In Praise of Bedsits

Dancing laughing / Drinking loving 
And now I'm all alone / In bedsit land

Writer and music journalist Jon Savage is absolutely right to identify Soft Cell's 1981 single Bedsitter as one of the great tracks of the decade, not just for its "melody, mood, and irresistible forward motion", but also for daring to address in a pop song themes of loneliness, isolation and the limits of hedonism as a lifestyle. 

Having said that, there wasn't necessarily anything desperate or depressing about living in a bedsit during this perod. Speaking from personal experience, I can vouch that there was nothing more liberating than having a room of one's own in the heart of the city.

The room may have been unheated, the decor seedy, and the landlord Rigsby-like, but I would echo Virginia Woolf and say that having a modest but fixed and regular income (i.e. dole money) and a place to live (with key and lock) is crucial if one is to achieve creative freedom and independence and I loved every minute spent living all alone at 7, Arlington Gardens, surrounded by books, clothes, and records on the floor (delighting in memories of the night before). 

What's more, when I consider members of today's so-called boomerang generation - like my nephew - it fills me with a mixture of horror and sorrow. For despite all the home comforts and advantages that he speaks of, to remain living with one's parents at the age of 28 seems inconceivable (and a little obscene) to me.

But there you go, times and people have changed ...

See: 'Jon Savage on song: Soft Cell - Bedsitter', The Guardian (25 Jan 2010): click here to read online.

Play: Soft Cell, 'Bedsitter', single release from the album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret (October 1981): click here. Songwriters: Dave Ball and Marc Almond. Lyrics: © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

Note: the photo is of the poet Lori Gatford taken in her Leeds bedsit sometime in the late 20th century. 

On the Origins of a Solar-Phallic Landscape

S. A. von Hell: A New Day (c. 1985-87)

Someone very kindly emailed to say how intriguing and strangely affecting they found my solar-phallic landscape painted sometime in the mid-1980s and featured on a recent post [click here]. They also requested that I provide some background to the work which, as they rightly assume, wasn't merely imaginative ...

Primarily, the picture has its origins in the work of the writer and artist D. H. Lawrence, who once confessed in a letter to a friend:

"I put a phallus [...] in each one of my pictures somewhere. And I paint no picture that won't shock people's castrated social spirituality. I do this out of positive belief that the phallus is a great sacred image: it represents a deep, deep life which has been denied in us, and is still denied."

This brief remark encapsulated my philosophical aesthetic at the time and provided a kind of mini-manifesto.

Secondly, the picture was very much influenced by my love of Killing Joke, particularly during the period beginning with Fire Dances and ending with Brighter Than a Thousand Suns. I bought the three albums released before this period - and the first two albums that followed - but my beautiful obsession with the band was at its most intense and uncompromising between 1983-87, i.e., the pagan years, when I subscribed to an eco-apocalyptic model of Romantic primitivism tinged with Nazi occultism.

The oak tree foliage at the side of the picture was an idea I took from the cover to the Killing Joke single from which I also lifted the title, A New Day (1984) - see image below. 

Finally, the painting was born also of my reading of Jung's writings on the solar phallus and the collective unconscious; in other words, it was meant to be an image with archetypal significance. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, let me try to briefly explain ...    

One of Jung's favourite stories concerned a paranoid-schizophrenic patient with suicidal tendencies named Emile Schwyzer, who had spent most of his life in and out of mental institutions; a man who believed that stars were composed of dead souls and that the Earth was flat and surrounded by infinite seas.

One day, Schwyzer reported a particularly striking hallucination, in which the sun seemed to possess an erect penis that moved back and forth and caused the wind to blow. This vision stayed with Jung, although he was unable to fathom its meaning until he became aware of a similar solar-phallic image within the ancient Roman mystery religion centred on the god Mithras. Then, it all made perfect sense and everything clicked into place; here was a compelling piece of evidence for the existence of a collective unconscious.   

At the time - i.e., in the mid-1980s, when I thought Jung was a genius rather than a crank - I was happy to buy into all this, despite numerous problems with the actual details of the story and with Jung's celebrated theory (a theory that has more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese, as James Hillman acknowledges).

What Jung is essentially doing, is extending Kant's categories of reason to the production of fantasy; archetypes are conceived as categories of the imagination and analytic psychology is thereby revealed as a form of transcendental idealism with mytho-hermeneutic knobs on. Not my cup of tea at all; certainly not now, when the last thing I would paint - if I were to ever pick up a brush again - would be a solar-phallic landscape.       

Notes 

The letter by D. H. Lawrence to Earl Brewster (27 Feb 1927) can be found in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 648-49.  

(E. G. Records, 1984) 

Becoming-Imperceptible: Notes on 'The Woman Who Wanted to Disappear'

I.

The last piece of fictional writing by D. H. Lawrence was an untitled fragment of text scribbled in a notebook during the final year of his life and unpublished until 2005, when it was transcribed and added as an appendix to the Cambridge edition of The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories.  

In the story - called by the Cambridge editors 'The Woman Who Wanted to Disappear' - an unnamed woman announces to her husband that she would like to vanish for a year and intends to leave him and her two young children the following day, taking only a small suitcase with her. She makes it clear that she wants no one to come sniffing after her when she's gone, whatever the circumstances.  

Seeing as she has already made arrangements with her lawyer and the bank - and knowing that it would be pointless objecting to her planned disappearance - the husband, Henry, says nothing and simply marks the date of her anticipated reappearance the following year in red pencil on the calendar. 

It wasn't so much that she wanted to get away from him and the children; rather, she wanted to get completely away from herself and find a place in which she might feel at peace - and also of some use to somebody else, for her own superfluity was troubling to her: 

"If only she could get away from herself, and be different, somehow! Oh, be different! come to rest somewhere! She could never come to rest, never for a second." 

And so, this wealthy, restless woman departs and, after a brief stay in an expensive mountain top hotel, she buys a car and drives into the surrounding dark forest:  

"It reminded her of her childhood - but it was not a disappearance. Hundreds of cars were on the road, and all the hotels were rather full. A mistake, really, to start romantically disappearing at the end of July, when everywhere is overcrowded. Somehow she didn't want to disappear into a crowd, though that is supposed to be the easiest thing to disappear into. She wanted to disappear into some rare and magical place where she could become her own rare and magical self - her true self, that nobody knew, least of all she herself."

I suppose many people have felt this way; have desperately sought out some kind of rare and magical place in which they might both disappear and become who they are. But, of course, to discover some kind of immanent utopia involves leaving the main road and abandoning the safety of one's vehicle and that requires a certain reckless courage that is increasingly rare today.  

II. 

Although - as far as I recall - they don't talk of disappearing as such, Deleuze and Guattari do suggest that the ultimate aim of all becoming is becoming-imperceptible, i.e. to reach the point at which individuals can no longer be identified in human terms, but only acknowledged as a chaos of non-subjectified effects (or what Lawrence terms vibrations). 

In other words, this is to recognise that our haecceity is entirely composed at a molecular level of impersonal elements and can only be mapped in schizoanalytic terms of "longitude and latitude, a set of speeds and slownesses between unformed particles".  

Becoming-imperceptible marks an evanescence of the self. It means arriving at that fourth dimensional space that is now/here, rather than no/where, described by Lawrence in an essay on love as "the realm of calm delight [...] the other-kingdom of bliss". It is here we accomplish our perfection, even as we stage our disappearance.  

See:

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Woman Who Wanted to Disappear', The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Appendix V, pp. 251-55.  

D. H. Lawrence, 'Love', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 9. 

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, (The Athlone Press, 1996), p. 262.

On My Brief Life as a Painter

S. A. Von Hell: A New Day (c. 1985-87)

One of the few things I have in common with Adolf Hitler, is that I too failed to get into art school; though in my case, this was St. Martin's, London, not the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, and I don't remember being particularly shocked or devestated by the decision, unlike Herr Hitler, whose rejection would prove fateful.

For one thing, I had no training or background in the arts, and no discernible talent, skill, or competency as a painter. In fact, when I went for the interview at St. Martin's, I didn't even have a proper portfolio; I just had ideas and a kind of occult-pagan aesthetic that was heavily influenced at the time by D. H. Lawrence, Killing Joke, and Franz von Stuck.

My interviewers, unsurprisingly, were not impressed and weren't shy in telling me that they found my views to be disturbing and the handful of sketches for hand-painted t-shirts that I did bring along to be puerile. The punk insistence that all that mattered was attitude - who cares about composition and colour - failed to convince. 

Anyway, long story short - and as I've said - I didn't get a place on the course and the very small number of canvases I produced in the mid-1980s - including the fairly large phallic landscape above - have all been destroyed by damp or thrown away by my sister who was supposed to be looking after them for me in her loft.  

For better or for worse, I decided post-St. Martin's to reinvent myself as a poet rather than a painter - and then, later, as a philosopher-provocateur. But I miss playing around with paints and have promised myself to one day produce some new pictures, if only for the sheer pleasure of covering a surface with something other than words. 

Note: for a supplementary post to this one, please click here.

Bret Easton Ellis: Towards a Non-Magical, Non-Elvish Gay Life

Bret Easton Ellis 

Photo: Iris Schneider for The Washington Post 

According to the American novelist Bret Easton Ellis, the liberal insistence on sanctifying homosexuality is a kind of inverted homophobia, which results, ironically, in a new form of victimisation that transforms complex human beings into little more than fairy tale characters (Gay Magical Elves). The heteronormative majority cheer every time another man or woman in the public eye dares to come out and appear before them as some kind of saintly figure whose primary purpose is to remind them of their own virtues as a people: Look at us! So tolerant, so loving, so inclusive! 

This desire to embrace and celebrate every queer individual on the LGBT spectrum, is not only patronising in and of itself, but it denies the individuality of the person concerned; they become merely a stereotype and symbol. And, in the process, they become neutered and neutralised. Because the deal is, if they want to be loved and accepted within wider society, then they must make themselves lovable and acceptable by becoming like the sweet and sexually nonthreatening persons seen on TV (bitchy clowns and queeny best friends). "God help the gay man", writes Ellis, "who comes out and doesn't want to represent, who doesn't want to teach, who doesn’t feel like part of the homogenized gay culture and rejects it."

Ultimately, to be liberated, is not to feel pride in your identity (be it sexual, racial, or religious); it means, rather, having the freedom to be flawed (and often full of self-loathing) just like everybody else. In other words, it means having the right not to smile and have to be so (HIV) positive all the time. Not all queer individuals wish to promote healthy mainstream values; they don't all want to be married and raise a family; don't all support left wing causes or aspire to be politically correct. According to Ellis, however, a lot of gay men today "feel they can’t be provocatively raunchy or politically incorrect in the mainstream media because it doesn’t represent The Cause".

He continues:

"This is where we're at now, I guess. Within the clenched world of the gay PC police there has been a tightening of the reins. It's as if in this historic moment for gay men we somehow still need to be babied and coddled and used as shining examples of humanity and objects of fascination - the gay baby panda - and this is a new kind of gay victimization. The fact that it is often being extolled by other gays in the Name of the Good Cause is doubly stifling."

Saying this predictably resulted in a lot of criticism for Ellis - not least from others in the gay community. But, to his credit, the author of American Psycho ultimately chooses to affirm himself as a writer who believes in free speech, rather than as part of a community whose members must conform with the prevailing orthodoxy in order to display their solidarity. The fact that some wish to promote a fantasy of queer life that doesn’t really exist, is not something Ellis is prepared to comply with. He may write fiction for a living, but he prefers gay reality no matter how painful and fucked-up that reality is:

"We are not all well-adjusted Good Gays. We’re not all happily queer - meaning the queer part doesn't make us happy or unhappy - just that some of us are cranky, depressed wrecks. We're complicated. We're angry. We can be as rude about our sexuality as our straight counterparts. Some of us feel the need to express our 'gay' selves any way we want to, even if that doesn't conform to 'gay positive' stereotypes. (A lot of us think these so-called 'gay positive' stereotypes are, in fact, 'gay nightmares.') Some of us reject the notion of how Gay Life is defined and don’t want to be a part of it, and so we create our own."

Ellis continues in a passage with which I'm very sympathetic:

"Where's the not-famous, slobby, somewhat lazy gay dude who is fine with being gay but just doesn't care about being PC or being an example of 'moral uplift,' who just wants to get on with his life, the guy who wants to be himself without becoming a label? A gay man who doesn't equate gay with dignity? The gay man who feels he doesn’t have to march in the parade while smiling? The inclusion and promotion of this common gay man by the Gatekeepers of Politically Correct Gayness would be something shattering. It would be a massive move toward eliminating The Gay Man as Magical Elf."

Notes

Bret Easton Ellis, 'In the Reign of the Gay Magical Elves', Out, (13 May 2013): click here to read online. 

I assume that Ellis still stands by this essay, as he repeats the views expressed here in his new book White (Picador, 2019). 

Send in the Clowns

I.

In an early school report, one of my teachers noted: "Stephen's work suffers due to his insistence on playing the clown. He has to understand that he is in school to learn and not merely to amuse his classmates."

Despite this po-faced attempt to nip my talent for comedy in the bud, this insistence on playing the clown - influenced in part by Cesar Romero's performance as the Joker in Batman - continued all the way into adolescence, when that fabulous grotesque, Johnny Rotten, the clown prince of punk, became a great inspiration.     

II.

As a matter of fact, I never regarded myself as a clown: certainly not the type who relied on slapstick or other forms of physical comedy; and certainly not the type who was solely interested in entertaining others.

Even at six-years-old, I was more interested in challenging authority and provoking laughter through the use of language - including the language of fashion - than by throwing buckets of water (not that there's anything wrong with throwing buckets of water, as Tiswas demonstrated).

Admiring as I did fun lovin' criminals like the Joker and, later, anarchic pranksters like the Sex Pistols, meant there was always a bit more of a subversive edge to my fooling around, refusal to care, and mockery (of self and others). I may have worn Grimaldi's whiteface makeup, but that's just about where any point of comparison ends.    

III.

If not a clown, then what was I really? Some might say a fool and I've nothing against those who rush in where angels fear to tread.

But I'd probably be happier with the term trickster, as there's something more ambiguous about such a shape-shifting figure and the manner in which they often push things beyond a joke; are they being mischievous, malicious, or both? Either way, they seem to act with the full intelligence of evil.

Primarily, tricksters violate principles of social and natural order. That is to say, tricksters playfully deconstruct reality and dissolve binary distinctions. And that's why Jordan Peterson is absolutely right to describe Derrida as a philosophical trickster - though his ignorant dismissal of Derrida's work (without even attempting to engage with it) is as shameful as that of those four Cambridge dons who, in 1992, opposed the awarding of an honorary degree to M. Derrida on the grounds that his thinking failed to meet accepted standards of philosophical clarity and rigour.

Ironically, Peterson has himself just had an offer of a visiting fellowship rescinded by Cambridge University following a humourless and politically correct backlash from members of both faculty and the student body, who seem to regard him in much the same way he regards Derrida - that is to say, as a dangerous charlatan.

Ultimately, culture requires its clowns and tricksters - almost as comic saviours. Indeed, that's something I would have thought Peterson, as a great reader of Jung, would readily agree with. Thus his loathing of Derrida is, in some ways, surprising as well as disappointing.

Ooh La La La: Katherine Waugh's Fugitive Philosophy

Paul Klee: Angelus Novus (1920) 

I. Kate Loves Marlon

Katherine Waugh describes the impersonal form of writing that she loves best as fugitive in character and I don't have any problem with that, though how it differs from what Deleuze and Guattari term minor literature and/or nomadic philosophy is not quite clear; they too speak of outlaws and those who have the courage to flee.

Indeed, Waugh even privileges the same authors as Deleuze and Guattari - Nietzsche, Kafka, Artaud ... all the usual suspects. She may have been a subjectless teenage reader, but there's nothing unique about her taste in writers. Or movie stars ...

If saying you like Marlon Brando isn't exactly going out on a limb, describing Sidney Lumet's film Fugitive Kind (1960) as extraordinary - in a positive sense - is admittedly a bold move. Waugh is clearly smitten with the character played by Brando - Valentine Xavier - dressed in his snakeskin jacket. She speaks of his "singular beauty and sexual allure", before quickly adding that what really appeals is the fact that Valentine is "seeking to escape the oppressive subjectification he feels trapped within".

How do we know that this guitar-playing drifter is "seeking to escape the oppressive subjectification he feels trapped within"? Because he tells the older woman he's taken a shine to (played by Anna Magnani) the tragic tale of an apodal bluebird that is destined to forever stay on the wing. Should the poor creature ever attempt to land, it will immediately perish.

That's how Valentine wishes to be understood; as a man who doesn't belong anywhere and must always keep moving. And I guess that's how Waugh also wants to be understood; footloose and footless. Part bluebird - and part angel of history, as Waugh flits from Brando to Benjamin and the latter's obsessive love of a painting by Paul Klee ...     


II. Kate Loves Walter

German philosopher and cultural critic, Walter Benjamin, was, as Waugh reminds us, literally a fugitive. Or, perhaps more accurately speaking, as a Jew in German-occupied Europe, Benjamin was a political refugee. Either way, he died on the run from the Nazis.

Waugh wonders what Benjamin might think of contemporary culture, were he to view it through the eyes of his Angel. Would what he saw make him panic, or fall into picnoleptic hysteria? I don't know. And, to be honest, I had to google the last term too.

Waugh writes of  eyes that cannot see the past, but remain "hypnotized and bedazzled by the virtual luminosities of a history-less present, and possibly, in such a state, not seeing the present (however one defines it) either". And it's a nice idea, nicely expressed, even though it's not her idea; it belongs rather to that philosopher of speed, Paul Virilio.

Not that this really matters ... It's only that later in the essay, Waugh expresses such a love of original writing that ... But I digress (as Waugh herself digresses, though she terms it a divagation). Let's get back to Benjamin ...

What is it that Waugh loves about him? Did he too wear a snakeskin jacket and possess the singular beauty and sexual allure of Marlon Brando as Valentine Xavier? I think it would be pushing it a bit to describe him in such terms. However, he did seek to escape the oppressive subjectification he felt trapped within. Waugh tells us that Benjamin was (amongst other things):

Self-effacing ☑
A lover of pseudonyms ☑

Able to stage his own disappearance in the text ☑
Buried in an anonymous grave ☑

In other words, he ticks all the right boxes for Waugh, who loves a writer who gives nothing away about himself and is able to become-imperceptible, which is the ultimate goal of all becomings. And o' how she longs for such writers to come from out of the future as it were, now that Kafka, Joyce, and all the B-boys, are long dead and buried beneath the weight of (non-fugitive) scholarship and critique.

III. Closing Remarks

Essentially, what Waugh is calling for is a new theoretically-informed criticism which is extreme, absurd, bewildering and, above all, thrilling. She approvingly quotes the music critic Simon Reynolds: "Far from being born of a cold-blooded drive to dissect and demystify, the attraction of critical theory (especially the French kind) was that it set your brain on fire."

I don't agree with that. Au contraire, I think that French critical theory builds upon the Nietzschean teaching that only those who know how to put ideas on ice have earned the right to enter into the heat of debate. Thus, I don't think Waugh would much care for the posts here on Torpedo the Ark where enthusiasm (and what she terms passion) is very much curbed.

Indeed, I suspect she'd think me a narcissistic stylist who trades in bland inanities dressed up as "profundities in 'clever' sentences". And she is quick to remind her readers - with all the snobbery of those who (often secretly) defend genre distinctions and high culture - of Sylvère Lotringer's remark: theory is not synonymous with blogging.

That might be true, but blogging is not synonymous with "the horrors of much online, spontaneous, 'opinionizing' and 'self-expression'" either. Indeed, I would suggest that one can (sometimes) find conceptual intelligence in all kinds of writing, including blogging - and she can put that in her snow globe and shake it!   

See: Katherine Waugh, 'The Fugitive Kind', essay in Fugitive Papers, Issue 2, (Summer 2012), pp. 12-15. 

Note: Katherine Waugh is a curator, writer, and filmmaker based in Ireland.  

Greta Thunberg: Child Saviour or Witch?

We cannot help regarding the phenomenon of Greta with wonder, fear, 
amazement, and respect. For in her the spirit of modern childhood 
is profoundly, almost magically revealed.  

Following a recent post, someone who identifies as a practicing Christian and environmental activist writes quoting scripture in support of Greta Thunberg: And a little child shall lead them [Isaiah 11:6].    

I have to say, I'm always a little troubled by this idea of an infant saviour - even when it turns up in Nietzsche's Zarathustra. And with reference to the case of Miss Thunberg, it's a startling model of redemption she offers; one that denies people hope, deliberately spreads panic, and desires that the entire world suffers, as she herself has suffered, on a daily basis.

Addressing a UN climate conference last year, she virtually placed a curse on all their houses, as if she were less salvator mundi and more some kind of witch. Indeed, seeing how she's enchanted an entire generation and left so many world leaders - including the Pope - spellbound, describing Greta Thunberg as a witch seems entirely justified: she's like a Swedish Joan of Arc.
   

I'm not saying this to denigrate her, or dismiss her message. But I do think we need to exercise caution when dealing with charismatic individuals who claim to possess (or be possessed by) special gifts and who speak with absolute conviction, seeing the world as they do in stark black and white terms.

When Greta presents her arguments within the bounds of science, I don't have a problem. But when she offers us an interpretation of the facts that veers towards apocalyptic vision, then I have my concerns - for her and for all those who share her vision. Their love - for the planet, for humanity - becomes questionable and subtly diabolic, to borrow a phrase from Lawrence, exerting as it does a destructive force. 

Women like Greta - and her mother - who campaign to save the world and save the future, may have kind hearts and the very best of intentions. But, underneath, there's something malevolent; an unconscious desire for revenge on those they blame for the crisis that afflicts them at a personal level. You can almost see it in their eyes. Still, this malevolence is just as necessary as superficial goodness - maybe more so, especially when it comes to exposing the world's own corruption and stupidity. 
  

Like that other witch-child, of whom Hawthorne writes, Greta is a being 'whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder, or with an order peculiar to themselves'. We say she's neurologically diverse, or has Asperger's, a condition that manifests itself in all kinds of ways; depression, obsessive-compulsive behaviour, selective mutism, etc.

And again, it gives Greta a peculiar look in her eyes that is also Pearl-like: 'a look so intelligent, yet so inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious' that one almost questions whether she's a human child. Who knows what this brave but tormented sixteen-year-old will be like as a fully grown woman. I wish her well and hope she discovers a little peace and happiness; hope, above all, that she doesn't martyr herself to her own cause.      

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter' (Final Version, 1923), Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Quotes taken from Hawthorne's 1850 novel can be found on pp. 93-94.  

Note: The lines underneath the image of Greta Thunberg are paraphrased from Lawrence (writing of Pearl) in the First Version (1918-19) of the above essay, SCAL, p. 252. 

For a sister post to this one on Greta as Pippi Greenstocking, click here. 

Pippi Greenstocking: Notes on the Case of Greta Thunberg

Illustration: @artbyneva on Instagram

I.

Once upon a time, there was a young girl from Sweden called Greta. Greta had pigtails and was an unconventional child with special gifts who cared so much about climate change that she stopped going to school. Often, she would attempt to shame adults into listening to her, especially if they were more concerned with putting profit before the planet.

Many found Greta inspirational; others mockingly called her Pippi Greenstocking. And a few expressed their concern that her neurodiversity made her vulnerable and prone to fanaticism and fantasy ...

II.

Paulina Neuding, for example, is interested in the role Greta's parents have played in her meteoric rise to international fame. Her father, Svante Thunberg, is an actor and her mother, Malena Ernman, a successful opera singer, so both dream of transforming the world into a stage and seek the limelight.

A book, published last year and entitled Scener från Hjärtat, tells the story of Greta and her family - including her younger sister, Beata - in sometimes harrowing detail. Narrated by Malena, the work was written, apparently, with the collaboration of her husband and daughters.

As Neuding notes, this story is framed in terms of a family and a planet in crisis - and, rather oddly, these crises are inextricably linked. The personal is political, as they used to say in the sixties.

Thus it is, for example, that Scenes from the Heart claims that the "oppression of women, minorities, and people with disabilities stem from the same overarching root problem as climate change: an unsustainable way of life. The family's private crisis and the global climate crisis [...] are simply symptoms of the same systemic disorder."

Little wonder, therefore, that Greta seems to take everything so personally; insisting people wake up to the coming eco-apocalypse and feel the fear, pain and panic that she experiences daily. Greta Thunberg protests not merely because she believes the planet is dying, but because she feels as if she were dying inside too.

Her mother's hope seems to be that once the planet has been saved and there is environmental justice for all, then Greta and Beata can also be happy and healthy, overcoming their depression, anxiety, eating and obsessive-compulsive disorders, selective mutism, etc.

Without wishing to say anything negative about Greta, question her phenomenal impact, or deny the existential threat posed by climate change, Neuding wonders whether it's advisable to groom an anguished sixteen-year-old into a global icon ...?

Adults - including politicians and journalists such as herself - have a responsibility to not be carried away by messianic hysteria: "It is time we stopped to ask if we are using her, failing her, and even sacrificing her, for what we perceive to be a greater good." 

See: Paulina Neuding, 'Self-Harm Versus the Greater Good: Greta Thunberg and Child Activism', Quillete (23 April 2019): click here. 

For a sister post to this one on Greta as child saviour or witch, click here. 

On Holism and Anti-Holism

Holism / studiocarreras.com

Despite what some commentators suggest, I wouldn't describe myself as a reductionist.

But, as might be imagined, my love of cracks, gaps, fragments, ruins, ruptures, breakdowns, and all those things that belong to what might be termed a gargoyle aesthetic, means that I have little time for those monomaniacs who subscribe to holistic thinking and insist on a smutty state of Oneness in which all parts are reconciled and find their completion. 

Thus, it's mistaken to read the multiplicity of posts on this blog and then attempt to understand them as a Whole: the will to a system, says Nietzsche, betrays a lack of integrity.

Ultimately, I'm sympathetic to Blanchot's suggestion that we learn to think about the relationship between literary fragments in terms of sheer difference; as things that are related to one another only in that each of them is unique and without, as Deleuze and Guattari note, "having recourse either to any sort of original totality (not even one that has been lost), or to a subsequent totality that may not yet have come about".

In a passage that captures perfectly the anti-holistic spirit of Torpedo the Ark as desiring-machine, the latter write:   

"We live today in the age of partial objects, bricks that have been shattered to bits, and leftovers. We no longer believe in the myth of the existence of fragments that, like pieces of an antique statue, are merely waiting for the last one to be turned up, so that they may all be glued back together to create a unity that is precisely the same as the original unity. We no longer believe in a primordial totality that once existed, or in a final totality that awaits us at some future date. We no longer believe in the dull grey outlines of a dreary, colourless dialectic of evolution, aimed at forming a harmonious whole out of heterogeneous bits by rounding off their rough edges. We believe only in totalities that are peripheral. And if we discover such a totality alongside various separate parts, it is a whole of these particular parts but does not totalize them; it is a unity of all of these particular parts but does not unify them; rather, it is added to them as a new part fabricated separately."

In addition to the artistic implications of this, a number of logical, ethical, and political consequences also follow; ones that, to me at least, appear far more attractive (and more radical) than those that follow on from holism which, unfortunately, is a concept invoked here, there, and everywhere within contemporary culture - even by people who should know better (i.e., people with the ability to be critically self-reflective).

We hear about holistic models of everything; healthcare, education, science, spirituality, etc. Even politicians talk about the need for joined up government. Again, to quote Nietzsche: I mistrust all systematisers - but today it's become impossible to ignore them.

These advocates of holistic thinking speak in fuzzy terms about inclusion, integration, and harmony. But such idealism builds churches and concentration camps; it erases real difference, fears otherness, and ultimately wants to subordinate the individual to a superior Whole (the Party, the State, Humanity). 

I find the thought of One Love, One World, One People, nauseating. If this makes me a reductionist, or a nihilist, then so be it ...

See: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane, (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 42.