21 Oct 2021

Auschwitz-Geschichten 2: Block 24 (The Dolls House)



Block 24 - just go through the big iron gates that read Arbeit Macht Frei and it's the first building on your left - was the Auschwitz brothel, commonly referred to as a Dolls House
 
It was one of several such institutions established by the Nazis within their network of camps in order to reward and incentivise prisoners and, Himmler hoped, reorientate the sexuality of those wearing pink triangles [1].
 
The (non-Jewish) women obliged to work in these brothels came mainly from Ravensbrück, although Auschwitz recruited sex slaves from among its own inmate population [2]. Usually aged in their 20s, the women had sex with an average of six or seven men every evening between 8 and 10pm. They also had to work on Sunday afternoons. Some of the women underwent forced sterilization; those who didn't and became pregnant were forced to have abortions.  
 
The (non-Jewish) male prisoners had to pay two Reichsmarks for a fifteen-minute session with a girl who was chosen for them. They were first examined to ensure they were (relatively) clean and healthy and were instructed that only vaginal intercourse in the missionary position was permitted (the doors of the girls' rooms had peepholes so that SS guards could keep an eye on proceedings and ensure there were no perverse or violent acts committed).  
 
As might be imagined, there was a fairly high turnover of women, who were fucked until either too exhausted or too ill to continue, at which point their services - and sometimes their lives - were terminated [3].
 
Despite this, there were other women desperate to take their place, as they at least got to have a small room of their own within the brothel, wear clean clothes, and be given additional food from the SS kitchen. They were even given rudimentary medical care. Naturally, this caused anger and resentment amongst other female inmates, but it did make surviving the camp significantly easier - and survival was ultimately the name of the game. 

After the War, the women rarely spoke of their experiences and they were not awarded any compensation - indeed, their existence was scarcely even acknowledged [4].
 
 
Notes
 
[1] Himmler conceived the idea of establishing concentration camp brothels in October 1941. The first Dolls House was set up a year later, at Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Ultimately, the Lagerbordell did not produce any noticeable increase in prisoner productivity levels and I very much doubt they provided an effective form of gay conversion therapy. What they did do was further demonstrate the depth of Nazi corruption and depravity.   

[2] It is worth noting that some of the women had previously worked as prostitutes; indeed, it was this anti-social activity that had got them arrested and put in the camps in the first place. The SS reasoned that it would help with the establishment of their own brothels if they recruited professionals at least to begin with. Of course, the fact that some of the women had already been involved in the sex industry doesn't in any way mitigate the cynical cruelty of Nazi sexual exploitation. 

[3] After finishing their time in the brothels, some of the women were made camp functionaries and, according to recent research, those who withstood the hardship of brothel life did have an increased chance of escaping death in the camps. Indeed, almost all the women in forced prostitution survived. 
      Those interested in knowing more on this topic (and who read German) should see Robert Sommer, Das KZ-Bordell: Sexuelle Zwangsarbeit in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern (Schöningh Verlag, 2009). A review of the book, by Thomas Kühne, can be found in Central European History Vol. 45, No. 3 (September 2012), pp. 593-595. Click here to read on JSTOR.  

[4] There are some notable exceptions to this silence, first and foremost among them the French documentary Nuit et brouillard (dir. Alain Resnais, 1956), which acknowledged the existence of concentration camp brothels based on interviews with survivors. 
      Mention might also be made of The House of Dolls (1953), a novella by the Jewish writer (and former Auschwitz inmate) Ka-Tsetnik 135633 (Yehiel De-Nur), which concerns the women who were kept for the sexual pleasure of German soldiers during World War II and known as the 'Joy Division' [Freudenabteilung]. 
    Written in Hebrew, De-Nur's work tends to blur the line between fact and fiction and has been described as pornographic by some critics, who see it as paving the way for later Nazi-themed sexploitation movies such as Love Camp 7 (dir. Lee Frost, 1969) and Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, (dir. Don Edmonds, 1975). 
 
 
To read other tales from Auschwitz, click here and here  
 
 

19 Oct 2021

Auschwitz-Geschichten 1: In Memory of Prisoner 26947 (Czesława Kwoka)

Czesława Kwoka (1942/43)
Photo by Wilhelm Brasse 
 
 
I. 
 
Most people find it extremely difficult to look at the heaps of emaciated bodies left to rot in the Nazi death camps once the system of extermination began to break down.      
 
And, of course, such unparalleled scenes of atrocity are horrific; no one likes to think of human beings reduced to base matter or witness mounds of anonymous corpses showing signs of advanced decomposition or still marked by traces of suffering [1].   
 
But is it any easier to look at this photo of a young Polish girl taken shortly before her death in Auschwitz ...?
 
 
II.
 
Czesława Kwoka was born in a small village in Poland, on 15 August, 1928. 
 
Along with her mother, Katarzyna Kwoka, she was deported shortly before Christmas 1942 and then sent to Auschwitz. She died on 12 March, 1943, aged fourteen, less than a month after her mother; just one of many Polish children murdered by the Nazis [2]
 
Czesia is among those memorialized in the permanent Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum exhibition The Life of the Prisoners. Her picture was taken by Wilhelm Brasse, a talented Polish inmate whom the Nazis pressed into service upon discovering that he had trained as a professional photographer prior to the German invasion of his homeland [3].       
 
Along with Anne Frank, Czesława Kwoka has become representative of all child victims of the Nazi killing machine.    
 
  
Notes
 
[1] Having said this, it's worth recalling Nick Land's argument that it's the corpse that wasn't cleanly and efficiently incinerated which functions as a sign of impersonal resistance to the final solution and that the real horror of the death camp comes when the system is in full operation and producing lamp-shades made from human skin and bars of soap from the body fat of the exterminated. See The Thirst for Annihilation, (Routledge, 1992), p. 139.
 
[2] Although details of her death are not known for certain, it's likely that Czesława was killed with a lethal injection of phenol - a favoured method amongst SS physicians. However she died, Czesia was just one of approximately 230,000 children and young people aged under 18 deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1940 and 1945. As might be expected, the vast majority - over 90% - were of Jewish descent; the others had ethnic backgrounds including Polish, Russian, Ukranian, and Romani. Most arrived as part of families and were not listed in camp records. Less than 1000 survived to be liberated by the Red Army in January 1945. 
 
[3] Although he survived the War and still owned a camera, Brasse was was unable to return to his profession because, as he confessed, when he looked through the lens all he could see were the faces of the dead. A 50-minute television documentary about his life and work, The Portraitist [Portrecista], was made in 2005, dir. Irek Dobrowolski. A trailer, with English subtitles, can be viewed on YouTube: click here
 
 
To read other tales from Auschwitz, click here and here        
 
 

17 Oct 2021

On Following the Science

Follow The Science Art Print 
Designed and sold by halibutgoatramb
 
 
When politicians says they will follow the science it means they are abdicating their duty to think and their responsibility to lead; they are hiding behind experts in order to justify their decisions and excuse their inevitable mistakes; Chris Whitty is basically a human shield employed to protect Boris Johnson. 

We repeatedly heard this phrase from UK government ministers during the Covid-19 pandemic - and I'm sure we'll hear it again this winter, if and when they decide to bring back social distancing, reintroduce mandatory mask wearing, and impose a new lockdown.
 
It is, as I indicate, a form of political cowardice and dishonesty, as well as a (perhaps wilful) misunderstanding of how science works; one that relies upon a rather slippery notion of consensus, when, in fact, there is no scientific agreement about how best to deal with a viral pandemic. 
 
Epidemiological models, based on what we have so far discovered about Covid-19, can vary greatly depending on the assumptions made by the modellers and how the data produced is interpreted and then implemented as actual policy. As one commentator has noted, government ministers "can trawl for evidence that suits their purposes or invest selectively in the types of research that are likely to show them in a favourable light" [1].  
 
Ultimately, the public are being misled whenever a politician claims to be simply following the science, even if political choices are (to a greater or lesser degree) informed by scientific findings. This is not because all politicians are liars or inherently corrupt; they may well be sincere in their belief that they are following the best scientific advice. Unfortunately, however, that doesn't guarantee "that this advice reflects an unbiased, unambiguous picture of how different policy options will work out in practice" [2].       
 
It's a shame that members of the mainstream media haven't done more in pointing this out. Too often during the pandemic, journalists simply followed the government's line in the naive belief that they were thereby also following the science. How refreshing it would have been if Laura Kuennsberg, for example, had stood up at a press briefing and reminded the PM that science does not think ... [3]
 
     
Notes
 
[1] Alex Stevens,  'Governments cannot just "follow the science" on COVID-19', Nature Human Behaviour, vol. 4, (June 2020), p. 560.  Click here to read online.  
 
[2] Ibid.  

[3] I'm borrowing the provocative claim made by Heidegger in Was Heisst Denken? (1954): "Die Wissenschaft denkt nicht." See the English translation - What Is Called Thinking? - by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray, (Harper & Row, 1968), p. 8.
 
 

15 Oct 2021

An Untimely Meditation on How to Write an Effective Blog (The Nietzsche Birthday Post 2021)

 
"It seems to me more and more that the philosopher, being necessarily a man of tomorrow 
and the day after tomorrow, 
has always found himself and had to find himself in contradiction to his today ..." [1]  
 
 
Adam, who wishes to start a blog, writes to ask what makes a really effective post: 'Is it the personality of the writer alone that determines this?'
 
No: the effectiveness of a post has nothing to do with the personalty, the biography, or the psychology of the one who is said to have authored it - any more than it consists in allowing the reader to recognise themselves in the text. 
 
It's how untimely the post is in itself that counts and, ultimately, the strength of a text "is measured by the extent to which it refutes its creator - i.e., grounds something altogether different than that on which its creator himself stood and had to stand" [2]
 
That's why D. H. Lawrence was right to advise that we trust the tale and not the teller of the tale, although he's mistaken to say that the text merely tells us the truth of the present [3]. For at its best - which is to say at its most Unzeitgemässe - great writing of all description occupies an anomalous and ambivalent position in time, often speaking of and to a readership to come [4]
 
Haunted by the past, perturbed by the present, the untimely blogger projects their work into the future like an arrow, affirming that Greater Day which is not simply our tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow [übermorgen] which belongs to the distant stranger [5].
 
 
Notes
 
[1] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §212, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 2003).
 
[2] Martin Heidegger, 'Ponderings VI', 34, in Ponderings II-VI: Black Notebooks 1931-1938, trans. Richard Rojcewicz, (Indiana University Press, 2016), p. 318.  

[3] See D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (Final Version 1923), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 14.  

[4] Nietzsche famously makes an appeal to posterity and often likes to describe himself (and his philosophy) as untimely; i.e., "acting counter to our time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a time to come". See the Foreword to 'On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life', in Untimely Meditations, ed. Daniel Breazeale, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 60.  
      Readers who are interested in this topic might also like to see Duncan Large's excellent essay, 'On "Untimeliness": Temporal Structures in Nietzsche, Or "The Day After Tomorrow Belongs To Me"', Journal of Nietzsche Studies, No. 8, Autumn 1994, (Penn State University Press), pp. 33-53. Click here to read on JSTOR.
      As Large rightly points out, affirmation of the future - in all its openness and possibility - is, for Nietzsche, the mark of a true philosopher; whilst, on the other hand, insistence on a perpetual present with no sense of futurity (only progress) is a sign of cultural decadence.
 
[5] Or, as Duncan Large describes it in the above essay, "the radically other time of the Übermensch, situated beyond a hiatus of qualitative temporal difference" [p. 49].    
 

13 Oct 2021

A Brief Note on the Queering of Superman

Superman: Son of Kal-El
Detail from a variant cover to #5 by Inhyuk Lee 
DC Comics (2021)
 
 
Let me say at the outset, if DC Comics are happy with writer Tom Taylor's decision to transform Superman into a cocksucking social justice warrior, then I have no problem with that. 
 
In other words, I really don't care if John Kent, the Son of Kal-El, enters into a same-sex relationship with his pink-haired boyfriend Jay Nakamura; he can even be bi now and gay later, it's all fine by me. 

However, what is troubling is the argument made by Taylor that everyone deserves to see themselves reflected in their fictional heroes and be able to say: Wow! They're just like me! And if that means the queering (and/or racially transforming) of a previously straight white cis male character, then so be it. 
 
The concern I have is this: doesn't this narcissistic need to self-seek and identify even with those from other worlds ironically erase the difference and diversity that is supposedly being celebrated? How do you learn to imaginatively engage with otherness if you insist that everyone is supposed to walk, talk, look and act like you, sharing your desires and your values? 

Ultimately, if you are only ever going to look for yourself in love and seeketh your own glory in art, then you are inevitably going to spend your life masturbating before a full-length mirror in solipsistic isolation.
 
 
See: Superman: Son of Kal-El, #5, (DC Comics) written by Tom Taylor, illustrated by John Timms. Available in all good comic book stores on 9 November, 2021.  


11 Oct 2021

Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?

Adam Eget, Super Dave (Bob Einstein), and Norm Macdonald 
in the first episode of Norm Macdonald Live 
 (26 March, 2013): click here 
 
 
I. 
 
Adam, who wishes to start a blog, writes to ask where I get my ideas for posts from. 
 
To be fair, although this is not an original question, it isn't as dumb as some people think and deserves an answer, rather than a snort of derision or a look of disdain. In fact, to enquire after the origin of ideas and the creative process is to ask something philosophically important.
 
And so, Adam, let me try to say something that might help ...
 
 
II. 
 
An idea - from the Greek term ἰδέα, meaning a visible pattern - is now more commonly defined as an abstract concept or (after Descartes) as a mental representation of an object. Many philosophers, being forever caught up in the realm of ideas, have considered them ontologically to be the fundamental category of being. Further, they consider the capacity to form, comprehend, and exchange ideas as an essential (and defining) feature of mankind [1].
 
Some people like to believe that ideas spontaneously generate from out of nowhere; that no real effort or serious thinking is required. Artists, for example, will often speak of inspiration. But whilst I don't wish to deny eureka moments or the divine influence of a muse, I think we all know that inspiration is usually born of hard work. 
 
Similarly, I'm sceptical of the idea of innate ideas believed to be universal, i.e., something which all people are born knowing (intuitively), rather than something they have learned through experience - what D. H. Lawrence, for example, terms blood knowledge. If you want to have ideas - particularly new ideas - then you need not only work hard, but get out into the world and encounter things. 
 
Having said that, I'm not advocating any and all forms of experience and by hard work, I do not mean mere toil. As Heidegger says, sometimes the most vital form of activity is waiting patiently and preparing for the future and allowing one's work to become an inner illumination of the heart [2]. 
 
Ultimately, good ideas cannot be compelled and, ironically, may often result from those times when work seems to go slowly or badly; i.e., those moments of failure.                      
 
 
Notes

[1] Plato, for example, argued that there is a mind-independent realm of unchanging and universal ideas or forms. Real knowledge is knowledge of these ideas; knowledge of the material world (which is subject to change) doesn't count for much in his view. 
 
[2] I take this phrase (and idea) from section 150 of Heidegger's 'Ponderings IV', in Ponderings II-VI: Black Notebooks 1931-1938, trans. Richard Rojcewicz, (Indiana University Press, 2016), p. 186. 


10 Oct 2021

Heidegger Vs Tyson Fury

Tyson Fury Gypsy King 
by Ryan James Wilson 
 
 
As someone who has always admired those brave enough to enter the ring and dedicate themselves to the always brutal, often bloody - sometimes deadly -  art of boxing, I would like to send my congratulations to the self-styled Gypsy King, Tyson Fury, for defeating the American Deontay Wilder and thereby retaining his WBC heavyweight title. 

Boxing - a sport that transcends sport, being as it is about so much more than competitive physical activity - has inspired many great writers and film-makers and even though Fury undoubtedly has his flaws and shortcomings (made much of by critics who seem not merely to take issue with some of his remarks, but object to his very existence), he's a remarkable figure. 
 
Amusingly, however, I've just come across this note by Heidegger which seems to offer a counter-view to my own: "An age in which a boxer can be acclaimed a great man and be deemed worthy of the usual tokens of honour, in which purely physical virility (brutality) counts as the mark of a hero," is an age where there is little or no place for philosophy.*
 
Of course, Wittgenstein would argue that the philosopher must be prepared to fight for a space in which to think and that the philosopher who isn't prepared to regularly engage others in intellectual combat is like a boxer afraid to enter the ring.  
 
 
* See Martin Heidegger, 'Ponderings and Intimations III', 177, in Ponderings II-VI: Black Notebooks (1931-1938), trans. Richard Rojcewicz, (Indiana University Press, 2016), p. 134.   


8 Oct 2021

You Know We're Living in a Society

George Costanza: defender of society and civilisation -
'The Chinese Restaurant', Seinfeld, S02/E11, (1991): click here.
 
 
In this era of identity politics, nobody wants to talk positively about society and its benefits. 
 
Instead, people prefer to speak of whatever community they imagine themselves belonging to on the basis of gender, race, religion, or a host of other identifying factors that they determine as crucial to who they are [1]
 
Often this sense of self is rooted in an experience of injustice or feelings of social exclusion and oppression. Communities thus often spend a good deal of time asserting their rights and (somewhat ironically) demanding recognition by the wider (mainstream) society that they either reject or wish to radically reform. 
 
People coming together on the basis of shared experiences and values sounds reasonable and can be empowering. But when communities become self-enclosed groups with special interests and are suspicious or resentful - even hostile - to those on the outside, then things can quickly develop in way that is problematic.           
 
Even Heidegger - whom one might have supposed to be very much for traditional (quasi-mythical) forms of Gemeinschaft and against modern, inauthentic forms of Gesellschaft - warned:
 
"The much-invoked 'community' still does not guarantee 'truth'; the 'community' can very well go astray and abide in errancy even more and even more obstinately than the individual." [2] 

 
Notes
 
[1] In a very amusing scene from one of my favourite episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm - 'Trick or Treat' (S02/E03) - Larry David identifies himself as a member of the bald community: click here.   
 
[2] Martin Heidegger, 'Ponderings and Intimations III', 153, in Ponderings II-VI: Black Notebooks 1931-1938, trans. Richard Rojcewicz, (Indiana University Press, 2016), p. 127. 


7 Oct 2021

Post 1750: The Rambler

Portrait of Samuel Johnson 
by Joshua Reynolds (1775)
 
 
I.
 
1750 is something of a lucky number for me as the sum of its digits adds up to 13; a star number of great significance within many cultures, as well as the day of the month on which I was born. 
 
As a date, 1750 is often used to indicate the end of the pre-industrial era, so I suppose one might say that the modern world as we understand it - fully enframed by technology and powered by great machines - begins here. 
 
But 1750 also saw the first edition of Samuel Johnson's The Rambler ... [1] 
 
 
II.
 
For those of you unfamiliar with the name, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is one of the most distinguished men of letters in English history. A poet, playwright, essayist, critic, biographer, and editor, he began his writing career on The Gentleman's Magazine, in 1737 [2]
 
His famous dictionary - which took him almost nine years to complete - was published in 1755 to great acclaim, but it's the series of tuppenny essays which he published twice weekly under the title of The Rambler, that most excite my interest here (I'll explain why below).
 
Between 1750 and 1752, Johnson (anonymously) wrote over 200 Rambler articles. Often on moral and religious topics, the essays tended to be more serious than the title of the series might suggest and Johnson adopted an elevated style of neoclassical prose that was in stark contrast with the colloquial language that most popular publications of the day favoured.
 
However, whilst sometimes sounding a bit like sermons, Johnson maintained a speculative approach to his subject matter and the essays mostly avoided being too didactic in character. It was always his hope, he said - echoing Ben Jonson - to mix profit with pleasure [3]
 
Other subjects discussed in The Rambler included literature, society and politics and Johnson liked to supplement his own thoughts with quotes from Renaissance humanists such as Erasmus and Descartes. Taken as a whole, these essays constitute Johnson's most consistent and sustained body of work.     
 
Alas, the publication was not a great success; as its author lamented in the final essay, 'I have never been much a favourite to the publick'. Having said that, there was a small band of devoted readers and The Rambler was critically respected for the quality and power of the writing [4]
 
 
III. 
 
So, why does all this interest me ...
 
Well, without wishing to blow my own trumpet - or compare myself to Samuel Johnson - it seems to me that Torpedo the Ark is in the tradition of The Rambler
 
The 1,750 published posts - which might be seen as micro-essays - are composed on an equally wide variety of topics and constitute a sustained body of work. Further, the blog also has a small but loyal readership and manages, I hope, to entertain as well as inform. 
 
The only real difference is that I don't charge readers anything - not even tuppence - to access the work on Torpedo the Ark; something which makes me foolish in Johnson's opinion: No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money ...    
  
 
Notes
 
[1] It's an amusing title in its ambiguity: does Johnson want his readers to imagine him as one who roams in the countryside of ideas, wandering from one topic to the next; or is he self-mockingly referring to himsef as one who writes at length in a slightly confused manner, blathering on about subjects almost unparalleled in range and variety, but never telling us anything of substance ...? 
 
[2] Founded in London, in 1731, by Edward Cave, The Gentleman's Magazine was a monthly publication which ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term magazine for a periodical and included commentary on any topic the educated public might be interested in, from commodity prices to Latin poetry (rather, one might say, like Torpedo the Ark, which also aims to produce numerous pieces of such variety that it becomes impossible to provide an overview).   
 
[3] See the Prologue to Ben Jonson's play Volpone (1606). 
      This ideal has continued to unfold in our own times; the BBC, for example, declare a desire "to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain".

[4] Further, when issues of The Rambler were collected in book form (1753), the essays became more widely read and appreciated, particularly amongst members of the newly emerging middle-class who hoped to improve their knowledge in a manner that would enable them to converse more easily with the highly educated members of the aristocracy. 
      Contemporary readers can purchase a facsimile reprint of The Rambler (Kessinger Publishing, 2010) on Amazon: click here. Alternatively, Johnson's essays from The Rambler can be read on the Samuel Johnson blog published by Matt Kirkland: click here
 
 

4 Oct 2021

Butterfly

 
Damien Hirst: Expulsion (2018) 
Butterflies and household gloss on canvas 
(84" diameter)
 
 
I. 
 
One of my favourite short poems by D. H. Lawrence is called 'Butterfly' and exists in two versions, the first of which opens with the following lines: 
 
 
The sight of the ocean 
or of huge waterfalls
or of vast furnaces pouring forth fire
 
does not impress me as one butterfly does
when it settles by chance on my shoe. [1]
  

I have to confess, my own response to Damien Hirst's series of works known as Mandalas [2] made from the wings of thousands and thousands of dead butterflies, was something similar: even whilst astonished by the beauty of the works - and dismayed by the cruelty involved in making them - they did not impress as a single living butterfly impresses when it comes from out of nowhere and briefly settles on one's shoe, or on a flower in the sunshine.
 
When a single living butterfly emerges from its chrysalis and lifts up its large, often brightly coloured wings, fluttering into flight with 56-million years of evolution behind it, then "wonder radiates round the world again" [3]
 
But when Mr. Hirst imports innumerable dead butterflies from breeding farms in the tropics so that he might gleefully glue their body parts on to canvas in order to make art - and money - we go away feeling somewhat despondent, even a little demoralised. 
 
For it's as if life itself has been enframed and we witnesss a gathering of lost souls [4] exhibited for our macabre delight ...      
 
 
II.    
 
Having said this, I'm aware of the need to curb what Giovanni Aloi calls misplaced outrage when it comes to Hirst's use of butterflies. For as he rightly notes, whilst one can subscribe to the view that killing creatures for the production of art is unethical, it's important to acknowledge that what Hirst is doing is nothing new and that most artworks rely upon animal slaughter: 
      
"Watercolours are mixed with ox gall, an extract of bovine gall bladder, and tempera with egg. Sepia, the reddish-brown favourite of life drawing, is derived from the ink sac of the common squid and many other pigments rely on pulverised insects to provide us with the brilliant and subtle hues used in paintings. Canvases, meanwhile, are sized with rabbit skin glue. And ferrets, squirrels, and hogs are killed to make artists’ brushes." [5]
      
Aloi goes on to argue that Hirst is simply being honest about this and making the destructive reality of art apparent:
 
"His work reveals how the achievements of art have depended on our willingness to sacrifice the lives of animals. Or perhaps more disturbingly, Hirst shows us that aesthetic beauty can derive from so-called acts of cruelty towards animals and nature." [6]
 
Finally, Aloi points out that the farms that breed Hirst's butterflies not only help sustain local economies by providing legal and regulated work, but protect the environment by dramatically reducing habitat destruction. The poaching of rare specimiens from the wild - to be sold to international collectors on the black market - is also something that the farming of butterflies helps to prevent. 
 
So, whilst I still remain unimpressed in a Lawrentian sense with Hirst's butterfly mandalas, I would encourage readers to think twice before mounting their moral high horse.   


Damien Hirst: Expulsion (2018): detail
 
 
Notes
 
[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Butterfly' [I], The Poems, Vol. I, ed. by Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 590. 
      Both short versions of this poem are located in The 'Nettles' Notebook, but readers might like to know that a significantly longer third version of 'Butterfly' can be found in The Last Poems Notebook; see The Poems, Vol. I, p. 610. This can be read online by clicking here
 
[2] Damien Hirst's Mandalas exhibition was held at the White Cube Gallery (Mason's Yard, London), 20 Sept - 2 Nov 2019: click here for details.
 
[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Butterfly' [2], The Poems, Vol. I, p. 591.
 
[4] Those who know their ancient Greek will recall that the word for butterfly - Ψυχή [psyche] - also denotes soul
   
[5-6] Giovanni Aloi, 'The misplaced outrage over Damien Hirst's dead butterflies', Apollo (30 Sept 2019): click here to read online.