion designer John Galliano loves to surround himself with much-loved objects collected over the years and it's good to know that he recognises the vital nature of his relationship with them. 

 

For not only do objects inspire as alluring things-in-themselves, they also trigger, he says, the memories and emotions that allow him to create.

 

 

II. 

 

As might be imagined, Galliano has a lot of paintings, drawings, and photographs that he treasures, but the objet d'affection that most interests me is an artist's mannequin (or lay figure) called Auntie, whom, Galliano informs us, is over a hundred years old and yet still assists him with his all fittings whilst acting also as his sternest critic. 

 

Apparently, Auntie was residing in Montmartre when Galliano first encountered her and he likes to imagine that, in her youth, she inspired some of the great modern artists who would have lived and worked in the area during the final years of La Belle Époque. 

 

As something of an agalmatophile myself, I can fully appreciate Galliano's fascination with this life-sized wooden doll. 

 

 

III. 

 

For those readers who are unfamiliar with mannequins such as Auntie, I should perhaps explain that they were used by artists keen to improve and refine their knowledge of the postures and movements of the human body (although they were not, however, intended as substitutes for live models). 

 

For unlike mannequins made for medical or fashion purposes, an artist's doll is fully articulated:

 

"The flexibility of its shoulders and arms, hips and legs, wrists and ankles allows it to be configured into any position possible [...] even each finger is easily manipulated to individually open and close. This remarkable agility was made possible by an intricate system of rotating wood ball-and-socket joints, numerous dowels, and an elaborate internal mechanism [...] or 'skeleton', that holds its parts in place." [2]

 

As might be imagined, dolls of this quality took several months to make and were extremely costly. Nevertheless, they were increasingly in demand from the late 18th to the mid-19th century and even after this date some artist's still liked to have a lay figure in their studio.    

 

Personally, I think it sad that there are now so few surviving examples of these skilfully-crafted dolls in tip-top condition and so one is grateful to Galliano for taking such good care of Auntie and providing her with such a beautiful retirement home. 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1]  Screenshots of Galliano and Auntie from an episode of Objects of Affection, dir. Nikki Petersen, and uploaded to the Vogue YouTube channel on 16 Nov 2021. Whilst graciously showing us around his treasure-filled French hideaway, Galliano introduces us to some of the objects that mean the most to him: click here.    

 

[2] Marjorie Shelley, 'Mannequins: A Tool of the Artist's Workshop' (April 2016) on the Met Museum website: click here. 

 

 

For a related post on Surrealist mannequin fetish (published on 6 april 2017), please click here.  

 

 

Notes on 'The Crisis of Narration' by Byung-Chul Han (Part 3)

Byung-Chul Han pictured with the Spanish language

edition of Die Krise der Narration (2023) [a]

I. 

 

Byung-Chul Han is very good at coming up with memorable phrases and titles for his books. Arguably, indeed, that's his greatest talent and I understand why a friend of mine characterised (and dismissed) his work as merely a mix of soundbite and slogan distilled from the work of other much greater thinkers. 

That's a bit harsh, but I know what she means (even if I wouldn't wish to criticise Han for this). 

 

Anyway, on we move to section six of The Crisis of Narration [b] - 'From Shocks to Likes' ...

 

Reading Benjamin (who is in turn reading Baudelaire and Freud), Han argues that external reality impacts upon the subject as a form of shock and that consciouness is a way of registering and protecting us from stimuli that would otherwise be too much to handle: "The more readily consciousness registers these shocks, the less likely they are to have a traumatic effect." [44]  

 

Having dreams and forming memories are thus delayed ways of coming to terms with things that might otherwise overwhelm us. And the modern world is profoundly shocking; "the shock aspect of individual impressions has become so intensified that our consciousness is forced to be permanently active as a shield against stimuli" [45].  

 

But that isn't good; for it means we register less and less reality and have weaker and weaker experiences (our dreams become less disturbing and our memories less vivid). We need some degree of shock in order to feel and to think and to create. 

 

Unfortunately, we don't just now act as living organisms to protect ourselves from stimuli - we employ digital technology to (literally) screen off reality. Han writes:

 

"Etymologically, a screen [Schirm] is a protective barrier. A screen bans reality, which becomes an image, thus screening us from it. We perceive reality almost exclusively via digital screens. [...] On a smartphone screen, reality is so attenuated that it can no longer create any shock experiences. Shocks give way to likes." [46] 

 

That's what we want today: a non-threatening, non-disturbing, non-shocking world that we can like. Not a world of otherness that we can gaze at and which gazes into us, but a familiar, friendly, flat, sealed-off and smoothed-off world that is pleasing to the eye and satisfies our need for safety and smartness. 

 

Nietzsche would not approve. Lawrence would not approve. Heidegger would not approve. Baudrillard would not approve. In fact, anyone who loves objects and otherness and wishes to live dangerously in a world in which dreams, memories, and disturbing artworks are still possible would not approve.  

 

For Han, this world cowardly new world is typified by Netflix and Jeff Koons:

 

"In the age of Netflix, no one speaks of having shock experiences in connection with films. A Netflix series is nothing like a piece of art that corresponds to a pronounced danger to life and limb. Rather, it typically leads to binge watching. Viewers are fattened like consumer cattle. Binge watching is a paradigm for the general mode of perception in digital late modernity." [47] 

 

"The type of artist represented by Baudelaire, someone who inadvertently causes fright, would today  seem not only antiquated but almost grotesque. The artist who typifies our age is Jeff Koons. He appears smart. His works reflect the smooth consumer world that is the opposite of the world of shocks. [...] His art is intentionally relaxed and disarming. What he wants above all is to be liked." [48][c]

 

 

II. 

 

I do agree with Han: big data does not explain anything and the numbers never speak for themselves. 

 

Having said that, if we know the how, what, where and when, perhaps it becomes a bit easier to answer the metaphysical question of why and I don't see why theory shouldn't be based upon data. 

 

Similarly, I agree that whilst AI can compute and count it doesn't really think, but that doesn't mean it can't help us conceptualise and comprehend and continue to produce narratives (be they philosophical, psychoanalytic, or artistic in character) if that's our wont. 

 

Because Han tends to think in quite stark (and oppositional) terms - narrative community contra information society, for example - his work can unfortunately become trapped in its own binaries.         

 

III.

 

I have to admit, I'm a bit dubious about the healing power of narrative, even if I quite like the idea of the philosopher as cultural physician practicing the art of critique et clinique, and even if I have in the past promoted an idea of rescripting the self. 

Obviously, Han sees himself very much as one who has come to heal (even save) mankind by helping us to come to terms with the many ills and woes of contemporary culture by embedding them in a meaningful context; if not, indeed, in what comes close to being a religious narrative that "provides consolation or hope and thus carries us through the crisis" [57]. 

 

Jesus! This reminds me of that pompous egg-headed philosopher Alain de Botton, who, thankfully, seems to be keeping a lower media profile of late. He also treated his readers like small children in need of the consoling voice or gentle touch of a loving parent when they felt bad. 

At best, it's patronising and at worst, it's philosophical mollycoddling. 

 

 

IV.

  

As a Lawrentian, I often refer to the inspiration of touch and/or the democracy of touch: click here or here, for example. 

 

Touch is one of the key terms in Lawrence's phallic vocabulary [d] and so I'm pleased that Byung-Chul Han also recognises the importance of touch: "Like storytelling, touching also creates closeness and primordial trust." [58] 

 

That's true, but I suppose it depends on who's doing the touching and in what context.        

Han goes on to suggest that we now live in a society "in which there is no touching" [59] and that this has negative consequences:

 

"The retreat of touch is making us ill. Lacking touch, we remain hopelessly entrapped in our ego. Touch in the proper sense pulls us out of our ego. Poverty in touch ultimately means poverty in world. It makes us depressive, lonely and fearful." [59-60]   

And, paradoxically, the rise of digital connectivity and social media only makes things worse. 

Again, I think that's probably true, but I understand why some would dismiss this as a series of groundless assertions, made as they are without any supporting evidence. In the end, when you read an author like Han, you simply have to take a lot on trust (those who love his work will believe every word; those who don't will adopt a more sceptical position).  

 

V. 

I mentioned above Han's notion of a narrative community. But other than being something in contradistinction to the information society, what is a narrative community? 

 

It seems to refer to a small village (with or without an ancient tree at its centre), where the villagers sit around and swap stories that reinforce values and norms and thereby ensure unity (i.e., produce a we). There's no competitive individualism in the narrative community; just solidarity and empathy.

 

But Han doesn't want his readers to mistake the narrative community for some kind of Volksgemeinschaft as conceived by the Nazis and rooted in ethno-nationalism (or blood and soil). 

 

He wants, rather, that we conceive of the narrative community as a dynamic society allowing for change and otherness and do not "cling to a particular identity" [63], embracing instead a model of universal humanism informed by Kantian philosophy [e] and the poetry of Novalis [f].  

     

Well, I'm sorry, but where Han leads I will not follow ...

 

Push comes to shove, I think I prefer even the hell of the present to a future utopia promised by Idealist philosophers and Romantic poets! And Han's optimistic political vision, based on his concept of a narrative community which "provides meaning and orientation" [68] and opens up a new order, is not one I share.      

Notes

 

[a] This image is borrowed from a review of Byung-Chul Han's La crisis de la narración, by Marco Nicolini entitled 'El regreso del storytelling' (20 Oct 2023) and published on the Arzeta website: click here (or here for the English translation).

 

[b] Byung-Chul Han, The Crisis of Narration, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2024). The work was originally published as Die Krise der Narration, (Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2023). Page numbers given in the above post refer to the English edition. 

 

[c] Han really hates Jeff Koons. I have written on this (and in defence of the latter and his artwork) previously on TTA. See for example the post dated 16 Feb 2022: click here.  

[d] I explore this phallic vocabulary on James Walker's Memory Theatre (a digital pilgrimage based on the works of D. H. Lawrence): click here.

[e] Han refers to and quotes from Kant's 'Perpetual Peace', a philosophical sketch from 1795 in which the latter dreams of a global community in which all human beings are united and there can be no refugees: "Every human being enjoys unlimited hospitalty. Everyone is a cosmopolitan." [Han, The Crisis of Narration, p. 63.]

      Kant's essay can be found in Political Writings, ed. H. S. Reiss, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 93-130.  

 

[f] Han writes: "Novalis is another thinker who argues for radical universalism. He imagines a 'world family' beyond nation or identity. He takes poetry to be the medium of reconciliation and love. Poetry unites people and things in the most intimate community." [63] 

      That Han should simply take us back to moral idealism and Romantic fantasy is disappointing to say the least. However, those readers who wish to know what Novalis has to say about the world family all living as one in a beautiful society, should see his Philosophical Writings, trans. and ed. Margaret Mahony Stoljar, (State University of New York Press, 1997).   

 

 

Part 1 of this post can be read by clicking here. 

 

Part 2 of this post can be read by clicking here.  

Notes on 'The Crisis of Narration' by Byung-Chul Han (Part 2)

(Matthes and Seitz Berlin 2023) [a]

 

 

I.

 

Byung-Chul Han really likes Walter Benjamin - not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

He makes over a dozen references to Benjamin's work in the opening chapter of his new book and more than another dozen or so references to texts by this quirky cultural theorist in chapter two, which is where I'm picking up this commentary-cum-critical encounter ...

 

In 'The Poverty of Experience' Han - following Benjamin - mourns the fact that communicable experience passed down orally from generation to generation is "becoming increasingly rare" [10]; nothing is narrated any longer; no one tells stories drawn from their own lives any more.    

 

Folk wisdom no longer counts for much when people freed from tradition by technology look to Google for answers and download problem-solving apps: "The new barbarians celebrate the poverty of experience as a moment of emancipation." [11] 

 

And, to be fair, perhaps modernity did provide an opportunity to start from scratch and make it new ... 

 

Benjamin's thought is shot through with ambivalence on this question; as a Marxist, he believes in progress and the revolutionary spirit. But, in the end, his "deep-seated scepticism towards modernity" [13] wins out and he decides that we are ultimately impoverished (and dehumanised) by the disenchanted world of today - and not even Mickey Mouse can save us. 

And for us, in a late-modern (or post-modern) era, not only do we exist without history, but even the future has come and gone. No one even tries to make things new or dares to dream of radical social transformation; no one has "the courage to create a world-changing narrative" [14] and storytelling is now mostly "a matter of commercialism and consumption" [14]. 

 

This is quite a bleak analysis: "It is only with narrative that a future opens up, for narrative gives us hope." [15] But as a Nietzschean philosopher, I can happily do without the morally optimistic idea of hope. Indeed, let me remind readers of my new year's message for 2024:

 

Hope may be one of the great Christian virtues, but in Norse mythology it is simply the drool dripping from the jaws of the Fenris Wolf; and courage is a term for the bravery displayed by the warrior in the absence of hope [b]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Is the past something that needs salvaging - or something in need of salvation? It's an interesting question (assuming the past doesn't just need forgetting). 

 

Han - again following Benjamin - plumps for the latter: "We owe our happiness to the salvation of the past." [16] 

 

I have to say, that's not the kind of sentence I'd write. For it is just as true that we owe an awful lot of misery to the fact that people often can't (or won't) let go of the past and that far from saving the past they ruin the present and sacrifice the future with something else that "has a long tail and reaches back into the past" [16] - ressentiment and the will to revenge. 

 

Nietzsche says that the greater the plastic power of a people, the more history they can embrace and affirm as their own. But he also ties innocence to forgetfulness and insists that whilst it is Christian to forgive, it is noble to forget. So I'm not entirely convinced that we need to resurrect the past and make it a continuing influence upon the present.     

 

Having said that, I do enjoy a certain level of temporal (and personal) continuity; I like to imagine I'm pretty much the same now as I was aged six, for example. And one of the things that's nice about the theory of evolution (or, I suppose, the myth of creation in Genesis) is that it allows one to feel part of a much wider and longer story (though I'm not greatly concerned about this). 

 

 

III. 

 

When it comes to certain things - selfies, social media, and the art of Jeff Koons, for example - Han is very much like a dog with a bone; i.e., unwilling to let go and determined to get to the marrow (or essence) of the thing. 

 

Thus, no surprise to see him taking a pop at Snapchat and Instagram once more and declaring that digital photos are - if not quite the soul-stealing work of the devil - things that "announce the end of the human being as someone with a fate and a history" [20] and mark the birth of Phono sapiens - non-beings who have surrendered to the momentary actualities of experience and are unable to discriminate or be selective. 

Phono sapiens believe they are being playful on their smartphones 24/7 and that this puts them in control, but, actually, they are being manipulated and exploited. 

 

 

IV.

 

Ultimately, Han comes to the same conclusion as the protagonist of Sartre's Nausea (1938): "Only with narration is life elevated above its sheer facticity, above its nakedness." [27]

 

In other words, narrating make's the world and time's passing meaningful; it inhibits that feeling of nausea that Roquentin experiences. But, arguably, la nausée is just a Sartrean synonym for (or another aspect of) what Heidegger terms angst  - and surely the key thing about angst is that it's not something to be overcome or resolved. 

 

Narrating the world may make meaningful and be comforting - may make objects seem less alien and less threatening; may make the fact that being rests upon non-being seem less troubling - but this also insulates us from a fundamental form of freedom.      

 

Ultimately, I think I'd rather be dizzy before the void and bewildered by the (sometimes malevolent) presence of objects than fobbed off with some transcendent narrative, even if that makes the world rhythmically structured and promises blissful order. 

 

By insisting that existentialism is a humanism, Sartre transforms "frightening being-in-the-world into familiar being-at-home" [29] and such domesticity is not something philosophers should be advocating.      

    

V.

 

The thought has just occured to me: I'm Konrad - the boy who cannot tell stories [c]. 

 

For just like Konrad, I lack the inwardness that would allow me to "internalize events and to weave and condense them into a story" [34] and my world, like Konrad's, is pretty much entirely disenchanted. 

 

Perhaps that explains why my dreams of becoming a novelist came to nothing - and why I like fragments and pieces of factual information so much. 

 

But please don't send me to see Ms Leishure ... 

 

For whilst I agree that, utimately, the world is made up of events that resist explanation and that we might question causality, I don't wish to become "a member of the small narrative community" [36] if that means abandoning reason or denying the possibility of objective facts. 

 

If things have a magical aura that's great: but even things that don't possess that radiance which raises them above mere facticity, they're still astonishing and it seems to me that a scientific description of the unfolding of the universe is just as beautiful as a mytho-religious narrative such as the one found in Genesis.     

 

And finally, as readers will know, I hate full-stops and prefer to use an ellipsis whenever possible ... 

 

And that's because, in my view, there's always something left unsaid and even the most perfect of narratives can never really be sealed off in an intertextual universe; can never be a concluding form that has closure as its goal and can't wait to stamp the words The End, thereby passing a kind of death sentence. 

 

There is no end - and there is no origin; we should instinctively mistrust any book or story that opens with the words In the beginning ...       

 

 

Notes

 

[a] This is the cover of the original German edition. I am relying upon the English translation by Daniel Steuer published as The Crisis of Narration (Polity Press, 2024). All page numbers given in the post refer to this edition.  

[b] See the post 'Nothing Changes on New Year's Day' (31 Dec 2023): click here. See also the much earlier but related post 'Happy to be Hopeless this Christmas' (26 Dec 2014): click here.

 

[c] Konrad is a character in a short story by the children's author Paul Maar. Han discusses this story in chapter five of The Crisis of Narration. 

 

 

Part 1 of this post can be read by clicking here.

 

Part 3 of this post can be read by clicking here.

 

 

Notes on 'The Crisis of Narration' by Byung-Chul Han (Part 1)

(Polity Press, 2024)

 

 

I. 

 

Byung-Chul Han has had a new book published in English translation: The Crisis of Narration [a]. 

 

It's another slim little work which, like Jason Alexander's Acting Without Acting (2009), is not so much a book as a pamphlet [b]. Nevertheless, I coughed up the £12.99 asking price on Amazon for the paperback and thought I would offer a running commentary on it here as I read it over dinner ...

 

 

II.   

 

Han provides a short preface that opens: "Everyone is talking about 'narratives'." [vii] 

 

And I had to smile at this assertion as I can't imagine anyone outside of academia ever using the word narrative and although the word crisis is very popular with politicians and political commentators - the cost of living crisis, the NHS crisis, Middle East crisis, etc. - I don't think they care too much about the crisis of narration. 

 

But maybe they should: because maybe Han is right to argue that narratives provide our anchor in being and furnish life with "meaning, support and orientation" [vii]. So perhaps we need the return of narration and to give back to narratives their power and gravitational force. 

But that won't be easy in an age in which narratives have lost their mystery. We all know now that they are constructed and don't possess any essential inner truth, having been revealed to be "contingent, exchangeable and modifiable" [viii].

Han is acutely aware of this. He knows that we are living in a post-narrative time - which is really just another way of saying a secular age in which God is dead. For the kind of narratives that Han values are basically religious narratives that reach into "every nook and cranny of life" [viii]. 

The problem is, I'm not sure I want to live in a new age of narrative if that means living once more in a theocratic society. Having to lose ritual and festivity is probably a price worth paying for not being ruled over by a priestly caste. And besides, I'm not convinced that being anchored in being necessitates being mired in faith and religious dogma. 

I prefer what Han terms micro-narratives over grand narratives that transform our being-in-the-world into a being-at-home; I don't want to be domesticated in the name of  truth, thank you very much. Nor do I want to belong to a concluding form that creates a closed order founded upon meaning and identity 

 

I guess this makes me a recalcitrant postmodernist in Han's eyes; still kicking against the idea of belonging to any community or returning to some past ideal. Ultimately, I'm with D. H. Lawrence who famously declared: 

 

"I don't want to live again the tribal mysteries [...] I don't want to know as I have known [...] My way is my own [...] I can't cluster at the drum any more." [c]  

 

Of course, Han also knows there is no going back: 

 

"No amount of storytelling could recreate the fire around which humans gather to tell each other stories. That fire has long since burnt out. It has been replaced by the digital screen, which separates people as individual consumers. Consumers are lonely. They do not form a community. Nor can the 'stories' shared on social media fill the narrative vacuum. They are merely forms of pornographic self-presentation or self-promotion. Posting, liking and sharing content are consumerist practices that intensify the narrative crisis." [ix]

Does that include blogging, I wonder ... 

 

I rather suspect Han would say it does; that he would dismiss the fragments of fiction-theory assembled here on Torpedo the Ark as being forgetful of being and lacking empathy; that posts such as this one simply inform and pass the word along without ever providing a meaningful narrative or creating a genuine community. 

 

The fact that the posts are typed on a laptop is, Han would argue, "already a barrier to the telling of stories" [xi]. Well, I'm sorry but the days when I would handwrite poems and leave them in public places or hidden in tree hollows for people to find by chance are long behind me.

 

Perhaps Han initially writes his books in blood and narrates them in person to a select few followers who know how to listen closely and pay deep attention: I don't know. But I do know he has also agreed to the commercial publication of over twenty works, translated into many languages, and sold all over the world, so I'm not going to take too much shit from him on this matter. 

 

Having said that, let's follow him as he traces out the long pre-history of the present narrative crisis ...   

III.

 

The first chapter of Han's new book opens with an attack on those who prefer local news rather than hearing news from afar. For Han being interested about what is happening close to home shows a form of attention deficit:

 

"The newspaper reader's attention extends only to what is near. It shrinks to mere curiosity. The modern newspaper reader jumps from one news item to the next, instead of letting her gaze drift into the distance and linger. The modern reader has lost the long, slow, lingering gaze." [1]    

 

This surprises me. And, as a Lawrentian, I obviously cannot let it pass ... 

 

One recalls, for example, that Richard Somers loved nothing more than to read bits in the Sydney Bulletin - "the only periodical in the world that really amused him" [d] - even if it didn't provide an earnest editorial narrative. The assembled bits had real vitality: "There was no consecutive thread. Only the laconic courage of experience." [e] 

 

And one thinks also of the essay 'Insouciance' in which Lawrence condemns his neighbours at a Swiss hotel - "two little white-haired English ladies" [f] - for sweeping him off his balcony with all the latest news from abroad: "away from the glassy lake, the veiled mountains, the two men mowing, and the cherry-trees, away into the troubled ether of international politics" [g]. 

 

Lawrence is curious and concerned about the immediate world that is physically present before him - that is actually there - but he doesn't care about gazing into the distance and feigning interest in what happens in every corner of the earth or in numerous abstract issues.   

 

Does this make Somers a modern reader? Does it make Lawrence less of a thinker; a lover only of information and triviality? Han seems to want the earnestness that Lawrence hates; to privilege news stories that possess a temporal breadth and the power of destiny. But we might ask if there has ever been a newspaper that never explains or informs, but only narrates in a manner that is both wondrous and mysterious. 

 

It's hard to imagine Herodotus working on Fleet Street, as much as Han may wish it. 

 

One might at this point wonder why, if Han longs for stories that are more like seeds of grain - full of germinal force - rather than specks of dust, he doesn't simply read works of literature and give the tabloids a miss. Well, it's because, like Walter Benjamin, he thinks modern novels also mark the decline of narrative; the latter is an expression of a community, whereas the novel is all about bourgeois individualism.

 

Still, as bad as modern works of fiction are, "the ultimate decline of narration comes not with the novel but with the rise of information under capitalism" [5].    

 

Information technology doesn't allow us to rest, to relax, to be bored; it "drives the dream bird away" [5] and stops us listening carefully (for Han the narrative community is one which immerses itself in what it hears). 

 

In a crucial passage, Han writes:

 

"On the internet [...] the dream bird cannot build a nest. The information seekers drive him away. In today's state of hyperactivity, where boredom is not allowed to emerge, we never reach the state of deep mental relaxation. The information society is an age of heightened mental tension, because the essence of information is surprise and the stimulus it provides. The tsunami of information means that our perceptual apparatus is permanently stimulated. It can no longer enter into contemplation. The tsunami of information fragments our attention. It prevents the contempative lingering that is essential to narrating and careful listening." [6]

 

It's a nice passage: classic Han. And I find it hard to disagree with anything he says here. His fundamental argument that in a digital era reality itself is turned into information and human beings are no more than living data sets, is quite clearly the case. 

 

And whilst some would simply shrug and ask so what, I can't help feeling, like Han, that this is not a good thing and will result in a new form of algorithmic domination which "hides behind the illusion of freedom and communication" [7]. 

   

 

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, The Crisis of Narration, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2024). The work was originally published as Die Krise der Narration (Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2023). Page numbers given here refer to the English edition.    

[b] See the season 7 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm entitled 'Seinfeld', written by Larry David and dir. Jeff Schaffer (November 2009). To watch the scene I'm referring to on Youtube, click here. 

 

[c] D. H. Lawrence, 'Indians and an Englishman', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde, (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 120.  

[d] D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 269. 

[e] Ibid., p. 272

[f] D. H. Lawrence, 'Insouciance', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 95. 

 

Part 2 of this post can be read by clicking here. 

 

Part 3 of this post can be read by clicking here. 

Reflections on the Sorcerer's Apprentice and the Villainy of Things

 

Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice

Fantasia (Walt Disney, 1940)

 

 

I. 

 

Goethe's Der Zauberlehrling (1797) is a ballad composed of fourteen stanzas with an unusual rhyme scheme. It tells the tale of an occult master and his young disciple who discovers that objects are not always there simply to serve us and may in fact be invested with a malevolent spirit; that an enchanted realm is not necessarily a safe space to inhabit.   

Whilst the poem remains popular in the German-speaking world, I suspect most people know the story of 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' thanks to its adaptation by Walt Disney in the animated film Fantasia (1940), starring Mickey Mouse - a character about whom the philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes in his fascinating short work Undinge: Umbrüche der Lebenswelt (2021) [a] ...        

 

 

II. 

 

According to Han, the representation of material reality in the Disney universe and Mickey's relationship with things radically changes over time. 

 

In his earliest adventures, inanimate objects of all kinds have their independence and behave in an unpredictable - somewhat treacherous - even dangerous manner. Mickey is constantly obliged to grapple with these objects and they remain a permanent source of frustration for an anthropomorphic mouse attempting to impose his will upon the world, as well as providing comedy gold. 

 

For as Han rightly notes: "The cartoons are entertaining to a large extent because of the villainy of things." [46]

Sadly, however, times have changed and one of the depressing aspects of life today is that things have lost their mischievous character. In transforming material reality into a safe space that offers no resistance or dangers, we have succeeded in subordinating objects to our control. 

 

In other words, objects are obliged to behave themselves and even though we manipulate and exploit them, they no longer have the right to rebel or extract their revenge: 

 

"The villainy of things is now probably a thing of the past. We are no longer maltreated by things. They are not destructive; they do not offer any resistance. [...] Things are submissive. They are submitted to our needs." [46-47]

 

Han continues:

 

"Today, even Mickey Mouse leads a digital, smart and immaterial life. His world is digitalized and informationalized [...] the representation of material reality is markedly different [...] Things no longer have an independent life; they are obedient tools for solving problems." [47]

 

Is this a good thing? Is it right for a cartoon mouse to teach children that there is a quick solution - an app - for everything? 

 

I don't think so. 

 

And, personally, I would prefer life to be problematic; that physical reality remain something we constantly bump up against. I rather like being at the mercy of objects which not only want to harm or make fools of us, but also support, sustain, and comfort us.  

 

Ultimately, I agree with the young witch who recently informed me: 'When non-things beckon us to enter a virtual abyss, it will be the saving power of actual objects that will summon us back into the nearness of the nearest.' [b]

 

 

Notes

 

[a] This work was translated into English as Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld, by Daniel Steur, (Polity Press, 2022). Page numbers given in the above post refer to this edition.

     

[b] I'm paraphrasing here from a paper due to be presented at Treadwell's Bookshop, on 8 February 2024, entitled Bells, Books, and Candles: On the Continuing Allure of Actual Objects in an Age of Virtual Reality. For more information - and an abstract - see the most recent entry on the TTA Events page: click here.   

Sid Vicious Versus the Crucified

Sid Vicious Versus the Crucified 

(SA/2024) [1]

The god on the cross is a curse on life, a signpost to seek redemption from life; 

Sid Vicious on his motor-bike is a promise of life: it will be eternally reborn 

and return again from destruction.

 

 

I.

 

Can it really be forty-five years ago yesterday that Sex Pistol Sid Vicious died, aged twenty-one, from acute intravenous narcotism? 

 

It may seem hard to believe, but time flies and it's absolutely the case that Sid departed this world in the early hours of February 2nd, 1979.

 

 

II. 

 

There's really not much more to say about a death of which so much has already been written. 

 

Besides, I'm not one who mourns or regrets Sid's martyrdom; for his was what we might term a necessary death; fatal in the originary sense of the term and one which secured his tragic status. 

 

It's important to realise that punk was - despite its nihilism and apparent morbidity - a form of thanksgiving and an affirmation of life; that Sid, as its highest representative (i.e., its one true star), was not just a drug-addicted loser, but an ecstatically overflowing spirit who redeemed the contradictory and questionable nature of rock 'n' roll.   

Christ on his Cross counts as an objection to life in its eternal fruitfulness and recurrence. But Sid on his motorbike was a spiky-haired Dionysus who affirmed life whole and not denied or in part - even in its most destructive and terrible aspects.

 

As Nietzsche writes:

"One will see that the problem is that of the meaning of suffering: whether a Christian meaning or a tragic meaning. In the former case, it is supposed to be the path to a holy existence; in the latter case, being is counted as holy enough to justify even a monstrous amount of suffering. The tragic man affirms even the harshest suffering: he is sufficiently strong, rich, and capable of deifying to do so. The Christian denies even the happiest lot on earth: he is sufficiently weak, poor, disinherited to suffer from life in whatever form he meets it." [2]

 

In sum: Christ on his Cross places a curse on life; but Sid on his motorbike - or singing on stage at the Olympia, Paris [3] - is a promise that life will be eternally reborn from destruction.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The iconic image of Sid on his motorbike is from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980): click here. Christ Crucified is an oil painting by Velázquez (1632), located in the Prado Museum, Madrid.  

 

[2] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, (Vintage Books, 1968), section 1052, pp. 542-543. I'm essentially paraphrasing this section throughout this post. 

 

[3] See the post published on 13 October 2018: click here.