On Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (Another Post in Response to Simon Solomon)

Image: Marian S. Carson Collection 

at the Library of Congress

 

 

I. 

A common form of corporal punishment for boys and junior officers in the British navy was being bent over the breech of a cannon in order to be caned or whipped on their exposed buttocks. This practice - painful, but not disabling - was euphemistically known as kissing (or marrying) the gunner's daughter and Adam Ant once wrote a song alluding to it [1].

 

II. 

I thought of this when Simon Solomon recently admonished me for providing an 'unsourced reference taken from the heavily doctored Will to Power and as such non-canonical' [2]. 

It wasn't so much that I felt I was about to receive a light beating, but I did feel I was being tied to Nietzsche's canon - i.e., those works which were written and published by him in his lifetime [3] - and forced to pledge love and loyalty only to his authorised books.

And I have to confess that, just like Captain Renault, I was shocked - shocked I tells ya! - to be reprimanded by Herr Solomon of all people; an independent scholar whose reading of Hölderlin in terms of schizopoetics and things that go bump in the night [4] is unorthodox to say the least. 

Indeed, some - including those of a more Swalesian mindset - might even describe it as heterodox, i.e., a work that not only deviates from older, more conventional readings, but wilfully perverts them. By his own confession, Solomon's passionate appreciation (and translation) of the German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin involved fucking the latter up the arse in order to produce some kind of monstrous offspring [5].      

 

So, for Simon to invoke the canon and insist that I play by the academic rules and show my obedience to (and conformity with) the law that governs what is and is not an acceptable text, is, I think, a bit rich.  

III. 

Having said that, I accept that there are seminal texts - i.e., works which are highly influential and possibly lay the foundation for future study - but I'd not even call these texts canonical (and what is seminal work for me - such as Sade's La philosophie dans le boudoir (1795), is merely a white stain on the history of French literature for others).  

 

Ultimately, to invoke the canon and wish to uphold it, is to give support to those texts which, as Barthes would say, come from culture and do not break with it; texts which are linked to "a comfortable practice of reading" [6]; texts which have authority and have achieved the status of timeless classics; texts which are meant to contain eternal truths.

As a white European heterosexual male, I'm not obsessed with deconstructing, decolonising, expanding, or queering the canon; I simply don't wish to be strapped to it and thrashed by those who think I should show a little more respect to the Political Father.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Adam Ant, 'Marrying the Gunner's Daughter', from the album Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner's Daughter (Blueblack Hussar Records, 2013). Not one of his best songs, but click here if you fancy giving it a listen.  

 

[2] See Solomon's comment dated 27 November 2025 and posted at 17:14:00 on Torpedo the Ark in response to a post titled 'On (Not) Taking a Stand' - click here. And see note 3 below for why Solomon is right to be wary of material extracted from The Will to Power.  

 

[3] Ecce Homo can also be included as part of Nietzsche's canon; for whilst it was published posthumously in 1908, he had completed writing it in 1888. 

      However, the book of notes assembled from Nietzsche's Nachlaß (i.e., literary remains) by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche working in editorial collaboration with his friend Peter Gast and titled Der Wille zur Macht (1901) is an entirely different kettle of fish and references to this work should be treated with a certain amount of caution. 

      His sister's claims that this was the magnum opus Nietzsche had hoped and planned to write can certainly be dismissed and some Nietzsche scholars have gone as far as to describe it as essentially a philosophical forgery. Nevertheless, the significantly expanded second edition containing 1,067 sections (1906) has been translated into English - most famously by Anthony M. Ludovici in 1910 for the edition of Nietzsche's works edited by Oscar Levy and by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale in 1968 - and the book remains one often consulted by readers of Nietzsche (albeit a non-canonical text as Solomon says).

      Readers who would like to know more about the publication history of Nietzsche's work might like to see William H. Schaberg, The Nietzsche Canon: A Publication History and Bibliography (University of Chicago Press, 1996). 

 

[4] See Solomon's 2020 book Hölderlin's Poltergeists: A Drama for Voices, published under the Irish spelling of his name as Síomón Solomon (Peter Lang, 2020). I have written extensively on this book on Torpedo the Ark: click here.   

 

[5] In the book cited above, Solomon writes enthusiastically of what he describes as Deleuze's bum banditry, a reference to the way in which the latter liked to approach certain other thinkers from behind and below. See Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations 1972-1990, trans. Martin Joughin (Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 6.  

[6] See Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller (Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 14.

      Like Barthes, I prefer texts that discomfort and impose a state of loss; texts which unsettle "the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories" and bring to a crisis our relation with language itself (texts a bit like Nietzsche's, in fact - including his non-canonical writings).   

 

 

On (Not) Taking a Stand: Placing Alexander Hamilton's Aphorism Under Erasure

 

I. 

 

Those who stand for nothing, fall for anything.

 

This line, often attributed to Alexander Hamilton - one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the protagonist of Lin-Manuel Miranda's smash hit musical [1] - is precisely the sort of simplistic cliché posited as an undeniably wise truth that I despise. 

 

Not only does it discourage critical thinking and debate, but it equates those who lack conviction and, like me, prefer to remain transpositional, with being credulous and gullible.

 

 

II. 

 

The kind of men [2] who take a stand, are often the same kind of men who have a point to prove and a case to rest. 

 

And they are often the same kind of men who like to stand to attention (feet together, arms by side, spine straight, shoulders back, chin up, eyes front), which is certainly one way to discipline the body, but not my way [3]. 

 

For the kind of men who are willing to discipline the body in this manner and who insist on standing for something are also the same kind of men willing to march and to die and to kill for their ideological principles, moral values, core beliefs, etc. 

 

For in taking a stand, they find themselves with a position to defend; and in finding themselves with a position to defend they all too quickly declare it legitimate to do so by any means necessary [4]. 

 

Personally, I don't like such men: men who stand for something. I prefer men who, like rebellious angels, have the courage to fall - in love, for example (or into sin) - even at the risk of seeming foolish, or weak and indecisive, or lacking manly virtue.

        

 

Notes

 

[1] Hamilton: An American Musical (2015) is a biographical musical with music, lyrics, and a book by Lin-Manuel Miranda (based on the 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow). From its (off-Broadway) opening, Hamilton received near-universal acclaim and it has since won multiple awards and continued to be box office gold. 

      A West End production opened at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London on 21 December, 2017, and picked up seven Olivier Awards in 2018, including Best New Musical. 

      I have not seen it: and do not want to see it. I suspect, if someone were to drag me along, I would either leave at the interval (and, when getting home, immediately have to watch Heat on DVD), or I'd fall asleep quicker than Larry David in the season 9 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm entitled 'The Shucker' (dir. Jeff Schaffer, 2017): click here. 

 

[2] I find it necessary to genderise the discussion at this point, for, as will become clear, it seems to me that this issue of taking a stand etc. is one tied to a certain model of masculinity (one seen as as virtuous and virile in the Victoran era, but which is now viewed as toxic).

 

[3] Being upright and able to stand to attention was a core component of the Victorian ideal of (heterosexual) masculinity. Symbolising strength and self-control, an erect posture was a physical manifestation of a man's character and moral standing. Men who slouched were weaklings unlikely to succeed in society; those who were prone to lying around and being idle or licentious were viewed as unmanly degenerates (homosexuals, drug addicts, dandies, or bohemian artists). 

 

[4] This supposedly radical phrase is thought to be an English translation either of a line written by Sartre in his 1948 play Les mains sales - en usant de tous les moyens - or of phrase spoken by Frantz Fanon in his 1960 address to the Positive Action Conference in Accra, Ghana; par n'importe quel moyen. 

      It is most famously assocated with Malcolm X, however, who used it repeatedly during a rally in NYC, in June 1964 (i.e., a few months before his assassination in February 1965): We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary. The argument of course, is twofold: firstly, that you you have to fight fire with fire (and meet violence with violence); secondly, that the ends justify the means. 

 

 

This post grew out of remarks made by and to Simon Solomon following a post dated 21 November 2025: click here. 

 

 

Euphoria Contra Ecstasy

Killing Joke: Euphoria (2015)  

Screenshot from the official video

And then the clouds break / A ray of sunlight, gloria!  

As if a promise / Some strange kind of euphoria [1]

 

 

I. 

 

When I was young, one of the key words in my vocabulary was the Ancient Greek term ἔκστασις (ékstasis), which refers to a psycho-spiritual sense of release; the ecstatic individual is one who has found a way to literally step outside of their own self and become part of something greater (some might characterise this as the nowness of the moment; some might speak of God).  

 

Ecstasy, therefore, is an altered - some would insist higher - state of consciousness and many who have experienced it speak of an intensely pleasurable experience, whether resulting from sexual activity, drug use, or religious devotion [2]. The desire for a temporary loss of self and loss of control is, it seems, rooted in a fundamental human instinct - one which Freud memorably termed der Todestrieb [3].     

 

And it's at this point I'd like to say something about another Ancient Greek term - εὐφορία - or, as we write it in English, euphoria  ...

 

 

II.  

  

It's because I think Freud is right to identify a death drive and because I believe the wilful desire to experience ecstasy is rooted in this drive (and is thus, from a Nietzschean perspective, décadent), that I now avoid speaking of ékstasis and favour euphoria, which, I would argue, is an expression of man's most vital self.   

 

In other words, euphoria is a sense of physical wellbeing that encourages us to stay true to the earth, whilst ecstasy, involving as it does an element of transcendence and a stepping out of reality, is a dangerous first step on the path to heaven; euphoria is tied to Dionysian joy [4], but ecstasy terminates in the kind of religious rapture [5] longed for by Christians and other afterworldsmen [6].  

 

 

III. 

By way of providing an example, let us turn to two contrasting scenes in D. H. Lawrence's novel The Rainbow (1915) ...  

 

In the first of these, we witness the heavily pregnant Anna Brangwen dancing naked in her bedroom and this, I would say, is a scene of euphoria; one that celebrates the fertile female body in all its gravid beauty:

 

"Big with child as she was, she danced there in the bedroom by herself, lifting her hands and her body to the Unseen [...]

      [...] She danced in secret, and her soul rose in bliss [7] [...] she took off her clothes and danced in the pride of her bigness [8].   

 

In the second scene, which comes in the following chapter (VII), we are told how her husband, Will, is driven to the point of ecstasy by Lincoln Cathedral:

 

"When he saw the cathedral in the distance [...] his heart leapt. It was the sign in heaven, it was the Spirit hovering like a dove [...] He turned his glowing, ecstatic face to her, his mouth opened with a strange, ecstatic grin." [9]    

 

It's not that Will is an objectophile - though he clearly has certain tendencies in that direction - his real desire is to escape mortal existence and become one with the Infinite in timeless ecstasy. No wonder Anna "resented his transports and ecstasies" [10] and longs to leave the cathedral and be back under the open sky.

 

And no wonder she turns to the gargolyes, which save her "from being swept forward headlong in the tide of passion that leaps on into the Infinite" [11] and help her to bring Will back down to earth with a bump.  

 

In brief: Anna's Dionysian euphoria triumphs over Will's Christian ecstasy ...

 

He still loves Lincoln Cathedral, but, after Anna has effectively disillusioned him by mocking his desire to consummate his love, even Will recognises there is life outside the church; that there are birds singing in the garden; flowers growing in the fields. 

 

And these things induce a sense of joy and wellbeing that was free and careless and "at once so sumptuous and so fresh, that he was glad he was away from his shadowy cathedral" [12]. 

 

 

IV. 

 

And on a cold and grey November morn, when all the autumn leaves have fallen and "I can hear the magpies laugh" [13], all it takes is a momentary break in the clouds and a ray of sunlight and I too feel strangely euphoric ...     

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from the Killing Joke single 'Euphoria', released from the album Pylon (Spinefarm Records / Universal Music Group, 2015): click here to play. The melodic character and almost choral quality of this track reminds me of the songs on Brighter Than a Thousand Suns (E.G. Records / Virgin Records, 1986), which is certainly one of my favourite Killing Joke albums.  

      

[2] I'm not suggesting these are the only ways to induce ecstasy; other methods might include physical activities such as yoga, dancing, or working out at the gym. Others find quiet meditation in which they concentrate on their breathing does the trick.

 

[3] Freud defines the death drive as the will possessed by organic life forms to return to an inanimate state. It is the opposing (although complementary) force to the life instinct, Eros, which drives self-preservation and reproduction. Both drives belong to the same libidinal economy. See his Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). 

      Here, I will argue that whilst the desire to experience ecstasy is rooted in the death drive, euphoria is an expression of man's most vital self.   

 

[4] For Nietzsche, the story of Dionysus is form of thanksgiving and an affirmation of life; the promise that it will be eternally reborn (this in stark contrast to the figure of the Crucified, who counts as an objection to life and a curse upon it). 

 

[5] Rapture is derived from the Latin term raptus, meaning to seize and carry off; one is literally swept up with ecstasy and transported to another (better and more perfect) world. This is why certain evangelical Christians in the United States use this term as their great eschatological watchword. 

      For these religious fanatics, the Rapture is an end-times event when all Christian believers (including the resurrected dead) will rise in the clouds, to meet the Lord their God. Although this is a relatively recent theological development - first arising in the 1830s - the origin of the term can be traced back to the Bible which uses the Greek word ἁρπάζω (harpazo); see 1 Thessalonians, 4:13-18, where a gathering of the elect in Heaven is described after the Second Coming of Christ.     

 

[6] This term - Hinterweltler in the original German - is a coinage of Nietzsche's and refers to those lunatics who focus their hopes and values on a transcendental realm that one enters at death, thereby devaluing earthly life. 

     For Zarathustra, it was suffering and impotence which created the idea of an afterworld and whilst it may seem attractive to many, it is, he says, a humiliation to believe in such heavenly nonsense. He teaches men to listen rather to the voice of the healthy body and stay true to the earth. 

      See the section entitled 'Of the Afterworldsmen', in Part One of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85), trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 58-61. 

 

[7] Although the term bliss was later appropriated by those who like to imagine the spiritual delights of heaven, it was originally an Old English word (with a Proto-Germanic root) simply meaning joy in the mundane sense. 

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 169-170. I discuss this scene - much loved by maiesiophiles everywhere - in the post 'On Dirty Dancing and the Virtue of Female Narcissism 2: The Case of Anna Brangwen' (30 July 2017) - click here - and again in a post titled 'Maiesiophilia' (8 Dec 2022): click here.   

       

[9] D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow ... p. 186.  

 

[10] Ibid., p. 188. 

 

[11] Ibid., p. 189. I discuss this scene at greater length in the post titled 'Believe in the Ruins: Reflections of a Gargoyle on the Great Fire of Notre-Dame de Paris' (16 April 2019): click here.  

 

[12] D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow ... p. 191.  

 

[13] Killing Joke, 'Euphoria' (2015), as cited in note 1 above.  

 

Behold the Sausage (Or Incipit Parodia): A Foolish Response to Simon Solomon

The Three Jokers (SA/2025)

 

'I have a terrible fear I shall one day be pronounced holy ... 

I do not want to be a saint, rather even a buffoon ... Perhaps I am a buffoon ...' [1]

 

  

I. 

 

According to Simon Solomon, Nietzsche's final book, Ecce Homo (1908) [2], is an embarrassing catastrophe resulting from his tragic inability to reconcile free-spirited sincerity with his desire to consummate nihilism. As a consequence, says Solomon, he falls into the abyss and we are left with a work which is "rightly regarded as the catastrophic car-crash of his philosophical career" [3]. 

 

This last line makes one think of Ballard's famous 1973 novel and imagine Nietzsche as the nightmare angel of the philosophical highway, looking to develop not so much a new and perverse sexuality, but a Dionysian philosophy [4]. 

 

Only, of course, Ecce Homo is not a car crash and nor should it be read as a cautionary tale of psychopathology. And Nietzsche doesn't fall into the abyss so much as voluntarily leap into the absurd, becoming the clown or comedian he always wanted to be. 

 

In this respect, Nietzsche is more like Arthur Fleck than he is Robert Vaughan and whilst the subtitle of Ecce Homo is apt and memorable - Wie man wird, was man ist - it could also have been: I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realise it's a fucking comedy [5]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, whilst Nietzsche is more Fleck than Vaughan, he is also far more of a silly sausage than the mentally ill clown played by Joaquin Phoenix. And by that I mean he has more in common with Hans Wurst [6] than Joker ...  

 

A popular comic character in Germany with a complex, multifaceted personality, Hans Wurst often featured in rural carnival celebrations during the 16th and 17th centuries. His humour was often coarse - lots of sexual innuendo and scatalogical references - and it certainly wasn't popular with everyone. Indeed, in the 1730s there were attempts to banish Hans from the German stage in order to improve the quality of comedy writing and protect public morality.  

 

This was initially met with resistance, however, German theatre gradually moved away from popular, improvised performances to the modern bourgeois artform we know today. And Hans Wurst morphed into the far more respectable stock character of the Harlequin; or, if he did appear, it was in puppet form as a German equivalent of Mr Punch.  

 

By the close of the 18th century, Emperor Joseph II had banned all buffoonery and burlesque and instructed theatre producers to concentrate on staging shows suitable for all to enjoy. However, Wurst's name lived on and he retained his place in the cultural imagination.     

 

 

III. 

 

So what has all this to do with Nietzsche? 

 

Well, in Ecce Homo Nietzsche says it's preferable to be thought of as Hans Wurst than as any kind of guru or holy figure: see the line quoted at the top of this post. 

 

Christine Battersby writes: 

 

"In his so-called 'late' period, Nietzsche denies that there is any underlying or sublime 'truth' that is covered over - and healed - by art. Instead, we are left with a play of surfaces, and with the affirmation of life as the new ideal. Indeed, in Ecce Homo Nietzsche takes an additional step as he aligns himself with the Hanswurst: with a mode of the ridiculous, the crude and the all-too-human - with that which is, above all, not elevated, self-denying or sublime in the Schopenhauerian sense." [7]

 

In sum: for Nietzsche, playfulness - not sincerity or systematicity - is the essential precondition of greatness. And so whilst other philosophers sing in praise of wisdom or mature reason, he sings in praise of childlike innocence and pure folly. 

 

But he also sings in praise of human baseness: for in adopting the persona of Hans Wurst in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche is "aligning himself not only with a mode of the ridiculous that is cut off from the sublime, but also with that which is morally repellent" [8].  

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1979), p. 126. 

 

[2] Although written in 1888, Ecce Homo was not published until eight years after Nietzsche's death in 1908. The subtitle of the work reveals its autobiographical aspect: How One Becomes What One Is.  

      As well as assessing his own life and contribution to philosophy, Nietzsche attempts to give us a new image of the philosopher; one who mocks the ascetic ideal that has hitherto dominated philosophy (i.e., a set of values that are a fundamental denial of life and which teach that meaning is to be found not in joy, but in suffering).

 

[3] See the comments left by Solomon on the posts 'Waxing Philosophical on Insincerity' (9 July 2018) - click here - and 'Haddaway, Man! An Open Letter to Peter Wolfendale' (22 November 2025): click here. 

      I fear that Solomon has a rather old-fashioned view of Ecce Homo; one that buys into the idea that it is the product "of a mind no longer master of its fantasies" and that it should be regarded as a work of insanity. The line quoted is from the Introduction to R. J. Hollingdale's translation (Penguin Books, 1979), p. 7. 

      Far from being the car crash he says it is, I see it as Nietzsche's most fun book and, as Hollingdale concedes, despite its "obvious failings and shortcomings", when "considered purely as an essay in the art of writing, it is among the most beautiful books in German" (ibid., p. 8). 

      See my post of 15 October 2013: 'Ecce Homo: How One Becomes as Queer as One Is' - click here. And see also my essay of this title (also known as Carry On Nietzsche) in Visions of Excess and Other Essays (Blind Cupid Press, 2009), pp. 255-280.   

 

[4] I'm referring here to J. G. Ballard's Crash (Jonathan Cape, 1973).  

 

[5] This is a line spoken by the protagonist of the film Joker (dir. Todd Phillips, 2019), Arthur Fleck, played (brilliantly) by Joquin Phoenix. Click here to watch the scene in which this line is delivered.

 

[6] The name Hans Wurst literally translates into English as John (or Jack, if you prefer the diminutive) Sausage. 

 

[7] Christine Battersby, '"Behold the Buffoon": Dada, Nietzsche's Ecce Homo and the Sublime', Tate Papers, No. 13 (Spring, 2010): click here.

      As Battersby reminds us, Schopenhauer was interested in how the ridiculous [lächerlich] relates to the sublime and claims that the genuinely humorous is not in conflict with the latter, but is complementary, and that the most serious people often laugh easily. 

      However, Schopenhauer draws a sharp distinction between true humour and that which is merey komisch - such as the bawdy rubbish given us by Hans Wurst and which amuses only the lower classes who lack the ability to appreciate the sublime with any intensity. Nietzsche, however, sides with the ordinary people who know, like D. H. Lawrence, that a little bawdiness keeps life sane and wholesome; see his poem 'What's sane and what isn't', in The Poems Vol. III, ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 1614. 

[8] Christine Battersby, as cited above. 

      In other words, whilst Schopenhauer ties the humorous to the sublime, Nietzsche ties the comic to the monstrous and criminal and to the fact that man has physical needs and limitations (this is evidenced by other references to Hans Wurst in Nietzsche's late notebooks). 

      Essentially, this is the Nietzsche embraced by Bataille in his idiosyncratic reading of the latter. Obviously the French author was influenced by other thinkers, but, as he once confessed: "A peu d'exceptions près, ma compagnie sur terre est celle de Nietzsche ..." See 'On Nietzsche', (Continuum, 2004), p. 3, where the line is translated by Bruce Boone as: "Except for a few exceptions, my company on earth is mostly Nietzsche ..."         

 

 

For a related post to this one - 'Don't You Know Jesus Christ Is a Sausage?' (18 April, 2020) - which also references this essay by Battersby - please click here.

 

Musical bonus: Serge Gainsbourg, 'Ecce homo', taken from the album Mauvaises nouvelles des étoiles (Mercury Records / Universal Music Group, 1981): click here.  

      I'm not sure what Nietzsche would have made of this track, but I like to think the title if nothing else would make him smile.   

 

 

(Re-)turn to Red

Fig. 1 Killing Joke: Turn to Red  

(Malicious Damage, 1979) [1] 

Cover design by Mike Coles [2] 

 

 

It's amazing how certain songs and certain images can stay with you for many years after you first encountered them. 

 

Take, for example, the debut EP by Killing Joke with a sleeve design by Mike Coles (fig. 1). It's over forty-five years since its release and yet whenever there's a red sunrise - as there was this morning over Harold Hill (fig 2): 

  

 

Fig. 2 I Wonder Who Chose the Colour Scheme ... 

Photo by Stephen Alexander 

 

 

- it's not shepherds that I think of, but the track 'Turn to Red' that begins to play in my head (even though, ironically, the song twice informs us that the sky is turning grey). 

 

And it's Mike Coles's Mr Punch figure [3] that I look to see dancing across the rooftops; which, I suppose evidences the power of his design, as recognised by Russ Bestley: 

 

"One mark of a great designer in the field of music graphics is in the way that the audio and visual become almost inseparable - you can't listen to the music without picturing the cover artwork, and vice versa." [4].

 

Bestley, in fact, is a huge admirer of Coles's work: more so than me, to be honest; I'm far more of a Jamie Reid fan and punk purist [5]. 

 

Having said that, I agree with Bestley that Coles's images for Killing Joke set the scene for the music; that you can almost hear the band's "dark, raw power when you look at their early record covers" [6], including the Turn to Red EP, which nicely combines collage with drawing and photography set against a flat red background [7].

 

And, coincidently, it was Mike Coles's Turn to Red design that influenced me when asked a couple of months ago by Catherine Brown to come up with an image to promote her walking tour of Hampstead, following in the footsteps of D. H. Lawrence, as part of this year's Being Human Festival [8]. 

 

I hope - should he ever see the image (fig. 3) - that it makes Mr Coles smile ... 

 

 

  

Fig. 3 Turning Hampstead Red with D. H. Lawrence (2025) 

Stephen Alexander (in the manner of Mike Coles)

 

Notes

 

[1] The Killing Joke EP Turn to Red was released in a 10" format by Malicious Damage on 26 October, 1979. It had two tracks - 'Nervous System' and 'Turn to Red' - on the A-side and just one track on the B-side; 'Are You Receiving?'. 

      It was then re-released on 14 December of that year in a 7" and 12" format by Island Records, with an additional track; a dub remix of the title track called 'Almost Red'.   

      The title track, featuring a closed groove so that the word red is repeated endlessly (or at least until you lift the needle of the record), can be played by clicking here. And for the remastered 2020 version, with a video by Mike Coles, click here.

 

[2] Mike Coles can be found on Facebook: click here. Or visit the Malicious Damage website: click here. Coles's artwork is also available to buy from the Flood Gallery: click here. Finally, readers may be interested in Coles's book; Forty Years in the Wilderness: A Graphic Voyage of Art, Design & Stubborn Independence (Malicious Damage, 2016), which traces a pictorial history of his work under the Malicious Damage  label, including the record sleeves, posters and flyers promoting Killing Joke. 

      Historian of punk and post-punk graphic design, Russ Bestley, writes of this book: 

      "Part autobiography, part personal reflection, part celebration, this publication may lead to a critical reappraisal of the designer's work alongside more widely acknowledged contemporaries, though such considerations are far from being a driving force for the project, and the title ironically sums up Coles' attitude towards independent and autonomous production." 

      See Bestley, 'I wonder who chose the colour scheme, it's very nice …': Mike Coles, Malicious Damage and Forty Years in the Wilderness', Punk & Post-Punk, Volume 5, Issue 3, (Sept. 2016), pp. 311-328. The essay, which I shall refer to throughout the post, can be downloaded as a Word doc from the UAL research depository: click here.

 

[3] Coles already had a long interest in the traditional British puppet character of Mr Punch and the latter would become a key figure in his work: "'Mr Punch was something that fascinated me before Malicious Damage or Killing Joke. That drawing from the first single was done in 1977 after I'd been to the Punch & Judy festival in Covent Garden'". 

      Mike Coles, quoted by Russ Bestley in the above cited essay, from email correspondence of 18 August, 2016.

 

[4] Russ Bestley, as cited in note 2 above.

 

[5] Whilst Coles is to be respected as an image-maker who developed his own unique aesthetic, for me, he strays just a little too far from what I would consider a punk visual style. And indeed, by his own admission, he "'never took much notice of all the punk stuff'" and "'never really felt a part of the punk movement'". He was more influenced by "'Victorian freak show stuff'" than the Situationists. Quoted by Russ Bestley in the above cited essay, from email correspondence of 14 August, 2016.   

 

[6] Russ Bestley, as cited in note 2 above.  

 

[7] Readers might be interested to know that along with the hand-drawn image of Mr Punch and the picture of two smiling figures taken from a toothpaste ad, the cover features a (high-contrast) photo of Centre Point (which remains a London landmark to this day).   

 

[8] The Being Human festival is an annual celebration of the humanities led by the School of Advanced Study at the University of London, working in collaboration with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. 

      Each November they put on hundreds of free public events across the UK in the hope that they might garner support for the continued study of art, literature, history, and philosophy, etc. by demonstrating the value and relevance of such disciplines; the humanities, it is argued, enable us to understand and fully appreciate what it means to be human. For further information, click here.  

      Dr Brown's Hampstead walk took place on 8 November, 2025 (11:00 - 13:00): click here. It will be noted that it was decided to use an alternative (inferior and far less humorous) image to advertise the talk for reasons unknown.    

 

 

Haddaway, Man! An Open Letter to Peter Wolfendale

Hi, my name is Pete, 

and I’m a systematic philosopher [1]  

 

 

I. 

 

Hello Pete, my name is Stephen Alexander, and I mistrust all systematisers and would normally seek to avoid them [2]. In your case, however, I'll make an exception ... 

 

For like you, I'm an independent scholar - which you amusingly suggest is merely a fancy way of saying unemployed with a Ph.D - who is less than impressed with the "ossified social cliques" [3] that control academia and although I live in Essex, my roots, like yours, are in the North East of England; my father was from Gateshead and my mother from Whitley Bay. 

 

We also both came out of the philosophy department at Warwick: I note that you completed your doctoral thesis on Heidegger in 2012; I finished mine, on Nietzsche, in 2000. 

 

So we have some things in common. 

 

 

II. 

 

However, I also note that you consider yourself "a heretical Platonist, an unorthodox Kantian, and a minimalist Hegelian" [4], and whilst I'm pleased to see you qualify your Platonism, Kantianism, and Hegelianism in this manner, I'm still troubled that these are the three thinkers you name as your primary sources of inspiration. 

 

And whilst we both have a wide range of interests, I'd say my curiosity is motivated more by hate than by love and, actually, I think you're mistaken to say it's all good at the end of the day. 

 

As for your "trinity of dialectical virtues" [5] - sincerity, explicitness, and consistency - well, I had to smile as these are possibly the three things I most try to avoid on Torpedo the Ark, where I never mean what I say or say what I mean and couldn't care less about whether my text is haunted by the spectre of logical contradiction [6]: I am Monsieur Teste in reverse! 

 

III. 

 

Two confessions: 

 

Firstly, I haven't read your 2014 book, Object-Oriented Philosophy: The Noumenon's New Clothes, even though I probably should have. For whilst I was never in with the OOO crowd, I did read a good deal of Graham Harman's work and found a lot of it resonated with my own (rather more material and less metaphysical) interest in objects. 

 

It was only when Harman started promoting his version of OOP as a new theory of everything and boasting of how he had become a major influence on individuals in the arts and humanities, "eclipsing the previous influence ... of the prominent French postmodernist thinkers Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze" - and had even "captured the notice of celebrities" - that I grew tired of him and his flat ontology [7]. 

 

Secondly, I'm not sure your new book is going to feature on my list of Christmas reading either. 

 

That's mainly because as someone who is still very much committed to Nietzsche's reverse anthropocentrism - i.e., his attempt to translate man back into nature and demonstrate how virtue itself is animal in origin - I suspect I'm just the sort of thinker whom you are seeking revenge against in the name of Reason unbound from all such petty naturalism. 

 

What I am going to do, however, is follow your advice and start by reading your newer blog writings (those classified as Phase 3) and then read one (or more) of your interviews, in the hope that I can better understand what you mean by rationalist inhumanism and Promethean socialism; neither of which I very much like the sound of [8]. 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] This line of greeting from Wolfendale - and the photo - are taken from his blog, Deontologistics: click here. 

      For those readers who might not know, a systematic philosopher - such as Wolfendale - is one who seeks to develop a logically coherent and comprehensive body of knowledge based upon fundamental principles in order to explain the world we live in. To create such a perfect system - or metanarrative - has been the (insanely ambitious and inherently oppressive) dream of thinkers from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and Hegel. 

      As for the term deontologistics, this is a neologism coined by Wolfendale to describe his own research project into the nature and limits of reason and his aim to establish a system of philosophy of the kind described above. 

      In moral philosophy, deontology is the idea that an action should be based solely on whether it is right or wrong according to a set of fixed principles, with no consideration given to the consequences of that action. In other words, it's a form of fundamentalism; insisting that one's duty or obligation is always to uphold the letter of the law and stick to the rules no matter what. 

 

[2] I'm paraphrasing Nietzsche writing in Twilight of the Idols ('Maxims and Arrows', 36), who then goes on to add: "The will to a system is a lack of integrity." See the Hollingdale translation (Penguin Books, 1990), p. 35. 

 

[3] Peter Wolfendale, 'Introduction', Deontologistics: click here. 

 

[4] See the short biographical note on Wolfendale on the Urbanomic website: click here. He is one of their authors and his debut book, Object-Oriented Philosophy: The Noumenon's New Clothes, was published by Urbanmomic in 2014. His new book, The Revenge of Reason, is forthcoming at the end of this year; a work in which he ponders the fate of Reason in the 21st century and lays out his vision for neo-rationalism as a distinctive philosophical path towards an inhuman destiny. 

      Ray Brassier obviously thinks highly of him, as he wrote a postscript to the former and supplied a preface to the latter. Details of both works are available on the Urbanomic website. 

 

[5] Peter Wolfendale, 'Introduction', Deontologistics: click here. 

 

[6] When it comes to sincerity, explicitness, and consistency, I side with Nietzsche, Wilde, and Roland Barthes (even at the risk of falling into what Wolfendale terms unrestrained irony). Barthes famously rejects the ideology of clarity (or explicitness) in Critique et vérité (1966), just as he mocks the idea of logical consistency in Le plaisir du texte (1973), from where I borrow the idea of M. Teste in reverse. 

      For my thoughts on (in)sincerity, see the post dated (9 July 2018): click here. 

 

[7] I'm quoting Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (Penguin Books, 2018), p. 8. For my thoughts on this book, see the post published on 24 March 2018: click here. 

 

[8] From what I understand at this point - without having done much reading in the area - rational inhumanism seems to intersect with (or emerge from) Ray Brassier's idea of transcendental nihilism and is an attempt to liberate reason from human biology, psychology, and cultural history. 

      As for Promethean socialism, I believe this refers to the deliberate re-engineering of ourselves and our world on a more rational and egalitarian basis. In other words, it's a kind of left-leaning accelerationism that affirms techno-scientific progress and the overcoming of natural limits. 

      One can't help feeling we've heard all this before and that, ultimately, if you strip Wolfendale's work of its complex and sophisticated philosophical theorising, one's left with just another fevered dream of a future utopia.

 

 

Douglas Murray Contra Michel Foucault

The Ghost of Michel Foucault Haunting Douglas Murray

(SA/2025) 

 

I. 

 

Readers familiar with Torpedo the Ark may recall that I have written several posts which mention the neoconservative political commentator and cultural critic Douglas Murray: click here.

 

And whilst I wasn't exactly blown away by either of the books of his that I've read - The Strange Death of Europe (2017) and The Madness of Crowds (2019) - I still find him in many ways an admirable figure and, if forced to choose, would still rather go to dinner with him than Gaby Hinsliff.   

 

However, the fact that Murray continues to denigrate Michel Foucault's work - or, more precisely, abhor Foucault's influence within academia - is something I still find disappointing (and kind of irritating) ...

 

 

II.

 

Speaking in conversation with philosopher Roger Scruton at an event organised by The Spectator in 2019 [1], Murray concedes that, as a writer, Foucualt is often brilliant and his books are "filled with resonant phrases and so on" [2]. 

 

However, Murray cannot forgive the fact that Foucault deconstructs the notion of truth as an objective thing in itself, to be pursued rigorously and maintained as an absolute standard or ideal: "I finally read Foucault last year and I have to say: I'm so appalled ..." 

 

And why is he so appalled? 

 

Because, says Murray, whilst he'd previously read about Foucault's work and heard others discuss it - and whilst he'd always known that he "sort of instinctively disliked it" - it was only after reading it [3] that he realised how catastrophic Foucault's philosophical project really is:  

 

"this sort of perversion of all life [...] as being solely about power, and the ignoring of every other human instinct - the total ignoring of love, the total ignoring of forgiveness; power, only power." 

 

That, I think, is an unfair and grotesque caricature of Foucault and his work; one that goes beyond being a gross oversimplification [4]. 

 

I'm not a Foucault scholar, but I'm pretty sure that he didn't think of power as something that could be possessed and didn't think either in terms of oppressed groups needing to be emancipated from the domination of more powerful oppressors; he was a post-Nietzschean thinker, not a neo- or quasi-Marxist [5]. 

 

Thus, whilst power certainly plays an important role in his philosophy, he conceives of it in a highly novel manner as something complex that produces things (including us as subjects) and puts something new into the world; it induces pleasures, generates discursive practices, forms bodies of knowledge, etc. It is power - not love - which runs through the entire social body and which, as a matter of fact, calls love into being [6]. 

 

For Murray this is a distortion of the truth: but then, he would say that wouldn't he, as an idealist who, despite professing to be an atheist, still affirms Christian virtues [7].  

Oh, and whilst we're discussing this: I think it's also profoundly mistaken to blame Foucault for the rise of identity politics (which Murray does): Foucault, the masked philosopher and anti-essentialist, argued that identities are not inherent but socially and historically constructed and could easily become traps or a form of subjugation.

 

Instead of creating or maintaining identity, Foucault's political strategy was more focused on refusing it and developing new forms of resistance and even a cursory reading of his work makes it pretty obvious that he would have very little time for today's identity politics (would, in fact, see it as reactionary; a return to the same old bullshit to do with fixed categories and subjectivation). 

 

I really don't understand why Murray fails to see this; particularly as he claims to have read Foucault. It's almost a wilful misunderstanding - one which Jordan Peterson also buys into - and if I said earlier that I'd rather go to dinner with Murray than Gaby Hinsliff, I'd like it to be noted that I'd sooner go to dinner with Foucault than Murray (even if dinner with Foucault often involved nothing more than a club sandwich and a Coke) [8].  

 

Notes

 

[1] The full transcript of Douglas Murray's conversation with Roger Scruton (8 May 2019), in which they discuss what it means to be a conservative, can be found on The Spectator website: click here. All lines quoted in this post from Murray are taken from here. 

      The relevant clip from the night in which Foucault is condemned by both men, has been posted by Culture Wolf on YouTube: click here. Anybody who thinks they might like to watch the entire event online can visit The Spectator website: click here.     

 

[2] Note how Murray doesn't say ideas; implying Foucault was a mere stylist rather than a major thinker. 

 

[3] The fact that Murray doesn't mention any specific books or essays, leaves one to wonder the extent of his reading of Foucault who published around a dozen books during his lifetime and who has had at least twice as many posthumous publications of essay collections, lecture series, etc.

 

[4] It is also, of course, a live paraphrase of a passage that will appear in The Madness of Crowds:    

      "From Michel Foucault [...] thinkers absorbed their idea of society not as an infinitely complex system of trust and traditions that have evolved over time, but always in the unforgiving light cast when everything is viewed solely through the prism of 'power'. Viewing all human interactions in this light distorts, rather than clarifies, presenting a dishonest interpretation of our lives. Of course power exists as a force in the world, but so do charity, forgiveness and love. If you were to ask most people what matters in their lives very few would say 'power'. Not because they haven't absorbed their Foucault, but because it is perverse to see everything in life through such a monomaniacal lens."

      See Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (Bloomsbury, 2019), p. 53. 

 

[5] As one commentator has recently pointed out:

      

"Right-wing critics frequently label Foucault's thought as another species of Marxism. Douglas Murray wrote in The War on The West (2022) that  'Foucault's obsessive analysis of everything through a quasi-Marxist lens of power relations diminished almost everything in society into a transactional, punitive and meaningless dystopia.' Jordan Peterson has also been fond of calling Foucault a 'postmodern neo-Marxist'.

      It's a popular and long-held narrative, but there are several problems with it. For one, it is incoherent to describe Foucault as a 'neo-Marxist' or a  'cultural Marxist'. He, like other postmodern thinkers, was broadly opposed to Marxism."

      - Ralph Leonard, 'Michel Foucault still confuses the Right, 40 years later', Unheard (25 June 2024): click here. As Leonard rightly goes on to argue, it's Nietzsche, not Marx, that haunts Foucault's philosophy. 

 

[6] I'm thinking here of something written by D. H. Lawrence:

      "For power is the first and greatest of the mysteries. It is the mystery behind all our being, even behind all our existence. Even the phallic erection is a first blind movemet of power. Love is said to call the power into motion: but it is probably the reverse; that the slumbering power calls love into being."

      See Lawrence's essay 'Blessed Are the Powerful', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 327. 

 

[7] In a live streamed video conversation on a Christian radio podcast with the theologian and former Anglican Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, Murray confessed:      

      "I was brought up a Christian, a believing Christian into my adult life, and am now, I suppose, in a self-confessedly complex situation of being among other things an uncomfortable agnostic who recognises the values and the virtues that the Christian faith has brought."

      See 'The Big Conversation' (season 3, episode 3), hosted by Justin Brierly (13 May 2021): click here.

 

[8] In an amusing interview, Foucault expressed his preference for American fast food over French cuisine; specifically mentioning a club sandwich and a Coke, followed by ice cream. 

      The interview, with Stephen Riggins, was first published in the Canadian journal Ethos (Autumn, 1983). As well as revealing his favourite meal, Foucault also voiced his thoughts on the quest for monastic austerity and a cultural ethos of silence. It can also be found under the title 'The Minimalist Self' in Politics, Philosophy, Culture, ed. Alan Sheridan and Lawrence D. Kritzman (Routledge, 1988), pp. 3-16.  

 

Heidegger's (Absent) Dog

 

Martin Heidegger and Rae based on an image 

created by Ruth Malone using ChatGTP

@goingalongwithheidegger 

 

I. 

 

According to Ruth Malone, whilst Heidegger's method of comparative analysis between the human, the animal and the stone can be defended against the charge of anthropocentrism - provided, that is, that one accepts his foundational ideas and the validity of his philosophical approach - he nevertheless didn't understand dogs, in her view, and she is certain, therefore, that he could not have had a canine companion. 

 

I'll return to that final point later. Firstly, however, let me try and summarise Miss Malone's position set out in a short piece on Substack entitled 'Heidegger's captivated animals' [1] ...  

 

 

II.  

 

Heidegger famously thought animals, including highly intelligent animals like dogs, were poor in world in comparison to world-forming humans; although they are much better off than inanimate objects, such as stones, which, in his view, are entirely without world; i.e., have no access to being [2].  

 

Animals - and again, this includes mutts - may not understand the world as we understand it, but they are, nevertheless, instinctively captivated by things; in fact, it is this term - captivation [Benommenheit] - which defines the animal's particular way of being and how they are essentially different from us and from rocks [3]. 

 

And for Malone this is sufficient to get Heidegger off the anthropocentric hook. Being poor in world is a consequence of captivation but does not describe the essence of the animal; our four-legged friends are neither intrinsically deprived nor inferior in any fundamental sense, it's just Heidegger has a penchant for thinking negatively and views lack as a key aspect of being (and not merely the absence of something). 

 

In fact, as Malone indicates - drawing on the recent work of Sean Kirkland - it's impossible to carry out the Destruktion of philosophy that Heidegger calls for unless one posits a concept of lack and adopts a privative method or approach [4].       

 

Having found that we have something in common with the animal - we both have worlds - Heidegger then destructively examines the notion of poverty "revealing the both having and not-having of world by the animal" [5], before then dipping into zoology in order to tie his idea of captivation to animal behaviour. 

 

"Importantly, at this stage, Heidegger's approach is no longer driven by comparison with the human but builds a positive account of the being of the animal using the findings of biology. As such, Heidegger develops an account of the animal way of Being which can no longer be described as privative but now [...] contains a 'wealth of openness with which the human world may have nothing to compare'." [6]

 

This suggests that not only is the animal other to us, but, in some ways, has an advantage over man; the fallen animal; the unhappy animal; the mad animal who has lost his healthy animal reason [7]. 

 

And yet, despite this - and despite Malone's valiant attempt to defend Heidegger from the accusation of anthropocentrism - I can't help still having the impression that Heidegger had little time for nonhuman creatures which, according to him, have no language, history, or hands and cannot even be said to dwell or die.   

 

And indeed, Malone herself kind of circles round in order to conclude that it's difficult "to maintain the view that the animal is poor in world once one sees its captivation and 'wealth of openness'" [8] - and perhaps it's mistaken to posit the notion of weltarm in the first place; or, at any rate, wrong to group all animals together. 

 

For whilst the lizard does not recognise the rock as a rock [9], it seems clear to Malone that dogs do recognise their ball or favourite chew toy. Therefore, she suggests, the latter can recognise beings as beings, even if they cannot reflect upon and understand the being of beings and if Heidegger had only enjoyed the companionship of a canine chum he'd have had to acknowledge this.

 

 

III. 

 

And so we return to the question of whether or not Heidegger ever had a dog ... 

 

And, to my suprise, it seems that Malone was right in her supposition: he did not, in fact, own a dog; nor is there any mention in the numerous critical and biographical studies of his ever having any other kind of pet animal either.  

 

Notes

 

[1] See Ruth Malone, 'Heidegger's captivated animals', on Substack: @goingalongwithheidegger (16 Nov 2025): click here. 

 

[2] See Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Indiana University Press, 1995), Pt. 2, Ch. 2, § 42, pp. 176-78.  

      It's unfortunate that Heidegger chose to use the terms weltbildend (to describe human being), weltarm (to describe animality), and weltlos (to describe stones), as they do appear to lend themselves to an anthropocentric and hierarchical philosophy, both in the original German and English translation (world-forming, poor in world, without world).   

 

[3] Malone rightly reminds us that Derrida sees a logical difficulty in Heidegger's insistence on the fact that the difference between the animal's poverty and the human's wealth is not one of degree, but, rather, a difference in essence: "if the animal is so very different to the human, then how can a comparison, which results in the idea of the animal as 'poor in world', be meaningful?"

      See Ruth Malone, 'Heidegger's captivated animals' (as cited above) and see also Derrida's discussion of this issue in Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (The University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 49.   

 

[4] See Sean D. Kirkland, Heidegger and the Destruction of Aristotle: On How to Read the Tradition (Northwestern University Press, 2023). It's an interesting new study of Heidegger's project of Destruktion (a project famously taken up and radically extended by Derrida, of course, as déconstruction).   

      Malone summarises the three steps of Heidegger's methodology, which Kirkland derives from Being and Time (1927), and which she argues structures his comparative analysis of humans and animals, as: 

      "1. Start by bringing something positively to light. 2. Reveal destructively what is beyond that which is successfully brought to light. In other words, reveal what had remained concealed in the first step. 3. Focus the destruction on the 'posing of the question', not the claims, conclusions positions or philosophical results." - Ruth Malone, 'Heidegger's captivated animals', as cited above.

[5] Ruth Malone, 'Heidegger's captivated animals', cited above in note 1.  

 

[6] Ibid. Malone is quoting Heidegger writing in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics ... p. 255. 

 

[7] I'm paraphrasing Nietzsche here; see The Gay Science, III. 224. 

 

[8] Ruth Malone, 'Heidegger's captivated animals', cited above in note 1.  

 

[9] As someone who likes lizards more than dogs, I'm not entirely comfortable with this claim. For whilst a lizard may not know what a rock is in an abstract conceptual sense, it's smart enough to know that rocks are not just great places to sunbathe, but, in providing camouflage and shelter, are also crucial to its survival needs and studies have shown that they carefully select rocks and remember which ones offer most advantage. 

      Thus, even if their relationship with rocks is primarily based on instinct and learned association, they are not devoid of higher cognitive functions (they can solve problems, learn simple tasks, exhibit advanced social behaviours, etc.). 

      One recalls the following short poem by D. H. Lawrence, from his 1929 collection Pansies:

 

A lizard ran out on a rock and looked up, listening 

no doubt to the sounding of the spheres. 

And what a dandy fellow! the right toss of a chin for you 

And swirl of a tail! 

 

If men were as much men as lizards are lizards 

they’d be worth looking at.