Notes on Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts (Part 2: pp. 75-180)

Photo of Maggie Nelson by Jarrett Eakins (2013) 

alongside the cover of her book The Argonauts 

 (Graywolf Press, 2015)

 

 

Note: this post continues from part one (pp. 1-74) which can be accessed by clicking here.

 

 

I.

 

Performativity is a big part of being a writer, says Nelson, and I agree. 

 

But whereas she is keen to stress that this doesn't mean she isn't herself in her writing, or that her writing isn't somehow her - of course it's about me - I'm afraid that I do perform as a writer in a manner that might be branded "fraudulent or narcissistic or dangerous" [75] and which demonically dramatises the ways in which I am not myself, but always becoming-other. 

 

Of course, we should note that it's "easy to get juiced up about a concept like plurality or mutiplicity" [77], or becoming-other, and to use them so often that they become empty of any specificity; one doesn't wish to become like Freud, that is to say, intoxicated with "theoretical concepts that wilfully annihilate nuance" [85] or reality and fall into the white hole of idealism.

 

 

II.

 

Is homonormativity a "natural consequence of the decriminalization of homosexuality" [91]? I guess it probably is. 

 

And I can see how that might be a problem for outlaw fetishists like Bruce Benderson, who see homosexuality as an illicit "narrative of urban adventure" [91]; the chance to find pleasure via the breaking of laws. 

 

For once something is no longer "illicit, punishable, pathologized, or used as a lawful basis for raw discrimination or acts of violence, that phenomenon will no longer be abe to represent or deliver on subversion, the subcultural, the underground, the fringe in the same way" [91].

 

So where's the (transgressive) fun? 

 

This is why, Nelson informs us, "nihilist pervs like painter Francis Bacon have gone so far to say that they wish that the death penalty was still the punishment for homosexuality" [91] - which is, perhaps, just one more reason why you've gotta love Franny B. 

 

Even Nelson concedes: "In the face of such a narrative, it's a comedown to wade through the planet-killing trash of a Pride parade ..." [91]. However, as she then goes on to say, the binary of normative/transgressive becomes unsustainable at last.

 

 

III.

This line obviously makes smile: "Basking in the punk allure of 'no future' won't suffice ..." [95] Is Nelson advocating an ideal of hope here à la Shep Fairey? [a]

 

And this line also also caught my eye when flicking through The Argonauts: "I find it more embarrassing than enraging to read Baudrillard ..." [98] Well, honestly, there are passages in her book that I find more embarrassing than liberating. 

 

Again, this might be due to my own uneasiness around certain subjects, including what Nelson delights in calling ass-fucking, but I can't help feeling that she suffers from what Lawrence terms the "yellow disease of dirt-lust" [b], confusing the flow of sex with the excrementary functions.

 

"In the really healthy human being", writes Lawrence, "the distinction between the two is instant, our profoundest instincts are perhaps our instincts of opposition beween the two flows.

      But in the degraded human being the deep instincts have gone dead, and then the two flows become identical. [...] Then sex is dirt and dirt is sex, and sexual excitement becomes a playing with dirt ..." [c] 

 

This might explain why Ms Nelson is not interested in "a hermeneutics, or an erotics, or a metaphorics" [106] of her anus, but only interested in ass-fucking and the fact that "the human anus is one of the most innervated parts of the body" [106]. 

 

However, whilst recognising that "the anal cavity and the vagina canal lean on each other" [104], Nelson doesn't assert they are one and the same; what she suggests, rather, is that female sexuality is complex and diverse and not rooted in a single fixed location (and ultimately even Lady Chatterley takes it up the arse and discovers anal sex to be full of redemptive possibility [d]). 

 

IV.

I'm very sympathetic to Nelson's fear of assertion. 

 

Indeed, my writing, like hers, is riddled with "tics of uncertainty" [122]; words like perhaps and maybe, for example, as one attempts to "get out of 'totalizing' language; i.e., language that rides roughshod over specificity" [122] (although Barthes thinks it absurd to try and escape from language's inherently assertive nature by the use of such tics). 

 

V.

I'm also sympathetic to Nelson's (Deleuzian) view of herself as an empiricist; i.e., as a writer who aims to clarify rather than create per se, but who, in clarifying - and in dispelling myths of the eternal or universal - creates the conditions under which something new might be produced (see p. 128).  

  

 

VI.

 

How can deviant sexual activity and/or queerness "remain the marker of radicality" [137] in a pornified culture?  Precisely! 

 

Nelson sees the allure of "exchanging horniness for exhaustion" [138]; of turning to one's partner and asking: What are you doing after the orgy? [e] - but I doubt she'll ever dare whisper this in Harry's ear (even whilst recognising her right to fatigue).

 

 

VII.

 

Maggie may be embarrassed by Baudrillard, but she loves Barthes: particularly his book The Neutral (2007). 

 

And that makes me happy, because I love Barthes too and have recently published a post in gentle praise of this work [f] and of a concept which, "in the face of dogmatism, the menacing pressure to take sides, offers novel responses: to flee, to escape, to demur, to shift or refuse terms, to disengage, to turn away" [139-140].     

 

However, Nelson has also discovered that been born slippy like an otter isn't everything; that "studied evasiveness has its own limitations, its own ways of inhibiting certain forms of happiness and pleasure" [140]. 

 

Such as the pleasures of insisting and persisting, for example; and of making a commitment, sticking by what one has said previously, etc. I have to admit, however, that such pleasures continue to escape me and I shan't be singing 'Abide With Me' anytime soon.

 

   

Notes

 

[a] See the post of 6 Feb 2022 entitled 'The Rich Can Buy Soap' - click here. 

[b] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. Jaes T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 242.

 

[c] Ibid.

 

[d] See D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), chapter XVI. According to Lawrence, when Connie allows her lover to anally penetrate her she is made a different woman; one free of shame who discovers her ultimate nakedness.

 

[e] The phrase 'after the orgy' is from an essay of this title by the philosopher Nelson finds embarrassing - Baudrillard - and can be found in The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena, trans. James Benedict (Verso, 1993), pp. 3-13. 

      The orgy in question was "the moment when modernity exploded on us, the moment of liberation in every sphere [...] an orgy of the real, the rational, the sexual, of criticism as of anti-criticism, of development as a crisis of development" [3]. 

      For Baudrillard, now everything has been liberated, all we can do is "simulate the orgy, simulate liberation" [3], and accelerate in a void. 

 

[f] See the post pubished on 1 April 2025: click here.   

 

Notes on Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts (Part 1: pp. 1-74)

Cover of the Melville House edition 

(2016) [a]

 

 

I've said it before, but it's worth repeating: Maggie Nelson is one of those very rare individuals who probably deserves the title of genius; an original and insightful writer who produces work that is both lyrical and philosophical [b].

 

I still think she has an unfortunate tendency to overshare and give us just a little too much personal information, but that might just be me being a bit uptight and prudish [c]. And, for all the times when I want to look away from the page, there are many more occasions on which I'm grateful as a reader for her honesty, courage, and intelligence.  

 

And so, let's take a look at The Argonauts (pp. 1-74), but please note this is more a response to the lines or paragraphs that most resonate with me, rather than a review of the book as a whole (some aspects of which, even if central - such as sodomitical parenthood - I don't really care about [d]).  

 

 

I. 

 

Nelson tells us that before she met the great love of her life, the artist Harry Dodge, she had "spent a lifetime devoted to Wittgenstein's idea that the inexpressible is contained - inexpressibly! - in the expressed" [3] [e]. 

 

It was this profound but paradoxical truth that enabled Nelson to keep her faith in language - words are good enough! - and continue writing. But then Dodge, "equally devoted to the conviction that words are not good enough" [4], obliged her to reconsider the matter; perhaps words were "corrosive to all that is good, all that is real, all that is flow" [4] and that to name is to kill; perhaps we can't conceptualise and articulate the world clearly (and non-destructively) after all.

However, I'm not sure that Nelson, as a writer and poet, ever quite accepts this; a little later she asks: "How can the words not be good enough?" [8].

 

 

II.

Nelson has always thought it a little romantic to allow "an individual experience of desire take precedence over a categorical one" [10]. 

 

And I agree, it is romantic to just love Thelma, Alice, or Nicolas Poussin, rather than identifying oneself in terms of a fixed sexuality, although maybe that's easier for me to say than for someone who is (or has been) persecuted or discriminated against for their queerness; I don't have to worry about how certain pieces of legislation, such as Clause 28 or Prop 8, are going to impact on my life [f].

 

 

III.

 

This is very similar to how I feel and act when it comes to home improvements and domestic chores: I don't want to lift a finger "to better my surroundings" [14], or even keep things ship shape and Bristol fashion. I prefer to literally let things "fall apart all around" [14] and then, "when it gets to be too much" [14], just move on and flee the scene.   

 

IV. 

  

This is an undeniably correct observation (one that reminds me of something Baudrillard might have written, although Nelson credits the idea to Lacan, whose idea of the Real is not quite the same as the former's): 

 

"To align oneself with the real [...] can feel good. But any fixed claim on realness, especially when it is tied to an identity, also has a finger in psychosis." [17]

 

In other words, whilst aligning with a real or natural identity can be a source of pride and pleasure, it can also bring with it a touch of horror and be impossible to sustain for 24/7; no one can be themselves all day every day, can they?

 

There have to be moments when we don't quite feel ourselves and we take a breather from reality. 

 

 

V.

 

I like the fact that Nelson doesn't just keep banging on about difference and otherness; the fact that she acknowledges that encountering sameness can also be important, "as it has to do with seeing reflected that which has been reviled" [31]. 

 

And this encounter with sameness can also allow self-discovery: "To devote yourself to someone else's pussy can be a means of devoting yourself to your own." [31]

 

And I suppose that matters; although not as much as the "shared, crushing understanding of what it means to live in a patriarchy" [31] - the kind of sentence which one simply has to let pass when reading an author like Nelson who passionately believes that there is "some evil shit in this world that needs fucking up" [33], such as the phallocratic order and capitalism, even if she has "come to understand revolutionary language" [33] as a mixture of fantasy and fetish. 

 

 

VI.

 

This is pure liberalism: "I support private, consensual groups of adults deciding to live together however they please" [37]. 

 

The problem is such groups don't live in a giggly bubble on the moon; they have neighbours and they belong to wider society and so their decisions and lifestyle choices invariably impact others. They also inhabit the planet with other species and, like Nelson, I think our relationship with animals and plants in sacred terms.     

 

 

VII.

 

"Even if women are consulting the same satellites, or reading from the same script: their reports are suspect ..." [47]

 

This remark about the perceived difference in reporting accuracy between male and female weather reporters is interesting. I'm not sure, however, that the reason for it is the one Nelson (and Luce Irigaray) imagine; i.e. that women are somehow removed as a sex from the language game that assures objective coherence and predictive ability.

 

But there does seem to be some sort of difference involved based on sex and a woman's greater attunement to her own body in relationship to the world; it's very rare that the Little Greek, for example, will say it's cold outside (giving reference to the air temperature), preferring instead to tell me she's feeling cold.  

So yes, it's a different (more subjective) way of articulating reality; but I don't think this is the result of patriarchal forces looking to silence women or discredit their weather reportage.

VIII.

 

I'm grateful to Nelson for mentioning the poet and literary scholar Michael Snediker (whom I didn't know of) and his book Queer Optimism (2008). For his critical examination of waxing lyrical - as summarised here - is one I find very interesting.

 

For there is something problematic (and irritating) - particularly to a working class sensibility - when writers indulge in histrionics. Even issues of "maximum complexity and gravity" [56] can be discussed without exaggerated language and overarching concepts which can sometimes negate the "specificities of the situation at hand" [56].

 

(This returns us to Wittgenstein and the idea of speaking plainly.)  

IX.

Is transitioning from one gender to another (or even just floating somewhere in-between) really the same as a becoming as Deleuze and Guattari understand it? 

 

I don't think so. But perhaps Nelson's reading of the above on this topic is superior to mine; more true to the radical spirit of everybody's favourite nomad philosophers and certainly she and Harry Dodge know more about gender, sexuality, and identity issues than I do. 

 

Thus, best perhaps that I say nothing further here: for I don't want to run the risk of being thought presumptuous or another comfortably cisgendered straight white male know-it-all, who has forgotten (or is yet to learn) that "the best way to find out how people feel about their gender or their sexuality - or anything else, really - is to listen to what they tell you [...] without shellacking over their version of reality" [66].

 

But then, having said that, this sounds suspiciously like an attempt to silence those who don't care about personal truth and refuse to value lived experience above everything else.         

 

X.

On my first day at school, I cried when they pinned a name badge on me and tried to remove it (true story). Ten year later, I smiled when Poly Styrene informed her audience that identity was the crisis (having already seen that) [h]. 

Thus, like Nelson's professor of feminist theory, Christina Crosby, I would be mortified were a student - or anyone else - to hand me an index card and ask me to write on it how I identified and then pin it on my lapel. For like Crosby, I've "spent a lifetime complicating and deconstructing identity and teaching others to do the same ..." [73]  

 

Notes 

 

[a] The Argonauts was originally published in the United States by Graywolf Press, in 2015. The first UK edition, published by Melville House, followed in 2016, and it is this edition to which all page numbers given in the text refer.  

 

[b] In 2016, a year after the publication of The Argonauts, Nelson was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship; known to many as the genius grant. See the two-part post 'Heathen, Hedonistic, and Horny: Notes on Maggie Nelson's Bluets (2009)' (5 Sept 2024): click here.   

[c] See the post 'Can a Writer Ever Overshare? On Maggie Nelson's Self-Exposure' (9 Sept 2024): click here. 

[d] I'm sure Nelson would say it's this indifference to parenting - particularly the maternal - that disqualifies me from being a feminist; see pp. 48-52 and the story of a seminar with Jane Gallop and Rosalind Krauss. Nelson stands with the former, but I have to admit, I'm slightly more sympathetic to the latter. 

 

[e] I don't want to split hairs - though some say that philosophy is nothing other than the endless splitting of hairs - but I'm not sure Wittgenstein quite said this. 

      What he said, rather, was that the inexpressible (i.e., that which can be shown and, aguably, that which mysteriously matters most) forms the background against which whatever we can express has its meaning. In other words, context - not containment - is the crucial word here. 

      See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch (University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 16. A revised edition of this work, ed. G. H. von Wright, was published by Blackwell in 1998.

 

[f] Like Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, I want to use the word queer to include "all kinds of resistances and fracturings and mismatches that have little or nothing to do with sexual orientation" [35]. 

      On the other hand, one feels obliged to acknowledge historical and contemporary prohibitions aimed specificaly against those who identify as lesbian or gay, for example. As Nelson notes, this is kind of like wanting it both ways. 

      But then, there is "much to be learned from wanting something both ways" [36] and Nelson concedes that "annoying as it might be to hear a straight white guy" who is comfortably cisgendered talk about queerness, "in the end it's probably all for the better" [36].

 

[g] I'm referring to the single 'Identity' released by X-Ray Spex (EMI, July 1978): click here. 

Before heading to part two of this post - which can be accessed here -  readers might like to see an earlier post anticipating this one, entitled 'Argonauts' (26 Aug 2024): click here. 

D. H. Lawrence: Letters from Malta

Postcard showing the Great Britain Hotel in Valletta, Malta, 

where D. H. Lawrence - pictured here in a passport from this period - 

stayed briefly in May 1920

 

"And the island is stark as a corpse, no trees, no bushes even: 

a fearful landscape, cultivated, and weary with ages of weariness ..."

 

 

In May 1920, D. H. Lawrence was once again gripped by the absolute necessity to move: "We're going to Malta tomorrow. Don't know why it seems so thrilling. Perhaps it'll be a fiasco." [1]

 

Despite the latter possibility, Malta was another Mediterranean island to tick off on his bucket list of must see places as part of his so-called savage pilgrimage.

 

And whilst Lawrence was aware of his own tendency to quickly become disillusioned with a place once he landed, he always loved setting sail: 

 

"How glad to be on a ship! What a golden hour for the heart of man! Ah if one could sail for ever, on a small quiet, lonely ship, from land to land and isle to isle, and saunter through the spaces of this lovely world ..." [2]

And so, on 18 May he left by steamer from Sicily for Malta, where he stayed at the Great Britain Hotel, in Valletta, enjoying eggs, bacon, and marmalade for breakfast and cream teas in the afternoon, like a true expat, even whilst writing after his return about how much he hated the Britishness of the island: 

 

"There is something so beneficient and sterile, a kind of barrenness about it. English people seem so good, and so barren of life." [3] 

 

The Britishness of Malta wasn't the only thing that Lawrence disliked, however. In the same letter to Marie Hubrecht, he notes: 

 

"The island is a glaring gritty dry yellow lump with hideous villages. Only Valletta harbour is beautiful, particularly at night." [4]  

Partly, one suspects that Lawrence's attitude was shaped by the fact that he was delayed leaving Malta after a couple days as planned, due to an Italian steamer strike. For at first he seemed relatively happy: 

"It is wonderfully nice here in Valletta: most astonishing of all the abundance of food and of all things to buy, and it seems so cheap after Italy, where the shops are bare." [5]

In a letter to his sister Emily, Lawrence also remarks on the attractiveness of the native women:

 

"The Maltese women all wear this black silk arrangement in the street - gives them a dark, eastern look." [6]

 

But being "stuck" on the island - despite the fact life was "very easy and pleasant" and Valletta "beautiful and gay" [7] - clearly irritated him (as did the dry heat) and his lasting impression of Malta is not that of a fascinating island of great cultural and historical importance [8], but of a strange and hateful place "that glares and sets your teeth on edge and is so dry that one expects oneself to begin to crackle" [9].  

 

Still, if nothing else, at least Lawrence had a rather elegant suit made of tussore silk whilst in Malta [10]. 

 

And his troublesome relationship with the tragi-comic figure of Maurice Magnus - with whom he and Frieda had sailed to the island - was resolved when the latter killed himself, still in Malta, a few months later [11].    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H Lawrence, letter to Compton Mackenzie [16 May 1920], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 527.

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 47. Lawrence wrote those words when recalling his boat journey from Sicily to Sardinia in January 1921.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Marie Hubrecht (28 May 1920), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, III. 533. 

      See also the letter to Catherine Carswell [28 May 1920] in which he writes: " I get set on edge by the British régime. It is very decent, I believe, but it sort of stops life, it prevents the human reactions from taking full swing [...] which simply arrests my digestion." [III. 534]

 

[4] Ibid. 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Emily King [20 May 1920], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, III. 530.  

[6] Ibid. 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Jessica Brett Young [22 May 1920], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, III. 530.

 

[8] Lawrence was not unaware of Malta's long history and geostrategic significance and seemed particularly struck by the ancient nature of the native tongue, Maltese; a Semitic language derived from late medieval Sicilian Arabic with Romance superstrata (and the only Semitic language to use the Latin alphabet). 

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Catherine Carswell [28 May 1920], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, III. 533-534. 

      See also the letter to Amy Lowell (1 June 1920), in which Lawrence writes: "We went to Malta, and it was so hot I feel quite stunned. I shouldn't wonder if my skin went black and my eyes went yellow, like a negro's." [III. 538]

 

[10] The suit cost £6, which is about £350 in today's money, so still a real bargain. Lawrence proudly mentions the suit to Jan Juta in a letter dated 13 June, 1920. See Letters, III. 552.

 

[11] I discuss Lawrence's relationship with Magnus in a post dated 14 June 2021: click here. 

      Those who are particularly interested in Lawrence's reaction to Malta are encouraged to read the relevant section of Lawrence's Introduction to Maurice Magnus's Memoirs of the Foreign Legion (1924), published as Memoir of Maurice Magnus in D. H. Lawrence, Introductions and Reviews ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005). See pp. 53-58. The epigraph with which I open this post can be found on p. 57.

 

On Artistic and Philosophical Rabbit Holes

il-Kamra ta' Fuq

 

'I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit-hole ...

and yet - it's rather curious, you know, this sort of life!'

 

 

I. 

 

Artists, like philosophers and certain young girls, can never resist heading down a rabbit hole; often without considering how in the world they might get out again.  

 

So it is that, later this month, Maria Baldacchino, Karl Fröman, Maria Fröman, SJ Fuerst, and Luca Indraccolo, will individually explore and conceptually map out as best they can a series of surreal landscapes in an exhibition curated by Melanie Erixon entitled The Rabbit Hole Collective #1 [1].    

 

Visitors can look forward to encountering Lego-animals, gravity-defying pieces of fruit, painted inflatable pool toys, Pulcinella among the ruins, and other enigmatic figures looking for a coherent narrative within an environment in which it is reasonable to expect the impossible.   

 

 

II. 

 

The phrase, down the rabbit hole, is, of course, taken from Lewis Carroll's nonsensical novel, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and generally refers to the fact that it is often easier to get lost in one's own reality - or to find oneself in a strange and perplexing situation - than might be imagined once a collective frame of reference (i.e. common sense) is abandoned (or you take too many psychedelic drugs).  

 

Arguably, the best and most brilliant discussion of Carroll's work is by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who, in his 1969 work Logique du sens [2], challenges the conventional view that falling down a rabbit hole invariably ends in mad obsession or delusion (and is thus something that one should probably avoid doing).  

 

For Deleuze, the rabbit hole is primarily a zone of indeterminacy between two distinct states; i.e., a unique liminal space which he relates to his philosophy of difference and becoming. 

 

Thus, for Deleuze, the rabbit hole doesn't only allow for a shift in perspective or the exploration of new ideas and experiences, but provides an opportunity for molecular change via an opening up to alien forces (this is not simply an imaginative game or fantasy, but an event that has demonic reality and involves a natural play of haecceities) [3].     

 

 

III.

 

I'm not sure if the five artists involved in the upcoming exhibition at il-Kamra ta' Fuq have read Deleuze; nor if they care very much about his reading of Lewis Carroll in The Logic of Sense. 

 

However, one artist who has certainly read Deleuze and who does seem to care a good deal about his (and Guattari's) thinking on holey space [4], is John Beckmann [5], who, in 2019, was responsible for a conceptual installation in New York entitled Rabbit Hole (for Gilles Deleuze).

 

In this work, full of clever and often subtle artistic references, Beckmann filled an empty gallery with live rabbits, ladders, and all manner of artificial holes, tunnels, and escape hatches for visitors to explore. The aim was to create a rhizomatic space of complexity, ambiguity, hybridity, contradiction, and otherness, in which nothing was quite what it seemed. 

Amusingly, Rabbit Hole also raised a question that many critics have posed about the contemporary art scene: 

 

"Is it really a powerful underworld of counter-cutural subversion whose liminal spaces allow people to move beyond society's status quo? Or is it a warren of anxiety, self-reference and solipsism?" 

 

Answers on a postcard please ...

 

 

John Beckmann / Axis Mundi: 

Rabbit Hole (for Gilles Deleuze) (2019) 

archello.com

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The exhibition will run from 25 April until 11 May, 2025 at il-Kamra ta' Fuq, New Life Bar (1st floor), Church Square, Mqabba, Malta. For more details please click here, or visit artsweven.com

 

[2] The English translation of Deleuze's text by Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, ed. Constantin V. Boundas, was published as The Logic of Sense by Columbia University Press, in 1990. 

      Assembled from a series of thirty-four paradoxes and an appendix of five essays, the book is essentially an exploration of meaning and meaninglessness. For Deleuze, there is the kind of superficial nonsense which Lewis Carroll delights in and then there is the more profound (and violent) kind offered by Artaud. But nonsense of either kind can only be viewed as that which positively has no sense (as opposed to any absense or lack of sense).      

[3] See Deleuze and Guattari writing in A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press, 1988), pp. 252-253.

[4] See Deleuze and Guattari, writing in A Thousand Plateaus ... pp. 413-416. 

      The argument is that there are some people who are of necessity cave dwellers; individuals who love to bore holes and "turn the earth into Swiss cheese" [413]. Theirs is a space that is permeable and full of subterrannean passages that branch off in multiple directions and connect in unexpected ways; a space often associated with clandestine or illegal activities.

 

[5] John Beckmann laid the foundation for his New York based contemporary interior design studio Axis Mundi in 2004, drawing upon his scholastic roots in philosophy and visual culture. Those who wish to know more about him can click here.

Festina Lente: Or How An Artist Can Learn to Be Quick Even When Standing Still

Festina lente - a design by the famous Renaissance period 

printer and publisher Aldus Manutius, featuring a dolphin 

curled round an anchor

I.

 

A recent post on the politics of accelerationism contra slowness - click here - seems to have caused a degree of confusion amongst one or two readers. 

 

So, just to be clear: whilst suggesting that it might restore a degree of sovereignty to hop off the bus headed nowhere fast and take it easy while the world goes crazy [1], I'm not advocating a politics or a philosophy of inertia. 

 

For inertia not only implies unmoving but also unchanging and my thinking is closely tied to an idea of difference and becoming, not remaining essentially the same or having a fixed identity. 

 

Further, I'm of the view that quickness has nothing to do with running around like a headless chicken; that one can, as Deleuze and Guattari point out, "be quick, even when standing still" [2], just as one can journey in intensity without travelling round the globe like a tourist.

 

 

II.

 

Of course, this isn't a particularly new idea. 

 

One might recall the Classical Latin adage: festina lente, meaning make haste slowly [3]; a saying which has been adopted as a personal motto by everyone from Roman emperors to American sports coaches, via members of the Medici family and the Cuban Communist Party.  

 

Lovers of Shakespeare will know that the Bard frequently alluded to this idea in his work; as did the 17th century French fabulist Jean de la Fontaine in his famous fable (adapted from Aesop's original) concerning a hare and tortoise (the latter being praised for his wisdom in hastening slowly).   

 

My only concern with this is that moralists see making haste slowly as a matter of policy; i.e. a form of prudent conduct that protects one from making mistakes and as someone who values error and imperfection and failure - who sees these things as crucial to the making of challenging art, for example - that's problematic (to say the least).     

 

 

III.

 

And so I return to Deleuze and Guattari, because their rhizomatic idea of being quick, even whilst standing still, is not one that can be used to negate the creation of radically new art ...

 

According to the above, a painting, for example, is an assemblage of lines, shapes, colours, textures, and movements that "produce phenomena of relative slowness and viscosity, or, on the contrary, of acceleration and rupture" [4]. In other words, just as it's formed from different material elements, so too is it made up of different speeds and comparative rates of flow.      

   

And sometimes, these things converge on a plane of consistency [5] - but that's not to say the composition is ever perfect or free from error; nor that the artist who, purely out of habit and convention, signs their name on the work has succeeded and can now sit back and admire their own canvas. 

 

A painting is never really finished and whilst I can sympathise with artists who are often gripped with the urge to destroy their own pictures, I have never really understood those who place their canvases in golden frames and are genuinely pleased to see them hanging on a gallery wall.    

 

If an artist wishes to be quick, even when standing still, then, according to Deleuze and Guattari, they must learn to paint to the nth degree and that means (amongst other things) making maps not just preliminary drawings, and coming and going from the middle where things pick up speed, rather than attempting to start from the beginning and finish at the end (something that implies a false conception of movement) [6].  

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referencing here a lyric from the Killing Joke song 'Kings and Queens', released as a single from the album Night Time (E.G. Records, 1985).

 

[2] Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plaeaus, trans. Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press, 1988), p. 24. 

[3]  This Latin phrase is translated from the Classical Greek σπεῦδε βραδέως (speûde bradéōs). 

[4] Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plaeaus ... p. 4. 

[5] In art, composition refers to the arrangement and organisation of various elements within a work to create a cohesive and aesthetically pleasing whole. 

      But by a plane of consistency, Deleuze and Guattari refer to something that opposes this and which consists only in the "relations of speed and slowness between unformed elements" [ATP 507]; there is no finality or unification. A plane of consistency, therefore, doesn't aim to produce aesthetic pleasure, so much as open up a zone of indeterminacy and a continuum of intensity upon which new thoughts and feelings can unfold and interact without being constrained by pre-existing ideas and emotions. 

      In sum: it's a kind of virtual realm of infinite possibilities. See the post dated 23 May 2013 in which I discuss this and related ideas with reference to Deleuze and Guattari's fourth and final book together, What Is Philosophy? - click here. 

 

[6] See Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plaeaus ... pp. 24-25.

On the Politics of Accelerationism Contra Slowness

Jamie Reid, Nowhere Bus (2005)

giclee mounted cotton rag print (79 x 90.5 cm) 

bonhams.com

 

 

I. 

 

As everyone knows, the Sex Pistols were going nowhere - but they were going nowhere fast! Speed was the very essence of punk; even if travelling by bus [1]. Indeed, one might argue that Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid both subscribed to a political strategy that is now termed accelerationism ... 

 

In other words, theirs was a revolutionary project founded upon the idea that radical social and political change could only be achieved via an injection of speed (or chaos) into the current system in order to destabilise it and thus accelerate its demise. 

 

When everything is rotten and on the point of collapse, the task is not to try and reform or improve the situation, but, rather, to push the process of decay further and faster beyond the point of no return. Ultimately, the Sex Pistols wanted to make things worse - not better; McLaren and Reid believed in the ruins of culture, not its grand monuments. 

 

II. 

 

I'm not sure from where (or whom) McLaren and Reid adapt this line of thinking - one which attracts extremists on both the far-left and far-right - but, for me, it has its roots in the Nietzschean idea of pushing (or kicking) over that which is already falling [2]. 

 

One is also obliged to mention the work of Deleuze and Guattari in their seminal two-volume study Capitalism and Schizophrenia, in which they speak of accelerating the processes of the former all the way to a singular outer limit [3], effectively injecting Marxism with a little madness and speed.

 

And of course, it was from his idiosyncratic and delirious reading of Deleuze and Guattari, fuelled by amphetamine, that the British philosopher most associated with the theory of accelerationism, Nick Land, drew many key ideas in relation to his own brand of techno-nihilism that affirms rapid advances in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, human enhancement (or replacement), etc. [4]

 

 

III. 

    

As dangerously exciting as the idea of accelerationism is - and despite my own long advocacy of speed over slowness: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! - I find myself now increasingly drawn toward the idea that it might, in fact, be advantageous and desirable to slow things down; that slowness is another softly-spoken S-term to be added to the list that includes silence, secrecy, and shadows ... [5]   

 

Of course, this might just be a sign that one is getting older, but not necessarily any wiser: I'm very aware of the fact that it was only when he had passed 60 years of age and approched the end of his life, that Malcolm McLaren also embraced the idea of slowness in various cultural forms, including slow art and film [6].

 

Thus, for example, when discussing his series of 'musical paintings' entitled Shallow 1-21 (2008), he was very keen to explain how they were based upon the idea of slowness; that speed and the idea of going nowhere fast wasn't attractive to him any longer; that Damien Hirst's spin paintings were essentially boring [7]. 

 

McLaren now wanted individuals to take their time; to focus on things and delight in the nuances and details; to enjoy the moment that leads up to the event or action as much as the event or action itself; to appreciate that Jamie Reid's bus destination could, with but one stroke of a pen, be transformed from Nowhere to Now/here - i.e., an immanent utopia that exists in the bonds between people, not the dissolution of those bonds.   

A still from Malcolm McLaren's Shallow 1-21 (2008) 

showing a woman slowly eating some grapes
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art

   

   

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring of course to the Jamie Reid artwork used to promote the Sex Pistols' single 'Pretty Vacant' (Virgin Records, 1977) which featured two buses; one headed to Nowhere and the other destined to terminate in Boredom. 

      This amusing image, however, pre-dates punk; Reid was reworking an earlier graphic produced for his radical Suburban Press, having appropriated the buses idea and design from a 1973 pamphlet published by the American situationist group Point-Blank! In 2010, the activist David Jacobs, founder of Point-Blank!, claimed that he was the one who should be credited with the original concept and design. 

 

[2] In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes: 

      "O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: That which is falling, should also be pushed! Everything of today - it is falling, it is decaying: who would support it? But I - want to push it too!" 

      - 'Of Old and New Law Tables' (20), trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1969), p. 226.

 

[3] In Anti-Oedipus, for example, Deleuze and Guattari advocate an acceleration of the forces and flows that capitalism has itself unleashed: "To go still further, that is, in the movement of the market, of decoding and deterritorialization." [239]

      It should be stressed, however, that whilst they think capitalism "produces an awesome schizophrenic accumulation of energy" [34], this also acts as its limit, which is why "schizophrenia is not the identity of capitalism, but on the contrary its difference, its divergence, and its death" [246]. 

      Page references are to the English edition, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (The Athlone Press, 1994).

 

[4] Readers interested in knowing more about Land's thinking in this area might like to see his essay 'A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism' (2017), which can be located as a five page pdf on the Internet Archive: click here. 

      Ultimately, for Land, capitalism is something akin to an alien form of intelligence and a means of opening up the future. Thus, philosophers truly interested in change have a duty to affirm such regardless of the consequences to humanity or the planet. 

      See also Robin MacKay and Armen Avanessian (eds.), #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader (Urbanomic, 2014). 

 

[5] See the post 'In Defence of Isis Veiled' (9 Sept 2023), in which I suggest what a practice of occultism might mean today in an age of transparency: click here. 

 

[6] On the other hand, it's possible that this wasn't a sign of age, but an attempt by McLaren to get with the times and create a contemporary space for himself. For the slow movement as a cultural initiative encouraging individuals to reject the hustle and bustle of modern life, had, by the early 2000s, been (ironically) gathering pace for a number of years. 

      The core idea at the heart of the slow movement's philosophy is that faster is not necessarily better and that one should learn to relax a little so as to enjoy the moment and be able to appreciate and reflect upon things without feeling hurried or distracted. 

      The slow movement has found expression in many different areas; from slow art and photography, to slow fashion and food. There is also a political aspect to the movement; one that calls for local governance models that are inclusive and centered on deliberative democracy and community empowerment. 

      All this sounds very nice, but one suspects that this is essentially a middle-class movement; that the working class can't afford to take things slowly and lead a more leisurely lifestyle.

 

[7] I'm paraphrasing McLaren speaking in conversation with Prof. Jo Groebel, Direktor of the Deutsch Digital Institute, Berlin, at the American Academy in Berlin (29 Oct 2008): click here. Malcolm introduces the concept of slowness at 42:10. 

      For those who may not be familiar with the work, Shallow 1-21 is an 86-minute video consisting of 21 'musical paintings' that combine (but do not synchronise) musical snippets with short film clips - the latter appropriated from old sex movies - into a slow moving and hypnotically layered work of art.

 

 

For a follow up post to this one on making haste slowly and learning how, as an artist, one might be quick, even when standing still, please click here. 

 

On Lawrence the Lemon Lover

 Citrus Fresh DHL ... l'amante del limone 

  

D. H. Lawrence was someone who appreciated the beauty of the lemon - particularly the lemons that grow in Italy - more than most ... 

 

In Sea and Sardinia, for example, he writes of the lemons hanging "pale and innumerable in the thick lemon groves", where the trees press close together, because, "Lemon trees, like Italians, seem to be happiest when they are touching one another" [1]. 

 

He also notices the heaps of pale yellow lemons lying on the ground: 

 

"Curious how like fires the heaps of lemons look, under the shadow of the foliage, seeming to give off a palid burning amid the suave, naked, greenish trunks. When there comes a cluster of orange trees, the oranges are like red coals among the darker leaves. But lemons [... are] speckled like innumerable tiny stars in the green firmament of leaves." [2] 

 

Whilst in a section of Twilight in Italy, Lawrence writes of tall lemon trees "heavy with half-visible fruit" that look like "ghosts in the darkness of the underworld" [3] and whose flowers give off a subtle and exquisite scent. 

 

They trigger thoughts in him of "the ancient world still covered in sunshine [...] where there is peace and beauty" [4] and none of the black dissonance that belongs to the modern industrial world. 

 

Reading this, one wishes one could either sip un poco di chiar' di luna, con canella e limone [5] or even, indeed, rub a little olive oil on one's naked skin and "wander a moment in the dark underworld" [6] of the citrus grove, balancing a lemon flower in one's navel and laughing, like Juliet, the sun-woman.

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'As far as Palermo', in Sea and Sardinia, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 13.

 

[2] Ibid., pp. 13-14.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Lemon Gardens', in Twilight in Italy and Other Essays, ed. Paul Eggert (Cambridge University Press), p. 129. 

 

[4] Ibid., p. 132. 

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'A Little Moonshine with Lemon', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 99. 

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'Sun', in The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 24.

 

 

For a citrus fresh sister post to this one, click here.

 

Yahrzeit: In Memory of Malcolm McLaren

Malcolm McLaren comes of age 

(1959)

 

May the great name McLaren be magnified throughout the punk world, 

which was created according to his will.

 

 

Today marks the 15th anniversary of Malcolm Mclaren's death [1].

 

I don't know if the Greeks had a word for such an anniversary [2], but the Jews certainly do: Yahrzeit [3]. 

 

And it is worth remembering, I think, that Malcolm - like many of the key figures involved in the punk rock revolution [4] - was himself Jewish and even posed for a photo on the day of his bar mitzvah, looking very dapper in a double-breasted dinner suit, dicky bow, and tallit, whilst somewhat nervously holding a prayer book [5].

 

Whether McLaren's Jewishness played a significant role in his life and career is something that can be debated another time; as can the question of whether or not antisemitism is to blame for a lot of the hostility still directed his way and the fact that his astonishing contribution to popular culture - not just to music, but to art and fashion - is either grossly underrated or deliberately downplayed. 

 

Here, in this short post, I simply wish to commemorate his genius and acknowledge the huge influence (for beter or for worse) he has had on my own life.  

 

Notes

 

[1] Conicidentally, we might also note that Vivienne Westwood would have been celebrating her 84th birthday today, had she not died in December 2022.   

 

[2] Whilst there isn't an actual term in Greek - ancient or modern - for death anniversary, the practice of commemorating a loved one is known as Μνημόσυνο (Mnemosyno); a term derived from the name of the goddess of memory and mother of the nine Muses, Μνημοσύνη (Mnemosyne).

 

[3] Yahrzeit is a modern borrowing from the Yiddish word יאָרצײַט. It is an annual occasion traditionally commemorated by reciting the Kaddish (a 13th century prayer composed in Aramaic) and by lighting a long-burning candle.  

 

[4] This is particularly true of the New York scene as shaped by (amongst others) Richard Hell, Joey Ramone, Sylvain Sylvain, Chris Stein, and the founder of CBGB Hilly Kristal (all Jewish). In the UK, punk in the 1970s as most of us know it, was essentially invented by McLaren and his friend (and fellow Jew) Bernie Rhodes.    

 

[5] McLaren was born to a Scottish father (Peter McLaren) and a Jewish mother (Emily Isaacs), but was effectively raised by his maternal grandmother, Rose Corré Isaacs, a diamond dealer's daughter, in Stoke Newington's Sephardic community.

 

 

This post is for all those who remember Malcolm with fondness and continue to fight his corner.  

 

Oranges Are Not the Only Citrus Fruit (In Praise of Lemons)

Édouard Manet's Lemon (1880) [1]

served on a pewter plate against a lime green background 

(SA/2025)

 

 

The thought suddenly struck me after reading a poem by Frank O'Hara [2] that, just as sardines are not the only little fish in the sea [3], so too is it true that oranges are not the only citrus fruit [4] in the world; even if they are by far the most popular for juicing and thus might be said to enforce the same (repressive) model of normality each breakfast time as a bowl of cereal, or a slice of toast.

 

Ever since a young child, I have refused to accept the status quo or conform to popular opinion and so have long been suspicious of oranges and the role they play within society; much preferring lemons, not only for their colour and shape, but also for their smell and even the sharp sourness and acidic bitterness of their taste [5].

 

Oranges can be refreshingly tangy, it's true, but there's always an underlying sweetness that compromises their zestiness in comparison to the lemon and ultimately ordering un citron pressé - or perhaps even a little moonshine with lemon - is so much more punk rock than asking for a glass of orange juice.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Manet's picture - Le citron, oil on canvas (14 x 22 cm) - can be viewed on the the Musée d'Orsay website: click here.

 

[2] The poem I refer to by Frank O'Hara is 'Why I Am Not a Painter' (1956), and can be found in The Selected Poems, ed. Donald Allen (Random House, 1974). It can also be found on poets.org: click here. 

 

[3] See the recently published post on anchovies: click here.

 

[4] Obviously, I'm playing with the title of Jeanette Winterson's 1985 novel - Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit - which she later adapted for a BAFTA-winning television drama (BBC TV, 1990). 

 

[5] The juice of the lemon is about 5-6% citric acid; that's slightly more than lime juice; almost twice as much as grapefruit juice; and five times more than orange juice. It might interest to know that lemons also contain more vitamin C than oranges (whilst obviously lower in sugar).  

 

 

For a sister post on D. H. Lawrence's love of lemons, click here.