Notes on DIY

Bob the Builder

As a punk, one was obliged to subscribe to the political ethos of do it yourself: form your own band, print your own magazines, design your own clothes, etc., etc. 

I remember, however, that Rotten supplemented (and qualified) this idea by also insisting that whatever it was one did, one should always do it properly and was contemptuous of those who understood the first rule of punk as a license to be mediocre or inept. There was nothing shoddy or second-rate about the Sex Pistols; the look and the sound was all carefully contrived with an eye for detail and a profound understanding of style.

But for most people, of course, DIY isn't an anarchic method of self-empowerment and taking back control, it's to do with home improvements and having somewhere to go and something to do at the weekends; i.e., wander round Homebase, before then annoying the neighbours with a power drill as you work on the extension or loft conversion.

In other words, it's part and parcel of la vie domestique - i.e., the most boring form of life there is.

DIY encourages consumers to imagine they're skilled artisans, but it's more recreational than creative in character and more about cost-cutting than self-expression. At best - and at a real stretch - it's the idiot younger brother of the Arts and Crafts movement, though I still find it difficult to see a family resemblance between William Morris and Tommy Walsh.         

To paraphrase Wilde, a great deal of nonsense is spoken about DIY. There's nothing essentially dignified about hammering a nail, hoovering a carpet, painting a ceiling, or fitting a floor. Indeed, most - if not all - jobs of this kind are dirty, dusty, and depressing and such pleasureless activities should be admitted as such.

It's good to take pride in what you do - but when what you're doing is tedious and undignified, then it's best to be honest about it. Sometimes, it's preferable not to do it yourself, but to get on the blower to Bob the builder ... 


Note: I'm paraphrasing Wilde on manual labour in his 1891 essay 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism', written in his anarcho-libertarian phase: click here to read online.

  

Day 369: Notes on the Case of Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan

Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan 

The case of Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan - two young American cyclists murdered in Tajikistan by Islamists who first drove into them and then stabbed and shot them - is tragically fascinating for what it tells us about evil and the naive optimism of those who foolishly deny the existence of such.

According to the above, the reason so many people believe that the world is a scary, dangerous place inhabited by monsters, is due to a conspiracy; the powers that be want to keep us all afraid and mistrustful of one another.

In a blog post published shortly before he and his girlfriend were slaughtered, Austin wrote: "Evil is a make-believe concept we've invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own ..." People are, he insists, mostly generous and kind.

Now, that last part might of course be true and I'm not one of those conservative commentators who wish to frame this event in Little Red Riding Hood terms, i.e. as a cautionary tale against straying too far from the safety of home, or messing with strangers, etc. Nevertheless, the fact remains that people are not entirely generous and kind.

And some, indeed, are malevolent and cruel; particularly when motivated by a religious ideology and deep resentment towards privileged Westerners who think the whole world is their playground - from Iceland to Timbuktu - round which they can pedal in perfect peace and harmony, admiring the views and patronising the locals, blogging and Instagramming as they go. 

But just like tourists and travellers, terrorists too like to use social media. And in a video released after the couple's death, the group of men responsible are seen pledging allegiance to the Islamic State and vowing to kill the infidels who have overrun their land. As Baudrillard said, the world isn't dialectical. It's a place of violent extremes and radical antagonism; not reconciliation or synthesis.

In other words, it operates according to a principle of evil ...

Sweden: Vad Fan Gör Du?

I.

Sweden is a country about which I know very little and were it not for ABBA and the cinematic charms of Britt Ekland, I'd probably care even less.

However, as even left-leaning Prime Minister, Stefan Löfven, was on the radio this week telling everyone how angry he was with what's happening in his country and promising to get tough, I suppose I should say something ... 

II.

Until recently, Sweden was inhabited almost exclusively by Germanic peoples and therefore enjoyed a high level of ethno-cultural homogeneity. It may not have been the most exciting place on Earth, but there are worse things than living in a happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous country eating meatballs, surrounded by forests and beautiful landscapes, but with easy access to an IKEA.

In the past few years, however, Sweden has become a more diverse nation due to immigration from Africa and the Middle East. A significant number of the population now have a non-Nordic background and this has resulted in a number of what government officials and the mainstream media like to call social challenges.   

Proponents of mass immigration continue to argue that, despite these challenges and the establishment of so-called vulnerable areas in numerous towns and cities, there have been important economic and cultural benefits and people should just relax a little [tagga ned] when considering the newcomers. 

Opponents, meanwhile, can't see beyond the shocking crime statistics and growing civil unrest; from gang violence, rape, and arson attacks at one end of the scale; to young Muslim women refusing to shake hands on the other. For them, the cow is very much on the ice, so to speak.

Sadly, it does seem as if the prolonged period of Scandinavian serenity enjoyed by the Swedes is about to end. Which is a pity - but who's to blame for this other than the super-liberal Swedes themselves? Especially, of course, those in positions of political power, including Herr Löfven.

Ultimately, what Douglas Murray refers to as the strange death of Europe is both an act of self-negation and an act of faith carried out in the name of moral-idealism ...  

See: Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe (Bloomsbury, 2017). 

On Luck

Lucky, lucky, lucky me!

Even though I haven't a dime,

I laugh and play in a carefree way

And I have a wonderful time.

Within the dualistic theology of Christianity things have only two possible origins; either they come from God, or they are rooted in evil.

What's interesting is just how many things Satan is given credit for; not just mortal sin and witchcraft, but music, dance and detail. Indeed, some Christians even insist that luck is diabolical in origin - the luck of the devil - and therefore not something to be wished for or invoked.

Unfortunately, their explanation for this rests on a mistaken piece of etymology. For the word luck is not derived from the word Lucifer. Lucifer is an Old English term derived from Latin and means light-bearing; luck is a late Middle English word rooted in German and Dutch and refers to chance and good fortune.

Of course, Christians don't like either of these things; chance implies that there are events outside of God's control and when you like to conceive of your deity as omnipotent - overseeing the throw of every dice and the toss of every coin - that's not something you can accept.

And good fortune, they would argue, is not quite the same as receiving God's blessing; indeed, it seems suspiciously close to a pagan notion of fate and rekindles memories of an ancient goddess known for her fickleness and willingness to reward even the undeserving.     

As D. H. Lawrence pointed out, monotheistic followers of the Abrahamic religions - Jews, Christians, and Muslims - hate pagan gods, but they more than hate the great pagan goddesses, whom they curse and call vile names.

Though, having said that, Lawrence himself accuses Lady Luck of being vulgar and rejects the gifts that she may bring his way. But that's because he retains a strict puritanical streak in his nature and believes in working hard and earning his just rewards; ultimately, there can be no rocking horse winners in his world.  

The Buddha was another misery guts on this question, insisting that all things must have a cause - be it material or spiritual in nature - and that events never occur at random or by chance alone. Like Lawrence, he thinks that there's something base and shameful about making a living from gambling and seemingly relying on luck. Karma, the notion of moral causality, is of course central within Buddhism.

Still, I'm not a Buddhist. Nor a Christian; nor even much of a Lawrentian any longer, so can cheerfully confess to loving the idea of luck. It's crucial, I think, to live with a certain gay insouciance; to laugh at the sun and to wish on the moon, shaking hands with every passing chimney sweep.

For when you realise that life's a chuckle, Lady Luck'll smile upon you ...


Musical bonus: Lucky, Lucky, Lucky Me - one of the greatest songs ever written, by Milton Berle and Buddy Arnold, performed by Evelyn Knight with the Ray Charles Singers, (Decca, 1950). 

From the Land of Cockaigne to the Big Rock Candy Mountains

Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Land of Cockaigne (1567) 

Oil on panel (52 x 78 cm) 

First conceived in the imagination of medieval peasants and poets, Cockaigne is an immanent utopia wherein all desires are realised, sensual pleasures of every description readily available, and the daily restrictions placed upon one's freedom by priests and feudal masters are abolished - whilst they get their comeuppance at last.

Heaven might await the virtuous in some posthumous future, but Cockaigne was the collective dream of an earthly paradise - now/here, rather than nowhere - that encouraged the cardinal sins of lust, gluttony and idleness, thereby challenging the teaching that the good life had to involve constant toil on the one hand and abstinence on the other.       

At it's most carnivalesque, Cockaigne was said to be a topsy-turvy place in which the weather was always mild and even when it did rain, it rained custard; there were rivers of the finest wine flowing freely and ready-roasted pigs wandered about with carving knives conveniently placed in their back. According to some accounts, there was even a fountain of youth. Nobody works and yet nobody ever goes hungry.   

This idea of Cockaigne spread throughout Europe, with some interesting national variations; central to the Italian version, for example, which can be found in Boccaccio's Decameron (1353), is a mountain made of Parmesan cheese - which was handy for the people who lived there and spent the entire day preparing and eating pasta dishes.  

Of course, as with the appropriation of anarchic and amoral folk tales and their literary reworking as so-called fairy tales, eventually the myth of Cockaigne was taken up by the prigs and pedagogues of the emerging bourgeoisie and they turned it a fable condemning gluttony and sloth. Bruegel's depiction of Luilekkerland and its hedonistic inhabitants seen above, is intended as a warning against the spiritual emptiness that follows when we fall into a life of sin; whilst comic, it certainly isn't intended as a celebration of Cockaigne.

However, every now and again the idea resurfaces. In Haywire Mac's hobo-punk classic The Big Rock Candy Mountains (1928), for example, which beautifully sets out an American bum's vision of Cockaigne:

A far away land that's fair and bright, where the handouts grow on bushes and you can sleep out every night; a land where the cops all have wooden legs, the bulldogs have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft-boiled eggs; a land where you never need change your socks and the little streams of alcohol come trickling down the rocks; there's a lake of stew, and of whiskey too - you can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe - a land where there ain't no short-handled shovels, axes, saws or picks and they hung the jerk who invented work. 

One might ask if a dream of a better life in a land of plenty isn't the primary factor at work within the ongoing migrant crisis; they cross the seas in little boats having mistaken Europe for Cockaigne ...

See: Herman Pleij, Dreaming of Cockaigne, trans. Diane Webb, (Columbia University Press, 2001). 

For an earlier post on The Big Rock Candy Mountains, click here. 

Rutiluphilia (Reflections on Redheads)

Emma Hack: 'The Redhead' 

from the series Beautiful Women (2013)

emmahackartist.com.au 

Naturally red hair is an uncommon condition, even amongst the native peoples of north-western Europe, such as the Celts, in whom it occurs more frequently. In Ireland, for example, the most redheaded nation on earth, no more than 10% of the population are blessed in this manner, although over 1-in-3 carry the recessive ginger gene variant.

Whilst red hair is associated with other physical characteristics - such as fair (often freckled) skin and light (often green) coloured eyes - so too is it rich with cultural significance and subject to both positive and negative stereotyping.

Redheaded women, for example, are said to be fiery of temper and sharp of tongue.

But they are also regarded as morally suspect and bestial in nature, which is why, for example, during the Christian Middle Ages red hair in combination with green eyes was taken as a sure sign of a witch, a werewolf, a vampire - or a Jew. Such fear and mistrust of redheads - particularly in fatal combination with antisemitism - led to their persecution as heretics during the Spanish Inquisition. 

Not surprisingly, red-haired women also feature in the pornographic imagination as unusually passionate and promiscuous. Perhaps this is due to the vividness of their colouring; or perhaps it's their sensitivity to ultraviolet light and other forms of stimulation that makes such vixens of them.

Or perhaps all such ethno-sexual stereotyping is just nonsense ...     

Lose This Skin: Thoughts on Theodore Roethke's Epidermal Macabre

Juan de Valverde de Hamusco: 

La anatomia del corpo humano (1556)

According to D. H. Lawrence, Whitman was the great American poet-pioneer; the first to smash the old moral conception of man in which the body is conceived as but a shoddy and temporary container for some kind of ghostly essence; the first to seize the soul by the scruff of the neck and insist on her corporeal nature.   

This, for Lawrence, is crucial because he believes that the key to achieving what the Greeks termed εὐδαιμονία is "remaining inside your own skin, and living inside your own skin, and not pretending you're any bigger than you are."

Nietzsche also insists that man's self-overcoming does not correspond to the rapturous possibility of transcendence. The overman is not more spiritual, but more animal; complete with teeth, guts and genitals and all those things which idealists are embarrassed by and hope to see shrivel away. 

So, what's a reader of Lawrence and Nietzsche to make of the following poem by Theodore Roethke:


Epidermal Macabre

Indelicate is he who loathes
The aspect of his fleshy clothes -
The flying fabric stitched on bone,
The vesture of the skeleton,
The garment neither fur nor hair,
The cloak of evil and despair,
The veil long violated by
Caresses of the hand and eye.
Yet such is my unseemliness:
I hate my epidermal dress,
The savage blood's obscenity,
The rags of my anatomy,
And willingly would I dispense
With false accouterments of sense,
To sleep immodestly, a most
Incarnadine and carnal ghost.

Initially, one is triggered - as people now like to say - by the narrator's physical self-loathing and his desire to make an ecstatic break from his own biology, conceived in terms of clothing that conceals true being in all its naked immateriality and innocence.

However, even the narrator - and, for convenience's sake, let's call him Roethke - recognises that such mad metaphysical exhibitionism in which one strips oneself of flesh and bone until one effectively becomes untouchable, invisible, and non-existent, is indelicate; i.e. not only insensitive, but also slightly indecent.

Further, whilst Roethke's hatred for his epidermal dress and the rags of his own anatomy is so profound that he considers willingly dispensing not only with his modesty but all vital feeling, he's honest enough to acknowledge that in death there's no liberation of the soul. All that remains is a decomposing corpse; that incarnadine and carnal ghost that refuses to disappear into thin air.

Noble spirit, Roethke concedes, is entirely dependent upon - is an epiphenomenal effect of - base matter. And just as truth needs to be concealed behind lies and illusions in order to remain true, spirit needs to be wrapped in flesh.

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Whitman', in Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

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), p. 161. 

Theodore Roethke, 'Epidermal Macabre', from the debut collection Open House (1941). See The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, (Anchor Books, 1975).

Musical bonus: The Clash, 'Lose This Skin', from the album Sandinista! (CBS, 1980); written and with vocals by Tymon Dogg: click here. 


Thanks to Simon Solomon for suggesting a post on this poem.

The Four Drakes: Part 2: Nick and Gabrielle

Drake is an Old English surname, derived from the Anglo-Saxon term for serpent, draca, and thus etymologically related to dragon (and not to the word for a male duck). There have been a number of illustrious individuals by the name of Drake, including Sir Francis Drake and the comic entertainer Charlie Drake, both of whom we discussed in part one of this post: click here. 

Below, I wish to discuss a famous pair of siblings by the name of Drake, beginning with the younger brother ... 

Nick Drake (1948 - 1974): First the Day after Tomorrow Must Dawn for Me

Posh singer-songwriter and musician, Nick Drake, is a fine example of what Nietzsche terms a posthumous individual - i.e., one who only comes into their own and finds fame once they're dead.   

The prodigiously talented Drake signed to Island Records whilst studying English literature at Cambridge, releasing his debut album - Five Leaves Left - in 1969. By 1972, he had recorded two more albums - Bryter Layter and Pink Moon - neither of which sold more than 5000 copies on initial release.

The fact that he was extremely reluctant to promote the material by playing live and giving interviews to the music press, obviously didn't help matters. But one suspects that such reticence was more due to the chronic shyness and depression from which he suffered than any desire to create a mystique about his own person. 

After the failure of his third album, Drake retreated to his parents home and, aged 26, he took an overdose of amitriptyline pills, a prescribed anti-depressant. A verdict of suicide was given and although this has been challenged by some who knew him, his sister Gabrielle prefers to believe he made a conscious decision to end his life, rather than consider his death the result of a tragic mistake.

Five years later, the release of a retrospective album entitled Fruit Tree (1979) triggered a critical reappraisal of his work and by the mid-1980s artists including Robert Smith and David Sylvian were naming Drake as an important influence. Thirty years later, and he's now sold over two-and-a-half million records in the UK and US markets.

Gabrielle Drake (1944 - ): Serious Glamour 

To be honest, Nick Drake is no more my cup of tea than Charlie Drake; though again, that's in no way to deny or denigrate his obvious talent and intelligence. He's just too much of an introspective hippie for my tastes (Nick - not Charlie).

But his older sister on the other hand, Gabrielle - now there's someone I have always loved to see on screen; be it as the purple-wigged Moonbase commander Lt. Gay Ellis in UFO (1970-71), or as motel boss Nicola Freeman in Crossroads (1985-87). Her appearance in a 1967 episode of The Avengers as Angora and, a decade later, as Penny the schoolteacher in an episode of The New Avengers, is also worthy of note and something for which I'm grateful.

I'm grateful too for the fact that, unlike some actresses, Gabrielle was always happy when young to get her kit off and not above appearing in a number of seventies sexploitation films, including Au Pair Girls (dir. Val Guest, 1972), in which she has a leading role as Randi Lindstrom (that's right, ha-ha! she's Danish).

Perhaps of more interest to my more literary-minded readers will be the fact that she also appeared as a passenger (sacrifice) in a short film entitled Crash! (dir. Harley Cokeliss) and based on a story in J. G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition. The movie also featured the author talking about ideas that he would later develop into one of the great twentieth-century novels. As one critic rightly noted, the presence of Miss Drake brought serious glamour to urban alienation.

Finally, it needs to be said that Gabrielle has worked tirelessly to ensure her brother's name and music live on and it's clear that, rather touchingly, she remains his biggest fan. In 2014, she published a memoir of her brother and in 2018 she collected a Hall of Fame Folk Award on his behalf.

I wish she were my sister ...

Notes

The Avengers episode mentioned above was from Season 5 and entitled 'The Hidden Tiger' (first shown in the UK on 3 March 1967); The New Avengers episode was 'Dead Men are Dangerous' (first shown in the UK on 8 Sept 1977). 

To visit the official website of the estate of Nick Drake, please click here.

To visit the Gabrielle Drake fansite on Facebook, click here. 

The Four Drakes: Part 1: Francis and Charlie

Drake is an Old English surname, derived from the Anglo-Saxon term for serpent, draca, and thus etymologically related to dragon (and not to the word for a male duck). There have been a number of illustrious individuals by the name of Drake, including ...

Sir Francis Drake (c.1540 - 1596): Sic parvis magna 

Potato-loving, tobacco-smoking Sir Francis Drake was an Elizabethan privateer and explorer who circumnavigated the world, plundering it as he went and claiming various lands for the Crown, including what is now California.

He also famously defeated the Spanish Armada - having first finished a game of bowls -  securing his status as a national hero; although in the current climate of politico-moral correctness this is now open to revision (not least because Drake was one of the first British slave traders). 

Even before 1588, Spanish mariners regarded Drake with a mixture of fear and loathing; they believed him to be in league with the Devil and to possess a magic mirror that allowed him to locate the position of all the ships at sea.

After his death, in 1596, Drake was buried at sea, inside a lead coffin and wearing a full suit of armour perhaps in the hope this might protect him from demons sent to retrieve his soul.

Charlie Drake (1925 - 2006): Hello, my darlings!

Diminutive entertainer, Charlie Drake, is one of those strange, disconcerting comic figures - like Marty Feldman - who continues to haunt my imagination.

Watching him on TV as a child, I always felt repulsed rather than amused by the squeaky voice, sweating red-face, and little iggy-piggy eyes.

Perhaps if he'd been part of the Carry On gang I'd've found him more amenable. But, as a solo performer, overly-reliant upon slapstick, an annoying catchphrase (often addressed to the breasts of a female co-star), and an ingratiating persona, he was just too much for me.      

That's not, of course, to deny his brilliance as a writer and performer; it's simply to say he wasn't my cup of tea - although I admire the fact he gambled away most of the money he had made in his heyday and spent the rest on glamorous young women, whisky, and fast cars. When he died, Drake bequeathed just £5000 from an estimated £5 million fortune.

I also like the fact that - despite suffering with depression throughout his career, like his close friend Tony Hancock - Drake was philosophical about his loss of star status as he got older and transformed, as one critic notes, from an innocent-looking cherub into a faintly malevolent goblin; for there's nothing worse than a bitter and resentful clown. 

Note: readers interested in part two of this post on Nick and Gabrielle Drake, should click here.

Say Hello Then!

Portrait of the Artist Aged 3

(pris juste après une coupe de cheveux)

When I was very young, one of my favourite things to do was stand on the wall at the front of my house and say hello to adult passers-by, be they next-door-neighbours or complete strangers.

In those days, very few people had a car and so there was ample opportunity to initiate contact, even if it was just with the postman, milkman, or the rag-and-bone man, who used to come round on a horse and cart, ringing a bell.

(In those days too, of course, there was no pathological fear of paedophiles and no neurotic concern with health and safety and children of all ages - shocking as it now seems - played outside, unsupervised and without protective clothing.)

One might read my attempt to engage with the world as an innocent sign of friendliness; tinged perhaps with a degree of childhood cheekiness.

But, looking back, I think it betrayed a certain provocative aggression; for if the passer-by failed to respond to my initial greeting, I would quickly issue a second demand that they do so: Say hello then!

Ultimately, it was more a challenge than a greeting ... I didn't want to destroy the passer-by - as I did as an anarchic teenage punk - but I did want to put them on the spot, thus causing a degree of discomfort or irritation.

It wasn't so much that I cared about having my presence acknowledged; but I wanted to remind them that they existed in a world with others and had therefore an ethical obligation to be polite and friendly; that no one had the right to pass by in silence on the other side of the road.

Even today, if I'm honest, I find it shockingly rude when someone sits next to me on a plane, for example, and doesn't nod, smile, or say hello. I understand there's an issue of reserve amongst the English, but, sadly, this is often just used as an excuse to cover up bad manners and social ineptitude.

One of the things I really miss about living in Spain is the fact that everyone says hola!


Afterthought

It might be argued, I suppose, that Torpedo the Ark is just another platform from which to address strangers and that I'm still essentially playing the same childhood game of ethical provocation. And I have to confess that I quite like this idea of continuity with - and loyalty to - my very young self. 

Why I'm a Sex Pistol Rather Than a Clash City Rocker

A Seditionaries Destroy shirt 

McLaren and Westwood (1977) 
Victoria and Albert Museum Collection

According to Mick Jones, speaking in an interview with GQ in 2011, there were two types of punk: those who wanted to destroy and those who wanted to create ...

Clearly, the Sex Pistols wanted to destroy; they announced the fact on their first single and on the shirts that Uncle Malcolm and Auntie Vivienne designed for them. They were into chaos, not music. And when asked what he intended to do about the rapid post-War decline of the UK, I'll always remember with a smile Steve Jones saying: Make it worse.

Like Nietzsche, the Sex Pistols wanted to consummate nihilism by accelerating the process; to kick over that which was already rotten and threatening to fall; to go still further in the schizonomadic direction of decoding and deterritorialization. Certainly for McLaren, the most revolutionary of strategies was to unleash all kinds of forces and flows and push things to the extreme, which is to say, their exterior and absolute limit. 

The Sex Pistols, we might say, are rock 'n' roll's anarchic promise brought to fulfilment; and they are also the exterminating angels who came to destroy rock 'n' roll once and for all, exposing its complicity with capital and the manner in which the music business ultimately serves to keep young people under control.

Their final great act was not their astonishing self-immolation on stage at the Winterland, but the destruction of their own legend in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle - a project that incriminates everyone, including the fans.  

The Clash, in contrast, were typical type two punks: "trying to create something better for everybody", as Mick Jones says. Social justice warriors with zips and safety pins; or nice middle-class boys pretending to be outlaws, as Sebastian Horsley memorably described them.

The problem is that those who speak about initiating a new wave, often secretly wish to shore up the old order and establish successful careers within it. Thus it was, for example, that for all their anti-American posturing and talk of phoney Beatlemania having bitten the dust, the Clash were desperate to make it big in the US and soon fell into all the usual rock star clichés. Indeed, they even ended up opening for the Who at Shea Stadium:

And all the young punks looked from Joe to Roger and from Mick to Pete; but already it was impossible to say which was which ...

Finally, in 2003, the surviving members of the Clash were all present and correct to meekly accept with gratitude their induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of fame - an institution which Rotten amusingly branded a piss-stain on humanity.

Of course, it's true that - eventually - we have our fill of destruction and must turn again to the task of creation; that once all the old forms are shattered and all the old icons toppled, we need to find a new way of living beneath the open sky. Only an idiot mistakes the ruins as an end goal.

But - and it's an important but - we should be extremely wary of those idealists who appear overly keen to start building the New Jerusalem; especially when using the same old tools and materials.   

Notes

To read the interview with Mick Jones, by Alex Pappademas, in GQ (2 Nov 2011): click here. 

To watch the Sex Pistols performing Anarchy in the UK during their final show (Winterland, San Francisco, 14 Jan 1978), click here. They tweak the lyrics, but the message remains the same: Destroy. 

To watch a 7 min promo film for the Clash Live at Shea Stadium album (Epic, 2008), click here. The actual show took place on 13 Oct 1982. 

For Sebastian Horsley's take on the difference between the Sex Pistols and the Clash, click here. 

Notes on the Be Real Campaign

berealcampaign.co.uk

I.

The Be Real Campaign - which has developed out of a global marketing campaign by Unilever for a range of toiletries sold under the brand name Dove and in partnership with the YMCA - is determined to change attitudes to body image and help all of us put real health above appearance.

According to their website, low body confidence is something that affects everyone; impacting upon our physical and mental well-being and preventing us from achieving all of the wonderful things we would be capable of if only we were more body confident.

In order to bring about real change, the campaign calls upon businesses, advertisers, and the media to act responsibly and embrace real diversity, positively portraying different body shapes and sizes drawn from all ages, genders and ethnicities.

Individuals are also encouraged to take back control and sign a pledge in which they promise to help create a body confident nation by no longer editing their photos on social media. They also, of course, agree to submit their details to the Be Real Campaign.

II.

I suppose it'll be pretty obvious to most readers that I won't be signing this pledge. Indeed, I philosophically oppose the aims of this campaign and the language of politico-moral correctness and authenticity upon which it relies.

What is confidence, ultimately, but a mixture of faith and narcissism? And what's the point of being healthy if you look like shit? As for Dove's idea of the real, do they not know that - somewhat ironically - it's objectifying and betrays a death instinct?

Our individuality and our agency is a type of artifice; something styled within culture. To become-human is to challenge real being (understood in essentialist terms) and enhance our thingness; our uniqueness as a species rests on the fact that we are more than a mere piece of nature and that we have invented each gesture.

I may, as a Nietzschean, be interested in ways of overcoming our humanity as presently conceived, but I certainly don't want us to fall back into a pre-human condition lacking in style, complexity and virtuality - no matter how real it may be ...

I'm Pretty Vacant - But I'm Not Sure I Belong to the Blank Generation

Virgin Records (1977)

I.

I remember listening to a run down of the charts in the summer of 1977; anxiously waiting to press record on my cassette player when Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols finally blasted out and hoping against hope that Tony Blackburn wouldn't ruin things by inanely talking over the greatest ever intro to a pop song; an intro that, if you like, consummated my love affair with punk.

Released on July 1st, Pretty Vacant was the band's third single and, unlike God Save the Queen, you could actually listen to it on the radio, despite Rotten's aggressive phrasing of the term vacant, sung repeatedly in the chorus with a strong emphasis on the second syllable. Indeed, you could even watch the official promo video, directed by Mike Mansfield, on Top of the Pops.


II.

According to Malcolm, Pretty Vacant was written at his instigation and directly inspired by Richard Hell's Blank Generation (which was itself a punk re-imagining of Bob McFadden's and Rod McKuen's 1959 single The Beat Generation).

Just as Rotten - by Hell's own admission - pushed the nihilistic persona that he'd originally developed in a more extreme direction, so is Pretty Vacant a far more provocative kettle of fish than its American counterpart. The latter is clever and vaguely amusing, but it lacks something in comparison. One can imagine Steve Jones hearing Blank Generation and crying out for it to be given some bollocks.

Perhaps the difference (and, for me, the problem) is that Hell allows himself the option of opting out of his own lifestyle - he can take it or leave it - but the Sex Pistols have no choice but to affirm the beauty of their own emptiness without caring what anyone thinks of this.

Is it a class thing, a cultural thing, or something else? Interestingly, Hell has spoken about the chauvinism of British punks who would sneer at the American bands and insist on the UK origins of the movement.

Whatever it is, there's something crucially different between the two songs. When one listens to Blank Generation one feels that one is listening to Hell's private vision or personal experience; it's basically a poem set to music. Pretty Vacant, by comparison, is a call to arms that genuinely articulates the feelings of a generation. And, whilst there's humour in both songs, it's more crudely sarcastic than cleverly ironic in the latter.

Ultimately, you don't need to have read Blake, Rimbaud and Burroughs to understand the Sex Pistols; you just need a mistrust of hippies, an eye for fashion, and an instinct for chaos. 

Play:

Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols: click here. 

Blank Generation by Richard Hell and the Voidoids: click here. 

They Eat Donkeys Don't They?

A box of donkey-hide gelatine from the 1960s 

Photo: George Knowles / South China Morning Post  

I. Meat is Murder - and So is Traditional Chinese Medicine

I suppose most people are aware of the Chinese practice of grinding up tiger bones and rhinoceros horns in the belief that these things have magico-medicinal properties and can help relieve numerous chronic ailments, cure disease, boost vitality and improve potency.

And I suppose most people are also aware that these crackpot claims lie behind an illegal international trade in body parts from critically endangered species; there are now less than 4000 tigers in the wild and only around 30,000 rhinos.    

But how many people, I wonder, are aware of the fact that the Chinese are also responsible for the dramatic decline in donkey numbers, both domestically and abroad? Twenty years ago, China had around 11 million donkeys; now the figure is less than 6 million.

As we will discuss, this, too, is mostly due to the mania for traditional medicine, although the fact that the citizens of the People's Republic of China also like to chow down on donkey meat - including so-called donkey burgers in which chopped or shredded meat is placed within a warm flatbread, known as a shaobing, and seasoned either with green pepper or coriander - is an added factor. 

II. How Eeyore is Turned into Ejiao 

Ejiao - or, as it is known in English, donkey-hide gelatine - is obtained from the skin of a donkey via a process of drying, soaking and stewing.

What was once believed to be a humble blood tonic, has successfully been re-branded as miracle product and marketed at China's expanding middle class. As well as being found in a wide variety of medicinal goods, ejiao also features in foodstuffs and expensive beauty products; for ejiao is said to not only make you feel better - but look better.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the ejiao industry has now become a global mega-business, with Dong-E E-Jiao, the world’s largest producer, reporting sales of £700 million in 2016.

But there's a problem: according to the ejiao industry's own figures, they process around 4 million donkeys each year, producing 5000 tonnes of gelatine. As domestic supply is capped at less than half this figure - 1.8 million, to be precise - it means manufacturers have to find an extra 2.2 million donkeys elsewhere and are thus heavily reliant upon imported skins often purchased from illicit supply networks at over-inflated prices and an unsustainable rate.

The shortage of genuine Chinese donkey hide has not only sent the cost of raw material through the roof, but it has encouraged the poor in Africa into (literally) selling their asses in order to cash in, undermining the long-term stability of rural economies.    

Whilst I'm vaguely sympathetic towards these people being exploited by Sino-capitalism, it's mostly the poor donkeys I feel sorry for; malnourished and mistreated during their short lives, they are then brutally killed and butchered in the unregulated slaughterhouses that can be found popping-up all over Africa, Asia and South America. 

As for the Chinese, who keep the ejiao industry grinding on ... one is almost tempted to share Morrissey's assessment of them - though, ultimately, aren't carnophallogocentrism and cruelty defining characteristics of humanity? 


Notes

For a related post on cruelty towards donkeys and the politics of zoosadism in Pakistan, click here. 

For an earlier post on Chairman Mao and the swindle of traditional Chinese medicine, click here. 

Anyone interested in doing something to help donkeys, should visit the website of The Donkey Sanctuary: click here. 

Donkey Punch: On the Politics of Zoosadism

Photo: ACF Animal Rescue 

According to the author and journalist Fatima Bhutto, it makes little real difference who wins the election held today in Pakistan amidst predictable violence and claims of widespread vote-rigging. 

It is, she says, the nation's supreme tragedy "that such a young, hopeful, promising people are offered this glut of shoddy candidates", all eagerly playing their role in a political circus - including the ex-cricketer turned sinister clown, Imran Khan, peddling a morally flexible manifesto and relying upon the support of the powerful military establishment. 

Khan's mixture of militancy and misogyny is shocking and depressing enough. But most shocking and depressing of all is the following tale of animal cruelty reported by Ms Bhutto ...

On 17 July, Karachi-based supporters of Khan's political party - the PTI  - tied a donkey to a pole: 

"They punched its face till its jaw broke, ripped open its nostrils, and drove a car into its body, leaving the animal to collapse, having been beaten to within an inch of his life. Before they left, they wrote 'Nawaz' (the name of the former prime minister) into its flesh, seemingly inspired by their leader, Imran Khan, who has taunted [his opponents in the PML-N] as ghaddhay or donkeys. The donkey was rescued by the ACF Animal Rescue team, a private organisation, who noted that, even days later, it could not stand up on its own because of the ferocity of its torture. It soon succumbed to its injuries, an innocent creature beaten to death for entertainment."

As if that wasn't horrifying enough:

"A day later, another donkey in Karachi was mercilessly attacked, this time the skin on its face was ripped off, the flesh on its forehead torn apart till all that remained between its eyes was a pulpy, bloody hole."

What, really, is one supposed to make of such disgusting acts of cruelty?

Bhutto worries that it is yet one more sign of the horror to come in her homeland. And maybe she's right: for zoosadism is one of those behaviours often considered a precursor to psychopathic violence; i.e., research indicates that madmen who can cheerfully punch a donkey in the face, are far more likely to punch their fellow man in the back of the head.

See: Fatima Bhutto, 'Imran Khan is only a player in the circus run by Pakistan's military', The Guardian, (24 July, 2018): click here to read online. 

Thanks to Afiya Zia for bringing the above article to my attention. 

Notes on A Glam-Punk Childhood

20th century boy (c. 1973)

I. 

1977 - the year of punk - may have been of crucial importance in shaping my tastes, attitudes, and ideas, but it certainly wasn't the beginning of my long love affair with pop culture. 

Thus, whilst the first album I ever bought may have been Never Mind the Bollocks, I'd been buying singles since 1971, when Benny Hill released Ernie (the Fastest Milkman in the West), an innuendo-laden comedy song that was the Christmas number one that year and which has remained a much-loved favourite with many of those who remember it, including former prime minister David Cameron.  

The second single I remember spending my pocket money on was Crazy Horses, by the Osmonds, which reached number two in the UK charts in the autumn of 1972 and proved that even clean-living Mormons can rock out. Looking back, it's clear that the song was ahead of its time with its concerns to do with the environment and fume-spewing motor vehicles smoking up the sky. But even back then, I hated cars and knew that - like my father - I never wanted to drive.

It was the following year however - the year of glam - that I really started buying singles on a regular basis; by Slade, by Sweet, and - of course - by Gary Glitter, whom I adored and had a large poster of on my bedroom wall. I spent many, many happy hours stomping around in my older sister's platform boots and singing along to the smash hits released by the above in that golden year of 1973, including: Cum on Feel the Noize, Blockbuster, Ballroom Blitz, Do You Wanna Touch Me, Hello Hello I'm Back Again, I'm the Leader of the Gang (I Am), and I Love You Love Me Love.           

What was it about these artists and their songs that appealed so powerfully to the ten year old child (and, if I'm honest, still appeal even now) ...?


II.

Obviously, the outrageous clothes, make-up and hairstyles caught my eye and I was seduced also by the camp nature of their performance - even if I had no idea then what campness was. But, mostly, it was the music: loud, fast, tribal and ridiculously catchy - making you want to pogo up and down years before Sid Vicious was credited with inventing the dance.

There was also something distinctly British and working class about glam. Perhaps it was the fact that it didn't take itself too seriously; that, like punk, it seemed to be more in the theatrical tradition of music hall and even pantomime, rather than serious rock with its roots in rhythm and blues. It was about dressing up and messing up and having a laugh - not perfecting one's skills as a musician or soulful songwriter.

As "Whispering" Bob Harris sneered after a performance of Jet Boy by the New York Dolls on the Old Grey Whistle Test in November 1973, it was mock rock - sexy, stylish, superficial, and shiny - not something that real music lovers and old hippies such as himself needed to take seriously (the Dolls, of course, formed the bridge between glam and punk - as the fact that they were briefly managed by Malcolm McLaren in 1975, prior to his involvement with the Sex Pistols, perfectly illustrates).


III.

Those cunts who now sneer with politico-moral correctness and a sense of their own cultural superiority at the music, the fashions, the TV, and pretty much every other aspect of life in the 1970s need to be told (or in some cases reminded) that it was more than alright - it was better. 

Or, at any rate, despite all the boredom, blackouts and bullshit of the time, people were happier and I'm pleased to have been born (and to have remained at heart) a 20th century boy.    

Reflections on Cat Cognition and Feline Intelligence

Black cat looking out of window 
Stephen Alexander (2018)

I.

I don't have a cat: but I like cats. And I particularly like the friendly black cat who comes to visit - even after the Little Greek accidently trod on his paw.

Sometimes he sits in the garden; sometimes he prefers to stretch out on the back porch, sharpening his claws on the doormat. But he also likes to nose around the house and rub himself against the furniture. This morning, he jumped on the windowsill and stood staring out of the window.

I don't know what caught his attention and I don't really know what he thinks of things - or me for that matter. But, clearly, he's exercising an intelligence of some kind as he familiarises himself with a strange environment and interacts with new people, learning how to exploit and manipulate both.  

II.

Apparently, the brain of the average domestic moggie is just about large enough in size for cats to qualify as big brained animals - though of course, this doesn't necessarily mean they are intelligent; for whilst a correlation has been shown between these things, correlation does not mean causation.

However, thanks to behavioural observation, I think we can take it as a given that cats are smart - they dream, they scheme, they solve problems and they play. And even when told that dogs have twice as many neurons as cats, I refuse to accept that mutts are twice as intelligent. For whilst dogs can be vicious, only cats are sophisticated enough to derive pleasure from cruelty. Give a dog a bone and it's perfectly happy; but a cat only really gets excited at the thought of live prey.       

Apparently, cats also have excellent memories. Indeed, one of the reasons that stray cats adapt so well to extremely demanding urban environments is because they are able to retain and recall information and learn from past experience. They have also memorized their hunting and survival skills - unlike dogs, that have become almost completely dependent upon their human masters.

Ultimately, it's because cats have retained their indifference, mistrust, and contempt of man that they have also kept their savage beauty and seductive mystery across the millennia. They live alongside us, but have never really been domesticated; they have, as anthrozoologist Dr John Bradshaw says, three out of four paws still firmly planted in the wild and can easily revert within only a few generations back to the independent way of life enjoyed by their ancestors 10,000 years ago.


III.

Finally - and perhaps most interestingly of all - it's clear from extensive research that dogs pereceive us as different (superior) beings. They don't behave around us as they behave around other dogs and they know they live in our world. 

But cats, however, seem to regard people merely as bigger, clumsier versions of themselves and have thus not bothered to adapt their social behaviour; they act towards us in a manner that is indistinguishable from how they would act towards others of their kind.

Essentially, for cats there is only one world - and its theirs.

See: John Bradshaw, Cat Sense, (Basic Books, 2013). 

Diversity: What Would Nietzsche Think?

Image: Scotty Hendricks (2018)  

bigthink.com

I.

The word diversity is frequently used today, particularly by those who regard it as a value and like to signal their politico-moral correctness even if that means denigrating or disprivileging their own people, culture and history.

In order to illustrate this latter point, one might refer to the recent case of students at the University of Manchester who painted over a mural of a poem by Rudyard Kipling and replaced it with a verse by the African-American poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou.

This was done in the name of anti-racism - for Kipling, a well-known British imperialist, was said to dehumanise people of colour - and in order to celebrate the diversity of a student body looking to reclaim history by - quite literally - whitewashing it.            

I don't here wish to discuss the merits (or otherwise) of either Kipling's or Maya Angelou's work; nor do I want to express my concerns about historical revisionism and literary censorship. But I would like to say something further about diversity and the idea of multiculturalism, from a post-Nietzschean perspective ...


II.

If confronted with a world in which everyone was retreating to their own safe space from which to assert an identity (on the basis, for example, of sex, gender, race or religion) whilst, at the same time, speaking about the benefits of ever-greater diversity within society and culture, I suspect that Nietzsche would feel himself compelled as a philosopher to argue that greatness belongs only to the individual or the people who find a way to stylise chaos and give birth to a dancing star - the latter being a sign of unity within diversity.

Nietzsche loves words like difference, plurality and multiplicity; he thinks of the will to power as composed of a large number of competing forces, flows, and desires. But - and this is important to understand - he doesn't affirm diversity as a good in itself nor as a goal to be aimed at.

On the contrary, Nietzsche insists that culture, for example, has to be unified; that the only alternative to such is a civilization based upon a barbarism of styles and tastes and incapable of ever producing art or sovereign individuals. Nietzsche opposes the systematic anarchy, the aggressive philistinism, and the Volkerchaos that characterise European modernity and are the symptoms of culture's extermination.

Thus, whilst he may have announced the death of God and thereby decentered and demoralised the world, he still believes in shared ethical bonds between people. His nihilism is not the same as the nihilism of those who devote themselves to free markets and money-making, or to the neo-Platonic fantasies of science and technology; those who lack the ability to act under the constraint of a single taste or - as Heidegger would say - to dwell poetically upon the earth.


III.

Deleuze is right to say that, for Nietzsche, history can be read as the process by which "reactive forces take possession of culture or divert its course in their favour". That the will to diversity can therefore be understood as part of an ongoing slave revolt in morals and the overcoding of active forces by the modern State - that coldest of all cold monsters that thrives at the expense of culture and sucks the life out of people in the name of human rights and globalism.

Nietzsche is aggressively opposed to all this and when faced with the ways in which societies become decodified and unregulated, makes no attempt at recodification. But, again, we must be careful here. For whilst Nietzsche makes no attempt to recodify along old lines or patch the holes ripped in the great social umbrella, he very much wants to bring together newly liberated forces onto what Deleuze terms a plane of consistency and regain mastery over the chaos that has been released.

Why? Because for Nietzsche culture is above all unity of style in all the expressions of a people and this requires harmonious manifoldness - not fake diversity built upon idiotic identity politics and an ugly jumble of all styles and peoples. Multiculturalism is not just a failed experiment, it's an absurd fallacy.

Of course Nietzsche's thinking has anti-democratic and illiberal implications - and he wasn't shy about saying so. But I would suggest we need to urgently think about these questions and not simply attempt to close down conversation by calling anyone who does so a fascist or a supporter of the alt-right. 


Notes

Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson, (The Athlone Press, 1992), p. 139.

D. H. Lawrence: Priest of Kink

Ooh, he was awful - but I like him!

In a famous letter written to Sallie Hopkin on Christmas Day, 1912, Lawrence insists that once you know what love can be, then - even if the skies have fallen - "there's no disappointment anymore, and no despair". He then announces that his future task as a writer will involve "sticking up for the love between man and woman".

And, in the years and books that followed, he did indeed posit heterosexual coition as central to his erotics and defend what he called in his late work phallic marriage, i.e., marriage founded upon complimentary gender opposition, the seasonal and sacred rhythm of each calendar year, and a penis that only ever ejaculates inside a vagina.  

However, despite his own sexual politics forever oscillating between the romantic and the reactionary, Lawrence's work also provides us with an explicit A-Z of perversions, paraphilias and fetishistic behaviours, obliging readers to think about subjects including adultery, anal sex, autogynephilia, cross-dressing, dendrophilia, female orgasm, floraphilia, gang rape, garment fetishism, homosexuality, lesbianism, masturbation, naked wrestling, objectum-sexuality, podophilia, pornography, psychosexual infantalism, sadomasochism, and zoophilia.       

One is almost tempted to suggest that Lawrence was, in fact, a priest of kink ...

See: The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 492-3. 

See also Jonathan Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence, (Oxford University Press, 1991). I am very much in agreement with Dollimore when he writes that there is a perverse dynamic at work within Lawrence's text and that he audaciously eroticises (and queers) Western metaphysics. Certainly, Lawrence is far more than a prophet of heterosexual experience conceived in a conventional manner and ultimately he deconstructs his own phallogocentrism; thus his continued importance and interest as a writer. 

The Broken Heart Knows No Country

A short guide to D. H. Lawrence country

by Bridget Pugh (Nottinghamshire 

Local History Council, 1972)

I. The View from Walker Street

In a letter to Rolf Gardiner written in December 1926, Lawrence provides a fairly detailed description of the East Midlands landscape in which he grew up; the so-called country of his heart - a phrase much loved by those who would forever tie Lawrence to Eastwood and fix his work within a literary tradition of English Romanticism.  

It is, for me - as for all those who prefer to think of Lawrence as a perverse European modernist, writing after Darwin, Nietzsche and Freud rather than Byron, Shelley and Keats - another of those deeply unfortunate expressions.

Like his self-description as a priest of love, I really wish he'd never said it. But, say it he did. And so let's examine this phrase and see if we can interepret it in a manner that doesn't serve a depressingly provincial purpose - as if the view from Walker Street was the only one that shaped Lawrence's perspective upon the world.

II. The Savage Pilgrimage

As is clear from much of his writing - particularly his letters - one of Lawrence's driving obsessions was to stage an angry engagement with England, whilst also making good his escape from the place of his birth in all its perceived dullness. 

His savage pilgrimage is usually said to begin after the War and refer to a period of voluntary exile. And whilst it's true and important to recall the fact that Lawrence left Britain at the earliest practical opportunity - only returning for brief visits, the last of which was in 1926 - I think we find this schizonomadic desire to flee from the suffocating familiarity of home from the start.

The fact is, Lawrence always hated Eastwood and couldn't wait to get away - first to Nottingham, then to London and to Cornwall, before drifting with Frieda around Europe, America and Australia. In 1913, he once confessed as much to his sister Ada, telling her that he should be glad if the town were one day blown off the face of the earth. 

We shouldn't forget that nostalgia is a type of disease - not a sign of health - and that if Lawrence occasionally displayed symptoms of homesickness he was essentially sick of home: 

"It always depresses me to come to my native district. Now I am turned forty, and have been more or less a wanderer for nearly twenty years, I feel more alien, perhaps, in my home place than anywhere else in the world. I can feel at ease in ... Rome or Paris or Munich or even London. But in Nottingham Road, [Eastwood], I feel at once a devouring nostalgia and an infinite repulsion."

That's the Lawrence I admire: refusing to belong to any community or region; a singular individual who is no longer their Bert - and probably never was.

And as for the heart to which memories of childhood landscapes are said to belong, well, like Lawrence, I would prefer for it to be broken rather than preserved in formaldehyde; for it's wonderfully liberating to abandon the past and to find new things to treasure, new people and places to love, within the dawn-kaleidoscopic loveliness of the crack.

See: 

D. H. Lawrence, letter to Rolf Gardiner, 3 Dec. 1926, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V. March 1924 - March 1927, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989).

D. H. Lawrence, [Return to Bestwood], Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 15. 

Punk bonus: Stiff Little Fingers: Gotta Gettaway (Rough Trade, 1979): I'm sure this is how the young Lawrence felt (it's certainly how I felt at 16): click here to play on YouTube.

In Memory of Hypatia

Rachel Weisz as Hypatia in the 2009 film  

Agora (dir. Alejandro Amenábar)

I. Hypatia: The Spirit of Plato and the Body of Aphrodite

Whether we choose to think of her romantically as the last of the Hellenes, or as the first early-medieval woman to be murdered for practising the pagan arts of science, mathematics, and philosophy (things regarded as suspiciously close to heresy and to witchcraft within the Christian imagination), Hypatia was an astonishing figure; virtuous, tolerant, and highly intelligent. Whilst no ancient depictions of her have survived, she was also said by Damascius to be exceedingly beautiful and fair of form.


II. Hypatia: From Philosophical Martyr to Feminist Icon 

Born in 4th century Alexandria, Hypatia was a prominent Neoplatonist and renowned teacher, who, in her later life, advised the Roman prefect Orestes, who was then feuding with the anti-Semitic Christian bishop of Alexandria, Cyril.

This would prove to be fatal: for - as we shall discuss in more detail below - Hypatia was accused by Cyril's supporters of deliberately sowing discord and preventing any reconciliation between the latter and Orestes. In March 415, she was murdered by a brotherhood of fanatic monks known as the parabalani, under Cyril's command.

The particularly brutal nature of her death - Hypatia was flayed alive by the monks who scraped the flesh from her bones using razor sharp oyster shells - caused shock waves throughout Byzantium and she was honoured, like Socrates, as a martyr by her fellow philosophers who became increasingly dismayed by the moral fanaticism that characterised early Christianity.

Many centuries later, Hypatia was celebrated as an embodiment of reason and freedom of thought; Voltaire declaring her to be a universal genius. In the 20th century, she was also regarded as a feminist icon; Judy Chicago giving her a prominent place at the triangular table in her famous installation The Dinner Party (1974-79).

And still, today, in the 21st century, Hypatia's life continues to fascinate many scholars, writers, and artists. Most recently, for example, we were treated to the 2009 film, Agora, directed by Alejandro Amenábar and starring Rachel Weisz. Despite its numerous historical inaccuracies, the film should be commended for identifying religious fundamentalism as the great curse or blemish upon mankind, then as now.     


III. Hypatia Versus the Crucified

When Cyril succeeded his uncle, Theophilus, as the bishop of Alexandria, it was obvious there was trouble ahead for Hypatia. For whilst Theophilus was strongly opposed to Neoplatonism, he was prepared to tolerate Hypatia, whom he admired. But not so Cyril - a man happy to persecute his enemies and put his prejudices into practice. In 414, for example, he closed all the synagogues in Alexandria and confiscated all property belonging to the Jews before expelling them from the city.

This action appalled Orestes and he sent a scathing report to the emperor. The conflict between these two men quickly escalated and the parabalani made an attempt on the life of the Roman prefect who, as noted, frequently consulted Hypatia for advice - much to Cyril's irritation. Thus, despite her universal popularity, Cyril set out to discredit Hypatia and undermine her reputation; he alleged, for example, that she had engaged in occultism and beguiled people through her Satanic wiles.       

Things came to a bloody head when, during the Christian period of Lent, the parabalani attacked Hypatia's carriage as she was travelling home. She was dragged into a nearby church, stripped, tortured, and killed. Not only was she flayed alive, as previously mentioned, but her body was dismembered and the limbs burnt.

So much, then, for the religion of Love ... Hypatia's vain hope that Neoplatonism and Christianity might peacefully coexist and cooperate was now seen as an impossibility by philosophers, who now regarded the followers of Jesus with contempt and proudly emphasised the noble Greek origins of their ideas.

As Nietzsche would say, the battle lines were drawn: Dionysus versus the Crucified ...