Moments of Wonder

Illustration of (Diane Morgan as) Philomena Cunk 

by Jack Hughes for Gallery 1988

http://jackmrhughes.tumblr.com/ 

Wonder, says Socrates, is the mark of a true philosopher. 

In fact, philosophy has no other origin but this dizzying sense of astonishment before the universe and the manifold things that compose it. Thus, in attempting to understand the latter, one must expect one's head to spin; for objects, although alluring, are ultimately alien and perplexing in nature, rather than familiar and reassuring.   

Sadly, this disconcerting, vertigo-inducing sense of wonder is, according to Ian Bogost, "all but eviscerated in modern thought". Some people speak of scientific wonder but this is founded upon a form of logic that merely furthers the will to knowledge and human conceit.  

However, there remains at least one woman sick with wonder in a way that invites a detachment from ordinary logics; a woman who is permanently puzzled and beautifully bemused by the world around her - Philomena Cunk - and any torpedophiles who have not yet watched her brilliant (and hilarious)  Moments of Wonder are encouraged to do so ... (begin by clicking here).

Notes

Diane Morgan is an actress, comedian and writer best known for playing Philomena Cunk: dianemorgan.co.uk

Jack Hughes is a London-based, freelance illustrator: jack-hughes.com

       

Can't We Talk About This?

John Keane, The Death of Theo Van Gogh (2007)

www.johnkeaneart.com

In November 2004, Dutch filmmaker and provocateur Theo Van Gogh was brutally slaughtered on an Amsterdam street for his part in the making of a short film entitled Submission; a film which, primarily, examined the relationship that exists between Muslims and their God and asks how necessary reform of Islam might be possible when Allah demands absolute obedience to his laws, with no room for doubt or critical dissent amongst his worshipers.   

Having shot his victim multiple times, Van Gogh's devout assailant then cut his throat and attempted to decapitate him in front of horrified witnesses, before finally plunging the knife deep into the dead man's chest. Apparently, among the last words spoken by Van Gogh to his killer were: Can't we talk about this?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Van Gogh's friend and collaborator on Submission - writes: 

"It was so Dutch, so sweet and innocent. Theo must have thought there was some kind of misunderstanding that could be worked out. He couldn't see that his killer was caught in a wholly different worldview. Nothing Theo could have said to him would have made any difference."

- Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel, (Pocket Books, 2008), p. 321   

I recount this deeply depressing incident by way of a response to a presentation recently given by John Holroyd on the topic of Islam.

Holroyd, a Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens hating crypto-theologian, teaches philosophy and religious studies at a London college and is a man for whom these subjects are perfectly compatible, if not, indeed, one and the same thing. His paper, in essence, called for still greater dialogue between the West and the militant forces of Islamic extremism, thereby strangely echoing Van Gogh's naivety in the face of those who hate us, hate all that we love and hold dear, and mean to do us mortal harm.

Now, whilst I concede that it might be good to talk - and that loving one's enemies might be the Christian thing to do - sometimes, unfortunately, there's really nothing further to discuss and inasmuch as this loving of enemies can lead to a reluctance to actively combat the forces of murderous and reactionary violence, then Jesus's teaching might be said to result in immorality and risk the triumph of evil.   

Thus, rather than listen to Jesus, I'd sooner heed Michel Foucault who argued that fascism - whether it be political or religious in nature and whether found in the hearts and minds of others or, indeed, in our own acts and pleasures - must be vigorously resisted as an essential aspect of living an ethical life.

  

Black Noise (On the Poetry of Francis Ponge)

Kazimir Malevich, Black Square (1915) 

Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

I'm not sure I fully understand what physicists and audio engineers mean by the term black noise - I think it refers to a noise whose frequency is located close to zero (or what is commonly known as silence) on a spectrum of sound - but I like how philosopher Graham Harman uses the same term within his work to describe the background hum of mysteriously muffled objects hovering at the fringes of human intelligibility.  

Perhaps it's this gentle and virtually-inaudible sound of things that the French prose-poet Francis Ponge was able to attune his ear to ...

Known as the poet of things, Ponge explored the fascinating universe of actual entities - from pebbles to cigarettes, and flowers to bars of soap - in the (admittedly anthropocentric) belief that all objects, whilst remaining fundamentally withdrawn, nevertheless yearn to express themselves and await the coming of a speaking-subject who might hear them and find some way to articulate their near-silence, thereby revealing something of their hidden depths and weird, inhuman otherness.

What I love about Ponge - apart from his object-oriented ontology - is the fact that he avoided all the tired conventions of poetry; such as empty symbolism and allegory, self-indulgent lyricism, or obvious appeals to emotion. He declared himself an enemy of both the drabness of the dictionary and the transcendent posturing of poetry and sought to combine description and definition with the power and purity of elementary language.

His principle aim, therefore, was to defeat the Stereotype and to do so with a form of speculative realism and something extremely rare amongst artists - intellectual integrity.  

Notes

Graham Harman, Guerrilla Metaphysics, (Open Court Publishing Company, 2005).

Francis Ponge, Le parti pris des choses (1942). This collection of 32 short to medium length prose poems is available in several English translations, including, most notably, those by Lee Fahnestock, Robert Bly, and Beth Archer Brombert. 

D. H. Lawrence's Becoming-Bat

Lawrence doesn't like bats, but this doesn't stop him writing about them in his poetry in a manner of real philosophical interest. For rather than anticipate Thomas Nagel's question and attempt to say what it's like to be a bat, Lawrence allows a proto-Derridean play of différance to infuse his writing, constructing a dummy creature with a mask-like face which parodies and subverts the very notion of an essential batness.

In the short poem, 'Bat', for example, Lawrence first confuses them for swallows flying late in the Italian twilight and sewing the shadows together. But then he realises his mistake:

Swallows?

Dark air-life looping
Yet missing the pure loop ...
A twitch, a twitter, an elastic shudder in the flight 
And serrated wings against the sky,
Like a glove, a black glove thrown up at the light,
And falling back.

Never swallows!
Bats!The swallows are gone.

This realisation that he's watching bats and not birds flitting about the Ponte Vecchio and flying overhead, gives Lawrence an uneasy creeping in his scalp. He thinks of them as little clots of darkness with wings like bits of umbrella:

Creatures that hang themselves up like an old rag, to sleep;
And disgustingly upside down.
Hanging upside down like rows of disgusting old rags
And grinning in their sleep.
Bats!

They may very well be symbols of happiness and good fortune in China, but not so for this former resident of Eastwood.

In the much longer and more amusing poem 'Man and Bat', Lawrence develops his chiroptophobia whilst again doing something of philosophical and literary import. The impure frenzy with which a bat flies round and round his room in mad circles of delirium disgusts and disconcerts him, but it also allows Lawrence to demonstrate not merely how experience might be transfigured into art and given poetic expression, but how writing is inseparable from a process of becoming.

Lawrence, that is to say, establishes what Deleuze terms a zone of proximity with the bat, just as he does elsewhere with various other birds, beasts and flowers. He becomes-bat as the bat in turn becomes-rag or old umbrella. This is not something which is easy to accomplish. But to affect a becoming of this kind is something which all great writers must achieve. Indeed, this is the very mark of literary greatness.  


Notes

For an excellent reading of Lawrence's poetry in terms of différance and intertextuality, see Amit Chaudhuri's study, D H. Lawrence and 'Difference', (Oxford University Press, 2003). I am grateful to Chaudhuri for showing how - contrary to the conventional view - Lawrence is not a simple-minded nature lover concerned with understanding the beauty and essence of real animals, but, rather, in artificially constructing creatures in and on his own terms.

'Bat' and 'Man and Bat' may be found in Volume I of the Cambridge Edition of Lawrence's poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (CUP, 2013), pp. 294-300.  

Baewatch

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKpo0v0wIbE

There invariably comes a point in the development of slang wherein it crosses the threshold that divides urban cool from the mainstream. When suddenly, terms used between a small number of linguistically creative and innovative hipsters are appropriated by unimaginative individuals who can only imitate and follow trends rather than set them - including those dullards in the corporate media and commercial world who try so desperately to be down with it. By way of an example of this, we might consider the brief evolutionary history of the term bae.     

As a term of endearment, bae is simply an abbreviated form of babe or baby and not - as some commentators rather ridiculously suggest - an acronym for before anyone else. It seems to have originated amongst young English speakers in the African-American community sometime in the middle of the last decade. From there, it quickly spread via social media and popular music into general urban usage before, finally, being seized upon by the big brands such as Pizza Hut and Burger King. Bae also found itself nominated in 2014 by the OED as one of the so-called words of the year.

If this marks a sign of its success, so too does it pretty much spell the end of the line for bae; it begins to bleach, as linguists say. In other words, whilst it persists as a term, it is increasingly drained of its colour and its vibrancy is appreciably diminished thanks to widespread usage as a marketing device and the unasked for granting of legitimacy.   

Still, we needn't spend too long mourning the death of bae; there'll always be new slang terms as the young, marginalised and stylish develop their own ways of speaking so as to confuse and confound old ears. 

Anyone Can Be Van Gogh With an iPhone

Sunfuckingflower (2015) by Stephen Alexander

Bored, I decided to take a picture of the one cheerful thing in the room: a sunflower. Still bored, even after taking the picture and looking at it for a second or two and wondering at its heart of darkness, I sent it to a friend who is a lover of all things floral.

She replied: "I suppose this proves anyone can be Van Gogh if they have an iPhone."

This struck me as a rather curious remark. One sensed a degree of hostility beneath the irony, although whether this was for me as an amateur snapper or for the specific tool used to capture and send the image, I'm not entirely certain. The remark did, however, remind me of something that D. H. Lawrence once wrote:

"When Van Gogh paints sunflowers, he reveals, or achieves, the vivid relation between himself, as a man, and the sunflower, as sunflower, at that quick moment of time. His painting does not represent the sunflower itself. We shall never know what the sunflower itself is. And the camera will visualise the sunflower far more perfectly than Van Gogh can."

Is this what my friend was, in her own rather mocking manner, trying to hint at? Was she, like Lawrence, seeking to defend the fourth dimensional aspect of an artwork; i.e. that magical quality which remains incommensurable with the painter, the object, or the technology involved in creating a visual image?

Perhaps. Otherwise, she's just being sarky ...!


See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Morality and the Novel', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 171. 

Note: No ears were mutilated in the production of the above image.

 

 

Remarks on Fifty Shades of Grey

This weekend saw the release of the cinematic adaptation of the best-selling novel by E. L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey. 

The book - once described by Salmon Rushdie as the most badly written ever published - traces out the relationship between a 21-year old college student and virgin, Anastasia Steele, and her handsome, slightly older lover, Christian Grey. 

He is an extremely wealthy and successful entrepreneur who knows precisely what he likes in the bedroom and in the boardroom (power and control) and who demands much the same thing from the women in his life as he does from his employees; i.e. total subordination. In Christian Grey's world, everyone is expected to lick his arse and have theirs spanked.

Although she finds Grey intimidating, Ana also finds him irresistible and before long she's happily riding in his helicopter and letting him have his wicked way with her; he might not be a hearts and flowers kind of guy, but he sure knows how to beat, bully and abuse a girl.         

The work thus not surprisingly features explicit scenes of bondage, discipline, and sado-masochism, as well as more conventional - though no less problematic - forms of romantic cliché and is a prime example of a genre known somewhat sneeringly by critics as mummy porn. Despite being atrociously written and promoting a highly suspect form of sexual politics, the work has topped best-seller lists here and in the US, sold over 100 million copies worldwide and been translated into more than fifty languages.

As for the film, directed by Sam Taylor Johnson of all people and starring Dakota Johnson (as Anastasia) and Jamie Dornan (as Christian Grey), it too has provoked a huge amount of media attention, faced significant opposition, and received mostly negative reviews from the critics. But it too has raked in millions of dollars and set opening day records at the box office.

What, then, is there to say at last? Is Fifty Shades simply a contemporary version of Lady Chatterley's Lover; a novel perfectly suited to our pornified and semi-literate culture? 

It's certainly possible that we get the fiction and the authors we deserve. But it's rather depressing to realise this and to accept our own complicity and shameful submission as readers; for multiple shades of grey merge finally into one unpleasant shade of brown ...  

  

Intimacy Issues

After a recent presentation at the 6/20 Club in which I discussed the seductive and disturbing character of Kawabata's sleeping beauties, I was informed by a woman who believes passionately in love, humanity, and her rights as a sexual subject, that my interest in object-oriented ontology and objectum sexuality betrays the fact that I have underlying intimacy issues. 

This has amused me all week: for the fact is that rather than manifesting an all-too-familiar psychological disorder, I'm advancing a far more radical philosophical objection to the very concepts of interiority, depth, and essential being, of which intimacy is but one aspect.

In brief, Vivienne, I don't think we have an authentic inner self in need of discovery, expression, or liberation; I don't think we have a soul to be saved, a sex to be proud of, or a psyche that is mysteriously unconscious and revealed only in dreams and secret desires in need of analytic interpretation by a therapist. 

To put this in even briefer Nietzschean terms, I remain, madam, superficial out of profundity ...

 

Ichthyophilia

Helena Bonham Carter with her fishy Valentine

 Photo copyright Camera Press/John Swannell/Fish Love 

English actress Helena Bonham Carter has apparently exchanged her fish phobia for something of a fish fetish, as evidenced by the above photo in which she poses nakedly embracing a big-eyed tuna. 

This is such a rare and unusual form of love that the only other celebrity I can think of rumoured to enjoy romancing - rather than merely consuming - denizens of the deep is Troy McClure whom readers may remember from such wildlife films as Earwigs - Eew! and Man Vs Nature: The Road to Victory.

Ms Bonham Carter was persuaded to strip and lend her support to a campaign by the Blue Marine Foundation that calls for the establishment of ocean reserves, in order to protect endangered species of fish and other marine life, by her friend and fellow thespian Greta Scacchi; someone who herself has recently been photographed naked with a large cod [click here].

It's a good thing, I think, to care for fish (and not only so that we might then catch them and eat them). And it's a good thing also to challenge the prejudice and stupidity surrounding human-nonhuman sexual relationships - so well done to all parties involved in the fish love project. 

For more information on the BMF campaign please visit: www.bluemarinefoundation.com  

And for many more pictures of nude celebrities with fish and other sea creatures - including stunning images by Rankin of Lily Loveless with an octopus and Lizzy Jagger astride a yellow-fin tuna - visit: www.fishlove.co.uk

 

Birthday Musings of an Aquarian

It is very easy to sneer at astrology, but perhaps the ancient heavens of the zodiac continue to offer us what D. H. Lawrence describes as a truly imaginative experience and the entry into another world of being; one that is vital and meaningful, even if it is a world of which our astronomers and physicists know nothing. Perhaps.

At any rate, without quite feeling the ecstatic sense of joy that Lawrence experiences when released into this other world of mytho-cosmic splendour, I have always been pleased that I was born under the sign of Aquarius like many of the figures I have at one time or other loved and admired (from Mozart to Malcolm McLaren).

However, although feeling blessed to be a child of the 11th House, I have never been very happy that Aquarius is symbolized by a water-bearer; certainly not when other signs of the zodiac have marvellous starry beasts to call upon and find totemic satisfaction in. Who wants someone with a jug, when there are lions, bulls, goats and even crabs on offer?

It doesn't even help to discover - as I have only recently discovered - that this someone with a jug happens to be the iconic gay figure of Ganymede; i.e. a beautiful boy who, when all's said and done, is but an eternal servant and sexual plaything of the gods, offering not only libation but soft lips, nimble fingers, and strong thighs.

Now, whilst I've no moral objection to the Greek social practice of paiderastía, I don't like the idea of any mortal down on their knees before the divine - particularly when they have been kidnapped, raped and forced into slavery.  

  

D. H. Lawrence's Dendrophilia

DHL sitting under an olive tree in Italy (1926)

Lawrence is very fond of trees and there are many trees in his writings. In fact, at times, he feels there are too many trees crowding round and staring at him, interfering with his attempts to think about subjects other than trees (such as human babies and the complicated story of their unconscious life). 

The trees, he says, seem so much bigger and stronger in life than we are; so overwhelming in their silence and rather sinister arboreal presences. Lawrence writes, for example, of the magnificent cruelty or barbarous nature of the huge fir trees that grow in the Black Forest:

"It almost seems I can hear the slow, powerful sap drumming in their trunks. Great full-bodies trees, with strange tree-blood in them, soundlessly drumming."

He continues:

"Suppose you want to look a tree in the face? You can't. It hasn't got a face. You look at the strong body of a trunk; you look above you into the matted body-hair of twigs and boughs; you see the soft green tips. But there are no eyes to look into, you can't meet its gaze."

Thus it's pointless staring at a tree in an attempt to know it. All you can do is "sit among the roots and nestle against its strong trunk" in a form of insouciant tree worship and fantasise about becoming-tree, full of root-lust but completely mindless. 

If, at one time, he were frightened of the trees and felt them to be primeval enemies, now Lawrence says they are his "only shelter and strength" and that he is happy to lose himself amongst them and to be with them "in their silent, intent passion and great lust", feeding his soul with their non-human life and indomitable energy. He concludes this rather beautiful (and somewhat erotic) meditation on trees by saying:

"One of the few places that my soul will haunt, when I am dead, will be this. Among the trees here near Ebersteinburg ... I can't leave these trees. They have taken some of my soul."

But we should note, however, that Lawrence's trees - here, and most certainly in his poetry - are not simply natural phenomena; they are also ornamental figures of Gothic resistance forming part of an allegorical landscape that, as Amit Chaudhuri points out, "brings together the natural and the unnatural". 

Ultimately, Lawrence's thinking on trees (and flowers) owes more to Ruskin than to Wordsworth ...

Notes:

The quotations from Lawrence are from Chapter IV of Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004). pp. 85-88.

The quote from Amit Chaudhuri is from D. H. Lawrence and 'Difference', (Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 208.

Just Saying Something on Subjects and Objects

 

Cambridge Professor of Philosophy, Rae Langton, makes it very clear why she values people over objects. For whilst conceding that the former are a part of the phenomenal world of things, she insists that human beings (as subjects) have a uniquely rich inner life and a moral-rational capacity to make choices. To be an object, she writes, is to be something which isn't free; something that is stabilized and whose movements are all-too-predictable. She continues: 

"It is to be something incapable of the activities of knowledge, communication, love, respect. It is to be something that is merely a sensory appearance, something whose qualities are exhausted by how it can look, feel, sound, and taste to a perceiver. It is to be merely a body, something solid and extended in space. It is to be a tool, something whose value is merely instrumental, something which is a potential possession."

Obviously, as an object-oriented philosopher, I don't agree with this. For me, it's an anthropocentric conceit to believe that we belong to a superior ontological order to all other entities; be they organic or inorganic, natural or artificial, real or virtual objects. For me, our subjectivity is really just a peculiar way of being an object - much as life is simply a rare and unusual way of being dead (to paraphrase Nietzsche if I may). 

The question, I suppose, is why do so many thinkers like Rae Langton continue with this conceit? That is to ask, why do they continue to think of the object with such contempt and dogmatically privilege the position of the human subject?

Baudrillard, who has a far more interesting and philosophically provocative view of the object, provides us with a convincing explanation. Those who continue to support the fiction of an autonomous subject do so because it has "an economy and a history which is quite reassuring; it is the equilibrium between a will and a world ... the balancing principle of the universe". 

If we are more than mere objects, then we are not delivered up helplessly to a monstrous and chaotic universe of chance. Nor are we simply the unfortunate victims of surrounding forms or fascinating and fateful events that exist beyond our control.

In other words, to believe in ourselves as free-wheeling and free-willing subjects makes us feel safe and secure, as well as significant. That's comforting, but it's a lie. Perhaps a necessary lie that allows us to live and which it would be nihilistic to expose as such, but a lie nonetheless.

I'm just saying ...

Notes

Lines quoted from Rae Langton and Jean Baudrillard can be found in:

Rae Langton, Sexual Solipsism, (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 329. 

Jean Baudrillard, Fatal Strategies, trans. Philip Beitchman and W. G. J. Niesluchowski, (Pluto Press, 1999), p. 112.

Sleep and Dreams

D. H. Lawrence says some very amusing things about sleep and dreams in his brilliantly crackpot work of 1922, Fantasia of the Unconscious, which - following another sleepless night - I thought it might be interesting to re-examine here.

For Lawrence, sleep is a phenomenon that relates both to his cosmology and his thanatology; the moon being not only the centre of our individuality and the pole that governs nighttime activities, but a meeting place for cold, dead, angry souls. Each time we lie down to sleep, says Lawrence, we constitute within ourselves a body of death and this body of death is laid in line by the activities of the earth's magnetism or gravitation - what he terms the circuit of the earth's centrality: "It is this circuit which is busy in all our tissue removing or arranging the dead body of our past day."

In other words, for Lawrence, there is a kind of cleansing and terrestrial current moving its way through our nerves and our blood as we sleep; "sweeping away the ash of our days' spent consciousness towards one form or other of excretion". This earth-current, however, whilst an active force, is not strictly speaking a vital one; rather it is death busy in the service of life and which, as it sweeps, stimulates in the primary centres of consciousness "vibrations which flash images upon the mind". 

Somewhat surprisingly, these dream-images should not be a matter of any great concern to us. Indeed, Lawrence views them as purely arbitrary; "as disconnected and as unmeaning as the pieces of paper which the street-cleaners sweep into a bin fro the city gutters at night". They are not prophetic of the future, even if pregnant with the past. Dreams are merely "heterogeneous odds and ends of images swept together accidentally by the besom of the night-current, and it is beneath our dignity to attach any real importance to them". Lawrence continues:

"It is always beneath our dignity to go degrading the integrity of the individual soul by cringing and scraping among the rag-tag of accident  and of the inferior, mechanic coincidence and automatic event. Only those events are significant which derive from or apply to the soul in its full integrity. To go kow-towing before the facts of change, as ... fortune-readers and fatalists do, is merely a perverting of the soul's proud integral priority, a rearing up of idiotic idols and fetishes."

Having said that, Lawrence then concedes that there are in fact some dreams that matter. But this is only when something threatens us from the material world of death: "When anything threatens us from the world of death, then a dream becomes so vivid that it arouses the actual soul. And when a dream is so intense that it arouses the soul - then we must attend to it."

The knack is to distinguish these death-dreams that stimulate and haunt the soul, from the purely mechanical images that often result from some temporary material obstruction in the physical body; perhaps because we have eaten cheese before bedtime, or too many pancakes. 

Finally, Lawrence ends his short meditation on sleep and dreams with a warning against staying up late at night and not rising early enough in the mornings; the twin dangers that threaten us today, for we have, we moderns, "made the mistake of turning life inside out: of dragging the day-self into night, and spreading the night-self over into the day." This is a self-destructive form of evil; an impoverishment of the blood. Unless it's an afternoon nap - Lawrence speaks positively about a quick snooze after lunch; for this is just a necessary readjustment in the blood's chemical constitution and vibration.

But the long hours of morning sleep are very harmful and result in inertia and automatism; we get up feeling shattered before we have even done anything. Thus it is that:

"Every man and woman should be forced out of bed soon after the sun has risen: particularly the nervous ones. And forced into physical activity. Soon after dawn the vast majority of people should be hard at work. If not, they will soon be nervously diseased."

This may or may not be true. Either way, it's disappointing to observe how Lawrence ultimately uses his madly imaginative metaphysics to simply justify a conventional work ethic.      

See: D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (CUP, 2004).  

In an Age of Courtship Disorder

Kurt Freund (1914-1996)

Courtship disorder is a theory first put forward in the 1980s by Kurt Freund; a sexologist who, until then, was best known for his pioneering work in the field of phallometry or PPG.

According to the theory, certain paraphilias are best understood when viewed as related forms of aberrant courtship behaviour in human males. In other words, they should not be examined independently of one another as conditions in their own right, but rather as symptomatic of a single underlying syndrome. These paraphilias are voyeurism, exhibitionism, frotteurism, and biastophilia (or what Freund terms preferential rape) and they can be seen as anomalous expressions of the following species-typical courtship phases: 

(i) looking to find someone to love and making an initial appraisal of their suitability as a partner 

(ii) attempting to catch the eye of the one you fancy via pre-tactile interaction (smiling, flirting, etc.)    

(iii) becoming physically intimate (kissing, cuddling, petting, etc.) 

(iv) engaging, finally, in full sexual intercourse. 

Now, whether perverts with a penchant for the above paraphilias lack the skills to participate in what is often a long and sophisticated game of seduction played between would-be lovers - or simply lack the patience - I don't know.

It might even be that they regard conventional courtship rituals as a form of dishonesty and deceit and therefore see their own behaviour as an attempt to openly bypass social hypocrisy; cutting to the chase by, ironically, cutting out the chase. Again, I don't know.

However, it should be pointed out that their activities are not merely forms of impatience and anti-social behaviour, but also illicit and lacking in any consideration of those whom they perv upon non-consensually and - in the case of the paraphilic rapist - violently.

Having said that, it might be argued that within our pornified culture of Tinder, twerking, and Chatroulette, courtship disorder is now the new norm ... 

Auschwitz and the Question of Evil

Auschwitz by Tana Schubert (2014)

tana-jo.deviantart.com 

This week marked the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, allowing commentators in the news media to put on their most solemn faces, mouth a series of clichés and broadcast all-too-familiar images, thereby constructing a lazy moral narrative around a place and an event that demands and deserves far more than sanctimonious inanity. 

For a start, we need to face up to the fact that, as Baudrillard points out, the Nazi genocide was not the extermination of a people by evil, but, rather, the attempted extermination of evil by a people acting in the name of Love; the murderous outcome of idealism and an insanely logical order.  

Secondly, we must reconsider the piles of rotting corpses and accept that they are, technically speaking from a camp commandant's perspective, besides the point and profoundly problematic. For the final solution essentially aimed not at the monstrous production of dead bodies; rather, it was an attempt to systematically process death and transform wretched human flesh into bars of glistening, pure white soap. As Nick Land writes:

"We simplify out of anxiety when we conflate the mounds of emaciated bodies strewn about the camps at the point of their liberation - the bodies of those annihilated by epidemics during the collapse of the extermination system - with the reduced ash and shadows of those erased by the system in its smooth functioning. The uneliminated corpse is not a submissive element within this or any other 'final solution', but an impersonal resistance to it, a token of primordial community."

In other words, it is only because our bodies are weak and prone to disease - only because our flesh is mortal and life is fundamentally immoral - that fascism of whatever variety can never triumph: Evil makes free.

In Memory of Egon and Wally

 Egon Schiele, Portrait of Wally (1912)

 © Leopold Museum, Vienna

One of the most heartless lines ever written was written by the painter Egon Schiele in a note to a friend  in February 1915: 'I intend to get married advantageously. Not to Wally.'

And so it was that on June 17th of that year, despite opposition from her family, Schiele wed the socially superior and more acceptable figure of Edith Harms, rather than his young model, muse, and girlfriend, Wally, whom he had met in Vienna in 1911 when she was just seventeen, and who had inspired some of his most beautiful and erotically striking pictures. 

Apparently, Schiele was hoping to retain Wally as a mistress after his marriage to Edith - suggesting, for example, that they might go on holiday together once a year - but she was having none of this and, having been cruelly informed of his plan to walk down the aisle with another woman, she immediately abandoned him and decided to start her life anew, training as a nurse. Sadly, they never saw one another again; she dying of scarlet fever on Christmas day, 1917, and he succumbing to a flu pandemic the following year.

Walburga ('Wally') Neuzil was born in August 1894, in the small town of Tattendorf. She was the daughter of a labourer and a school teacher. After the family moved to the Austrian capital following the premature death of her mother, Wally became a model for Schiele's mentor, Gustav Klimt, before becoming fatefully involved with the younger artist, to whom she was clearly devoted. 

Thus when, for example, Schiele was thrown in jail in April 1912, for seducing a girl below the age of consent (a charge that was eventually thrown out of court - although he was found guilty of producing and exhibiting obscene works likely to corrupt minors), Wally stuck by him. Not only did she regularly visit her lover in prison, but she supplied him with painting materials and fresh fruit (Schiele noted in his diary that an orange, given to him by Wally, provided his only happiness during his 24 days in custody awaiting trial).  

 

Such loyalty makes me very fond of Wally. On the other hand, however, I'm rather disappointed in Schiele; who would have thought he'd have been such a little shit worried about marrying to his own advantage and content to social climb in this manner?

But then, as Nietzsche points out, there's nobody more corrupt and more conventional at heart than an artist!

Anja Niemi: Photography Degree Zero

 

 'The Terrace', Darlene and Me, by Anja Niemi (2014)

Norwegian photographer, model and stylist, Anja Niemi, has a new exhibit of work at The Little Black Gallery, here in London, entitled Darlene and Me and this is simply a short post to encourage torpedophiles to visit if they have the opportunity to do so as she's a talent greatly deserving of attention. 

Her flawless compositions leave one breathless, not only because of their beauty, their coldness, and their cruelty, but due to their vacuum packed, entirely self-contained character; what we might call their lack of atmosphere. 

In other words, Ms Niemi has a genius for creating a unique photographic space about herself (in both senses of the phrase); one that is anonymous, alien and uninviting. Lovely scenes to look at, but not to step into or dream of inhabiting. (Besides, the last thing anyone in her pictures is looking for is a little company.)

There is, somewhat regrettably, a narrative tacked onto each series of photos, including this one; Darlene is an unsuccessful salesgirl and beauty counselor ... Darlene is carrying around a case full of unsold lipsticks and make-up samples ... Darlene is living in a rented house in sixties California ...  Blah, blah, blah.

None of this matters and, thankfully, the images don't merely seek to communicate an all-too-human story, or invite a banal interpretation. For this is photography degree zero; an ironic and indifferent exercise in style that is neither defined by nor confined within a conventional social or ethical context of meaning.  

Note: Darlene and Me is exhibited at The Little Black Gallery, 13A, Park Walk, London, SW10 0AJ until March 10th, 2015. Admission free. Opening hours: Tuesday and Thursday 11am - 1pm and 2 - 6pm. Saturday 11am - 4pm, or by appointment. 

Eroticism in Man and Bed Bug

A pair of bed bugs sharing affections

Sexual conflict is not uncommon within the animal kingdom; male and female organisms often having violently antagonistic reproductive strategies, particularly when it comes to the mode and frequency of fucking. This has resulted in the evolution of weaponized genitalia, toxic sperm, forced copulation, and a particularly unpleasant practice known as traumatic insemination.  

Also known as hypodermic insemination, this potentially fatal mating practice is one favoured by some species of invertebrates, including the common bed bug. The unfortunate female insect is penetrated through her protective exoskeleton by the sharpened penis of the male who then injects his sperm through the gash directly into her abdominal cavity. 

Although this might result in a successful fertilization of her eggs, the procedure is, as might be imagined, detrimental to the well being of the female. For not only does it leave an open wound which is susceptible to bleeding and infection, but the ejaculation of fluids into the hemocoel can trigger a serious immune reaction.

Why bed bugs have evolved to reproduce in this manner is uncertain. It has been suggested that traumatic insemination may have arisen as an adaptation amongst males looking to circumvent female resistance and eliminate the need for time-consuming courtship rituals; or that it evolved as a means to deposit sperm as close as possible to the ovaries.    

Whatever the cause of this practice, the result, ultimately, is a significantly increased mortality rate amongst female bed bugs. And, eventually, this results in the extinction of entire colonies. 

Not that male members of the genus Afrocimex seem unduly worried about this. Indeed, if there are no females to fuck, then they resort to same sex penetration; the injected seminal fluid migrating to the testes of the feminized male where it is absorbed and thus, if nothing else, giving them a nutrient-rich meal for their pains. 

And the point of this post ...?

Well, it's always fun to show how God moves in mysteriously cruel ways. Further, it's important to remember the violent and malevolent truth of sex; that it's never really good, clean, healthy fun, no matter what doe-eyed lovers with their scented candles may care to believe. Ultimately, love is war by other means.

As for my friend who is currently pestering her boyfriend to have genital beads inserted along the shaft of his penis so that his cock might better resemble her favourite vibrating dildo, I say: Be careful what you wish for ...

Eroticism in Man and Slug

 Two banana slugs sharing affections and looking to exchange sperm

For Nietzsche, eroticism is a physical rejoicing of the body in its own strength and vitality; an exhibition of its beauty and perverse strangeness. "In animals", he writes, "this produces new weapons, pigments, colours, and forms; above all new movements, new rhythms, new love calls and seductions. It is no different in man."

Eroticism, then, regardless of the species, might be thought of as an organic function of the will to power. Those who subscribe to the anthropocentric conceit that whilst sexual activity is common to birds, beasts and flowers, only man has had the wit to transform love into a fatal strategy and an art form, are therefore profoundly mistaken.

In fact, having just spent most of the day reading about the mating habits of slugs, I'm inclined to think that when it comes to fucking it is we - and not they - who are poor in world. 

This has been recognised by many researchers in the field, one of whom wrote that the sight of a courting pair of hermaphroditic slugs majestically circling one another and displaying their disproportionately large penises before entwining in a great ball of slime for hours on end, makes human sexual activity seem severely restricted and diminished in comparison. 

Perhaps this is why so may couples resort to the use of toys in the bedroom - their own bodies failing to excite much interest.  

Note: See Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, (Vintage Books, 1968), section 808.

Miley Cyrus Meets Roland Barthes

Miley Cyrus by Cheyne Thomas / V Magazine 

I'm not a great fan of the 22 year-old American performer Miley Cyrus, but I am very much taken with this snapshot of her in a bathtub currently doing the rounds on social media. 

Why? Because, in Barthesian terms, it strikes me as a genuinely erotic photograph which produces the key element for disturbing the more general field of interest or studium. That is to say, the picture affords that which projects out of the image like an arrow and pierces me as viewer with a certain poignant fascination or delight. This is what Barthes terms the punctum. He writes:

"Many photographs are, alas, inert under my gaze. But even among those which have some existence in my eyes, most provoke only a general and, so to speak, polite interest: they have no punctum in them: they please or displease me without pricking me: they are invested with no more than studium." [27]

I know exactly what he means: when one glances casually at the many images of Miss Cyrus available online, one feels at most a rather flaccid degree of vague desire; she's alright, but, in or out of her clothes, it makes very little difference. There's no real surprise or delight; I might like the pictures or find them interesting, but I do not love them.  

This, in fact, is very often the problem with pornographic images; they are too homogeneous or unary. That is to say, they transform reality without making it vacillate. The erotic photograph, on the other hand, is a pornographic image that has been fissured and which gives us troubling details and untimely objects to distract our attention from the otherwise banal and exclusive presentation of sex. 

These supplements are what seduce us and they are often contained in the picture purely by accident (they attest neither to the photographer's intent nor technical ability). Often, we cannot even say what it is that arrests our gaze and constitutes a punctum: "What I can name cannot really prick me", says Barthes [51].

And so - returning to the above photo of Miss Cyrus - I'm not entirely sure what it is I find so captivating and loveable about the picture; is it her eyes, the position of her arms, the towel on her head, the bracelet, the smallness of her breasts, the stick-out ears, or is it the soap bubbles?

"The effect is certain but unlocatable, it does not find its sign, its name; it is sharp and yet lands in a vague zone of myself; it is acute yet muffled, it cries out in silence. ... Nothing surprising, then, if sometimes, despite its clarity, the punctum should be revealed only after the fact, when the photograph is no longer in front of me and I think back on it. I may know better a photograph I remember than a photograph I am looking at, as if direct vision oriented its language wrongly, engaging it in an effort of description which will always miss its point of effect, the punctum." [51-3]

Miley looks so lovely and fresh-faced, so innocent and defiant in her nakedness, that it's distressing to realise at last that there exists another type of punctum - one not of form, but of intensity and which is related to time. For no matter how young and vital the subject, every photograph tells the same story: she is going to die. 

That's the final challenge of every photograph: however brilliantly they seem to capture the moment and the excited world of the living, each picture contains the imperious sign and certainty of future death. They excite our fascination and our desire, but, ultimately, they make us want to cry ...      

 

See: Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard, (Vintage, 2000).

All Is Forgiven, But Nothing Learnt in The Case of Charlie Hebdo

The so-called survivors' edition of Charlie Hebdo has been published in a print run that numbers in the millions and in several languages, including English and Arabic. What was once a small, struggling, French satirical magazine is now a global phenomenon.

The cover of this eight page issue features a new drawing of Mohammad which, sure enough, has managed to offend and provoke many Muslims - with the more extreme elements, in Pakistan for example, calling for further revenge killings in order to defend the honour of the prophet and punish those who, in their eyes, are guilty of blasphemy and wilfully insulting 1.5 billion people. 

Interesting as this reaction might be, that's not really my concern. Rather, what worries me is not the image, but the text that accompanies the image: above the crying cartoon figure is written tout est pardonné - all is forgiven.

I must confess to finding this outrageously sanctimonious; an attempt by the staff of the magazine to position themselves on the moral high ground by offering their own rather cheap and unconvincing imitation of Christ. They'll be telling us next that the twelve members of staff who died did so that we all might live in a more tolerant, more peaceful, and more loving world. It's a bit rich to say the least.

Equally galling - and further evidence of Charlie Hebdo's arrogance and inability to learn anything of import from what has just happened - is the fact that the figure also holds up a sign saying Je suis Charlie. The fanaticism of the political idealists who produce the magazine blinds them to the fact that, clearly, not everyone subscribes to or identifies with a universal model of secular humanism wrapped in the colours of the tricolore or star-spangled banner.

Charlie Hebdo can only conceive of a future in its own image; it cannot conceive of terrorism as the emergence of a radical antagonism at the very heart of globalization and as a malevolent force that is irreducible to the New World Order. One would suggest that the editors, writers, and cartoonists at the magazine - as well as their supporters - read Jean Baudrillard who, writing in 2002 after the attack on the Twin Towers, argues that the problem is we in the West have grown so powerful, so smug and self-satisfied, that we no longer care even to admit that there remain others in the world who do not share our dreams and our values:

"It all comes from the fact that the Other, like Evil, is unimaginable. It all comes from the impossibility of conceiving of the Other - friend or foe - in its radical otherness, in its irreconcilable foreignness. A refusal rooted in the total identification with oneself around moral values and technical power. ... How can the Other, unless he is an idiot, a psychopath or a crank, want to be different, irremediably different, without even a desire to sign up to our universal gospel?" [62-3]
                                                     
This brilliant - but largely ignored - insight means that Muslims are right to be offended by the cover of the latest edition of Charlie Hebdo - but are offended for the wrong reasons. What's offensive is not a silly little drawing, but the arrogant assumptions and ideological certainties behind it; the inability to contemplate for even one moment that the Islamists "might commit themselves entirely freely, without in any way being blind, mad or manipulated" [67] to their own moral laws, customs, and beliefs.

This kind of offends me too. And although I obviously don't call for the magazine to be burned, or the publishers murdered, I do wish the team at Charlie Hebdo would think about what they do with a little more subtlety and concern.   

 

See: Jean Baudrillard, 'Hypotheses on Terrorism', in The Spirit of Terrorism and Other Essays, trans. Chris Turner (Verso, 2003).

Alzheimer's and the Becoming-Object of Loved Ones

Recently, Dr Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal and an honorary professor at the University of Warwick, claimed that, in his view, cancer is the best way to die, as it affords one the opportunity to come to terms with death, say goodbye to family and friends, and spend time doing favourite things or visiting favourite places. Thanks to a combination of 'love, morphine, and whisky' even the pain that cancer results in can be managed and made bearable.   

This perfectly reasonable argument predictably attracted much criticism; a spokesperson for Cancer Research, for example, claimed that his comments were insensitive, irresponsible, and nihilistic! The fact that he also suggested we should spend the billions of pounds invested worldwide each year in a search for a cure to cancer in other areas, obviously didn't help convince the above of the merits of his case.  

What most interested me about Dr Smith's remarks, however, was his view that it is the protracted death from dementia that it is the most awful to contemplate or experience, as the person is slowly robbed of their humanity and, eventually, their life. 

This proves, contrary to what some of his critics claim, he's no nihilist; rather, he's a romantic humanist who finds the prospect of becoming-inhuman or becoming-object the most terrible thing imaginable. As an object-oriented philosopher - and as a son whose mother has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's - I would beg to differ here and challenge Dr Smith's thinking.

Contrary to what he says - and despite our anthropocentric conceit that posits human subjectivity as a unique and superior form of existence - there's nothing to fear about becoming-object, or making a return to material actuality. It might in fact be rather joyous and liberating to be stripped of agency and autonomy; to abandon the illusion of essential inner life and discover instead the seductive and ironic qualities of complete inertia and indifference.

Why dream of being your old self once again when you can become-object? Indeed, might it not be the case that in becoming-object one finally becomes what one is ...?

Why I Don't Love Russell Brand

As an alienated child of Essex who loves playing with language as well as calling for radical social change, I might be said to have something in common with comedian and activist Russell Brand. 

And, at a push, I would readily admit that anyone who unites Peter Hitchens and Johnny Rotten into enmity can't be all bad or entirely mistaken. But, unfortunately, that's as far as it goes. 

Because I don't like all that hair or the wild staring eyes; I don't like the addictive or the paranoid personality traits; I don't like the crass and naive political idealism, or the slightly sinister calls for a new spirituality coupled to a romantic rejection of reason and science; and neither do I care for the preening narcissism, wilful infantilism, and casual sexism.

So, sorry Russell, but whilst I might happily join you for a (non-alcoholic) drink one day, I won't be joining your revolution anytime soon ...   

 

Je ne suis pas Charlie

Stephane Charbonnier 

1967 - 2015

The vile and sentimental murder of the journalists and illustrators who worked for the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has shocked many people - though not those of us who vividly remember the events surrounding the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005; or recall the shooting and attempted beheading of Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, the year before.   

Predictably, all the usual apologists for transpolitical terror and sympathizers with the Islamist cause have attempted to justify what happened in Paris. But equally galling is the manner in which many have echoed Je suis Charlie - more of a hollow slogan, rather than a meaningful gesture of solidarity.

The fact is other individuals, other publications, other news organizations etc., whilst defending in principle the notion of free speech, have not done so in practice. Rather, in practice, they have acted with a mixture of cowardice and hypocrisy - refusing, for example, to republish or broadcast the works that have (it's claimed) incited such hatred and religious madness.  

They say they are acting responsibly as good liberals should and choosing not to fan the flames or further offend Muslim sensibilities, but, really, they are just scared and prepared to compromise and self-censor in a manner that the radical activists of Charlie Hebdo - including its bravely defiant Editor, Stephane Charbonnier - absolutely refused to do. That's what made the latter heroic; they were prepared to put their lives on the line in a manner that most of us - to our shame - are not. 

I'm not Charlie - but neither are the majority who mouth the slogan even as they seek to appease the enemies of secular society and the values of the West in the name of multiculturalism and a desire to avoid trouble at all costs.      

Haters Back Off! I Love Miranda Sings

What's not to love about the brilliant comic character and internet sensation created, performed, and marketed with genius, by Colleen Ballinger? Miranda Sings is the perfect postmodern clown; the ugly-beautiful face of all that's bad - but, paradoxically, all that's good - about contemporary popular culture. 

In fact, the Miranda Sings YouTube channel is social media satire at its finest and funniest and fully deserving of its 300 million views and 3 million subscribers (or, as Miranda would call them, her Mirfandas). 

Her guest starring role on a recent episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee in full Miranda mode alongside a bemused and amused Jerry Seinfeld - followed by an appearance on The Tonight Show playing Pictionary - confirms that Ballinger has the respect and admiration of those in her profession who know great comic acting when they see it. 

Miranda's unique (and uniquely irritating) voice and her madly inventive use (and misuse) of language have to be heard to be believed. Likewise, her insane facial expressions, awkward body postures, and idiosyncratic twerking style just have to be seen (though the latter might still not be believed even after being seen).

Singer, model, actress, dancer - and magician! - again, I can only ask: what's not to love and recommend all readers check out her videos, or, if you get the chance, go see Ballinger performing as Miranda live in concert. 

Links: 

You can find Miranda by going to her website: mirandasings.com ... Or you can watch any of the hundreds of videos posted on her YouTube channel: youtube.com/user/mirandasings08 

To watch Miranda with Jerry Seinfeld on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee click: here  ... Or to see Miranda on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, click here.

It is your age - A Poem by Isabel del Rio

It is your age that pulls away the veil

From eyes expecting so much more than seen.

And what you did or who you were prevailed

just briefly, what you are is just has-been.

Dreams are no more and even love is dreamt,

No longer hope of saving skin or soul

From surest damnation, all feelings spent

On make-believe things until they run cold.

Don't say it's sad, unfair or undeserved,

this is the only journey you will take,

at least you're here for now, a sentence served

with no purpose but solely for its sake,

to prove or disprove nothing, even less

an answer to the question: what's this mess?

Isabel del Rio is a writer and linguist, born in Madrid and living in London. She writes in both English and Spanish, and has published fiction and poetry. Her bilingual book, Zero Negative / Cero Negativo appeared in 2013 (Araña Editorial). She works for an international organization as head of terminology, and is currently writing a memoir. 

Ms. del Rio appears here as part of the Torpedo the Ark Gastautoren Programm and I am very grateful for her kind submission of a sonnet written last year and, indeed, for the photograph.  

A Nietzschean Message for the New Year: Amor Fati

For me, the greatest and most touching of new year blessings and resolutions remains the one with which Nietzsche opens Book IV of The Gay Science (written January, 1882):

"Today, everybody permits themselves the expression of their dearest wish. Hence, I too shall say what it is that I most desire - what was the first thought to enter my heart this year and what shall be for me the reason, guarantee, and sweetness of my life henceforth: I want increasingly to learn to see as beautiful what is necessary in things, so that I may become one of those who makes things beautiful.  

Amor fati - let that be my love from now on! 

I do not want to wage war against that which is ugly; I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to judge those who judge. Looking away shall be my sole negation. For some day I wish to be one who says Yes to life as a total economy of the whole."

This is what the phrase torpedo the ark means to me: love fate; find pleasure in things as they are; don't judge; look away from that which offends one's taste, but nonetheless affirm everything (even the cockroach that obscenely scuttles across the floor, or lies on its back kicking its legs in the air).

Happy New Year to torpedophiles everywhere ...      

Note: The above text by Nietzsche is a modified version of Walter Kaufmann's translation in The Gay Science, (Vintage Books, 1974), IV. 276.