Reflections on 'The Yellow Wallpaper' (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I. 

 

The American author and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) is perhaps best remembered today for a (semi-autobiographical) short story written after she suffered a severe bout of postpartum psychosis and first published in 1892: The Yellow Wallpaper ... [1]

 

 

 

II. 

 

The (possibly unhinged and certainly unreliable) narrator is a married woman who keeps a journal. Her husband, John, is a doctor and "practical in the extreme". 

 

By this she means: 

 

"He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures."

 

Rightly or wrongly, she resents the fact that he will not believe she's physically unwell and blames him for thereby retarding her recovery. And, to be fair, I can see how this might be troubling. 

 

For it's bad enough when one's useless GP insists there's really nothing wrong. But when one's own spouse - who just happens to also be a physician of high standing - "assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression", that must be really maddening. 

 

And when one's own brother - also a highly respected doctor - concurs that one is simply exhibiting signs of a slight hysterical tendency ... Well, it would be enough to make anyone want to scream and tear at the wallpaper (whatever the colour or pattern). 

 

It's an unfortunate fact that doctors and others working in the healthcare professions, are often not what one might expect or hope for. And experience over recent years has taught me to be wary of accepting their diagnoses and prescribed treatments. 

 

And so I'm sympathetic to the narrator of Gilman's story; even if, as I say, she may be unreliable on occasion and a little too romantic and overly sensitive to queer vibrations for my tastes (sometimes, a draught is just a draught and you really do just need to close the window).  

 

And I do see that John is a patronising and paternalistic prick; I wouldn't want to be married to him, that's for sure.     

 

As for the wallpaper:

 

"I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. [...] The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others."

 

I know a lot of people dislike wallpaper: and I know a lot of people hate the colour yellow - although I'm not among their number and have, in fact, just painted my kitchen in a lemon zesty colour full of enough sunshine to make Van Gogh proud [2].  

 

Still, she has a point: one should be happy - or, at the very least, not unhappy - in one's domestic surroundings. 

 

And it's wrong of her husband to laugh at her about the wallpaper. Just as it's wrong not to appreciate that Wilde was perfectly serious when, lying in his wretchedly furnished Paris hotel room, he declared that he and his wallpaper were fighting a duel to the death: One or the other of us has to go.

 

The fact that Wilde died shortly afterwards proves that home furnishings can have a malevolent - even fatal - influence on our lives and that aesthetics deserves to be taken very seriously as a branch of philosophy. 

III.

 

Like the narrator, I also used to lie awake as a child and extract a mixture of terror and entertainment out of the objects of my little bedroom. She remembers how kindly the knobs of a big old bureau were, whilst I remember the scary faces and figures made of leaves that appeared in the curtains - and that returns us to the yellow wallpaper:  

"This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then. But in the places where it isn’t faded, and where the sun is just so, I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design." 

 

Despite this, the woman grows very fond of her room; in spite of the wallpaper, or perhaps - somewhat perversely - because of the wallpaper: "It dwells in my mind so!" She spends many hours trying to follow the pointless pattern:

 

"There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit." 

 

She particularly dislikes it at night, when the moonlight shines on the undulating wallpaper and gives her the creeps: 

 

"The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out. I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper did move [...]" 

 

Her husband tells her to go back to sleep and not be silly. But she doesn't. Instead, she lies there in the darkness "trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately". 

 

If the colour of the paper is bad enough, it's the pattern - with its purely random design that seems to change depending on the light and time of day - that really tortures her mind:

 

"You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well under way in following, it turns a back somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you." 

 

In the end, she decides the female figure she sees behind the pattern is a prisoner; trapped and desperate to escape. And she determines to learn her secret, even if she still can't stomach the yellowness of the wallpaper which makes her think "of all the yellow things I ever saw; not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things". 

 

Oh, and did I mention the paper's unique smell: 

 

"I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here. It creeps all over the house. I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs. It gets into my hair." 

 

"Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like. It is not bad - at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met. In this damp weather it is awful. I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me. It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house - to reach the smell. But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell." 

 

 

IV.

 

And so, we approach the end of Gilman's remarkable tale ... and the narrator's further descent into madness. 

 

She decides, for example, that the pattern of the wallpaper really is moving; that the trapped woman is making it move as she crawls around and shakes the bars of her prison, desperate to break out. Unfortunately, "nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so".   

 

But, having said that: 

 

"I think that woman gets out in the daytime! [...] I’ve seen her! I can see her out of every one of my windows! It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight. [...] I see her [...] creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines. I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!" 

 

Finally, there's only one thing for it - she has to strip the paper off the walls: 

 

"As soon as it was moonlight, and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her. I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper." 

 

The next day, when alone in the house, she attempts to finish the job, keeping a rope close by just in case the woman gets out and requires restraining. But peeling off the paper isn't easy and she grows increasingly angry and frustrated. She also now totally identifies with the woman and believes that she too has emerged out of the wallpaper:   

 

"I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard! It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please! I don’t want to go outside. [...] For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way."

 

At this point, her husband John comes home and discovers her creeping around the room:

 

"'What is the matter?' he cried. 'For God's sake, what are you doing!' I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. 'I’ve got out at last,' said I [...] And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!'" 

 

In horror and despair, her husband collapses: 

 

"Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!" 

 

Is that final line a triumphant assertion of female agency and independence - or the confession of a lunatic? 

 

Maybe both: I don't know. 

 

But I do know Gilman's work fully deserves the multiple readings from many different perspectives that it has had over the last 130 years. H. P. Lovecraft was not wrong to recognise it as a classic tale which powerfully (and cleverly) delineates the madness which can overtake any one of us (whatever the colour of our wallpaper) [3].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I am reading (and quoting) from Gilman's tale as published in eBook form by Project Gutenberg in 1999. Click here to read free online.  

 

[2] See the post 'How Beautiful Yellow Is' (1 May 2024): click here. 

 

[3] See H. P. Lovecraft, 'Supernatural Horror in Literature', a 28,000 word essay published in The Recluse (1927): click here to read on the H. P. Lovecraft Archive. 

 

Thanks to Síomón Solomon for suggesting this post.

 

A Brief History of Irish/Jewish Relations (With Reference to Current Events)

Larping for Palestine with the students of 

Trinity College Dublin

 

I.

 

I have previously written on the relationship of Irish Republicanism to National Socialism [1].

 

However, in light of the authorities at Trinity College Dublin agreeing to the demands of a hundred or so useful idiots amongst the student body to cut commercial ties with Israel because of the war in Gaza [2] - which, for want a better term, we might describe as a Judenboykott - I thought it might be interesting to take a further (brief) look at the history of Irish/Jewish relations. 

 

 

II. 

 

There have never been many Jews choosing to settle in Ireland. 

 

Nevertheless, the history of Jews on the Emerald Isle can be traced back over a thousand years; the Annals of Inisfallen [3] makes the earliest known reference to them, recording that when, in 1079, five Jews came from overseas bearing gifts they were quickly sent back - so much for the welcoming nature of the Irish (more of a modern than a medieval trait it seems). 

 

Despite this, by the early 13th-century there was a tiny Jewish community in Ireland, based in or near Dublin, though how settled they were (and what rights they had) at this time is uncertain. It's really only in the 16th-century that Jews became accepted into Irish society - though the first synagogue wasn't built until 1660, near Dublin Castle.   

 

During the late 19th-century there was an increase in Jewish immigration to Ireland, but in 1901 they still numbered less than 4,000 (up from around 450 twenty years earler). Again, most of these people resided in the capital where they established schools, shops, and synagogues and became prominent in business, education, and politics.  

 

Officially neutral during the Second World War, the political establishment of Ireland tended to be indifferent to the fate of European Jews, even if overt antisemitism was not widespread in Ireland. The Nazis - always planning ahead - had listed the 4,000 Jews of Ireland for future extermination. 

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, given this indifference - and the fact it had been made very difficult for Jews to gain refugee status in Ireland during and after the War [4] - the native Jewish population saw a significant decrease in numbers in 1948 after the establishment of Israel; many choosing to move there out of ideological and/or religious convictions. 

 

In subsequent decades, more Jews would also emigrate to Israel, the UK, and the US due to the decline of Jewish life in Ireland and for better economic prospects. According to the census of 2022, there are now around 2,200 Jews living in the Irish Republic (over half of whom are in Dublin). 

III.

 

Having said that overt antisemitism isn't (and never has been) a major problem in Ireland, that doesn't mean the Irish are entirely innocent with reference to this ...

 

Indeed, many of  Ireland's key political figures - including the founders of two major parties - were noted for their antisemitic speech and behavior [5] and even now there are delightful political figures including Réada Cronin, Chris Andrews, and Mick Wallace to contend with [6].  

 

And then there's the Church ...

 

Throughout the 20th-century, several leading figures in the Catholic Church have promoted antisemitic beliefs and attitudes, and a number of leading Catholic newspapers and journals carried what the historian Dermot Keogh termed "radical anti-Jewish articles" [7] - and by which he refers to really shocking stuff, that I really don't wish to reprint (or even discuss) here. 

 

 

IV.

 

In sum: it's not surprising that students at TCD seem to be not merely supportive of Palestine, but actively hostile to Israel; for it's a politico-religious prejudice that pre-dates the current war in Gaza [8], which started, let us remind ourselves, on 7 October 2023, when Hamas and several other terrorist groups launched a coordinated attack on southern Israel, killing over 1,100 people and taking some 250 hostages. 

 

I don't think the students are morally retarded, so much as misguided and naive concerning the dangers of what Foucault terms micro-fascism; of just how easy it is to slip from being pro-Palestinian to pro-Hamas and from being anti-Zionist or anti-Israeli to antisemitic. 

 

Foucault asks: "How does one keep from being fascist, even (especially) when one believes oneself to be a revolutionary militant?" [9]    

 

It's a crucial question and one which all activists indulging in the ugly politics of ethno-religious identity and victimhood should ask themselves: "How do we rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and our pleasures, of fascism?" [10] It's not easy. But I would suggest one might begin by refraining from the following three things:

 

(i) mindlessly chanting slogans and waving flags ... 

 

(ii) cosplaying in keffiyehs ... 

 

(iii) making raised fist gestures for the cameras.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post entitled 'The Shamrock and the Swastika' (16 Feb 2020): click here.   

 

[2] In a statement, the university declared that Trinity College Dublin will "complete a divestment from investments in Israeli companies that have activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and [...] endeavour to divest from investments in other Israeli companies". See the report by Rory Carroll in The Guardian (8 May 2024): click here. 

 

[3] The Annals of Inisfallen are a chronicle of the medieval history of Ireland originally compiled c. 1092, but regularly updated by the monks of Inisfallen Abbey after this. It is housed in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 

 

[4] In 1948, a Department of Justice official explained that it was the policy to restrict the admission of Jewish aliens, for the reason that any substantial increase in numbers might give rise to antisemitism. 

 

[5] Arthur Griffith, founder of Sinn Féin, subscribed to all the usual Jewish conspiracy theories, whilst Éamon de Valera, a founder of Fianna Fáil and one of Ireland's most significant statesmen, personally called on the representative of the Nazi German government to express his condolences for Hitler's death.

 

[6] Réada Cronin, a Sinn Féin TD from Kildare North, posted several antisemitic tweets, which included claims that Jews were responsible for European wars and that Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency) was influencing British elections. After she apologised, Sinn Féin took no further action. 

      Chris Andrews, another Sinn Féin TD, liked posts on social media referring to Israelis as "murderous Zionist bastards". 

      Mick Wallace, an MEP, shared links to publications on social media suggesting that Jews control the media and were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. 

 

[7] Dermot Keogh, Jews in twentieth-century Ireland: refugees, anti-semitism and the Holocaust (Cork University Press, 1998), p. 92.

 

[8] See Manfred Gerstenfeld's review of Rory Miller's Ireland and the Palestine Question, 1948-2004, published as 'Ireland: A Country Hostile to Israel', in the Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 19, No. 1/2 (Spring 2007), pp. 188-191. The review can be found on JSTOR: click here. I would suggest relations between Ireland and Israel have not got any better during the last twenty years.

 

[9] Michel Foucault, Preface to Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. xiil. 

 

[10] Ibid. 

 

 

For a related post to this one, please click here.

 

 

Larping for Palestine

This season, I'll be mostly wearing ...

Photo (detail) by Spencer Platt

 

 

Those on the woke-left are usually very sensitive about the idea of cultural appropriation - i.e., the borrowing (or theft) of elements belonging to a minority culture by members of a majority culture and the parading of these elements in a manner that is both inauthentic and disrespectful in that it disregards any context of meaning. 

 

It is, say those who speak out against it, another form of colonialism in which marginalised and oppressed peoples are robbed of their identity and intellectual property rights, or reduced to the humiliated status of exotic other [1]. 

 

However, many of these same people are happy to wear a keffiyeh in order to show their support of the Palestinians. For this, they say, is not cultural appropriation, it is rather an act of cultural celebration and political solidarity. 

 

I have to admit, I'm not entirely convinced by this ... 

 

For one suspects there's a certain hypocrisy at work here and the creation of a double standard based on the (questionable) belief that it's okay to don Arab headgear when one is on a protest march, but not when one is attending a fancy dress party. 

 

In other words, if one is (posing as) an angry militant, fighting for social justice and to preserve the dream of Revolution - or if one acts in the sincere belief that one's ideology is grounded in Truth - then, apparently, all your actions can be justified.

 

But for those of us who recall Tom Wolfe's essay on radical chic [2], what we are witnessing now on university campuses in the West is just another form of posturing and performance on behalf of privileged young people searching for a fashionable cause via which they can signal their virtue; be that BLM or freeing Gaza.

 

As Kat Rosenfield writes, it's almost a parody of the student activism of the 1960s; more live action role playing in front of the TV cameras than real protest [3]. 

 

But it's also, of course, the chance to feel powerful and to pretend your life has some purpose; the opportunity for comraderie and community. But when this bonding exercise involves the bullying and intimidation of Jewish students, then maybe its time to remove the keffiyehs and stop larping for Palestine.      

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Cultural appropriation is something I have discussed and written in defence of elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark. See, for example, the post published on 5 August 2016: click here.  

 

[2] See the post 'Radical Chic: On Puncturing the Fourth Wall of Excess and Spectacle with AOC' (15 Sept 2021), in which I refer to Wolfe's essay from 1970: click here.

 

[3] Kat Rosenfield, 'Columbia is a parody of radical activism: LARPing students care more about partying than Palestine', UnHeard, (26 April 2024): click here.

 

 

For a related post to this one, click here.  

 

 

Hail, Emperor Grayling

Philosopher A. C. Grayling - 

give this man a toga and a crown 

(Photo: Simone Padovani)

 

 

I don't much like long-haired British philosopher A. C. Grayling, but a recent remark concerning the interesting etymology of his given name, Anthony - spelled with an H, but pronounced 'Antony' - caught my attention:

 

"The name comes from Antonines in Rome - one of the most famous was Marcus Aurelius. Some idiot in the Renaissance thought that maybe the name Antony comes from 'anthos' in Greek, which means flower. So if you are an Anthony with an H, you're a flower, rather than a Roman emperor. I'd much rather be a Roman emperor." [1]

 

Firstly, of course, this struck me as a very un-Wildean thing to say, the Irish poet and dramatist famously declaring that in the next life he would like to be a flower; beautiful, but with no soul. 

 

Secondly, however, it reveals that Grayling subscribes to a rather common male fantasy; i.e., one of holding supreme power - particularly if one gets to dress up in a toga and wear a laurel leaf crown. 

Indeed, so widespread is this nostalgia for ancient imperialism amongst men that there was even a viral trend on TikTok last year, with women asking the men in their lives how often they think (and dream) about the Roman Empire. The answer, it seems, is very often - with some men confessing they do so multiple times per week (or even per day) [2].

 

This includes very rich and powerful men, such as Mark Zuckerberg, who has repeatedly expressed his admiration for Augustus - and, so it appears, philosophers such as Grayling. 

 

Perhaps this helps to explain the latter's zealous committment to the European Union, founded in 1957 by the Treaty of Rome, which he describes as "the greatest project for peace and cooperation, progress and security, high common values and standards" [3]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Asked ten random questions by Sian Cain, including one about how he likes to be addressed, this was his answer. The full piece, in The Guardian (5 Oct 2024), can be accessed by clicking here.   

[2] The trend is so popular that the hashtag #RomanEmpire on TikTok has surpassed 1.2 billion views. Asked about this, the historian Mary Beard commented: "In some ways, ancient Rome is a kind of safe place for macho fantasies. It's where men can pretend to be macho men." 

      See Olivia B. Waxman, 'The Most Famous Historian of Rome on Why Men Are Obsessed', Time (26 Sept 2023): click here.  

 

[3] I'm quoting from Grayling's website: click here.  

      Obviously, the implication is that the pax Europaea is comparable to the pax Romana, a 200 year period of Roman history seen as a golden age of peace, prosperity, regional expansion and increased power. It is usually dated as commencing with the accession of Augustus, in 27 BC, and concluding in AD 180 with the death of Marcus Aurelius. 

      I'm aware, however, that to view the EU as an attempt to recreate the Roman Empire is somewhat absurd, although not entirely fanciful, as both institutions engender the emergence of a market economy characterised by free movement of goods and people, a single currency, universal laws, etc.    

Putting the Hap Back into Happiness: Notes on Sara Ahmed's Killjoy Feminism

saranahmed.com / feministkilljoys.com

 

'My name is Sara Ahmed. I am a feminist killjoy. It is what I do. 

It is how I think. It is my philosophy and my politics.'

 

 

Sara Ahmed has long been interested in feminism and the question of happiness and last year saw publication of The Feminist Killjoy Handbook in which she conveniently brought together many of her ideas and insights gathered over the years on this topic. 

 

In a nutshell, Ahmed wishes for her readers to suspend their belief that happiness is a good thing and to conceive of feminist history as essentially a struggle against happiness; the latter understood as a way in which oppressive social norms are made to seem natural, desirable, and innocent. To paraphrase Nietzsche, in happiness all that is unjust is pronounced joyous and absolved by laughter [1]. 

 

In a society which she regards as sexist, racist, and homophobic, the queer woman of colour - such as herself - has a duty to be unhappy and to defiantly declare herself to be a killjoy, which means, for example, refusing to laugh at unfunny jokes [2] and pointing out the things that systemically divide people; exposing the lies that are said to constitute common sense. 

 

 

II. 

 

On the one hand, I can see the logic of her argument and sympathise with her position. There are very good reasons why we can't all just get along and I've always liked the idea of reclaiming negative stereotypes and epiphets (the humourless feminist; the angry black woman; the unhappy queer). 

 

It's perfectly valid - and probably crucial - to expose the ironic fact that a conventional (and almost compulsory) model of happiness can have very unhappy consequences for some. 

 

On the other hand, however, I fear that Ahmed's joy killing ideology quickly becomes a form of the political asceticism that Foucault warned against in his preface to Anti-Oedipus: "Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable." [3] 

 

I don't know, maybe I'm more under the spell of French theorists than Ahmed; that I still hear, for example, the laugh of the Medusa and still affirm a practice of writing which is above all else joyful and premised upon the idea that revolution begins with a smile and does not necessitate the turning of warm flesh into cold stone, or the hardening of hearts [4]. 

 

Ultimately, when I start reading Ahmed the words of Emma Goldman also come to mind: 'If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution' [5]. 

 

 

III.

 

Having said that, readers are encouraged to make up their own minds and can do so by clicking here and accessing one of the concluding sections of her handbook, entitled 'A Killjoy Manifesto', and which, amongst other things, attempts to show how feminist principles are born of adversity and bumping up against a world that does not live in accordance with feminist principles. 

 

If you are: 

 

(i) unwilling to make happiness your cause ...

 

(ii) willing to cause unhappiness to others ...

 

(iii) keen to support others who are willing to cause unhappiness ... 

 

then you might just be the kind of committed, grumpy, ungrateful, bond-snapping killjoy that Ahmed celebrates and wishes to form a community with. 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Book III, 'The Seven Seals', section 6. 

 

[2] Principle 4 of 'A Killjoy Manifesto' is: I Am Not Willing to Laugh at Jokes Designed to Cause Offense. In it, Ahmed asserts that humour is "a crucial technique for reproducing inequality and injustice". She also admits that the killjoy "exists in close proximity to the figure of the oversensitive subject who is too easily offended". 

      See The Feminist Killjoy Handbook (Allen Lane, 2023), pp. 261-262. I provide a link to this concluding section of Ahmed's book (pp. 251-268) later in the post. 

 

[3] Michel Foucault, Preface to Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. xiil. 

 

[4] I'm referring here to the famous essay by Hélène Cixous. Originally written in French as Le Rire de la Méduse (1975), a revised version was translated into English by Paula Cohen and Keith Cohen as 'The Laugh of the Medusa' the following year. See my short post on this essay published on 24 June 2013: click here. 

 

[5] Although this line is frequently attributed to anarcho-feminist Emma Goldman, it never actually appears in any of her work. It was invented by the American anarchist Jack Frager in 1973 for a series of t-shirts and rather nicely transforms a much longer paragraph from the first volume of Goldman's two-volume autobiography into a memorable slogan: 

      "At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it." 

      - See Emma Goldman, Living My Life, Vol. 1 (Alfred A. Knopf, 1931), Ch. 5, p. 56. 

 

 

Bonus: those who are particularly interested in this topic might like to click here to watch a book launch event for The Feminist Killjoy Handbook at The People's Forum (NYC), with Sara Ahmed & Mona Eltahawy in conversation (3 Oct 2023).

 

 

Objects Make Happy

Taffy From the Objects Make Happy series

 (SA/2024) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

At the heart of Graham Harman's object-oriented philosophy is the notion of allure.

 

Allure, says Harman, is something that "exists in germinal form in all reality, including the inanimate sphere" [2] and is the key to all causation. 

 

Allure is the way that objects - which are fundamentally withdrawn  - signal to one another from across the void: "Allure is the presence of objects to each other in absent form." [3] 

 

I love that sentence and love this (rather ghostly) theory. 

 

We may never be able to know an object in itself (i.e., in the fullness of its reality), but we can still come into touch with them and they can still affect us in a variety of ways, not always positively or in a manner that is beneficial to us; I have written elsewhere about the malevolent aspect of objects and what Byung-Chul Han terms the villainy of things [click here]. 

 

But, more often than not, they make happy, which is why when I think of happiness I think of objects [4].  

 

 

II.

 

The feminist writer and critical theorist Sara Ahmed - author of The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004) - has a fascinating take on happiness and objects in terms of affect theory. 

 

According to Ahmed, there is a sustained (and sticky) connection between our emotions and objects and it's important to realise that happiness, for example, "starts from somewhere other than the subject" [5]. 

 

In other words, to feel happy is to be randomly (but intimately) touched by something; it comes from outside; it's an inner state triggered by external objects (which may include other people, or cats, but which also includes plants, stars, and ideas). Ultimately, happiness is contingent, not essential [6].

 

Of course, as Ahmed points out, as we change over time - as our bodies age, for example - "the world around us will create different impressions" [7] and what makes happy one day may no longer be experienced as so delightful the next; Locke famously talks of the man who loves and then no longer loves grapes [8].

 

Having said that, some objects hold our affection and bring joy across an entire lifetime; I can't imagine a time when Taffy, pictured above, wouldn't make me feel happy. 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] This charming clay figure, about 9-inches in height, is one I inherited from my mother and whom she named Taffy (presumably because the hat reminded her of traditional Welsh dress). Originally, it contained a small candle which, when lit, illuminated the eyes and mouth in the darkness. It made her happy and it makes me happy. 

      Of course, some will suggest that it's because the object belonged to my mother and reminds me of her that this is why it makes happy. However, whilst this certainly adds to its affective value, I don't think that's the whole story.

 

[2] Graham Harman, Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things (Open Court, 2005), p. 244.  

 

[3] Ibid., p. 246.

 

[4] All too often, cultural theorists and philosophers like to investigate negative feelings such as shame, disgust, fear, hate, etc. But it's surely just as valid - and just as vital - to investigate more positive feelings, such as happiness. I agree with Nietzsche's counter-Christian teaching that ethical behaviour is the result of happiness (not vice versa) which is why it makes sense to surround oneself with the objects (be they beautiful or otherwise) that make happy.

 

[5] Sara Ahmed, 'Happy Objects', The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 29-51. The line quoted is on p. 29. 

 

[6] As Ahmed reminds us, "the etymology of 'happiness' relates precisely to the question of contingency: it is from the Middle English 'hap', suggesting chance". See 'Happy Objects', The Affect Theory Reader, p. 30. 

 

[7] Sara Ahmed, 'Happy Objects', The Affect Theory Reader, p. 31. 

 

[8] See John Locke, 'Of Modes of Pleasure and Pain', Chapter XX in Book II of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (dated 1690 but first pubished in 1689).

 

How Beautiful Yellow Is

 

Vincent van Gogh: The Yellow House (1888) 

Oil on canvas (72 cm x 91.5 cm)

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam 

 

Apparently, yellow is not a popular colour amongst 21st-century Europeans and Americans who, when surveyed, placed it way behind blue, red, and green. In fact, more people named it as their least favourite colour than their best-loved.

 

That surprises me, as I've always liked the colour yellow and all the things that are coloured yellow; from stars to sunflowers, ducklings to daffodils. 

Painters too have always had a thing for yellow and it was one of the primary colours used in prehistoric cave art; the yellow horse of Lascaux was painted 17,000 years before Franz Marc gave us his famous blue horses. 

 

If the English Romantic painter Turner was one of the first 19th-century artists to use yellow to suggest moods and emotions, it's the great Dutch post-Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh who is probably the painter most associated with the colour. 

 

During his period in the South of France (1888-1899), Van Gogh celebrated yellow in all its shades, from pale lemon to bright sulpher yellow. He even famously lived in house painted yellow and - it is believed by some - once attempted suicide by consuming yellow paint.

 

I don't know if that's true; and nor do I know if Van Gogh suffered from a rare medical condition - xanthopsia - which can alter perceptions of colour and give the world a yellowish glow. I doubt it. And I prefer anyway to think that Van Gogh, who was well-versed in colour theory, simply loved yellow for its emotional intensity (its joy and vitality). 

Perhaps, in the end, too much yellow - like too much sunlight and too much reason - can become overwhelming and end in madness. But a world without yellow would be immensely poorer and duller. 

 

And so that's why I'm going to paint my kitchen yellow ... 

A Lick of Yellow Paint 

 (SA/2024)

 

What Was I Thinking? (29 April)

Images used for the posts published on this date in 

2013, 2018, and 2022

 

 

Sometimes - especially those times when, like today, I can't think of anything else to write about - it's convenient to be able to look back and see what one was thinking on this date in years gone by; voyeurs, naughty nurses, female nipples, and circus elephants, apparently ... 

 

 

The Voyeur / Ooh Matron!

 

I suspect that way back on 29 April 2013, I was also stuck for new ideas, because both of these posts on Torpedo the Ark were essentially lifted from the queer little book Whores Don't Fuck between the Bed-Sheets: Fragments from an Illicit Lover's Discourse (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). 

 

I assembled this text after finishing my PhD in 2000, but it has it's origins in work that can be traced back to the the late 1980s, when I first began to collect the cards left by prostitutes in London phone boxes and was concerned with issues to do with sexuality and the subject [1]. 

 

In the first of these fragments, I examined the way in which the imperial male gaze is taken to its erotic conclusion by the voyeur: By watching others fuck, he exercises his power to probe and master bodies, assigning meaning to otherwise insignificant sexual activity.

 

An often solitary figure, the true voyeur crucially has no desire to join in: For his pleasure derives exclusively from the fact that, like a god, he has mastered the art of immaculate perception. In other words, he can look at life and love without his tongue lolling out. 

 

In the second of these fragments, meanwhile, I disussed how the figure of the nurse plays an important role within the pornographic imagination, where she is usually conceived either as a kindly angel who administers some form of erotic relief, or as the cruel representative of strict and punishing authority delighting in needles and cold latex gloves. 

 

For the British, however, reared as they have been within a Carry On culture, the figure of the nurse also plays an important role within the comic imagination and so it's virtually impossible to take the sexual stereotype seriously for long: fetishistic medical fantasies are invariably undermined by fond memories of Hattie Jacques. 

 

 

On the Politics of the Female Nipple 

 

Five years later, and I was now concerned with the female nipple as the site of socially constructed meaning and a politics of desire: 

 

For whilst the male nipple is just as sensitive to certain stimuli and can also be erotically aroused, it isn't subject to the same pornographic fascination or taboo within our culture and so can be freely displayed in a way that the female nipple cannot. 

 

However, if I was sceptical with the Free the Nipple campaign back in 2018, I'm still not on board with it here in 2024. For it seems to me that what I wrote then is still a valid reason for concern now; there's a naivety in this campaign which fails to consider the law of unintended (or unforeseen) consequences:

 

Consider, for example, what happens when famous singers, actresses and models jump on board and start posting images of their perfect breasts and super-perky nipples. It doesn't result in a great leap forward for womankind; it leads, unfortunately, to greater insecurity and a new trend in plastic surgery - so-called designer nipples. 

 

For it turns out that many women don't want to free their nipples; at least not straight away. They want first to have botox fillers injected into their areola so that their nipples might look like those of their favourite celebrities. Only when they have permanently erect-looking and symmetrical on-trend nipples do they feel confident enough to wear sheer dresses or see-through tops and make themselves subject to the world's gaze. 

 

Thus, ironically, an attempt to emancipate women, make them proud of their bodies and further equality, ends in lining the pockets of already very rich and invariably male cosmetic surgeons. Idealism, it seems, always collapses into gross materialism; for such is the evil genius of the world. 

 

 

On D. H. Lawrence and Circus Elephants 

 

There's a number of elephants lumbering throughout Torpedo the Ark, with posts on wild elephants, zoo elephants, ceremonial elephants, and, as in this post from 2022, circus elephants, as poetically imagined by D. H. Lawrence.

 

For Lawrence, it wasn't the clowns, the acrobats, or the showgirls on horseback wearing their sparkling costumes and feathers that most thrilled him when he went with Frieda to the circus in Toulon (France) in December 1928: it was the elephants. 

 

Whilst the magnificent tusker elephants in Kandy certainly left their impression on Lawrence, it was the circus elephants plodding around the ring and performing their tricks that inspired a series of short verses that he termed pansies. 

 

As verses go, they're amusing enough. But I was rather surprised that Lawrence wasn't more sympathetic to these ancient pig-tailed monsters; that he seemed to be of the view that elephants not only look old and worn out, but belong to a prehistoric world or time gone by, as if they were relics or living fossils, who have nothing more to offer than entertainment value (and ivory). 

 

And I was disappointed that he would suggest that performing beasts are having fun:

 

For whilst I'm not an expert in elephant psychology and welfare, I very much doubt they enjoy exposing their vast bellies or find it amusing to balance on a ball or drum. Nor - I imagine - do they want to plod or shuffle around a ring, or crawl on their knees in utmost caution. Does anyone really believe that the strange postures and poses they are forced to take up come naturally? Or that training doesn't involve cruelty and the brutal use of bull-hooks, whips, and electric prods? And let's not even mention the physical and emotional abuse these poor creatures are subjected to when they are not in the spotlight; confined and chained for hours on end, or transported from town to town in the back of trucks and boxcars.  

 

I would conclude now as I concluded two years ago: 

 

Even if Lawrence was writing a hundred years ago and so can't be expected to share a contemporary view of zoos and circuses in terms of so-called animal rights, it's strange that a writer who was acutely sensitive to animals in all their wild otherness or mystery - and who hated the attempt by mankind to impose its will over the natural world - should have not been angered or outraged by the indecent sight of an elephant performing on command. 

 

Notes

 

[1] I reflect on this book - its aims and necessity, etc. - in a post published on 1 October 2018: click here. 

 

 

Horses, Horses, Horses, Horses!

Horses, horses, horses, horses! [1]

I.

 

Yesterday morning, I was in a central London café sipping a mint tea when, suddenly, from the other end of the street, a commotion was generating ... 

 

I looked at my companion, who wanted to run. But we stayed sitting as a pair of terrified horses - including a white horse drenched in blood - galloped past, causing chaos as they collided with vehicles and shocked observers [2].

 

And not only did I hear Patti Smith singing from out of the remote past, but I remembered also something D. H. Lawrence once wrote: "While horses thrashed the streets of London, London lived." [3]

 

 

II.

 

Today, still upset at seeing such noble beasts in obvious distress, I ironically went with a friend to the Horse Hospital, to take another look at the artwork of Gee Vaucher, which, to be fair, is better than I first thought (even if the overtly political nature of the work does get a bit tiring).

  

However, the thing that really caught my attention was a nude female mannequin, posing provocatively, wearing a horse's head mask and standing before a large red plastic bin at the top of the ramp that leads to the first floor ... 

 

As my friend, a longtime member of the kink community who was distinctly unimpressed by Vaucher's work amusingly remarked: I may not know much about art, but I know what I like.

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Fig. 1: Patti Smith photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe on the cover of her album Horses (Arista Records, 1975): click here to listen to the three-part track 'Land' (part one: "Horses" / part two: "Land of a Thousand Dances" / part three: "La Mer(de)"). 

      Fig. 2: A mannequin with a horse's head was one I took at the Horse Hospital earlier today.

     Fig. 3: Quaker (the dark horse in the foreground) and Vida (the white horse bleeding profusely), taken in central London yesterday.  

 

[2] This sounds as if I'm recounting a nightmare, but it actually happened. Apparently, five military horses were spooked and bolted when building materials were dropped from height at a construction site in Belgravia, next to where they were on a training exercise. For a BBC news report, click here.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 102. 

 

 

Further Remarks on the Case of Gideon Falter

Gideon Falter: chief executive of the 

Campaign Against Antisemitism

 

In response to a recent post [1] in which I stuck up for the right to cross the road - be one a proverbial chicken or an openly Jewish individual - I had a charming email from someone telling me I'm a Zionist stooge at best and an apologist for genocide at worst. 

 

Surely you realise that Gideon Falter is an activist and provocateur and that the whole thing with him being stopped by the police was staged for the cameras?

 

Well, yes, okay - but that's not really the issue, is it? 

 

Even Rosa Parks [2] had pre-planned with others in the NAACP her courageous act of civil disobedience on that fateful day in December 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama. And she was perfectly happy to be photographed being fingerprinted when arrested for a second time, in 1956, one month into the Montgomery bus boycott that her initial arrest had sparked.

 

The fact that Parks might also be described as an activist and provocateur who understood the power of symbolic protest and how to use the media to get her point across, doesn't detract from the rightness of her actions in exposing the shameful reality of segregation.   

 

Similarly, the fact that Falter exposed that on a spring day in central London, in April 2024, a man can be stopped from going about his peaceful and perfectly lawful business and walking where he wishes to walk on the grounds that his openly Jewish appearance - he was wearing a yarmulke - would antagonise a pro-Palestinian crowd to such an extent that his safety couldn't be guaranteed by the Met police, is what matters here. 

 

At least that's what matters to those of us who value the freedom of the individual above that of a vitriolic and potentially violent mob seeking to intimidate; in other words, I don't care that it was a manufactured incident.       

Notes  

[1] See: 'Openly Jewish' (22 April 2024): click here. 

[2] Rosa Parks (1913 - 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott.