Reflections on the Miners' Strike (1984-85)

With Arthur Scargill (Madame Tussauds, London, 1985)

 

 

I. 

 

I was surprised that the year long miners' strike, which began in the spring of 1984, wasn't more widely commemorated seeing as we've just passed the 40th anniversary of the ending of what was a significant event not just within the coal industry, but UK history. 

 

 

II. 

 

Led by the charismatic figure of Arthur Scargill, President of the National Union of Mineworkers, the strike was an attempt to prevent the closure of pits deemed by the Tory government under Margaret Thatcher as uneconomic (although the political goal was clearly to smash and humiliate the NUM, as well as weaken the wider labour movement; the fact that the miners had been able to bring down the Conservative government under Ted Heath in 1974 had neither been forgotten nor forgiven).

 

Of course, it was a battle they could not win; few major trade unions officially backed the NUM and some miners, particularly in the Nottingham area, continued to work throughout the dispute, thereby helping the government keep the lights on (what would D. H. Lawrence have made of this, one wonders; would he have supported the men of Eastwood, or would he have condemned the crossing of picket lines and called them scabs?).

 

I was living in Leeds when the strike started, so it very much felt as if it were unfolding on my doorstep, even if Cortonwood Colliery, where the strike kicked off, was based in South not West Yorkshire and the infamous Battle of Orgreave on 18 June 1984 took place 30-odd miles away in Rotherham [1].

 

In July, however, I moved to London: nevertheless, I followed events with interest and would regularly put what I could in the buckets held by those collecting money for striking miners and their families, for whom it was impossible not to feel tremendous sympathy and with whom, indeed, one felt a sense of working-class solidarity (my own father had gone down the mines after leaving school in Newcastle aged 14, in 1926, just a year after the Montagu pit disaster in Scotswood, in which 38 men and boys lost their lives).         

 

I also remember buying Arthur Scargill and the NUM Christmas cards, though I can't vouch that any of the money from such ever went to the strikers, as it should have done. 

 

And I still have (in a box in the loft) a copy of a 7" single by The Enemy Within called 'Strike' and which featured voice samples of Arthur Scargill. Released on Rough Trade Records in October 1984, I'm pretty sure that proceeds from sales of this did go to the Miners Solidarity Fund [2]. 

 

Despite my meagre efforts at showing support - and despite all the sacrifice made by the striking miners and their families - on 3 March, 1985, the dispute ended with a decisive victory for the Coal Board and the Tory government, opening the way for the closure of most of Britain's collieries [3]. 

 

 

III. 

 

In a diary entry, I noted:

 

This is a very dark day and a very sad day - almost one might call it tragic. The striking miners return to work on Tuesday. Many of them clearly feel betrayed. Rightly or wrongly, Scargill points the finger of blame at the TUC and the Labour Party.

      I suppose this marks the end of militant left-wing opposition to the Tories (at least for the foreseeable future) and Thatcher is gleeful and triumphant. Not sure this is an England I want to live in. Feel a lot of  admiration for the miners - proud men who deserve better. When asked on the news by a reporter what he intended to do now, Scargill simply smiled and said: 'Go home.' 

      Sadly, if his predictions about pit closures and the destruction of mining communities are even half correct, then a lot of people are going to find that might not be an option for them much longer. [4]

   

 

Notes

 

[1] For those who don't know, the Battle of Orgreave was, as the name indicates, an extremely violent confrontation between pickets and a huge army of bluebottles - some of whom were drafted in from as far away as London - at a British Steel Corporation coking plant. It was a pivotal event in the strike and, indeed, British history; one that changed industrial relations forever in the UK and how many people now view the police. 

[2] The enemy within is how Thatcher referred to the leaders of the miners' strike and other militant trade unionists. The single was written by Keith LeBlanc and produced by Adrian Sherwood and Keith LeBlanc. To play both sides of the single (the B-side is a mix of the A-side) on YouTube, click here. 

 

[3] What remained of the coal industry - in public ownership since 1947 - was sold off in December 1994 and by the end of 2015 the last of the deep-mining coal pits, The Big K (i.e., Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire), had closed. Prior to the 1984-85 strike there had been 175 working pits. Many of the coal mining communities have never recovered and some are now ranked amongst the poorest towns in the country. 

 

[4] Entry from the Von Hell Diaries (Sunday 3 March 1985). 

      This retrospectively surprising and slightly embarrassing mixture of sympathy, socialism, and sentiment, is still in evidence the next day, as I continue to heap praise on Scargill and approve of his walking off a TV-am set rather than share a sofa with Chris Butcher, a miner from Bevercotes Colliery - known as 'Silver Birch' - whom Scargill regarded (rightly as it turned out) as a scab and class traitor (Butcher was secretly being funded by the Daily Mail to travel around the country opposing the strike; he was also involved in legal action against the NUM).   

 

What's in a Word: Punk

 'The cult is called punk; the music punk rock ...'

 

 

I. 

 

In a pre-Grundy television interview, Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten is asked by Maggie Norden:

 

"What about the word 'punk' - it means worthless, nasty - are you happy with this word?"

 

A crucial question to which he replies: 

 

"No, the press gave us it. It's their problem, not ours. We never called ourselves punk." [1]

 

It's a somewhat surprising response which every idiot who proclaims that they'll be a punk until they die might care to consider ...

 

 

II.  

 

When Rotten refers to the press, he was more than likely thinking of posho freelance journalist and photographer Caroline Coon, who, having risen to prominence as part of the British Underground scene in the 1960s, attached herself to the new youth movement spearheaded by the Sex Pistols in the mid-70s [2].

For it was Coon, writing for the influential music paper Melody Maker, who famously described this anarchic subculture held together with safety pins and bondage straps as punk - a name by which, for better or for worse, it has been known ever since (despite Rotten's disavowing of the term) [3].

 

Personally, I always think it a pity when something as beautifully fluid, ambiguous, and messed up as the scene that grew out of at 430 King's Road is identified and codified; to name is to know and to know is to kill. Calling the Sex Pistols a punk band was to suggest they were not something radically new or different; that they could, in fact, be compared with other groups and to prevailing rock trends.

 

That's undoubtedly true of the Clash - the band with whom Coon became most closely associated - but it's absolutely not true of the Sex Pistols as conceived by McLaren and Westwood. And not true either of Alan Jones, Jordan, and all those others who either worked at or hung around 430, King's Road. 

 

Assuming that a collective term of reference is at least provisionally needed, what should we call this assemblage of individuals ?   

 

Perhaps the best answer to this question was supplied by cultural critic Peter York, who, in October '76, referred to the "Sex shop people" and characterised them as the "extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars" [4]. 

 

That, I think, is spot on: and very much in line with how I think of the Sex Pistols and those closely associated with them - as more funny peculiar than punk; i.e., as unusual, strange, abnormal, deviant, perverse, extraordinary, singular, exceptional, outlandish ... 

 

The photo below perfectly captures just how queer things were before being named and tamed by the media and the music business and before an army of identikit punks emerged.         

 

The Sex shop people: (L-R) Steve Jones, Danielle, Alan Jones, 

Chrissie Hynde, Jordan, and Vivienne Westwood 

Photo by David Dagley (Forum, June 1976)

 

Notes

 

[1] The full six minute interview with McLaren and Rotten - including a pre-recorded performance of 'Anarchy in the UK' - was on the tea-time current affairs show Nationwide (BBC1 12 Nov 1976). It can be found in the BBC Archive on Facebook: click here. A shorter version - without the band's performance - can also be found on YouTube: click here.   

 

[2] Acting on the recommendation of Alan Jones, then working as an assistant alongside Jordan at McLaren and Westwood's shop on the King's Road, Coon attended an early Sex Pistols gig and, like many others, she was captivated by what she saw happening both on and off stage and immediately began to document this new scene.  

 

[3] See Coon's Melody Maker article entitled 'Punk Rock: Rebels Against the System' (7 August 1976).       

      Although the word punk had already been used fairly widely for several years in connection to rock music in the US - and, indeed, has a much longer and more complex history than that: click here - it was Coon's piece that played a crucial role in introducing a slightly revised version of the term to a British audience and helping to identify a novel (but not radically new) genre of music.

      Coon obviously had a gift for this kind of thing as, interestingly, she was also the person who named the hardcore group of friends who followed the Sex Pistols as the 'Bromley Contingent'.

 

[4] Peter York, quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329. York was writing in an article entitled 'Them', in Harpers & Queen (October, 1976).

 

 

Her Smile Ineffably is Sweet / Divinely She is Slim: On the Sexual Politics of Waitressing

 

 

I.

 

Waitressing isn't perhaps the most glamorous job in the world, but, as Mr White recognises, it's a major occupation amongst non-college graduates and the one honest job that almost any woman can fall back on when times are tough and (just about) earn a living from.

 

And, like Mr White, I agree that women serving table work hard for very little pay and fully deserve their tips (despite the fact that Mr Pink does make some valid points) [1].

 

II. 

 

What they probably don't deserve, however, is to be sexually objectified and leered at by their male customers; either in real life, or, indeed, in the world of the TV sitcom, as Moira the waitress is objectified and leered at by Bob and Terry in a second season episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? 

Watching as she bends over a table in order to collect the tea cups and wipe the surface, Bob claims that whilst he could never actually cheat on his wife, Thelma, he can't help noticing other girls - including Moira and "her provocative body". 

 

Terry agrees that she does possess fantastic legs - "right up to her throat" - and have a "naughty little bum". However, later, when he gives her a suggestive wink, she tuts and looks away in disgust [2]. 

 

 

III.

 

Scenes like this - perfectly acceptable at the time, but less so now - remind one of why there was probably a need for feminist groups like the Waitresses, formed in 1977, and consisting of female artists who also worked in the service sector in Los Angeles.     

The group, active until 1985 and which eventually had over a dozen members, was co-founded by Jerri Allyn and Anne Gauldin, after Allyn, who had been working as a waitress for seven years, watched Gauldin perform a piece at the Feminist Studio Workshop in which she attempted to expose the dark side of the profession (i.e., the everyday sexism, the physical abuse, the poor working conditions and low pay, etc.).

 

The Waitresses also explored the sexualisation of women working in the service industry; how they were not just seen as common and available for exploitation, but encouraged to prostitute themselves by dressing in a sexy manner and acting flirtatiously in order to secure bigger tips from male customers [3].      

For their guerilla performances, the group created playful and provocative characters such as 'Wonder Waitress', who had come to help the harried and hassled waitresses of the world and advise them on how to unionise.

 

In 1979, the Waitresses and their supporters marched wearing waitressing uniforms in the Pasedena Doo Dah Parade, playing pots and pans instead of traditional instruments; they repeated this in 2007 to mark the 30th anniversary of the group's formation, marching in support of equal pay.   

 

 

The Waitresses marching in 1979 

Photo by Jerri Allyn

 

  

Notes

 

The title of this post is taken from a poem entitled 'Weary Waitress' by the English-born Canadian poet Robert W. Service (1874-1958): click here.  

The image by Stephen Alexander is based on a screen shot of Nova Llewellyn, as Moira, in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (see note 2 below).

 

[1] I'm referencing characters in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992); Mr White is played by Harvey Keitel and Mr Pink is played by Steve Buscemi. See the opening scene set in a diner: click here.

 

[2] See the series 2 episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? entitled 'Between Ourselves', directed Bernard Thompson, written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, starring Rodney Bewes as Bob Ferris and James Bolam as Terry Collier. Moira the waitress was played by Nova Llewellyn. 

      The episode, first broadcast on BBC1 on 19 March, 1974, can be watched in full on YouTube by clicking here. The relevant scenes takes place between 20:25 and 21:44.

 

[3] Some who study human sexual behaviour argue that men like to give gifts - including tips in restaurants - to attractive women for much the same reason that male birds like to share food or nesting material with potential mates. So maybe what some regard as sleazy behaviour is rooted deep in the male psyche and has a long and complex instinctual history. 

     Of course, there's always the possibility that a male customer isn't tipping in an attempt to put the waitress under an obligation that might be repaid sexually, but is simply being generous; although, as researches have also pointed out, good deeds among men tend to increase when there's even a remote chance they may get to copulate. 

Dangerously Close to Love: Hommage à Steve Jones (Sex Pistol and Style Icon)

 

Steve Jones wearing an Anarchy shirt and pair of 

Seditionaries boots and looking like the coolest man alive

Photo by Wolfgang Heilemann (August 1976)

 

 

I. 

 

If Johnny Rotten was the face of punk - and Malcolm McLaren the brains - then Steve Jones was the genitalia; the one who supplied a lot of the stylish swagger and foul-mouthed humour to the Sex Pistols; the one who called Bill Grundy a fucking rotter ...

 

Perhaps that's why I always had a lot of affection for Jones, who, in 1972, co-founded The Strand [1] with former schoolmates Paul Cook and Wally Nightingale [2]. They were the band from out of which the Sex Pistols would eventually evolve, sans Wally, but with the crucial addition of Glen Matlock on bass and, later, John Lydon, as lead vocalist and frontman; a role that Jones was never comfortable in. 

 

In fact, Jones was probably much happier nicking musical equipment from wealthy rock stars and clothes from the King's Road store owned by McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. We might discuss whether Vicious is fairly labelled as The Gimmick - or Rotten as The Collaborator - in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980), but Jones certainly loved to steal and so his being cast as The Crook is hardly unjust.    

Fortunately for Jones, Malcolm seemed extremely fond of him and in mid-1975, after years of constant pestering from Jones on the matter, McLaren reluctantly agreed to become the group's manager - but only on the condition that Cook and Jones agree to fire Nightingale (which they did). 

 

Mclaren was also keen that the band change their name and, after suggesting various alternatives, it was agreed that they would be known as Kutie Jones and his Sex Pistols ...

 

For McLaren, the latter part of the name not only referenced his and Vivienne's store, then called SEX, but it also hinted at the idea of young assassins for whom everything was permitted and to whom it was reasonable to demand the impossible. 

 

As for the first part of the name ... well, Kutie was a word much favoured by pornographers to describe a young female model; thus it was, for example, that a vintage fetish magazine published in the late 1950s and early 1960s was entitled QT, punning on this term, as well as the idea of it being something that those in the know kept quiet about [3].

 

 

II. 

 

Why did Wally have to go? 

 

Partly it was because he was, at heart, more pub rock than punk rock and he and Jones found themselves constantly at odds over the band's musical direction; the former favouring a traditional R&B sound, whereas the latter was very much into Bowie, Roxy Music, and the New York Dolls.  

 

But it was also a question of style, not just music; Nightingale didn't look the part, whereas the rest of the band - Cook, Matlock, and especially Jones - were as obsessed with fashion as they were with music; particularly the unique designs sold at 430 King's Road, created by McLaren and Westwood.  

 

This is evidenced by the above photo, taken in August 1976, in which Jones can be seen wearing a pink striped Anarchy shirt, accurately described by Paul Gorman as "the visual equivalent of the music made by McLaren's charges the Sex Pistols; jarring, violently expressive and an act of collage representing an exciting and scrambled manifesto of desires" [4]. 

 

This variant of the shirt contains several of the (now) familiar elements, including the Karl Marx silk patch, the chaos armband, and a stencilled slogan that greatly amused McLaren: Dangerously Close to Love.  

 

Jones is also wearing a pair of Seditionaries boots; if hippies liked their Birkenstock sandals - and skinheads loved their Doc Martens - then the footwear of choice for those punks who could afford to buy a pair was this refashioned suede and leather jodhpur boot, commisioned from the famous English shoemakers George Cox, that came complete with bondage-style straps and buckles.  

I'm not sure about the blue denim jeans - or the slightly dodgy-looking barnet - but Jones looks the business in this picture - as indeed do the rest of the band (before punk became just another uniform):

 

The Sex Pistols: Rotten, Matlock, Cook, and Jones

Photo by Wolfgang Heilemann (August 1976)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The band took their original name - later changed to the Swankers, at Wally Nightingale's suggestion - from the Roxy Music song 'Do the Strand', written by Bryan Ferry and found on the album For Your Pleasure (Island Records, 1973). Steve Jones has often spoken of his love for Roxy Music during the glam rock period. 

      Those who don't know the song - as well as those who never tire of hearing it - can click here, or here to watch a live performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test (BBC2, 3 April 1973). Surprisingly, 'Do the Strand' wasn't released in the UK as a single until 1978, when it failed to chart.  

 

[2] The guitarist Wally Nightingale is arguably the Pete Best of the Sex Pistols story; it was he who suggested to Cook and Jones that they form a band and he would happily assist the latter in stealing instruments and equipment. He is also credited with writing the music for 'Did You No Wrong', a song which featured as the B-side of the Sex Pistols' single 'God Save the Queen' (1977) - a song that I hated then and still hate now; but which can be played by clicking here.  

      Unfortunately, McLaren didn't think he fitted the image for the band that he had in mind. And so he was fired and Jones became the guitarist. Within six months of Nightingale leaving, they had found a new singer and played their first gig as the Sex Pistols (6 November, 1975) - and the rest, as they say, is history. Sadly, Nightingale died, aged 40, in 1996; still somewhat bitter about his expulsion.    

 

[3] Published monthly by the London-based company Concord Publications, QT ran for 94 issues between late 1956 and the summer of 1964. Click here for more details. In 1974, the magazine was revived under the title New QT, again featuring the work of Britain's top glamour photographer Russell Gay and published by Concord.  

 

[4] Paul Gorman, 'The Anarchy Shirt', Dazed (1 May, 2013): click here.  

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Silly Thing' is a song written by Paul Cook and Steve Jones and which features the latter on vocals. It was released as the third single from the The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979), reached number 6 in the UK charts, and is a fresh and crisp example of punk popcorn: click here.     

Know Thyself: A Reflection

Ai Weiwei: Know Thyself (2022) 

Lego bricks 192.5 x 192.5 cm [a]

 

 

I. 

 

Whenever I come across the ancient Greek injunction know thyself [b], I immediately think of Nietzsche's preface to the Genealogy in which he mocks the very possibility of this, even for those who pride themselves on being men of knowledge: We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers ... [c]

 

But I also think of Foucault's text entitled Technologies of the Self ...

 

 

II.     

 

Based on a lecture given at the University of Vermont in October 1982, this text is hugely interesting for its insistence that care of the self - conceived as an ethico-aesthetic project of stylisation - is at least as important as knowing the self (understood in relation to a moral conception of Truth).

 

In the modern era, care of the self was almost entirely decoupled from the more imperative-sounding command to know the self. And that is unfortunate to say the least, because care of the self crucially entailed the forming of external relations with others, whilst knowing the self is a much more internalised and solitary pursuit (like masturbation).

 

For Foucault, "the equation of philosophical askesis with renunciation of feeling, solidarity, and care for one's self and for others - as the price of knowledge - was one of the biggest wrong turnings" [d] in Western history. 

 

But rather than simply regret this, or naively call for an impossible (and undesirable) return to an ancient way of life [e], Foucault began to think things through in his own inimitable manner (more as a hermeneutics of the self than an epistemological exercise) ... 

 

 

III.

 

Gnōthi seauton is one thing; epimeleisthai sautou is another. Without doubt, says Foucault, we moderns have overemphasised the former and largely forgotten the latter. 

 

In the Graeco-Roman world, however, "the injunction of having to know oneself was always associated with the other principle of the care of the self, and it was that need to care for oneself that brought the Delphic maxim into operation" [f]. It was, in other words, one of the key principles (and practices) governing "social and personal conduct" [226].

 

For Foucault, this "profound transformation in the moral principles of Western society" [228] has occurred for two main reasons: 

 

"We find it difficult to base rigorous morality and austere principles on the precept that we should give more care to ourselves than to anything else in the world. We are more inclined to see taking care of ourselves as an immorality [...] We inherit the tradition of Christian morality which makes self-renunciation the condition for salvation. To know oneself was paradoxically the way to self-renunciation." [228] [g]

 

The second reason - just as crucial - is that in modern philosophy from Descartes to Husserl, "knowledge of the self (the thinking subject) takes on an ever-increasing importance as the first step in the theory of knowledge" [228].

 

 

IV.

Does any of this really matter today?

 

To many people, perhaps not: but to me, as a philosopher who, like Foucault - and, indeed, like Socrates - cares about the question of care, it matters a great deal. 

 

For I would love to see a greater concern with ethos as the Greeks understood this term; i.e. a way of being and of behaviour, of stylising the self (in relation to others) that was evident in every aspect of the person (their appearance, dress, manner, etc.). 

 

The immanent utopia realised now/here in the bonds between people that D. H. Lawrence terms a democracy of touch will be a society founded upon such an ethos; one in which everybody takes proper care of him or herself whilst also properly conducting themselves "in relation to others and for others" [h]. 

 

Ultimately, let me add in closing - once more in agreement with Foucault - the relationship between philosophy, politics, ethics, and art is permanent and fundamental. And that's why one can't simply visit an exhibition by Ai Weiwei, for example, and simply come away speaking about aesthetics or his method of working [i].  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] This Lego mosaic by Ai Weiwei, based on a first-century Roman work depicting a skeleton and the Greek phrase ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ, is presently on display at the Lisson Gallery (London). It previously featured as part of Ai Weiwei's solo exhibition Know Thyself, at Galerie neugerriemschneider, in Berlin (September 14, 2023 - March 30, 2024). 

      Why the artist chose to reverse the image and write the Greek maxim as if viewed in a mirror, I don't know; perhaps it is meant to indicate the fact that he is reflecting on the complex relationship between past and present (I very much doubt, from what I know of him, that he is advocating a reversal of moral wisdom).  

 

[b] Know thyself was inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo in the ancient Greek precinct of Delphi. It has been quoted and interpreted by countless thinkers, scholars and authors ever since. It is usually written in Greek as Γνῶθι σεαυτόν (gnōthi seauton).

 

[c] The original German reads: Wir sind uns unbekannt, wir Erkennenden, wir selbst uns selbst ... See Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887), p. iii. 

[d] Paul Rabinow, introduction to the Essential Works of Foucault 1: Ethics, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley and others (Penguin Books, 2000), p. xxv.

 

[e] In answer to the question whether he sees the ancient Greeks as offering an attractive and plausible alternative, Foucault says: "No! [...] you can't find  the solution of another problem raised at another moment by other people." Further, Greek ethics "were linked to a purely virile society" founded upon slavery and he doesn't much like that idea. 

      See 'On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress', in the Essential Works 1: Ethics ... p. 256. 

 

[f] Michel Foucault, 'Technologies of the Self', in the Essential Works 1: Ethics ... p. 226. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the text. 

      A slightly different version of this text appeared in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton (University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), pp. 16-49 and this can be read online by clicking here.  

 

[g] It's important to note that Foucault sees many continuities between pagan and Christian culture and does not see a clean break as many modern Christians and neo-pagans like to imagine. Christianity - a religion of confession and salvation - is, as Nietzsche once said, in many respects a form of Platonism for the people (see his preface to Beyond Good and Evil, 1886) and the Christian tradition is not uniquely to blame for the moral world we now inhabit. 

      See the interview with Foucault from January 1984, 'The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom', which can be found in an amended translation with footnotes in the Essential Works 1: Ethics ... pp. 281-301, where he stresses this point.  

 

[h] Foucault, 'The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom', Essential Works 1: Ethics ... p. 287. 

[i] In a recent post published on Torpedo the Ark, I discussed how Ai Weiwei's transformation of a well-known canvas by Van Gogh enables the viewer to reflect upon contemporary social, cultural, and political concerns. Those interested in reading the post, can click here. 

 

Wheatfield with Crows and Drones

Vincent van Gogh: Korenveld met kraaien (1890) 

Oil on canvas 50.5 x 103 cm 

Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam)

Many people like to believe that Wheatfield with Crows captures the violent turmoil of Van Gogh's mental state at the time and that it was the final canvas he produced; i.e., a picture painted a year-and-a-half after the Xmas ear cutting incident in Arles, but only moments before he shoots himself in the chest with a revolver in Auvers-sur-Oise, a commune on the outskirts of Paris, in the summer of 1890.

 

But that's a cinematic fiction invented by the makers of Lust for Life (1956); a biographical film directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Kirk Douglas as everybody's favourite Dutch artist (although it was Anthony Quinn who won the Oscar for his performance as Gauguin).  

I don't know why he shot himself - dying in bed a couple of days later - but it wasn't due to his annoyance with the birds and, as a matter of fact, he finished several other works after completing Wheatfield with Crows [1].  

However, as I've said many times, people believe what they want to believe, particularly if their Romantic version of events has been reinforced by a Hollywood movie. And the fact remains that this elongated double-square canvas is rightly regarded as one of his greatest works, albeit one weighed down by critical interpretations of a depressingly predictable and simplistic psycho-symbolic character.

 

 

II.   

The above is intended as art historical background to the work I really wanted to comment on; Ai Weiwei's playful (yet deadly serious) reimagining of Van Gogh's Wheatfield with Crows using coloured interlocking plastic toy bricks, or what most of us now generically refer to as Lego [2]. 

 

Replacing some of the crows of the original painting with far-more menacing drones, Ai Weiwei has produced a powerful comment (I'm guessing) on the war in Ukraine; a country known for its pale golden wheatfields and its strategic use of advanced aerial technology for the purposes of reconnaissance, surveillance, and precision strikes against Russian targets, transforming modern warfare and battlefield tactics in the process.  

As the press release for his new show at the Lisson Gallery (London), puts it: "This transformation highlights the ongoing relevance of historical artworks, revealing how they can serve as mirrors reflecting our current societal challenges." [3]

I think that's probably true, although I'm less convinced by his claim that an individual life can be conceived metaphorically as a building brick, or, indeed, as a series of pixels belonging to the digital plane, but that's something to be discussed another day ... 

 

Here, then, is Ai Weiwei's reworking of Van Gogh; along with a close-up to allow a better view of the brickwork in detail:   

 

Ai Weiwei: Wheat Field with Crows (2024) 

Toy bricks (WOMA) 320 x 160 cm  

Lisson Gallery

 

 

Notes

[1] Van Gogh's letters indicate that Wheatfield with Crows was completed around 10 July 1890 and predates such paintings as Auvers Town Hall and what is probably his final work, Tree Roots. He died on the 29th of July. 

[2] As pretty much everybody in the world knows, LEGO is a brand of plastic building blocks that snap together to create models of objects, manufactured by the LEGO Group; a Danish company founded in 1932. Whilst the LEGO Group actively discourage the use of the word 'Lego' as a generic term for any interlocking brick toy, it is, of course, commonly used as such in everyday language. 

      For the record, the bricks used by Ai Weiwei in his work are manufactured by Woma Toys; a Chinese company that produces custom designed building blocks.     

 

[3] This press release, written entirely by Chat GPT4 at the artist's request (apart from a few clarifications and the insertion of quotes taken from an unpublished text in which Ai Weiwei explains how Lego bricks allow a new method of artistic creation), can be found on (and downloaded from) the Lisson Gallery website: click here. 

      Photos of works included in the exhibition - Ai Weiwei: A New Chatpter [sic] - can also be found on the gallery's website. The show, which opened on 7 February, runs until 15 March 2025.

 

 

On the Loving of Enemies

Liebe deine Feinde, 

denn sie bringen das Beste in dir zum Vorschein ...

 

 

I. 

 

As we all know, Jesus famously taught we should love our enemies (and not only our neighbours):

 

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." 

- Matthew 5:43-44 (KJV)

 

Many Christians like to believe that this, one of the most widely quoted sections of the Sermon on the Mount, is what separates their faith from all earlier religious doctrines; i.e., that it's a distinctive moral innovation. 

 

But that's not quite true and there are, in fact, a number of ethical precedents, as scholars familiar with the writings of the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians have pointed out. Indeed, similar teachings can also be found in the works of Jewish, Greek, and Roman authors [1].   

 

Still, it remains an interesting and important idea; albeit one that requires careful consideration of its terms; the word love, for example - ἀγαπάω (agapan) in the original Greek - refers to a kind of universal affection that is spiritual rather than sexual in origin. We are encouraged to be charitable and forgive those who trespass against us, not sleep with the enemy or become erotically fixated on them. 

 

And yet, arguably, there is something a bit perverse (and paradoxical) about developing positive feelings towards those who curse, hate, and persecute you; is loving one's enemy not simply a passive-aggressive attempt by the despised and victimised to bond with those who are in a superior and more powerful position? 

In other words, is it not a type of coping mechanism disguised as morality? Nietzsche certainly seemed to think so ...

 

 

II. 

 

Writing in the first essay of the Genealogy, Nietzsche argues that love of enemies is a possibility only for the truly strong and noble individual, who can view his enemy with a high degree of respect (and even admiration); essentially seeing them as worthy opponents that elevate his own status. 

 

This is in stark contrast to the resentment-driven love of enemies preached by slave moralists who often use this concept to mask underlying hostility and their desire for the downfall of those whom they regard as the evil ones (even whilst secretly envying them).  

It takes something special to truly love one's enemies (and not merely forgive, but forget their misdeeds); it requires a generosity of spirit to not be consumed by hatred for those whom we blame for our suffering and misfortune [2].    

But the philosopher must go even further says Zarathustra and be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends ... [3] 

Notes

 

[1] I refer readers to John Nolland's The Gospel of Matthew (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005), which provides an extensive commentary on the Greek text of this work.

        

[2] See Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, I. 10.  

[3] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 'Of the Bestowing Virtue' (3). 

Who Is Stephen Alexander? A Guest Post by Sasha Thanassa

Stephen Alexander 

A Non-Selfie Selfie (2025) 

 

And how do you see yourself when looking in the bathroom mirror 

through someone else's eyes? 

 

 

I. 

 

Who (or what) is Stephen Alexander, the shadowy figure who blogs at Torpedo the Ark?

 

The multiple possibilities that he himself has playfully suggested in the past include: artist, anarchist, and antichrist; punk, pirate, poet, pagan ... More recently, he has declared himself to be a darkly enlightened philosopher-provocateur whose concerns are no longer with sex, style, and subversion, but more with silence, secrecy, and seduction. 

 

Using these and other terms that arise from within his own writings - as well as from the work of other figures to whom he often refers - I will attempt here to give a brief impressionistic sketch of someone who, like Foucault, neither wishes to self-identify as a unified subject nor feels obliged to remain forever the same [1].       

 

 

II.

 

Again, by his own admission, there are two names that have shaped Alexander's thinking above all others: Nietzsche and D. H. Lawrence; neither of whom he entirely embraces, but both of whom provide him with the critical weapons and crucial conceptual tools for the fight against moral idealism (i.e., the belief that the Good, the True, and the Beautiful are the highest of values and fundamentally connected) and modern humanism (i.e., the belief that behind everything sits the kind and reasonable figure of Man).    

 

Working in the entrails of Nietzsche and Lawrence more like a postmodern haruspex than a forensic pathologist, Alexander has managed on Torpedo the Ark to produce an idiosyncratic (and intertextual) brand of fiction-theory that suspends the genre distinction between philosophy and literature [2]. 

 

Arguably, it is this mode of language and thought that has enabled him to move across other established categories and freely discuss an almost infinite variety of ideas, experiences, and events in a creative and profoundly superficial manner that is always alert to the play (and permissiveness) of language.  

 

III. 

Another name we might mention is that of Simon Solomon; more than a mere commentator on posts or a sometimes contributor, Solomon is a very real (often hostile) presence on Torpedo the Ark and a vital interlocutor. 

It's sometimes hard to tell whether Solomon is Alexander's shadow or vice versa; who's the Jekyll, who's the Hyde (or are they equally monstrous)? In queer ontological alliance - if there is such a thing -  Alexander and Solomon seem fated to remain the best of frenemies [3], each presumably drawing some benefit from their relationship, despite the mutual antagonism [4]. 

IV.

But isn't Alexander just another in a long line of reversed Platonists? 

Perhaps - but what's wrong with that? We need more not less such people. A reversed Plato may still be, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, a reversed Plato [5], but that's better than an unreversed Plato.

 

And besides, as Derrida indicated, the first task of deconstruction has to be reversal (i.e., the locating and overturning of oppositions within a text). That may not be enough in itself - a reversal is not the same as a revaluation - but it's a start on the road toward a new way of thinking.

 

And so, like Lawrence, Alexander encourages his reader to think in terms of immanence rather than transcendence and to climb down Pisgah [6]; to affirm appearances and the natural world of scarlet poppies rather than fantasise about a world above (and/or beyond) this one in which there are eternal white flowers and other Ideal Forms.   

And like Deleuze - another thinker whom Alexander often refers to - he perverts Plato by siding with the Sophists, the Cynics, the Stoics "and the fluttering chimeras of Epicurus" [7].  

 

 

V.

So, have I answered the question with which I opened this post? 

 

Probably not. 

 

Perhaps all I've done is refer to a number of proper names to whom Alexander himself often refers. But then, these proper names serve a crucial textual purpose and contain within them a series of associations (and connotations) that allow us to see how Torpedo the Ark unfolds within a much wider philosophical and literary history and an intertextual space. 

 

When Alexander refers to himself as a Lawrentian, for example, he's not identifying with Lawrence as an extratextual being, but evoking a certain style of thinking and writing.  

 

Using proper names is also, of course, a way of dispersing and disguising the self; like Nietzsche, Alexander wants to be able to declare himself all the names in history [8] - onymic ambiguity rather than unified authorial presence is his aim.  

 

Notes

 

[1] In his introduction to The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault famously writes: "I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order." 

      See The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (Pantheon Books, 1972), p. 17.

 -

[2] This has been a long time goal for Alexander; see the introduction to his PhD thesis Outside the Gate (University of Warwick, 2000): click here. 

      Admittedly, he problematically writes here about dissolving lines of distinction, whereas in his later writings, influenced by Derrida, he speaks more about troubling (or curdling) these lines and concedes that the deconstructive objective is not the dissolving or permanent suspension of all oppositions, because, ultimately, they are structurally necessary to produce meaning.  

      

[3] The term frenemy - a portmanteau of 'friend' and 'enemy' - could have been invented for Alexander and Solomon, although Jessica Mitford claimed that it had been coined by one of her sisters when they were children for a particularly dull acquaintance; see her article 'The Best of Frenemies' in the Daily Mail (August 1977). It can also be found in her book, Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (NYRB Classics, 2010), or read online by simply clicking here.       

      

[4] Interestingly, Freud recognised that a close friend and a worthy enemy are equally indispensble to psychological wellbeing and have not infrequently been one and the same person. See Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (Pelican / Penguin Books, 1964) p. 37.

 

[5] See Hannah Arendt, 'Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture', in Social Research, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 417-446, (The John Hopkins University Press, Autumn 1971), where she writes: 

      "The quest for meaning, which relentlessly dissolves and examines anew all accepted doctrines and rules, can at every moment turn against itself, as it were, produce a reversal of the old values, and declare these as 'new values'. This, to an extent, is what Nietzsche did when he reversed Platonism, forgetting that a reversed Plato is still Plato ..." (435)

      A revised version of this can also be found in Thinking, the first volume of her two-volume posthumously published work The Life of the Mind, ed. Mary Mccarthy (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977-78). 

 

[6] See the essay by D. H. Lawrence 'Climbing Down Pisgah', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 223-229.

 

[7] Michel Foucault, 'Theatrum Philosophicum', in the Essential Works 2: Aesthetics, ed. James D. Faubion (Penguin Books, 2000), p. 346.

[8] In a letter to Jakob Burckhardt dated 6 January, 1889 (although postmarked January 5th), Nietzsche claims that by becoming every name in history, he (paradoxically) fights the reduction to anonymity and generality. 

      See his Selected Letters, ed. and trans. Christopher Middleton (University of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 346.

 

 

Révéroni de Saint-Cyr: Modern Perversity and Old School Pessimism

Illustration for Pauliska ou la Perversité moderne (1798)  

by Jacques-Antoine Révéroni de Saint-Cyr [1]

 

"L'amour est une rage; il peut s’inoculer par la morsure ..."

 

 

I.

 

The Marquis de Sade may be the best-known aristocratic French author writing dark Gothic fiction with a sexually explicit flavour, but he wasn't the only one. 

 

And I'm slowly getting round to read Révéroni de Saint-Cyr's two-volume novel Pauliska ou la Perversité moderne (1798); finally translated into English, by Erik Butler, and published by Tartarus Press (2018) [2]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Considered a (minor) classic of its kind, the work tells the story of a young Polish countess, Pauliska, as she travels around Europe, à la Sally Bowles, "inch by inch, step by step, mile by mile, man by man" [3], and misfortune by misfortune [4].

 

Combining supernatural elements with those of an erotic nature, the book is essentially a fatalistic meditation on desire, depravity, and the accursed nature of a life determined more by chance and random events, than moral law or human reason.

 

The suggestion is therefore given that we are all just helpless playthings, or, if you prefer, victims awaiting our own senseless death, rather than free-willing agents who can shape what happens to us and build an orderly world.     

 

Pauliska, is thus a deliberate slap in the face of those philosophes promoting the ideals of the Enlightenment, which is perhaps why Foucault seems to be such a fan of the work ...

 

 

III.

 

Writing in a text entitled 'So Cruel a Knowledge' [5], Foucault delights in the novel's opening where we encounter Pauliska fleeing a burning castle, as invading soldiers rape and disembowel the chambermaids; their screams reverberating in her ears as she makes good her escape:

 

"Pauliska abandons her scorched lands to the Cossacks [...] her countrywomen bound to the pale trunks of the maples, her servants mutilated and their mouths covered with blood. She seeks refuge in Old Europe [...] which sets all its traps for her at one go. Strange traps, in which it is hard to recognise the familiar ones of male flattery, worldly pleasures, scarcely intended falsehoods, and jealousy. What is taking form is an evil much less metaphysical [...] an evil very close to the body and meant for it: A modern perversity." [6]

This, obviously, is not good news for Pauliska, who encounters all kinds of terrifying men belonging to all sorts of strange sect, secret society, or criminal gang: political fanatics, libertines, counterfeiters, mad scientists, religious mystics, she is misfortunate enough to meet (and fall victim) to them all. 

 

Foucault writes: 

 

"In this underground world the misfortunes lose their chronology and link up with the world's most ancient cruelties. In reality, Pauliska is fleeing a millennial conflagration, and the partition [of Poland] of 1795 casts her into an ageless cycle. She falls into the castle of evil spells where the corridors close up, where the mirrors tell lies and watch what passes before them, where the air distills strange poisons [...] It is a paradoxical initiation not into the lost secret but into all those agonies that man never forgets." [7] 

 

This initiation into suffering - into evil - is achieved, says Foucault, through silent myths and wordless complicity; Pauliska is kept in the "harsh and monotonous condition of the object" [8]. 

 

And what is it she has to learn? 

 

That mankind will never establish a world of peace, justice, and freedom, because the savage truth is this; "man is nothing but a dog to man; law is the appetite of the beast" [9], and we're all trapped inside a giant cage from which there is no escape (for even death, as Nick Land reminds us, is at best, a temporary pause or refreshment before the inevitable return to the compulsive dissipation of life) [10].

 

Alternatively, dear reader, if you prefer we end with a different metaphor ... 

 

We're all bound - virtuous and wicked alike - naked on an enormous electric wheel; just like Pauliska at the end of  Révéroni's novel. And when this diabolical object par excellence begins to turn, sparks will fly and we'll cry out in endless agony. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Born in 1767, Jacques-Antoine Révéroni de Saint-Cyr belonged to an Italian family that followed Catherine de' Medici to France in the 16th century. Unhappy with his less-than-glittering military career, Révéroni decided to try his hand as a writer. Sadly, despite writing a large number of plays, novels, and essays, Révéroni never quite established himself as a man of letters and when he died, insane, in 1829, he was already more or less forgotten.  

 

[2] Readers who wish for a recent French edition of Révéroni Saint-Cyr's novel might like to see the one edited by Antoine de Baecque (Payot & Rivages, 2001). 

 

[3] Lyric from the song 'Mein Herr', written by Fred Ebb, with music by John Kander, for the film Caberet (1972), directed by Bob Fosse. The character Sally Bowels was famously played by Liza Minnelli. 

 

[4] Pauliska is clearly indebted to Sade's novel Justine, ou Les Malheurs de la Vertu (1791), although it arguably possesses its own unique charm.  

 

[5] Michel Foucault, 'So Cruel a Knowledge', in the Essential Works 2: Aesthetics, ed. James Faubion, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 2000), pp. 53-67.    

 

[6] Ibid., p. 54.  

[7] Ibid.

 

[8] Ibid., p. 56. 

[9] Ibid., p. 57. 

[10] See Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (Routledge, 1992), p. 180. 

An Open Letter to Simon Solomon from Stephen Alexander

 

Stephen Alexander / Simon Solomon

Dear Simon,

Thank you for your remarks on a recent post entitled 'Yabba Dabba Doo!' (28 Feb 2025). 

As I think you deserve a somewhat longer (and more considered) response than the comments section allows - and as the Little Greek suggested the following remarks may interest a wider audience - I've decided to publish them here in the form of an open letter ...    

Firstly, to answer your question regarding Barthes and nihilism, I suggest you read Shane Weller's essay entitled 'Active Philology: Barthes and Nietzsche', in French Studies, Vol. 73, Issue 2 (April, 2019), pp. 217-233. You can find a revised version of the essay on Kent University's Academic Repository:

https://kar.kent.ac.uk/71559/1/Barthes%20and%20Nietzsche%20%20THIRD%20REVISED%20VERSION%20-%20Clean%20version.pdf 

As some readers may not have the time or inclination to read the above text in full, here's the abstract which, I trust, will allow them to see why Barthes might indeed be considered a nihilist in the Nietzschean sense:  

"While the importance of Nietzsche to Barthes has long been recognized, with Barthes himself being the first to acknowledge it, this essay argues that Nietzsche's influence lies behind almost all of the major aspects of Barthes's mode of reading and writing in the 1970s, a mode that Barthes describes as 'active philology'. At the heart of this active philology is a cancellation of meaning that makes of Barthes's later critical practice a form of active nihilism in the Nietzschean sense. Exploring the various facets of this active philology in order to highlight the ways in which Barthes both follows and deviates from Nietzsche, this essay proposes an understanding of Barthes the active philologist as the incarnation of what Nietzsche terms the 'last nihilist' - and, crucially, one for whom any kind of Nietzschean overcoming of nihilism is anathema."

Even without reading Weller's essay, I would've thought, Simon, that the phrase La mort de l'auteur - title of a famous essay written by Barthes in 1967 - provides a huge clue as to what drives his critical approach ...

Secondly, you're right, Nietzsche does say in The Anti-Christ that the word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding and that in reality "there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross" [1]. But if you were to continue reading the same section of the above work (39), you would find the following important lines:  

"It is false to the point of absurdity to see in a belief [...] the distinguishing characteristic of the Christian: only Christian practice, a life such as he who died on the Cross lived, is Christian. ... Even today such a life is possible, for certain men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will be possible at all times. ... Not a belief, but a doing, above all a not-doing of many things, a different being." [2]

As ever with Nietzsche, there are lots of subtle twists and turns and one has to be wary about taking a line, a paragraph, or even an entire section as providing his definitive position. He puts it this way; he puts it that way; then he puts it another way entirely. The point is one can be a Christian, providing you don't turn a practice into a doctrine; i.e., it's about imitating Christ not following the teachings of the Church.     

As for De Profundis and other matters ... I don't see why I should accept this tear-stained text as more valuable than Wilde's earlier writings; you may find what you describe as his repudiation of aestheticism magnificent and moving, but I see it as a loss of style. 

And as for his ludicrous self-identification with Christ (with the latter conceived as a Romantic hero and artist), well, what is that if not simply another pose? I'm surprised you're taken in by this mix of self-pity, resentment, and bloated rhetoric. 

I'm also surprised that you don't seem to see the irony in quoting the part of Wilde's letter in which he takes a pop at those whose "thoughts are someone else's opinions [...] their passions a quotation" [3].

And not only do you quote from Wilde, but from Nietzsche and Jung too - even as you seem to object to my referencing authors; or perhaps your remark about being an 'anyone-ian' betrays a misunderstanding of how proper names function within a text.

In brief, the proper name contains within it a series of associations (and connotations) that I’m calling upon in order show how 'my' text unfolds within a much wider philosophical and literary history and an intertextual space. When I say 'as a Barthesian', for example, I’m not identifying with Barthes as an extratextual being, but evoking a certain style of thinking and writing.

Using proper names is also, of course, a way of dispersing and disguising the self; like Nietzsche, I want to be able to declare myself 'all the names in history' - onymic ambiguity rather than unified authorial presence is the aim. 

Anyway, hope these remarks answer your questions and address your concerns. 

SA  

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1990), p. 161. 

[2] Ibid. 

 

[3] Oscar Wilde, De Profundis. Written in 1897, the complete and corrected text wasn't published until 1962 when it was included in The Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (Harcourt, Brace & World). The line quoted can be found on p. 479. Note that a scholarly edition, ed. by Ian Small, was published as De Profundis; Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis, by Oxford University Press in 2005 (Vol. II of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde).