In Defence of Torpedo the Ark

Torpedo the Ouroboros (SA/2026) 

 

 

I. 

 

It didn't take long into the New Year before a familiar critique resurfaced (from a familiar source): 

 

I've noticed how an increasing number of posts on Torpedo the Ark rely upon the recycling of extant material and fear that, if you are not careful, then you will end up like the snake that swallows its own tail - a symbol which might mean different things within various esoteric traditions, but by which I refer to an author unable to generate original insights and so engaging in an act of self-cannibalism, allowing a once excellent blog to become trapped in in a doom loop of nostalgia and pastiche. [1]

 

 

 

II. 

 

I don't know if that's a fair criticism to make: it's certainly not entirely accurate. For one thing, my critic mistakes the vital process of autophagy for the pathological condition of autosarcophagy. 

 

Unlike the latter, which is often linked to severe mental and cultural disorder [2], the former is a highly regulated process necessary for good health and hygiene (homeostasis); a bit like dreaming, whereby the mind preserves order by purging psychic detritus during sleep [3].

 

Obviously, TTA refers on occasion to its own history and, yes, there is a strong degree of thematic recurrence as I return to established areas of interest and favoured authors and this may create a sense of circularity. Nevertheless, I like to think that when I reimagine and recontextualise old ideas and images, I do so in an active manner and in a way that does not risk my becoming-Ouroboros [4].

 

Ultimately, what is a doom loop of nostalgia and pastiche to one man is the laughter of genius to another and my temporal objective has always been to challenge the idea of time as a straightline that leads from the past into the present and thence into the future and any recycling is part of this deconstructive strategy rather than a sign of intellectual fatigue. 

 

Those who accuse TTA of idealising the past or furthering what Mark Fisher described as the slow cancellation of the future [5] have, I'm afraid, missed the point.             

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Extract from an email I received this morning (2 Jan 2026) from a correspondent happy to be quoted, but who wishes not to be identified. 

 

[2] Those interested in autocannibalism as a cultural phenomenon, may like to see Jean Baudrillard, Carnival and Cannibal, trans. Chris Turner (Seagull Books, 2010), in which an analysis is given of the West's fatal penchant for consuming and absorbing its own values and histories (and not only those of other peoples). 

 

[3] I'm taking the Lawrentian position put forward in Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922). See the post 'Sleep and Dreams' (6 Feb 2015): click here. 

 

[4] Like D. H. Lawrence, I'm not a fan of 'him with his tail in his mouth' - see the post dated 16 August, 2016: click here.  

 

[5] See the section on this idea in Fisher's Ghosts of My Life (Zero Books, 2014). I published a three-part post on this work back in November 2023: click here to access the first part on 'Lost Futures'.