9 Jan 2016

On Archaic Human Interbreeding

Photo credit: Neanderthal Museum (Mettmann, Germany)


As regular readers of this blog will know, torpedo the ark means (amongst other things) destroying the inbred and incestuous ideal of purity and celebrating the enhanced effects of diversity, deviance and hybrid vigour.

Thus I'm always interested to read studies that lend support to the possibility of sexual shenanigans (and thus genetic exchange) between different archaic human populations; i.e. of homo sapiens copping off with Neanderthals, Denisovans, and who knows who (or what) else in the promiscuous, prehistorical past. It's rather nice to think that the modern human genome carries a small percentage of DNA from now extinct species that were pretty much but not quite human in the same way as us.

Of course, I'm aware that some researchers like to argue that observable genetic affinities between archaic and modern human populations are in fact explainable in terms of common ancestral polymorphisms - and not admixture - but even they cannot rule out the possibility of introgressive hybridization due to some degree of fucking around and that thought makes me smile. 

However, just to be clear, I'm not saying that all passionate encounters with strangers make happy or that heterosis always makes healthy. It's now thought, for example, that modern man's proneness to allergies is due to the presence of three genes picked up from Neanderthal lovers - that hay fever is a sign not so much of our own hypersensitivity, but of the brute in us!

But inbreeding is far more likely to end in depression and reduced biological fitness than mixing things up a little; even the three genes mentioned above that cause some of us to itch and sneeze every summer, must also have conferred some evolutionary advantage (probably boosting the immune system, since they are involved in the body's defence system against pathogens).

So, to conclude: we should be grateful to our ancient ancestors who took the risk of loving those outside their own family, tribe, race, or species. Without such pioneers in perversity, we wouldn't be where we are today ...


This post was suggested to me by Dr Andrew Greenfield, to whom I am very grateful.


8 Jan 2016

Torpedo the Ark: A Disclaimer



I've already indicated elsewhere on this blog that the contents should all be considered as if spoken by a character in a novel. I had hoped that this borrowing from Barthes would serve not only as a kind of key to what I'm attempting to do here, but also as an effective disclaimer.

Unfortunately, for some readers this is clearly insufficient and I have been asked to be a little clearer. So, for these readers, let me now say this:

Torpedo the Ark is first and foremost the opening up of a literary space and the posts should be read as fragments of theory fiction. Where and when they seemingly refer to real people, real places, or extratextual events, it needs to be kept in mind that these things have been creatively transposed into an aesthetic virtual environment.

Thus, any similarity is - if not quite coincidental - nevertheless residual and irrelevant; all names, characters, and incidents are in a very real sense fabricated and no identification with actual persons, places, products, or events should be inferred or naively insisted upon. This equally applies to the author and/or narrator of the blog, who is also a simulated effect and function of the text and not its origin or limitation.  

Those who imagine they see themselves negatively portrayed in this or in any work of literature are profoundly mistaken; for art has no interest in damaging (or, for that matter, enhancing) reputations, any more than it wants merely to imitate or represent the real. Libel, one is almost tempted to say, exists only in the mind of the humourless, thin-skinned reader who takes everything too personally and too seriously.    


7 Jan 2016

On Haematolagnia, Feelings and Freethinkers



According to Lawrence, who posits some kind of instinctive and pristine form of blood-knowledge, the intellect is always suspect and we can easily go wrong in our minds. Thus, we should always trust our feelings, rather than our ideas. What the blood tells us, writes Lawrence in a letter to Ernest Collins, is always true. This libidinal irrationalism underlies Lawrence’s hostility towards modern science and forms the basis of his critique of Freudian psychoanalysis.

However, according to Nietzsche - at least during his mid-period, before he too started to develop something of a blood fetish - our feelings are no more original or authentic than our ideas. For behind even our deepest feelings stand inherited values, inclinations, and judgements. Thus to trust one’s feelings - to listen to one’s blood as Lawrence would have it - means no more than paying respectful obedience to our ancestors, rather than to “the gods which are in us: our reason and our experience”.

Ultimately, freethinkers are individuals who break from the morality of custom and traditional ways of behaving, evaluating, and feeling; men and women determined to rely upon their own intellectual resources, rather than sink down into the blood, into the past and into impersonal stupidity.

It’s a sad fact, says Nietzsche, but we must constantly be on guard against the feelings; particularly those higher feelings, “so greatly are they nourished by delusion and nonsense”.


Notes

D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. 1, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), Letter number 539, (17 January, 1913).

Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1982), Book I, Sections 35 and 33.


2 Jan 2016

Honey for Everyone

Carmen Dene on the cover of SpanIssue 101, 
(Town and Country Publications, Jan, 1963)


There are many reasons to enjoy The Avengers episode entitled 'Honey for the Prince' [4/26] - the lovely opening scene with Steed and Mrs Peel returning home from a party in a gay and flirtatious mood as dawn breaks, for example, or Emma wearing a revealing harem costume and dancing the dance of the seven veils before then fighting a would-be assassin - but, for me, the really exciting thing is the kinky cameo appearance of Carmen Dene in the role of a sexy masseuse to the sleazy villain of the piece (played by Greek character actor, George Pastell).

Although Miss Dene, born in Liverpool, 1944, to a Spanish mother, had minor roles in several major films in the 1960s, including Goldfinger (1964), Genghis Khan (1965), and Carry On Up the Khyber (1968) - often being cast for her Mediterranean good looks - she is perhaps most fondly remembered by those in the know as a regular model in the trio of pin-up magazines published by Town and Country during the 1950s, '60s and early-to-mid '70s - SpickSpan and Beautiful Britons.

This is not, unfortunately, the time or place to outline a full history of these publications, but readers who are interested in such are encouraged to visit the invaluable site Vintage Fetish Magazines, by clicking here. I would, however, like to put on record my love for these magazines and the numerous models featured therein; girl-next-door types, posing in their underwear in the somehow reassuring (if slightly shabby and sexless) suburban settings of Post-War Britain, thus allowing those with no interest in glimpsing stocking tops and directoire knickers, to admire the furniture and upholstery of the times, or simply stare at the wallpaper.

Ultimately, if given the choice between today's explicit, charmless, full-colour pornography and this lost black and white world of erotica and home decor, full of girls who haven't been surgically or digitally enhanced and interiors that haven't been designed with so much coolness and good taste that all the joy has been drained from them, then I know which I'd choose.

As one gets older, it seems, one becomes increasingly nostalgic for - and seduced by - naivety and queer signs of life. One wants a world in which it is still possible to dream and to play and there's honey for everyone ...


1 Jan 2016

Flappers

The playful flapper here we see, 
the fairest of the fair.


One of the reasons that I still very much love the flappers is because they continue to piss off puritans of all stripes who, as the critic H. L. Mencken put it so wonderfully, are those persons forever gripped by the terrible fear that someone, somewhere may be happier or having more fun than they are.

Unfortunately, this seems to include followers of D. H. Lawrence, one of whom wrote in response to a question I asked about the latter’s antipathy to the young women of the Jazz Age, that flappers were almost as bad as bunny girls. When pressed to explain this rather surprising comparison, this former editor of the D. H. Lawrence Society Newsletter sent the following text:

"Flappers are ridiculous and degrading. Lawrence hated them as he (rightly) hated the vulgar songs of Bessie Smith. Who wouldn’t look on flappers as anything but women exploiting their sexuality and being exploited? Essentially, it’s the absurd falsity of them that is so objectionable. They have been industrialised; mass produced – it’s repulsive! And all that phony joie de vivre is equally nauseating; I don’t for a second believe in their kind of good time. I won’t even mention their physical appearance – the boyishness that Lawrence commented on and so despised."

Where does one begin with this astonishing attempt to channel the spirit of Lawrence at its most malevolently misogynistic?

Well, firstly, it’s true that Lawrence on one occasion became so incensed with Frieda repeatedly playing a recording by the great American blues singer Bessie Smith, that he smashed the gramophone record over her head in an act often portrayed by commentators as violent domestic comedy, but which might better be construed as humourless domestic violence.

I also have to admit that the writer of the above pretty much manages to summarise the main reasons for Lawrence’s antipathy towards the flappers: their independence, their hedonism, their promiscuity, their artificiality and their superficiality (in dress, manner, and behaviour).

I think the really crucial point, however, is the one he leaves to last and wishes not to mention - but nevertheless can’t help mentioning: what Lawrence most dislikes about the flappers is their physical appearance. And by this we refer not so much to the short skirts they liked to wear (though doubtless Lawrence objected to these too), but to the actual bodies of the flappers, in shape, in size, and in their somewhat androgynous character.

In brief, the flappers, with their bobbed hair, flattened chests, narrow hips, and pert little bottoms, weren’t womanly enough for Lawrence, who, as is evident from his choice of wife, his descriptions of Constance Chatterley, and his paintings, clearly had a penchant for plump, curvaceous, fleshy females.

His attempt to body shame the flappers - something that, shockingly, is still being carried on by some of his followers even today - is rooted therefore not only in his puritanism and problematic gender politics, but also in his own sexual preference for BBW.

Ultimately, the slim and sophisticated figure of the flapper left him limp - and Lawrence resented them for it.


On Courage, Conviction and the Necessity of Change



A tadpole that has so gaily waved its tail in the water must feel very sick when the tail begins to drop off ... The tail was its dearest, gayest, most active member ... but the little green frog in the grass is a new gem after all. 
- D. H. Lawrence 


As Nietzsche says, it’s a common error to suppose that a person of conviction is courageous because they stick to their guns, their ideas, beliefs and principles, no matter what. This might be a method of establishing a solid reputation and of being recognized as dependable, like a trusted tool, within a society dominated by slave morality, but it takes a certain plucky insouciance to lack conviction, adopt brief habits, and hold one’s views lightly.

That is to say, the brave individual is one who regularly sheds his ideals like a snake sheds its skin; not because he changes his mind - for what kills all that is old and redundant within us is not a victory of reason, rather, it’s a form of vital energy. We shed skins and negate our former selves because new life bubbles up inside us and produces new feelings and, indeed, in certain species, entirely new forms of being. If the caterpillar had conviction, it would never become a butterfly; if the tadpole insisted on continuity and self-preservation, it would never sprout little legs with which to leap into the future as frog.

Like Nietzsche, Lawrence fully understands the importance of this and develops the idea of change as a vital necessity in a late article entitled ‘The State of Funk’.

There is, he admits, a certain justification for fear when change is upon us; because change of any sort can be dangerous and involve an element of suffering. But - having conceded that change often brings pain and uncertainty - there’s still no excuse for what Lawrence calls funk. Rather, it’s the duty of men and women when confronted by new and problematic conditions to face up to things with a little courage and good humour; not retreat behind well-known and well-worn positions and make a blustering display of their moral certainties, or offer ready-made solutions:

"There is no ready-made solution. Ready-made solutions are almost the greatest danger of all. A change is a slow flux, which must happen bit by bit. ... You can’t drive it like a steam-engine. But all the time you can be alert and intelligent about it ... Patience, alertness, intelligence, and a human goodwill and fearlessness, that is what you want in a time of change. Not funk."

Lawrence goes on to argue that it is in our power to change, our capacity to adapt, and our readiness to admit and fulfil new needs that our best hope and greatest strength resides. To be firm is one thing. But to be secretly full of fear and of petrified opinion is something else; something that leads to bullying and, ultimately, has disastrous consequences.

In sum: change is inevitable - not merely because external conditions change, but because we change and change vitally as the years pass: "New feelings arise in us, old values depreciate ... Things we thought we wanted most intensely we realise we don’t care about. The things we built our lives upon crumble and disappear, and the process is painful."

Painful, but not tragic; for we can live without conviction - and perhaps even live more gaily.


Notes

Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), IV. 296, 307.

D. H. Lawrence, ‘The State of Funk’, Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 218-224. Lines quoted are on pp. 220 and 221.


On Nietzsche's Hypomania

Nietzsche Burst! Designed by by Rev. Shakes (2014) 
Available on numerous gift items from www.zazzle.ca


If there's one thing I hate, it’s being told to cheer up or to smile, by strangers possessed by a will to happiness; fascists of optimism and positive thinking, always looking on the bright side and finding strength through joy.

Nor, come to that, do I want eternal bliss or a perpetual feeling of euphoria and I don’t trust those who fantasise about elevated moods and this, regrettably, includes Herr Nietzsche, whose writing is at its least convincing, least interesting, and least readable when he indulges his poet's taste for ecstasy and utopian fantasy.

That Nietzsche should find the prospect of a future humanity embodying a single great feeling and resting on clouds something delightful, is deeply disappointing and depressing. Like Anna Brangwen, I prefer to let many feelings come and go - even negative ones - and to keep my feet firmly on the ground. I love those things which save me from being swept up into any Absolute and spit on the idea of man's perfectibility.        

If we need to get over our humanity, then it's for the same reason and in the same manner we need to get over an illness, or a broken heart. Ultimately, it's a question of recovery and convalescence, not transcendence or salvation. It takes time and it can be a painful process. It requires patience and perhaps a prolonged period of silent reflection; it's not something to excitedly sing and shout about (like a madman).

Sometimes, in his hypomania, Nietzsche seems to misunderstand his own project and betray his own attempt at a revaluation of all values ...


See: Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), IV. 288.      


In Praise of Modern Science



For those overexcited vitalists who like to pretend that everything is alive, science deadens existence. Similarly, for those conceited anthropocentrists who like to imagine that Man is at the heart of the universe, science displaces and dehumanises.

Thus, for many people - not just poets and priests, but, regrettably, a significant number of philosophers - hostility towards science is second nature and they long for a re-enchantment of the world; to see things once more with the eyes of children, primitives, or the practitioners of occultism.

But, of course, not only would it be extremely foolish to try and return to an earlier, pre-scientific age of superstition and sorcery, but one might challenge the very presumption that knowledge kills. For in fact, knowledge does no such thing; on the contrary, it stimulates a taste and a desire for ever greater understanding and, as Nietzsche writes, the will to truth is ultimately what distinguishes men from animals and higher human beings from the lower; "the former see and hear immeasurably more, and see and hear more thoughtfully" [301].

Of course the world of rational enquiry is indebted to its religious inheritance - Nietzsche happily admits that the modern sciences would never have developed if the way had not been prepared by "magicians, alchemists, astrologers, and witches whose promises and pretensions first had to create a hunger ... for hidden and forbidden powers" [300] - but it's natural science and not supernatural fantasy that makes the world ever fuller, ever more complex, ever more wondrous.

The fact that many people refuse to see this is ultimately because the severity of science - what Nietzsche describes as its inexorability in all matters great and small - makes the uninitiated feel dizzy and afraid. They can’t catch their breath in the rarefied atmosphere created by those who have left the muddy waters of myth and religion behind.

But for those of us who have become accustomed to the discipline of science and its experimental practice, there is no place we'd rather live than in this "bright, transparent, vigorous, electrified air" [293].


See: Nietzsche; The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974). The numbers in the body of the text refer to sections, not pages.


On the Architecture of the Future



In response to a growing population and a resultant shortage of housing, it seems that every available space is now being built on in London and the surrounding suburbs. But whenever I see a new development, I always recall what Nietzsche wrote on the subject of high density housing and overcrowded city streets:

"One day, and probably soon, we need some recognition of what above all is lacking in our urban areas: quiet and wide, expansive places for reflection."

We need to build not just shopping centres, apartment blocks, and corporate skyscrapers, but sites free from commerce, traffic, and endless human noise (where good manners would prohibit even the use of mobile phones); public squares, parks and even rooftop fields that would afford men and women the opportunity to step aside, to breathe, and to briefly experience the joy of the vita contemplativa (for like other herd animals, man too is a ruminant).

Places that, as Nietzsche puts it, allow us to take a stroll round ourselves. And so the question is: where are the architects of the future who have the know-how and the vision to create such an environment; a home fit for men and cows.


See: Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), IV. 280. Note that I have slightly modified Kaufmann’s translation.


Sanctus Januarius: A Nietzschean New Year Message

Portrait of St. Januarius, by Caravaggio (1607)


Granting himself the right to do so in accordance with popular custom, Nietzsche famously opens Book IV of The Gay Science, written in January 1882, with a new year's resolution:

"I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation ... I wish to be only a Yes-sayer." [276] 

This section, one that I often return to, might be regarded as an essential thought for me; fundamental to the philosophy of Torpedo the Ark which is all about having done with judgement and the assigning of blame, or subscribing to what Nietzsche elsewhere terms a hangman's metaphysic.

But, although a short and seemingly straightforward passage, one has to be careful not to misunderstand what Nietzsche is saying here: 

Firstly, he is absolutely not saying that life is beautiful and attempting to fob us off with a feel good philosophy built upon false idealism. For Nietzsche, life is monstrous and inhuman and what is necessary in things (that is to say, fateful), is what most people would describe as morally repugnant or evil

Secondly - and even more crucially - Nietzsche not only wants to see what is necessary in things as beautiful (even when, in fact, it's often repulsive or malevolent in nature), he wishes to affirm this aspect as belonging to what he terms an economy of the whole in which all things are entwined. 

Thirdly, to love fate is not merely to resign oneself to the facts; but, rather, to interpret the latter and struggle to find new perspectives and create new ways of living.

Saying Yes, in a Nietzschean manner, doesn't therefore mean one must become a nodding donkey; one's No is contained in this affirmation and one learns how to actively negate the negative simply by turning one's face with aristocratic disdain upon those things (including those people and those gods) who demand worship, obedience, and submission. 

Happy New Year to all readers.


See: Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), IV. 276. 


30 Dec 2015

Heterosis

Luma Grothe: the lovely face of fashion 
and Irma Grese: the ugly face of fascism


Nazis are obsessed with blood: both spilling the blood of others deemed racial inferiors and preserving the purity of their own blood, which is thought to possess superior qualities and derive from a divine origin. For the Nazis, therefore, the most dreadful thing in the world is the prospect of interracial sexual relations between people of Nordic stock and those who are of non-Aryan descent. They described this as a form of Rassenschande - an infringement upon the laws of Nature which Nazi policies of racial hygiene were designed to vigorously uphold and enforce.

German girls were warned that should they commit blood treason and choose to fuck with racial inferiors, not only would they be forever lost to their own people, but any unfortunate child that resulted from the illicit union would be a lamentable creature, fit only for extermination. Such irresponsible actions also had a far wider consequence: Hitler identified miscegenation as the sole cause of cultural destruction; "for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is contained only in pure blood."

Despite the pseudo-biology used to provide a scientific basis for these beliefs, they are, of course, little more than pernicious fantasies. The fact is many mixed race individuals exhibit not only extraordinary beauty - as in the case of Luma Grothe, pictured above - but what is known as hybrid vigour. In other words, certain traits are enhanced as a result of the dissimilarity in the gametes by whose union the organism was formed.

Now, this is not to say that all such unions produce supermodels. But, by and large, it’s inbreeding that’s genetically problematic rather than outcrossing. For it’s the latter practice that increases diversity and promises heterotic wonders, such as Miss Grothe, born under sunny South American skies to a German mother and a father of Japanese and African descent.

Ultimately, if given the choice between the above and Irma Grese - the blonde, blue-eyed Beast of Belsen - I know whom I’d choose to share a world with ...


Note: The line quoted from Hitler can be found in Vol. 1, Chapter 11, of Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim, (Hutchinson, 1969), p. 269. 


The Owl of Minerva

Photo of  the poet-philosopher Simon Solomon,
by Sara Larsson (2015).  


Here we are then at the fag end of another year; drifting about in that awful grey twilight zone that lies between Boxing Day and January 1st. Naturally, one reflects with a certain sad shyness on the twelve months past.

Indeed, according to Hegel, one is condemned as a critical thinker to do nothing but look back with large eyes and a sharp beak on historical events and ideas. For philosophy is a retrospective practice par excellence – ‘The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only when dusk begins to fall’ – as he put it so beautifully.

In other words, philosophy cannot legislate for the future or even legitimately analyse the present, because it understands only with hindsight; it doesn’t appear until life has unfolded and already completed its processes. Like anatomy, philosophy presupposes a corpse.

Perhaps that’s why so many philosophers choose to ignore Plato and turn to poetry, which is a form of thinking and speaking the truth that has maintained something of its prophetic or visionary character – something alien to the world of pure reason. Poetry memorializes the past, but it also responds to the nowness of the moment and anticipates the day after tomorrow (or the god who is coming).

The thinker-as-poet, who challenges the divide between metaphor and concept and the separation of the real and the imaginary, does far more than simply play with words from behind a fool's mask, or frolic on rainbows. Theirs is a thinking which, as Heidegger says, is the topology of Being; i.e., that which tells Being the whereabouts of its actual presence (in things).

Like Lawrence, I think it a great pity that philosophy and poetry have been kept in an antagonistic relationship for so long; it's been damaging to both our intellectual and emotional life. We should value those writers who further textual promiscuity and remember Zarathustra's eagle, or Shelley's skylark, not just Minerva's wise old owl ... 


19 Dec 2015

The Case of Evelyn McHale (The Most Beautiful Suicide in the World)

Photo of Evelyn McHale, by Robert C. Wiles. 


For poets, there is nothing more romantic than the suicide of someone young; particularly if they take their lives with an element of style and manage to leave behind them a good-looking corpse. And no one has managed to achieve this feat with more success than an attractive, twenty-three year old bookkeeper, called Evelyn McHale, in 1947.

Hers is often described as the most beautiful suicide in the world and I’m happy to share this view. What makes her case so magnificent and not merely tragic (or mundane), are the following six points:

1. She chose a magical date, May 1st, an ancient spring festival, on which to make her self-sacrifice, thereby lending her death a certain mythical aspect or celebratory pagan splendour.

2. She chose the right method for her location. When in Berlin, for example, one should swallow poison or use a gun; in London, it’s appropriate to throw oneself from a bridge into the Thames, or onto the tracks of the Underground before an approaching train. But, as Serge Gainsbourg observed, New York is all about the astonishing height of its buildings. And so, when in NYC, one simply has to jump.

3. Having chosen, rightly, to jump, Evelyn then selected one of the two truly great and truly iconic modern structures from which to leap: the Empire State Building. This 102-story skyscraper, located in Midtown Manhattan, is, with its beautiful art deco design, the perfect place from which to fall to one’s death and since its opening in 1931 only a select number of lucky souls have had the privilege (and fatal pleasure) of plunging from this iconic site.

4. She was impeccably dressed for the occasion, with gloves and a simple, but elegant, pearl necklace. Before jumping she calmly removed her coat and neatly folded it over the wall of the 86th floor observation deck. She also left behind her a make-up kit, some family snaps, and a suicide note written in a black pocketbook, in which she asked to be cremated without any kind of fuss or service of remembrance. In other words, even in death, Evelyn kept her composure - which brings us to our fifth point:

5. She didn’t land with an undignified splat on the pavement of 34th Street; but, rather, with a crash onto the roof of a waiting car. And it wasn't just any old car - it was a UN Assembly limousine, as if she wanted to make an impression on the entire world. And impression, as we see from the photo above, is the key word here. For Evelyn literally impressed herself into the roof of the Cadillac, so that it seemed to fold round her, with metallic tenderness. There is almost nothing to suggest the terrible violence of the scene - apart from the ripped stockings and the absence of shoes.

6. She conspired with fate to ensure there was a photographer nearby to instantly capture the event of her death on film; thereby ensuring her place within the cultural imagination. Indeed, fifteen years later, Andy Warhol would incorporate her image into his work, just as he did images of other beautiful women, including Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.

As for the student photographer, Robert C. Wiles, he also struck it lucky that day; his astonishing photo of Evelyn was published in Life Magazine as a full-page 'Picture of the Week' in the May 12 issue. It was his first - and last - photo ever to be published and one likes to imagine he hung his camera up after taking this perfect shot, but I don't know if this is true or not.

I'll stop here - but I could of course talk about (and darkly caress) this topic forever. For Camus was right: there is only one truly serious philosophical question - and that is the question of suicide.


On the Whistling of Birds at Midnight

Image taken from Cathy Fisher's blog: Diary of an Account Manager


It's 'round midnight: but I can't sleep.

The robin who seems to live in my mother's back garden is singing still and, of all the sounds in the world, I love best the whistling of birds; more than whale song and more than even the most accomplished human voice. 

Thus, when there's a robin still filling the air with his silvery sound of defiance and affirmation, I'll always lend an ear to listen, whatever the hour. As Lawrence says, the song just bubbles through them, as if they were little fountain-heads of vitality and new creation.

But the question arises as to why the city-living robins have taken to nighttime singing; they are not naturally nocturnal birds, like nightingales, even if they like to sing well into the evening as the sun sets. 

The experts seem undecided. They used to think it was due to the increase in noise during the day - that the birds literally couldn't hear themselves think (or in this case sing) above the roar of traffic. But now the consensus seems to be that the real problem is light pollution; that it's no longer dark enough for our feathered friends to know when night has fallen and it's time to shut the fuck up and go to sleep. 

Either way, it can't be much fun being an urban robin; trapped in a perpetual electric twilight and forced to endure a constant hubbub during the day. Their numbers, unlike other species of once common garden birds, may not (so far) be declining, but they must be constantly exhausted, poor things.

How long will it be, I wonder, before something of this fatigue creeps into their song?


See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Whistling of Birds', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 19-24. 


18 Dec 2015

Francesca Woodman: An American Genius

Francesca Woodman: Providence, Rhode Island, 1976 (1976)
Tate / National Galleries of Scotland (AR00352)
© George and Betty Woodman


I have to confess that I only recently came across the work of American photographer Francesca Woodman, but I was immediately fascinated by her beautiful (often disturbing) black and white images which have a queer, gothic and surreal quality that is seductive in the sense that Baudrillard gives the term. That is to say, the photos partake of a game of slow exposure that is all to do with appearance and disappearance, and playing with the signs of sexuality and self-hood.

Woodman works in a manner that is not only highly stylized and disciplined, but also ritualistic and fetishistic; a combination of primitive magic and aristocratic aestheticism. She turns her own body into just another object, semi-exposed, but mostly withdrawn and concealed, existing in relation to other things (chairs, doors, mirrors, a bucket full of eels) that are equally real, equally fragile, and equally mysterious.

Born in 1958, Woodman was only twenty-two when she committed suicide in 1981, pissed, apparently, with the slowness with which her work was garnering critical attention or achieving commercial success. In a letter to a friend (written around the time of an earlier attempt to end her life), Woodman says she’d rather die young and leave behind her a delicate body of work, than see herself and her pictures fade away or be slowly erased by time.

Death, she realised, would be the making of her; for hers, like Nietzsche's, would be a posthumous existence. And this tragic realisation, coupled to her precocious talent for blurred image-making, makes me very fond of dear Francesca: an American genius.


Ben Carson: An American Idiot

Ben Carson by Gage Skidmore (2015)


Donald Trump is clearly not stupid: ignorant, perhaps, but he's mostly just a nasty piece of work; or flamboyant, as his new Russian buddy, Vladimir Putin, would say.

Ben Carson, on the other hand, who is also a candidate for the Republican Party nomination for President in the 2016 election, is not an out-and-out shit, but he does believe (and say) some very, very stupid things.

This is almost entirely due to the fact that, sadly, this retired (and much respected) neurosurgeon suffers from religious fundamentalism; a degenerative brain disorder that turns fine minds to mush.

Carson, as one commentator has put it, is an African-American who downplays the reality of slavery and continuing problems of racism in the US, and a man of medicine and higher education who denies many of the modern scientific facts and discoveries upon which our knowledge of the world is based.

Thus, for example, Carson not only thinks that evolution is a mistaken theory, but one to which Darwin was led by Satan! His argument is that something as beautifully complex as the human brain couldn't have arisen from a slime pit full of promiscuous biochemicals. In addition, Carson ridicules the idea of the Big Bang and rejects the validity of evidence provided by carbon dating.

Of course, many amongst the electorate seem to share Carson's prejudices - not to mention those who identify strongly as creationists, young-earthers, or proponents of intelligent design. But surely, even in America, there can't be many people who also subscribe to the popular medieval belief - as Carson does - that the Egyptian pyramids were not in fact ancient tombs, but elaborate grain silos, built by Joseph, son of Jacob, in preparation for a famine described in the book of Genesis.

Not only are archaeologists fairly certain that the pyramids were used for funerary purposes, but, as they also point out, they would have made pretty poor storage units for grain - as they aren't hollow!

Couple these (and many other) crackpot and controversial views to his reactionary positions on issues such as abortion, homosexuality, health care, immigration, and climate change and it becomes clear why Carson is, in the words of the song, an American idiot.


13 Dec 2015

On the Truth of Things

Artwork by Tyler Feder


According to Foucault, the ancient Greeks were mostly interested in a conception of public and political parrhesia that obliged them (and accorded them the privilege) of speaking the truth to others (including those in authority), in order to guide them and help facilitate wise government. 

The early Christians, on the other hand, were more concerned with a personal-psychological form of parrhesia (eventually institutionalized as a system of penitence); the moral obligation of each individual to confess the truth about themselves, in order to be freed from the burden of sin and thereby saved.

This, as Foucault says, is a significant moment of transformation in the long history of parrhesiastic practice; a history that he goes to great pains within his late lectures to reconstruct in order that he may better analyze the relations between subjectivity, language, and power - this essentially being his philosophical project in a nutshell. 

Now, fascinating as this project is - and one has to invariably return to politics and psychagogy (or questions concerning the governance of self and others) sooner or later - I have to admit that one of the great attractions of object-oriented ontology and other related forms of what Bill Brown terms thing theory, is that they allow one to be seduced by those entities that make up an inhuman and non-human universe and encourage the asking of questions that do not always posit Man as the central subject, final solution, or great point of correlation.

In other words, the beauty and the truth of things is they exist mind independently and it's a real joy to occasionally write about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens (not to mention bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens), rather than just human ideas and human relations.


Note: The lyric quoted in the final paragraph is - as I'm sure everybody knows - from the song 'My Favourite Things', from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The Sound of Music (1959).


12 Dec 2015

Post 555: The Scent of a Woman



The number five has no special significance or interest for me, although I'm vaguely aware of its symbolism within certain circles and that ancient Greek philosophers were endlessly fascinated by the mathematical beauty and symmetry of those three-dimensional shapes (or regular polyhedra) that became known as Platonic solids and of which there are five. 

The French fashion designer and couturier, Coco Chanel, also had a thing for the number five and it was rich with powerful associations for her. Indeed, for Chanel, five was the essential number and one which, she felt, always brought her luck. Thus, for a woman who liked to regularly launch her new collections on the fifth of May, it was only natural that she should choose the name No. 5 for her first (and to this day most famous) of perfumes.

Created by Franco-Russian chemist and perfumer, Ernest Beaux, Chanel No. 5 was released in 1921 and was designed as a scent for a new generation and a new style of independent, post-War women, with their short skirts, bobbed hair, and outlandish behaviour that pushed social and sexual boundaries.

Beaux worked from a rose and jasmine base, but brilliantly managed to make it cleaner and more daring than might be expected, by adding what he described as an element of pristine polar freshness. He also experimented with modern synthetic compounds and notes derived from a new commercial ingredient called Jasophore (an artificial source of jasmine). His complex formula also contained elements of orris root and natural musks. The revolutionary key, however, was Beaux's use of aldehydes; organic compounds which, when skilfully manipulated, can arrest and isolate specific scents, intensifying their aroma.

The bottle that the fragrance came in was also designed to counter the overly-ornate character of Victorian crystal which was then still in fashion and made popular by companies such as Lalique. Chanel wanted a container that would be lovely in its sheer simplicity and pure transparency; what she thought of as an invisible bottle. The perfection of the scent itself, she believed, meant not having to rely upon fancy packaging. As an ad from 1924 put it: Chanel is proud to offer its precious teardrops of perfume - unique in composition and of incomparable quality - in bottles that reveal the personality of their designer and not the customary art of the traditional glass-maker.    

Over the many decades since its release, Chanel No. 5 has managed to retain its magic and its allure, establishing itself as an immediately identifiable cultural artifact, worn by many beautiful women the world over; this despite the fact that the reputation of its creator has been somewhat tarnished by ugly revelations concerning her conduct during the German occupation of Paris ...

A girl, Chanel once said, has to keep her heels, head, and standards high; always remaining classy and fabulous. Quite how that squares with Nazi collaboration is debatable. For as a friend of mine once said, even the finest perfume in the world doesn't mask the malodorous smell of fascism.          

Torpedo the Ark Xmas Message 2015



Actually, as a philosopher, I try to avoid dealing in opinions - particularly personal opinions - and I can't stand opinionated persons who pride themselves on the strength of their conviction; as if something is true simply because they feel it to be so and/or sincerely wish it to be so. 

Nietzsche's often quoted but little understood remark about there being no facts, only interpretations, has had the unfortunate result of providing cheap philosophical comfort to such cocksure individuals, allowing them to assert beliefs about the world without making any reference to objective reality, or provide any verifiable evidence for their arguments. 

In other words, perspectivism - which was intended to make us think more carefully to what extent axioms of logic are adequate to reality and how truth-claims may or may not reflect a healthy will to power - now serves as a sop to those who think they are just as entitled to their views as anybody else and that all views are of equal status and validity within a relativistic universe.

It is, as I say, unfortunate. And it's certainly not my position; I might like a certain degree of pluralism, but I'm not an idiot: some ideas are mistaken or badly thought out; some views are restricted by prejudice; some opinions are simply not worth considering.

Ultimately, I share the Socratic position and think it crucial to discriminate between opinions, always remaining alert to the fact that just because something is popular or persuasive, this doesn't make it true or mean that it serves in the best interests of life.

In accepting the opinions of those who have big mouths and large financial resources with which to control the media - demagogues, such as would-be Presidential candidate Donald Trump, who either do not know the difference between the true and the false, the just and unjust, or simply do not care about the difference - we run the risk of damaging that part of ourselves (whatever we may call it) to which these things are vitally connected.

So, the conclusion of this Xmas message is this: you shouldn't worry about the opinion of everybody and anybody, but only about the well-informed analyses which enable you to decide what is right and wrong. By concerning yourself with the latter and by always asking for the evidence, you'll avoid that corruption of the soul caused by doxa

Torpedo the Ark!


10 Dec 2015

Dandelion: D. H. Lawrence and the Question of Care

Dandelion: photo by Greg Hume (2006)


As much as Lawrence may wish to sit like a dandelion on his own stem and concern himself exclusively with those objects existing within his immediate physical environment - refusing to care about abstract issues, faraway places, or unknown peoples - he’s conscious of the fact that such insouciance can lead to parochialism and might easily be mistaken for indifference on his part; something he’d very much regret.

For Lawrence is very keen to sharply differentiate between insouciance and indifference. The former, he says, is a refusal to be made anxious by abstractions, or swept off to into the empty desert spaces inhabited by idealists gripped by a compulsion to care about everything under the sun. The latter, however, Lawrence defines as an inability to care resulting from a certain instinctive-intuitive numbness or nihilism, which, like Nietzsche, he posits as the great malady of the modern age; a consequence of having cared too much about the wrong thing in the immediate past.

The apathetic or indifferent individual, the nihilist, is essentially an exhausted idealist; they have none of the carefree gayness of the insouciant man or woman and do not know how to live on the spot and in the nowness of the actual moment.

That said - and as indicated - insouciance can itself become problematic and serve to isolate the individual, cutting them off from the wider world and from history. We can’t be entirely self-sufficient and concerned only with our own musings and sense impressions. Nor can we only be concerned only about those with whom we have a direct relationship; our immediate family and friends, or kith and kin.

Ultimately, as Lawrence was reluctantly obliged to concede, feeling a sense of solidarity with all mankind isn’t entirely fraudulent and the love of humanity stands for something real and vital; "that feeling of being at one with the struggling soul, or spirit or whatever it is, of our fellow men". Lawrence continues:

"This caring about the wrongs of unseen people has been rather undone. Nevertheless ... still, away in some depth of us, we know that we are connected vitally, if remotely ... [and] we dimly realise that mankind is one, almost one flesh. It is an abstraction, but it is also a physical fact. In some way or other, the cotton workers of Carolina, or the rice-growers of China are connected with me and, to a faint yet real degree, part of me. The vibration of life which they give off reaches me, touches me, and affects me unknown to me. For we are all more or less connected, all more or less in touch: all humanity."

What’s interesting about this passage is that not only does it demonstrate that Lawrence was not an individualist as many critics mistakenly believe, but it also shows that his love of humanity was born not of some transcendental attempt to develop a conceited cosmic consciousness, but out of a sense of class consciousness; it’s the workers and the peasants of the world that Lawrence primarily feels connected to and sympathetic with.

Those who cultivate indifference to the point that they lose any compassion for others are mistaken. Lawrence understands their frank egoism, but refuses to share it - worried by the effect it has on the individual who refuses to care. Their intellectual honesty is fine and it’s good to cast off all spurious sympathy and false emotion, but not if this entails the death of all feeling and one becomes empty inside (believing in nothing, standing for nothing, caring for nobody).

Lawrence admits, however, that some can find perverse pleasure in precisely this becoming-void and take "real pride and satisfaction in pure negation". These he calls the perfect nihilists: those whose shallowness is mistaken for depth; whose false calm is mistaken for strength; whose indifference is mistaken for insouciance. Nietzsche termed them the last men; those who sit grinning furtively in the triumph of their own emptiness.


See: D. H. Lawrence, ‘Insouciance’, and ‘Nobody Loves Me’, in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004). The lines quoted are from the latter text.


5 Dec 2015

Making Love to Music

Etruscan dancers in a tomb near Tarquinia, Italy (c 470 BC) 


Provocative dance moves, such as grinding and twerking, are obviously obscene in an everyday sense of the term, but that's not what makes them tiresome and strangely offensive. I really don't care if idiots want to aggressively thrust their hips, wiggle their bottoms, and dry hump in public.

However, far from being sexual, it seems to me these moves are distinctly anti-sexual and obscene also in the very specific manner that Baudrillard uses the term. That is to say, they lack any metaphorical dimension or any stylish, carefully choreographed component.

In grinding and in twerking, as in pornography, "the body, the sex organs, the sex act are brutally no longer mis en scène, but immediately proffered for view" - and for consumption. It's a total acting out of things that have previously been kept off-stage and regarded as part of a seductive game usually played in private between partners.        

Although his concern is with the sublimation of sex, rather than its exorcising through obscenity, Lawrence was also concerned with the relationship between Eros and Terpsichore. In a short article written in 1927, entitled 'Making Love to Music', he identifies the tango and Charleston as modern dances that are secretly averse both to actual copulation and to the ancient magic of dance.

In contrast to the young men and women of the Jazz Age, Lawrence writes of the dancers painted on the walls of Etruscan tombs at Tarquinia:

"There the painted women dance, in their transparent linen ... opposite the naked-limbed men, in a splendour and an abandon which is not at all abandoned. There is a great beauty in them ... They are wild with a dance that is heavy and light at the same time, and not a bit anti-copulative, yet not bouncingly copulative either."

Although free from clothes and moral inhibition, these Etruscan figures are not grotesquely acting out sex in a crude and callous fashion, like Miley Cyrus: they are simply dancing a dance that is full of joy and a delight in movement; dancing their very souls into existence as it were.

It is, alas, we moderns who have "narrowed the dance down to two movements: either bouncing towards copulation, or sliding and shaking and waggling, to elude it", or make of it something vulgar and obscene.

   
Notes: 

Jean Baudrillard, 'The Obscene', Passwords, trans. Chris Turner, (Verso, 2003). The line quoted from is on p. 27.  

D. H. Lawrence, 'Making Love to Music', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 41-8. Lines quoted can be found on pp. 46-7.


4 Dec 2015

D. H. Lawrence's Philosophy of Mind

The Thinker - Rodin Stylized Pop Art Poster 
By Kim Wang


On Human Destiny is an interesting short piece written by D. H. Lawrence in which he addresses the question of mind. Lawrence argues that whilst most people don't have original thoughts, we all of us nevertheless have minds that are constantly active, even in sleep, grinding ideas over and over until they turn to dust. 

Whatever else he may be, man is first and foremost a thinking animal and even though we moderns like to assert our spontaneity of feeling and action, our very spontaneity is just another idea, born in the mind having been "gestated in self-consciousness".

Rather surprisingly, Lawrence also claims that this has always been the case: that man has never been a wild, instinctive creature; "even the most prognathous cave-man was an ideal beast ... no more like the wild deer or jaguar among the mountains, than we are". No matter how wild or primitive a man may appear to be, "you may be sure he is grinding upon his own fixed, peculiar ideas, and he's no more spontaneous than a London bus-conductor: probably not as much". 

Thus, it's unfair to claim, as some critics do, that Lawrence subscribes to the Romantic fantasy of a noble savage, beautiful and innocent in his mindlessness and free animality. And it's therefore also mistaken to suggest that Lawrence simply advocates some kind of return to Nature. He knows our becoming-animal is a question of culture and futurity, not regression, and that it certainly doesn't involve the surrendering of human intelligence: "You may, like Yeats, admire the simpleton, and call him God's Fool. But for me the village idiot is outside the pale."

Essentially, then, for Lawrence, mind is what characterizes man as a species and determines human destiny and it's "just puerile to sigh for innocence and naive spontaneity". But, the mind can become a sterile thing without some form of emotional inspiration. That's the key: our adventure further and further into consciousness mustn't become a journey into pure abstraction; we have to think, but we also need to feel and ensure our ideas remain fresh with creative vitality, not fixed and fatal and turned into dogma.

As Lawrence puts it in a poem: "Thought is the welling up of unknown life into consciousness ... a man in his wholeness wholly attending" and not the "jiggling and twisting of already existent ideas".


Notes:

D. H. Lawrence, 'On Human Destiny', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 203-04. 

D. H. Lawrence, 'Thought', The Poems, Volume 1, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 580-81.

3 Dec 2015

At the Gym with D. H. Lawrence



Natural born pedagogue and former Croydon school teacher, D. H. Lawrence, was keenly interested in the subject of education and spilt a great deal of ink addressing the question of what its purpose is and how it might be reformed upon non-idealistic lines. That is to say, turned from an intellectual pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, into an activity that awakens the primary affective centres.

Perhaps not surprisingly therefore, Lawrence was a passionate advocate of games and physical instruction and valued the sports hall or gym as a place of vital learning as much as the science lab or art class: "Let us have a gymnasium as the Greeks had it, and for the same purpose: the purpose of pure, perilous delight in contest, and profound, mystic delight in unified motion." [158]

Lawrence wants boys to learn how to fight - "like young bantam cocks"- with fists and with foils: "Teach fencing, teach wrestling, teach jiu-jitsu, every form of fierce hand to hand contest." [159] Football, however, would be taken off the curriculum - as would self-conscious body building or any wilful attempt to keep fit. Lawrence loathes the thought of someone sweating and grunting in the gym merely to develop muscles and perversely flaunt their healthy physique. He writes:

"The modern athlete parading the self-conscious mechanism of his body, reeking with a degraded physical, muscular self-consciousness ... is one of the most stupid phenomena mankind has ever witnessed. The physique is alright in itself. But to have your physique in your head, like having sex in the head, is unspeakably repulsive. To have your own physique on your mind all the time: why, it is a semi-pathological state, the exact counterpoise to the querulous peevish invalid." [157-58]

Clearly, for Lawrence, who subscribes to a system of dualism in which mind and body are forever distinct in polarised opposition, the problem is that modern athletes and keep-fit fanatics mix the two modes of consciousness; they prostitute the primary self to the secondary idea (which, of course, is Lawrence’s definition of masturbation).

What, then, are we to make of this? I suppose, in reply, I would wish to make three points:

Firstly, not all invalids are querulous or peevish and most do not wish for others to define, categorise, or stereotype them by their disability or illness, let alone allow it to obsessively dominate their own thoughts and behaviour. Lawrence, who spent a good deal of time in bed either ill or recovering from illness, may be speaking for himself and from his own experience here, but he shouldn’t generalise in such a manner.

Secondly, I’m sensitive also to Lawrence’s problematic gender politics and the fact that he only considers the physical education of boys in the above. The girls, presumably, will be too busy making their own dresses "and delicately unfolding the skirts and bodices, or the loose Turkish trousers and little vests, or whatever else they like to wear" [152-53]. They needn’t concern themselves with contest and naked wrestling, because, according to Lawrence, the soul of woman resides in fashion not fighting: "She puts on her clothes as a flower unfolds its petals, as an utterance from her own nature, instinctive and individual." [153]

Finally, despite referring his own model of a physical training facility back to ancient Greece, I’m not sure Lawrence fully appreciates to what extent the γυμνάσιον also functioned as a place for socializing, communal bathing and, crucially, engaging in intellectual pursuits. The nakedness of the athletes encouraged an aesthetic appreciation of the male body glistening with oil, and lectures and discussions on philosophy and the arts were frequently held at the gymnasia.

The Greeks certainly didn’t suspend all moralizing and put off all idea when they stripped for exercise as Lawrence likes to imagine; provisions were made not only for physical training, but ethical instruction. Plato’s Academy was, first and foremost, a gymnasium. As was the Lyceum, at which Aristotle established his school.

In sum: agon is a wider, more complex, and more ideal concept than Lawrence seems to realise ...


See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 85-166.


2 Dec 2015

War Post

Statue of Ares, God of War 
(Roman Copy of a Greek original at Hadrian's Villa) 


Today, in Parliament, a government motion to extend the British military campaign against the Islamic State - to bomb targets in Syria as well as Iraq - is very likely to be passed with a majority assembled from both sides of the House. For some MPs, in the wake of Paris and other recent atrocities, there clearly exists a strong argument for doing so. For others, including the leader of the Opposition, a convincing case for further military intervention in the Middle East hasn’t been made. In fact, for Jeremy Corbyn, British bombs dropped over Syria would only serve to make a grave and ghastly situation far worse.

If I’m honest, I have no idea who’s right and who’s wrong. But I do know that Lawrence vehemently opposed modern warfare and regarded murderous weapons of mass destruction, which bring death to anonymous victims, as refinements of evil. Not that Lawrence was a pacifist or opposed to violence. In fact, he fetishized the male as essentially a fighter and tied his own philosophy of power to notions of conflict and combat. But he also hated the idea of turning a primary physical activity, such as war, into an abstract and ideal process.

Real war, writes Lawrence, is a type of passionate relationship between men and to die in battle is a type of blissful consummation or great crisis of being. Unfortunately, it's become "a ghastly and blasphemous translation of ideas into engines" [159] and men have been turned into cannon-fodder. To be blown to smithereens by a bomb from the blue, dropped by an invisible enemy while you are eating your supper or sitting on the toilet, is a horrible and monstrous state of affairs.

So, on the one hand, Lawrence celebrates mortal combat and wants to see fierce naked men fighting face-to-face; able to exercise what he terms the choice of war. But, on the other hand, they must not be given the chance to use automatic rifles, grenades and poison gases - the deadly fruits of our own moral idealism and will to universal love.

In a manner far more radical than anything advocated by the CND crowd, Lawrence calls on the British people to make a unilateral destruction of all guns, explosives and chemical weapons - as well as the means of their production. Were we to do this, he says, we’d be able to breathe a collective sigh of relief and come to our senses once more as a nation. It would constitute an act of "reckless defiant sanity" [162].

Then, when all the mechanical weapons were destroyed, we could arm our soldiers with swords once more and "introduce a proper system of martial training in the schools" [161], ensuring every boy is turned into a fighter; as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp’s steel as another lover of struggle and fearless youth once put it.

Of course, for ardent supporters of Lawrence, the use of this famous line from a speech made by Hitler, might be seen as something of a cheap shot, or a low blow aimed at their hero. They would angrily object to the implication that Lawrence was a fascist. And, to be fair, they’d be right to do so. For, in historical terms, Lawrence certainly wasn’t a fascist, or a fascist sympathizer.

Nevertheless, there are clearly what might be termed molecular elements of fascism within his thinking which allow for the construction of a highly dubious cratology and a rather less-than-liberal education policy. And the job of a critic who cares is to counter these elements; to refuse to become enamoured of power and resist the urge to glorify war, heroism, strong leadership and all the other militant-militaristic bullshit that - post-Serpent - Lawrence himself decisively rejected in favour of tenderness.


See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 85-166.


28 Nov 2015

Petite Meller

Petite Meller in the video for her song Baby Love (2015).
Click here to watch on YouTube.


Peitite Meller: she's French, she's fashionable, she's thin, she's pale, she's doll-like, she's studying for an MA in philosophy and she sings catchy nouveau-jazz pop ditties. I'm pretty sure, were he still alive, Serge Gainsbourg would already have written half-a-dozen songs for her. 

In short: what's not to love about this object of perverse fascination and delight, now resident in London?

Well, there's her rather tiresome references to Freud and the unconscious and the slightly irritating elements of surrealism. For a young woman who cites Mille Plateaux as her favourite book one might have hoped not to end up back in the world of the nursery and the kind of lame sexual fantasies that are often described as forbidden, but which are actually familiar components of the pornographic imagination long circulated and sustained within our culture.

One might also object to the use of Africans, animals, and the elderly residents of a care home as extras (or little more than animated props) in her videos; exploiting their physical otherness in order to contrast and showcase her own ethereal beauty combining purity and privilege.          

If I wanted to be cruel, I might suggest she over does the blusher in order to disguise the embarrassment she must feel at her knowing collaboration with (one suspects mostly male) designers, photographers, and filmmakers who subscribe to an aesthetic that looks to Lolita, Leni Riefenstahl, and Lady Gaga for inspiration.

But, I don't want to be cruel: rather, I want to give this intelligent and talented woman every opportunity to develop as an artist. In the meantime, I suppose I'll just have to make do with an occasional flash of her knickers and sing along like everyone else to Baby Love.