Theoscatology in Nietzsche and Lawrence

Nietzsche and D. H. Lawrence Skibidi Toilet style [1]

  

 

I. 

 

Philosophers, eh? The shit that sometimes comes out of their mouths!

 

Take Nietzsche, for example; did he really say that men must defecate in order to become divine?

 

Sort of. 

 

Only he wasn't talking about the discharging of faeces from the body, so much as the elimination of sin - i.e., spiritual rather than biological waste; the toxic consequence of bad conscience rather than the semi-solid remains of last night's dinner.  

 

That becomes clear if we look at what he writes in an unpublished note from late 1883:

 

Many things about man are not very godly: whenever a person excretes faeces, how can he be a god then? But it is even worse regarding the other faeces we call sin: man still surely wants to retain this, and not excrete it. Now however, I must believe it: a person can be a god and still excrete faeces. Thus I teach you, excrete your faeces and become gods. [2]

 

 

II.

 

Like Nietzsche, D. H. Lawrence is also concerned in his theoscatological musings with the elimination of certain adverse emotions. Our great task, he says, is to liberate the mind from its "fear of the body and the body's potencies" [3], before we fall ever further into madness [4].

 

Both authors, in other words, are concerned with the collapse of the primary instincts and the way in which internalised cruelty produces a moral subject [5]. And both wish for man to elevate himself by accepting those things which make us ashamed: 

 

"If we are ashamed, instead of covering the shame with a veil, let us accept the thing which makes us ashamed, understand it and be at one with it. If we shrink from some sickening issue of ourselves, instead of recoiling [...] let us go down into ourselves, enter the hell of corruption and putresence, and rise again, not fouled, but fulfilled and free." [6] 

 

This may involve an act of anal sex [7], or it may simply involve building a less hysterical relationship with language - particularly the so-called obscene words that cause us embarrassment; i.e., all the old words "that belong to the body below the navel" [8].

   

Lawrence continues:

 

"Myself, I am mystified at this horror over a mere word, a plain simple word that stands for a plain simple thing. 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God and the Word was with God.' If that is true, then we are very far from the beginning. [...] Because today, if you suggest that the word arse was in the beginning and was God and was with God, you will just be put in prison at once. [...] Now that sort of thing is idiotic and humiliating. Whoever the god was that made us, he made us complete. He didn't stop at the navel, and leave the rest to the devil. [...] If the Word is God [...] then you can't suddenly say that all the words which belong below the navel are obscene. The word arse is as much god as the word face. It must be so, otherwise you cut your god off at the waist." [9] 

  

Notes

 

[1] Skibidi Toilet is a machinima web series created by Alexey Gerasimov in 2023 and released via his YouTube channel, DaFuq!?Boom! Featuring toilet bowls with human heads emerging, it has become hugely popular amongst the kids of Generation Alpha.

 

[2] See The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche Volume 14: Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Summer 1882–Winter 1883/84), trans. Paul S. Loeb and David F. Tinsley, ed. Alan D. Schrift and Duncan Large (Stanford University Press, 2019). 

      Or, if one wishes to check the original German text, see KSA 10:635-37:23. 

      Richard Perkins discusses this fragment in his essay 'An Innocent Little Story: Nietzsche and Jesus in Allegorical Conjunction', Nietzsche Studien Volume 26, Issue 1 (1997), pp. 361-383. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 309. 

 

[4] Lawrence famously attacks Swift for making his mistress Celia feel terrible about her own natural functions, including defecating. See the post entitled 'Celia Shits! Notes on Jonathan Swift's The Lady's Dressing Room and (Alleged) Coprophobia (2 April 2024): click here.  

 

[5] Nietzsche famously discuss this in the second essay of the Genealogy (1887). 

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Reality of Peace', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 35. 

 

[7] I have published several posts dealing with the subject of anal sex in Lawrence's work: click here.  

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to Pansies', Appendix 6 in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 664. 

 

[9] Ibid.  

      Of course, there are some - like Sir Clifford Chatterley, for example, who delight in this idea of cutting God off at the waist; see chapter XVI of Lady Chatterley's Lover, where he reads to Connie from one of the 'latest scientific-religious books' - Whitehead's Religion in the Making (1926) - about the manner in which the universe is physically wasting and spiritually ascending. 

      Connie has no time for such nonsense, but Clifford insists that "'whatever God there is is slowly eliminating the guts and alimentary system from the human being, to evolve a higher, more spiritual being'" (see p. 235 of the 1993 CUP edition, ed. Michael Squires).   

 

Once Upon a Time ... There Was a Philosopher Named Friedrich Nietzsche and He Privileged a Pissing Giant Over Clever Dwarves

Nietzsche with Snow White, dwarves, and other fairy tale characters 

in a whimsical, enchanted forest with a gingerbread house

craiyon.com 

  

We think that play and fairy tales belong to childhood: how shortsighted that is! 

As though we would want at any time of life to live without play and fairy tales! [1]

 

 

I.  

 

As the above quotation demonstrates, Nietzsche always loved fairy tales - or Märchen, as the Germans call them - a genre of short story characterised by magical or supernatural elements, archetypal characters, a fantastical setting, and (all too often) a conventional moral lesson in which good triumphs over evil and order is restored to a chaotic world. 

 

So, no surprise then that he should write one of his own ...

 

 

II. 

 

Whilst in Turin, in April 1888 - only nine months before his collapse - Nietzsche scribbled an untitled short text about a giant and some dwarves into a notebook where it remained unpublished for many years [2]. 

 

Less than 150 words in the original German, it's a queer story about the mortal danger of being urinated upon when you are of restricted stature, by someone monstrously bigger in size. For it's not only unpleasant, when you're a dwarf, if a giant pisses on you, but there's the very real risk of drowning (a prospect that even the most ardent urophile might blanch at) [3].

 

Thus, the dwarves recognise that they have to find a way to prevent the giant from relieving his bladder - and, indeed, stop him from shitting on them as well.     

 

(Somehow, I don't think Disney are going to be bidding for the rights to make this into a film anytime soon.)  

 

For the oldest and wisest dwarf, this double danger presented something of a philosophical problem; clearly action needed to be taken in the face of an existential threat. But the situation necessitated not only trying to scare the giant away by tickling him and biting his toes - "customary means to encouraging and enforcing bowel and bladder control" [4] - but morally measuring up and rising to the challenge as a people.   

  

 

III. 

 

What are we to make of this ...?

 

The story seems to suggest that powerful individuals - in this case one who is great in size and strength - can become threatening to the well-being of others smaller in size and weaker in strength and therefore need to be restrained and, if possible, persuaded to curtail their natural instincts.         

 

But that would be a rather surprising lesson coming from Nietzsche who not only refuses to posit a doer separate from their deeds [5], but usually writes in praise of greatness and dislikes the little people who, in the name of morality and civilisation, wish to cut others down to their own size, à la David, slayer of Goliath (1 Samuel 17) [6]. 

 

Zarathustra, for example, is forever bemoaning the fact that everywhere he looks, everything has become smaller; houses, men, virtue and even happiness [7]. Small people, he says, mistake mediocrity for moderation and fundamentally only want one thing: that nobody shall do them any harm - and that includes not pissing on them.  

 

So, despite initial impressions, Nietzsche's tale is probably a satirical (uro-scatological) attempt to reverse values and "twist the standard Märchen perspective that establishes cultural relationships between giants and little people" [8].    

 

Ultimately, argues Richard Perkins: 

 

"The giant expresses a natural and cultural superfluity that squanders its great capacities. He represents 'overflowing' as such, and, in an important sense, his crude bodily eliminations illustrate the supreme value that Zarathustra designates as the 'gift-giving virtue' [...] The giant pisses away his virtue as gold glistens and as the sun radiates its creative brilliance." [9]   

 

And on that watersporty note ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (II. 1. 270), trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 277. 

 

[2] For those who can read German, the tale can be found in the Critical Student Edition of Nietzsche's Complete Works: KSA 13: 483: 16. 

      For those who can't, an English translation by Richard Perkins is available in his essay 'A Giant and Some Dwarves: Nietzsche's Unpublished Märchen on the Exception and the Rule', in Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy Tale Studies, Vol. 11, Nos. 1-2 (Wayne State University Press, 1997), pp. 61-73. 

      This essay, which I shall quote from later in the post, is available to read or download on JSTOR: click here. 

 

[3] One wonders if Nietzsche ever read Rabelais's The Inestimable Life of the Great Gargantua (1535), in which the famous giant urinates on the city of Paris from the heights of Notre Dame, causing the people to flee, fearful that they'll be washed away in a torrent of piss (and, indeed, over 250,000 Parisians - not even counting the women and children - do drown in the resulting flood, according to Rabelais).     

 

[4] Richard Perkins, op. cit., p. 71. 

 

[5] Refuses, that is to say, to fall into the metaphysical and grammatical trap of thinking that there's a free-willing subject who can - and in certain circumstances ought - to change their behaviour. This clever moral move allows notions of blame, guilt, and sin (i.e., bad conscience) to enter into the world; see the Genealogy where all this is examined by Nietzsche in depth. 

      The key point is this: to ask a giant not to express his strength and not to piss when his bladder's full, is like asking an eagle not to prey upon a lamb. 

       

[6] One thinks also of how the good people of Lilliput are initially fearful and mistrustful of Gulliver and how, even after he has saved their land from invasion and extinguished a fire at the royal palace by, funnily enough, pissing on it, they turn on him and decide to blind him and starve him to death. 

      See Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels (1726).   

 

[7] See 'Of the Virtue that Makes Small', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 

      See also 'On the Vision and the Riddle' in the same text, where Zarathustra (assuming the role of a giant) carries a dwarf on his shoulders in order to give the latter a glimpse of greatness. Unfortunately, however, the dwarf fails to understand the profundity of what he sees and Nietzsche is able to show why the metaphor about 'standing on the shoulders of giants' (i.e. accepting intellectual dependency on past figures) is something that needs to be critically re-examined. 

 

[8] Richard Perkins, op. cit., p. 66.  

 

[9] Ibid., p. 70. 

      Perkins also directs us towards another unpublished piece in which Nietzsche gives his philosophical project a scatological twist: a fragment dating to late 1883 (see KSA 10: 635-37), which concludes with the startling injunction to shit and become as gods! For a discussion of the theoscatological in Nietzsche (and Lawrence) please click here. 

 

Re-entering the Circle of Fragments

Self-portrait used for cover of The Circle of Fragments 

(Blind Cupid Press, 2010)

 

 

I. 

 

The final book I published with Blind Cupid Press in 2010 [1] was a collection of little poems [2] written in the period 2000-09.

 

The title of the work - The Circle of Fragments - and, to some extent, the style of the pieces themselves, was inspired by the following lines written by Roland Barthes: 

 

"To write by fragments: the fragments are then so many stones on the perimeter of a circle: I spread myself around: my whole little universe in crumbs; at the centre, what?" [3]  

 

"The fragment ... implies an immediate delight: it is a fantasy of discourse, a gaping of desire. In the form of the thought-sentence, the germ of the fragment comes to you anywhere: in the café, on the train, talking to a friend ..." [4]  

 

What I wrote in a very short preface to the book is even more true now than then: along with a few broken bones and some shards of shattered glass, these leftover fragments - written between Barcelona and Berlin, Aberdeen and Athens - are pretty much all that remain from this period of my life.  

 

And so, it was amusing to recently re-enter le cercle des fragments and look back at what they captured (and, just as importantly, what they missed or failed to capture).    

 

 

II.

 

Obviously, I cannot reproduce all 112 of the fragments, although readers will find a number of them scattered here and there on Torpedo the Ark if they search the index closely enough (or click on those titles below that conveniently come with a link). 

 

However, I thought it might be instructive to provide a full list of titles [5] in the hope that they will provide a clue of sorts as to the content, theme, mood, and tone of the anthology:

 

Sea-Bitch, German Sea-Cow, Sun-Lizard-Rock, Love Remains the Great Adventure, In the Land of Convalescence, Underground with all the World, Death Chant, Sitges, Post-Coital Disappointment, At the Anchovy Museum (Collioure), Mosquito, Black Holes, The Holy Life, One Should Not Apologise Oneself Out of Existence Simply to Please Her, The Sorrow of an Invisible Man, The Bitterness of a Domesticated Man, The Woman Who Was Jealous of the World, Idiota, At the Funeral of a Domesticated Man, Lolita, In Memory of Anaïs Nin, In Memory of Henry Miller, The Birthday Cake, On the Other Side, Blanes, Song of a Discontented Man, When You Are Dead, In the Bookshop, Yolanda, In Becoming a Subject of the Sun, Lemon Drizzle, The Taormina Virgins, Un relation privilégiée, Phallic Defiance on Ward H2, In Memory of Friedrich Nietzsche, Filthy Love (In Memory of Georges Bataille), Diary Fragment, Hakenkreuz, Her Cunt, Supposing Truth to be a Woman, Life Bleeds, At the Party, Spinster (In Memory of Sylvia Plath), Flightpath, In Memory of Marinetti, Under Erasure, Haecceity, In Memory of the Divine One, The Three Consolations, Baby on the Bus, Aberdeen, Miracle, Tear Drops, Polarity, Confession of a White Widowed Male, Being and Nothingness, The Boring Dead, Little Greek, Flow, Becoming-Flower, Promises Promises, Fucked-Up, Crab-Like, Pa amb Tomaquet, Sandals, Floratopia, Fox, We Do Not Have Souls, September, In This Life, Posthumous Hope, Decree Nisi, Dawn, Image, Thomas, Mark, In Kissing Liberty, Odysseus, With the Coming of the Sun and the Rising of the Moon I Think of Her, Dawn Chorus, Conflicted Morality and Desire, Seven Fragments of Glass: I: Crash! II: In the Confrontation with Glass III: At the Hospital in Athens IV: Poppies V: The Vengeance of Objects VI: On Which Side is Wonderland? VII: I Love Everything That Flows, This is not a Love Song, Love, What She Should Tell Him, Tears, The Danger, Gifts, Self-Sacrifice, The Hired Hand, Snippets, Death Sentence, Lost Crows, We’re a Long Way From Wuthering Heights, Breast Relief for a Dying God, Little Miss Microbe, Reflections on the Abolition of Slavery, Regents Park, Cockroach, Caliban, If the World Were Caring, The Tour Guide, Roses in April, Abandoned, Baby Fingers, Negritude, Rats, Beige, Zurüchgeblieben, Aufklärung.   

 

 

III. 

 

Looking back, I still think many of these little poems sparkle in an amusing manner (even if the world at the time did not agree) and I regard them with similar affection as D. H. Lawrence regarded his own collection of fragments, which he called Pansies.

 

Better, says Lawence, to offer a simple thought which "comes as much from the heart and the genitals as from the head" [6], than present clever ideas and opinions - or didactic statements - dressed up in lyrical form. 

 

And this passage from Lawrence re his book of pensées perfectly expresses how I felt about The Circle of Fragments: 

 

"I do not want to offer this little book as a candidate for eternity in the ranks of immortal literature. It is [...] a book of today, and if it is a book of tomorrow, well and good. But I hope that on the third day, it will have gone to sleep, and become forgotten. Immortal literature dragging itself out to a repetitional eternity can be a great nuisance, and a block to anything fresh." [7] 

      

   

Notes

 

[1] There were seven Blind Cupid Press books published in 2010. The other six titles were:  

 

Whore's Don't Fuck Between the Bedsheets: Fragments from an Illicit Lover's Discourse 

Outside the Gate: Nietzsche's Project of Revaluation Mediated Via the Work of D. H. Lawrence

Visions of Excess and Other Essays

The Treadwell's Papers Volumes I & II: Sex/Magic and Thanatology

The Treadwell's Papers Volumes III & IV: Zoophilia and Reflections Beneath a Black Sun

Erotomania and Other Essays

[2] As will become clear, I primarily think of the pieces as fragments, though often in the past I described them as little poems, even if that's a problematic term both for me and for my critics who insist that they lack the rhythymic language and richness of imagery that defines the art of poetry. Some have suggested that they might, at a push, be called aphorisms, but, again, I'd be weary of using that term; the fragments may be short and observational, but I'm not sure they embody any form of wisdom or truth. 

 

[3] Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard (Papermac, 1995), pp. 92-93.

 

[4] Ibid., p. 94.  

  

[5] I'm one of those writers to whom titles matter. Indeed, I sometimes dream of the perfect title that would make the text redundant. Probably this is why I was once told that I'm not a serious writer or thinker, but, rather, a sloganeer or a comedian addicted to certain catchphrases and for whom everything is ultimately just a set up for a punchline. 

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, Introduction to Pansies, Appendix 6, The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 663. 

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'Unused Foreword to Pansies, Appendix 7, The Poems, Vol. I ... p. 667.   

 

 

The Nudist Story Uncovered

The Nudist Story (1960) 

 

It's gay! It's charming! It's beautiful! It's the picture about altogetherness! 

 

 

I. 

 

One of my favourite Carry On films - and I suspect one of everybody's favourite Carry On films - is Carry On Camping (dir. Gerald Thomas, 1969). 

 

But my favourite scene, however, is not the one in which Dr Soaper leads an outdoor aerobics session, during which Babs's bikini top flies off and he famously instructs Matron to take them away!  

 

No, I think my favourite scene is the opening one set in a local Playhouse cinema where Sid and Bernie have taken their girlfriends, Joan and Anthea, to see a film entitled Nudist Paradise about the joys and benefits of naturism [1]. 

 

And it was this scene that I was reminded of when watching an entertaining British movie directed by Ramsey Harrington and starring Shelley Martin and Brian Cobby, that has been described as the Citizen Kane of nudist films ...    

 

 

II. 

 

The Nudist Story (1960), released in the US with the title Pussycats Paradise (1967) [2], is essentially 85 minutes of naturist propaganda - it was produced by the Danzinger brothers [3] with the co-operation of the British Sun Bathers Association [4] - masquerading as a romantic drama written by Mark Grantham (under the name Norman Armstrong). 

 

The film also gives us two song and dance numbers, as well as more naked breasts and big bottoms bobbling about all over the screen than you can shake a stick at. Despite all one may have seen, nothing quite prepares you for this film; Carry On Camping's Sid Boggle would love every minute; Joan and Anthea less so. 

 

The plot - and there is a plot - involves an uptight businesswoman called Jane Robinson (played by Shelly Martin) who pretty much inherits the entire estate belonging to her very wealthy but somewhat eccentric grandfather, including the Avonmore Sun Camp where naturists like to get their kits off and relax or play sports in the altogether.     

 

Jane does not approve of Avonmore - her prudish attitude to nudism similar to that of Joan Fussey's in Carry On Camping - and so she decides to sell the property in order to raise funds to pay the inheritance tax owing on the estate.   

 

However, persuaded by handsome lawyer and camp director Bob Sutton (Brian Cobby) to at least visit the place and meet some of the sun-bronzed campers, Jane soon falls in love with him, with the place, and, indeed, with the naturist philosophy. Thus, before long, she's as naked and free as nature intended and has changed her mind about selling Avonmore. 

 

However, Miss Robinson is to discover there's a snake in paradise in the form of Gloria (played by Jacqueline D'Orsay); an extremely jealous young woman in love with Bob who does what she can to cause trouble for Jane. 

 

Happily - and I don't really think it necessary to issue a spoiler alert as I'm sure everyone can predict the ending - Gloria's scheme to break up Bob and Jane and see Avonmore sold after all is frustrated thanks to the good work of Jane's Aunt Meg (played by Natalie Lynn) and Bob's sister-in-law Carol (played by Joy Hinton). 

 

Thus, all's well that ends well.    

 

 

III. 

 

I think the reason I like this film is that it has a proto-Lynchian feel to it, by which I mean an almost surreal and unsettling style; nothing too dark or threatening - there are no severed ears to be discovered in the grass - but the normalised and Technicolor nudity in mundane settings leaves one feeling a little disoriented, so that one hardly knows where to look at times.   

 

And, what's more, the unscrupulous and devious character of Gloria illustrates that there remains a powerful sexual element hidden beneath the apparent innocence of life at Avonmore and Tony Crombie's all-too-jaunty somewhat irritating musical score.  

 

Many critics dismiss The Nudist Story as just another film in a genre of moviemaking which, as mentioned, is more about the promotion of a healthy lifestyle (without clothes), rather than the production of great cinematic art [5]. 

 

But I would encourage readers to watch it - unembarrassed and unashamed - so as to make up their own minds: and you can do so by simply clicking here. 

 

But, if watching it au naturel, just be careful you don't drop your ice-lolly in your lap ...    

 

Brian Cobby (as Bob Sutton) & Shelley Martin (as Jane Robinson) 

having decided to see a lot more of each other in The Nudist Story 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Carry on Camping can be watched in full and for free on daily Motion: click here. The scene I refer to in the cinema is at 1:40 - 4:51. Readers will note that I borrow some of the lines and phrases spoken here in the post that follows. 

 

[2] The film was later re-released in the UK with the title For Members Only (as seen in the poster reproduced above). 

 

[3] Edward J. Danziger and Harry Lee Danziger were American-born brothers who produced many British films and TV shows in the 1950s and 1960s. And when I say many, I mean many; "their pervasive presence forming a part of virtually every British filmgoer's and television viewer's experience during those years", as Tise Vahimagi writes in his profile of the Danzigers on the BFI Screenonline website: click here. 

 

[4] The BSBA was formed in 1943 and soon became recognised as a national federation of nudist clubs. By 1951, they had over fifty member organisations. 

 

[5] Nudist films first appeared in the early 1930s, often as narrated documentaries rather than dramas. During the 1940s, interest in making and watching such films significantly declined, but then really took off in the '50s and early 1960s, with the arrival of colour and changes in the law governing censorship. Doris Wishman was perhaps the most prolific producer and director in the genre, with eight nudist films to her credit between 1960 and 1964.  

      Despite the best intentions of some filmmakers devoted to the naturist cause, most nudist movies were largely made for titilation and real members of nudist camps were often replaced onscreen with younger and more attractive models. Obviously, the nudity remained strictly non-sexual and whilst there were plenty of bare breasts and backsides on display, genitalia was discreetly concealed by the angle of shot or a strategically placed prop.    

      As for the acting and technical production standards, well, as stated, no one was chasing an Academy Award. Gradually, as explicit sex scenes and nudity became a regular aspect of many major films in the late 1960s and 70s, the market for nudist films dwindled away until production ceased altogether.   

 

 

Readers interested in naturism might like to see earlier posts published on Torpedo the Ark which touch on this subject: click here.  

 

 

Vexillophobia: You Can Wave Your Coloured Rag All You Wish Ms Dodsworth, But I'll Not Be Flying the Flag

Brooke Bond Tea Card Album: Flags & Emblems Of The World (1967) 

Dead dreams, dead dreams flying flags / Flapping in the breeze, wave your coloured rags [1]

 

I.

Surprisingly, the exact origin of flags - and the etymology of the word itself - is unknown, but peoples all over the world have been waving their coloured rags (as identifying symbols) for many thousands of years. 

The Roman legions, for example, loved their imperial standards topped with eagles and stamped with the letters SPQR, but they were by no means the first people to fly flags; in all likelihood this honour goes to the ancient Chinese and, during the medieval period, it was silk from China that allowed a number of other peoples, including the Arabs and the Norsemen, to design flags of their own. 

Just like the Muslims and Vikings, Christian Crusaders also loved to wave banners and flags and the English Cross of Saint George - red cross on white background (although originally the other way around) - dates to this period (12th century).

 

It wasn't until the late-18th and 19th centuries, however, that people - not just soldiers and sailors - began to collectively identify with nation states and their symbols, including flags. 

And today, thanks to Europeans colonising significant portions of the world and exporting ideas of nationhood, citizens in every country on earth who think of themselves as patriots have to have their own bit of cloth to run up the flagpole and salute. 

Indeed, there are now so many fucking flags that one has to be a professional vexillologist to keep up!

II.

As might be apparent by now, I'm no vexillophile. 

Although, funnily enough, back in the early '70s I was one of the children who used to like collecting those little illustrated cards - usually fifty in a series - that were given away with packets of Brooke Bond tea and apart from the one with British Butterflies (1963), my favourite was the set entitled Flags & Emblems of the World (1967).   

 

But that was a long time ago. And today, I hate flags; flag bearers; flag wavers; and flag lovers. Today, whilst I wouldn't use the term, I might best be described as a vexillophobe - that's certainly the word Laura Dodsworth chooses to use (and claims to have coined) ...

 

III. 

 

Writing in an article on her Substack, Ms Dodsworth extolls "our beautiful Union flags" [2], hanging on her local high street, as on so many local high streets at the moment, as part of Operation Raise the Colours; a 2025 campaign promoting the flying of the English flag (and Union Jack) in public places [3] and giving us all a wee taste of what it's like to live in Northern Ireland - no wonder I have a song by Stiff Little Fingers running through my head whenever I step outside! [4]

"Bright red, white and blue cut through the drizzle like fireworks", writes Dodsworth; and it's true sectarianism can be dazzling (just as fascism can be fascinating and awfully pretty to look at - all those colours and sexy symbols).  

The flags, says Dodsworth, are a reminder that she's at home - making me wonder if she's not a touch demented; does she really need such reminders to know her whereabouts?   

Anyway, for the record: I don't "recoil in horror at bunting" and nor do I "start to twitch at the sight of a fluttering Union Jack"; the sight of the St George's cross doesn't provoke "maximum fear and outrage". But, on the other hand, neither do I wet myself with joy and excitement at seeing the English flag raised above the local chippy [5].     

 

Vexillophobia, dear Laura, is not "a form contorted self-hatred" - it's actually a sign of intelligence and maturity. One can appreciate the aesthetic design of a flag - "the thrilling colours and elegant geometry" - without wrapping oneself up in the bloody thing, or learning to stand tall and salute.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from the song 'Hard Times', by Public Image Ltd., on the album Happy? (Virgin Records, 1987): click here. The track, along with all seven others on the album, is credited to Dias, Edmonds, McGeoch, Lydon, and Smith. I don't like the song, but do appreciate the phrase 'wave your coloured rags'.  

 

[2] Laura Dodsworth, 'The Rise of Vexillophobia: fear of the flag is this nation's greatest malady', The Free Mind (31 August 2025): click here. The article is partly tongue in cheek, which is - for me at least - its saving grace.  

[3] The campaign began in August 2025 and involves tying flags to lamp-posts and painting the St. George's Cross onto mini-roundabouts, with the aim of promoting national pride and patriotism (and not of intimidating anyone or pissing off vexillophobes like me). The campaign has put me in a slightly strange position, as I despise both the people on the far-right who support it and the people on the far-left who oppose it (though I'm happy to accept that there are many supporters and opponents who don't belong to either political extreme).        

[4] The song I'm referring to is 'Fly the Flag' (written by SLF and Gordon Ogilvie) and found on the Stiff Little Fingers album Nobody's Heroes (Chrysalis Records, 1980): click here.  

[5] Push comes to shove, I suppose I'd rather see a British flag on top of the local town hall than, for example, the black flag of the Islamic State, the blue flag of the European Union, or the so-called pride flag of the LGBTQ+ community in all its rainbow-coloured garishness. But, ideally, I'd bin 'em all.  

King Mob Echoes

Print from a copper engraving showing rioters 

setting fire to Newgate Prison in June 1780

 

 

I. 

 

Without wishing to echo those who, like Professor David Betz, predict that the UK is now almost certainly heading for civil war [1] - perhaps not in the old sense, but something widespread and very nasty all the same - I would certainly agree that the future isn't looking particularly rosy.  

 

Like many other European states, we seem to have created the perfect conditions for mass social unrest (at the very least). Falling living standards, ethno-religious tensions fuelled by unprecedented levels of immigration, and loss of faith in the authorities, all add up to a feeling that things can't go on as they are and that something has to change. 

 

As Yeats would say: things are threatening to fall apart; the centre cannot hold; anarchy is about to be loosed upon the world [2] - and not in the romantic and radically chic manner fantasised by some.  

 

 

II. 

 

Perhaps it is the last of these things mentioned above - loss of faith in the authorities - that should concern us most. For as Betz says, insurgency is always rooted in a crisis of legitimacy. If governments and judicial systems lose not only the support but the trust of the people, then that's an extremely serious matter.  

 

In brief, break the magic spell that holds a nation together and things get very real very quickly and citizens - who desire stability and a sense of justice - begin to take matters into their own hands.    

 

And this is why it's so profoundly stupid and politically dangerous for the present government to have effectively put themselves in opposition to the British public by openly declaring that the rights of asylum seekers take precedence over the concerns of the native population [3].

 

 

III. 

 

Funnily enough, the current state of affairs in the UK puts one in mind of the situation in 1780 when a week of rioting in London was triggered by anti-Catholic sentiment and security concerns following the passing of an Act which was intended to reduce discrimination, but perceived as privileging a religious minority over the Protestant majority [4]. 

 

Trouble began on June 2nd, when a huge crowd - estimated to be around 50,000 strong - assembled and marched on Parliament. Many carried flags and banners, as mobs are wont to do. Having failed to force their way into the House of Commons, people grew increasingly angry and the situation quickly got out of hand; members of the Lords were attacked as they arrived and a number of carriages were vandalised and destroyed. 

 

Although this crowd was eventually dispersed by soldiers without further violence, this was not the end of the matter; that same night, Roman Catholic chapels were attacked in several foreign embassies. When it was discovered that protestors who had been arrested were being held in Newgate Prison, this was stormed and largely destroyed, allowing a significant number of prisoners to escape.   

 

On June 7th, things reached a climax when the mob decided to target the Bank of England. Finally, the government called in the army to restore order using deadly force; having been ordered to fire upon groups of four or more rioters who refused to disperse resulted in hundreds of casualties. 

 

Of the 450 people who were arrested, some twenty or thirty were tried and executed. Lord George Gordon who led the original mass protest (and lent his name to the riots that followed) was charged with high treason, but acquitted. 

 

Those who would like to know more are encouraged to read Dickens's historical novel Barnaby Rudge (1841), which provides a long and detailed (if fictionalised) account of the Gordon Riots and features Lord George in a prominent role [5]. 

 

IV. 

 

Whilst parallels between then and now can be drawn, they're limited in what they might teach us due to differing socio-historical contexts and circumstances. And Tommy Robinson is no Lord Gordon.  

 

However, we witnessed last year how rapidly situations can deteriorate and how quickly trouble can spread (especially in an age of social media) [6] and one suspects - fears - that if the political climate continues to heat up and the social fabric continues to come apart, then King Mob [7] may once more find its figurehead and assert its sovereignty.   

 

 

V. 

        

Having said all this, Betz may, of course, be mistaken in his analysis and anarchy in the UK may not be an inevitablity. There are those - including individuals in positions of power - who simply don't believe that prolonged and widescale mass violence (let alone civil war) is probable (or even possible); they have an unshakeable faith in the goodness and common sense of the British people. 

 

As one commentator notes:

 

"The UK Government's resilience website lists hazards ranging from severe weather to terrorism, but makes no mention of civil unrest [...] Perhaps politicians realise that any mention of civil war in an official publication would be a PR catastrophe. Or maybe they view Western citizens as simply too cosseted, too biddable. People raised amid relative plenty and security are simply not likely to erupt in significant numbers." [8] 

 

So perhaps we can continue to sleep tightly in our beds at night and wake up full of fresh hope in the morning. 

 

Or perhaps not: for after speaking with Betz, this same commentator concludes that even if the latter is only right in part, then still our lives will be transformed "utterly and for the worse", as we suddenly find ourselves living in a "smaller and more brutal world" [9].     

 

Notes

 

[1] Betz is Professor of War in the Modern World at King's College London: click here to visit his homepage. He has been in the news and all across social media for the last couple of years offering his expert analysis of current events and predictions about the future. See this recent interview, for example, on YouTube with Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster of Triggernometry: click here. 

 

[2] I'm referring of course to Yeats's famous poem 'The Second Coming' (written in 1919). The poem was originally published in The Dial (November 1920), but included also in his collection of verses Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921). To read on the Poetry Foundation website, click here.  

 

[3] I'm referring to the case surrounding the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, which has been at the centre of recent protests against the use of hotels to house asylum seekers at tax payers expense and without consulting the local people, following an alleged sexual assault of a 14-year-old schoolgirl by one of the residents. 

      In brief, a temporary injunction granted earlier this month by a high court judge that would have blocked migrants from being housed at the above hotel was overturned on appeal after Home Office intervention (the argument being that there is an obligation for the government to uphold the European Convention on Human Rights). And this has only further raised tensions in the area. A full hearing of the case is expected in mid-October.

 

[4] It should be noted that there were other factors and grievances; political and economic rather than religious in nature. It has been suggested, for example, that many rioters were more concerned about falling wages and rising prices - or the UK's involvement in various foreign wars - than their Catholic neighbours and, as is often the case, these blended together into a general feeling of angry discontent.   

[5] See also Christopher Hibbert's King Mob: The Story of Lord George Gordon and the Riots of 1780 (Longmans, 1958), which provides another colourful reading of the historical record.  

 

[6] I'm referring to the (allegedly far-right) anti-immigration protests and riots that occurred in England and Northern Ireland from 30 July to 5 August 2024, following the Southport stabbings in which three young girls were murdered. The large scale disorder resulted in over 1,800 arrests and many people being handed harsh prison sentences (famously including one woman, Lucy Connolly, for posting a tweet which she deleted soon afterwards). 

 

[7] According to Christopher Hibbert's book on the Gordon Riots, rioters daubed the slogan His Majesty King Mob on the walls of Newgate Prison, after gutting the building. 

      In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a radical group based in London - influenced by (but excluded from) the Situationist International - called itself King Mob. The group, consisting of six main members, published five issues of a journal entitled King Mob Echo as well as many posters and leaflets which mightily impressed a young art student by the name of Malcolm McLaren who, it's claimed, took part in an action at Selfridges in December 1968, that involved freely distributing toys from the store's toy department to children (one of the members - not McLaren - was dressed as father Christmas). 

      Several commentators on the Sex Pistols have asserted the influence of King Mob on the band and McLaren, fascinated by the Gordon Riots, included a punk reimagining of the latter as the opening sequence of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980).       

 

[8] Alexander Poots, 'Is civil war coming for Britain?', on the news and opinion website UnHerd (25 April 2025): click here. 

 

[9] Ibid.  

 

The Sex Pistols - Who the Dickens Were They?

Malcolm McLaren: Oliver Twist Manifesto (42 x 32 cm)

Double-sided flyer created for the Sex Pistols' final British show 

Christmas Day, 1977 [1]

Punk came out of this strange culture that had been repressed through the Victorian times ... 

The Sex Pistols were something more feral and more dark and native to the English psyche than rock 'n' roll 

and Malcolm saw them very much in a Dickensian way. - Julien Temple 

 

 

I. 

 

I spent a fair amount of time earlier in the year arguing that D. H. Lawrence can be thought of as a Sex Pistol: click here, for example. But to think of Lawrence as a proto-punk is not to suggest that we might think of the Sex Pistols as Lawrentian. 

 

In fact, if we are to think of the Sex Pistols in English literary terms at all, it makes far more sense to conceive of Johnny Rotten and company as neo-Dickensian characters. That's certainly how Malcolm McLaren attempted to portray them late on in their career, as the above flyer, written by him in December 1977, illustrates.

 

It begins:   

 

They are Dickensian-like urchins who with ragged clothes and pock marked faces roam the foggy streets of gas-lit London. Pillaging. Setting fire to buildings. Beating up old people with gold chains. Fucking the rich up the arse. Causing havoc wherever they go. Some of these ragamuffin gangs jump on tables amidst the charred debris and with burning torches play rock 'n' roll to the screaming delight of the frenzied pissing pogoing mob. Shouting and spitting 'anarchy' one of these gangs call themselves the Sex Pistols. [2]

 

It's obviously a fantasy vision of the band. But the question is: why does the fantasy take this particular form? Why reference ragamuffin gangs and pogoing mobs, etc? Is it just because McLaren's grandmother adored Fagin and made him read Dickens as a young child, or is there also a wider political context?

 

II. 

 

Before addressing these points, let's first give a bit more background to the production of the flyer ...  

 

By the end of 1977, life had never looked so good for the four Sex Pistols; three hit singles, a number 1 album, and about to commence on their first American tour. 

 

However, things were rapidly coming apart at the seams as relations amongst members of the band - never particularly good - had significantly worsened due to various factors including Sid's addiction to drugs (and to Nancy), Rotten's loathing of McLaren, and Malcolm's desire to ensure the band were remembered as a spectacular failure rather than a benign success.     

 

And so, in hindsight, it isn't all that surprising that the two shows played on Christmas day in Huddersfield - the first, in the afternoon, a benefit gig for the children of striking firemen and the second, in the evening, for fans of the band in and around West Yorkshire - would prove to be their final British performances.

 

Perhaps sensing that the end was nigh, Mclaren began to reimagine the Sex Pistols as so much more than merely another boring rock 'n' roll group. And so he wrote the above text for distribution at the events and illustrated with artwork by George Cruikshank from the original 1838 edition of Oliver Twist [3].

 

According to Paul Gorman, this flyer "acted less as a promotion for the Pistols than a commentary on both his Jewishness and his strange relationship with the group" [4]. But it also demonstrates McLaren's (somewhat bourgeois and overly-romanticised) understanding of working class culture as inherently rebellious, violent, and non-conforming and that returns us to the politics of this manifesto ...

 

 

III. 

      

It's often the case that when commentators discuss the Sex Pistols in terms of politics they immediately reach for their French dictionary and start talking about the Situationists and referencing Guy Debord's La société du spectacle (1967). 

 

That's not mistaken, but it does mean that less attention is given to the fact that the Sex Pistols are also very much part of an English history of insurrection to do with the so-called London mob and the Gordon Riots [5]. 

 

As the opening sequence of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) explicitly informs viewers, the roots of 'Anarchy in the UK' can be traced back to the 1780s [6]. That is to say, to a period fizzing with revolutionary and carnivalesque energies on both sides of the Channel and one that Charles Dickens wrote about in his (little read and rarely adapted) historical novel Barnaby Rudge (1841) [7]. 

 

Wilfully conflating mob violence with punk rock, the cinematic re-enactment of the Gordon Riots makes clear that McLaren saw the Sex Pistols as first and foremost a rejection of authority - be it of parents, teachers, priests, policemen, or soldiers of the crown - and representative, as Julien Temple rightly says, of "something more feral and more dark and native to the English psyche than rock 'n' roll" [8].   

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The flyer was signed 'Oliver Twist' to emphasise McLaren's vision of the band as Dickensian urchins. It formed item 52 of the 71 item Stollper-Wilson Collection of Sex Pistols memorabilia auctioned by Sotheby's in October 2022: click here. 

      One of the most noticeable things about the flyer is the fact that Malcolm allowed corrections to the text to remain openly on display, just as they are on the Dickens manuscripts he saw as a child. As Paul Gorman reminds us, McLaren subscribed to the view that honest error is crucial to the creative process, rather than "'the icy perfections of the mere stylist'". 

      See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 48, where Gorman quotes from an aphorism coined by the Victorian church architect J. D. Sedding (one often falsely attributed to Charles Rennie Mackintosh). 

 

[2] The rest of the text scawled by McLaren (with a wooden stick dipped in ink) reads:

 

This true and dirty tale has been continuing throughout 200 years of teenage anarchy and so in 1978 there still remains the Sex Pistols. Their active extremism is all they care about because that's what counts to jump right out of the 20th century as fast as you possibly can in order to create an environment that you can truthfully run wild in.

 

[3] The illustration by Cruikshank to which I refer depicts the first meeting between Oliver Twist and Fagin entitled 'Oliver introduced to the Respectable Old Gentleman'. It's an image which plays an important role in the mythologising of the Sex Pistols, paralleling as it does the first time that Malcolm and members of the band met with the nineteen-year-old who would become their singer and frontman: see the post 'On This Day ...' (22 August 2025): click here. 

      I am grateful for this clever insight to Michael E. Kitson, writing in 'The Sex Pistols and the London Mob', an unpublished doctoral thesis submitted to Western Sydney University (2008): click here to view the abstract and to download the work as a pdf. As this post makes clear, I agree with Kitson's central claim that the culture and semiotics of the London mob was fundamental to McLaren's (distinctly English) punk project and that the influence of Dickens on McLaren's thinking cannot be overestimated. 

 

[4] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren ... p. 381. 

      Interestingly, McLaren signs his manifesto with the name of Oliver Twist and not with Fagin, as one might have expected, as the latter was the explicitly Jewish character in Dickens's 1838 novel and the leader of a group of youngsters whom he grooms into a life of crime. 

      Still, whichever character McLaren ultimately identified with, the fact remains that Dickens's novel played a seminal role in his thinking. In 2000, he named the book as one of his favourites in a piece for The Guardian, describing it as an "unforgettable journey into criminal behaviour" that not only transported him back to his own childhood, but which justified his desire to - and here he paraphrases from his own Oliver Twist Manifesto - "create an environment " in which he could "truthfully run wild" whilst overseeing a generation of artful dodgers.  

      To read the list of Mclaren's top ten books in The Guardian (21 Feb 2000), click here.  

 

[5] The Gordon Riots of 1780 saw several days of violent disorder and destruction in London motivated by anti-Catholic sentiment and instigated by Lord George Gordon. After the mob - which had declared its own sovereignty on the wall of Newgate Prison - attempted to storm the Bank of England, the government finally sent in the army, resulting in several hundred fatalities.

 

[6] Funnily enough, the opening scene of the Swindle set in eighteenth-century London - featuring crowds cavorting in the streets as they joyously string up effigies of the Sex Pistols above a huge bonfire - is one that even Rotten admits to liking, conceding that it amusingly captures the spirit of punk. See John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs (Hodder and Stoughton, 1994), p. 289.

 

[7] I don't know if McLaren read Barnaby Rudge, but it's possible and Dickens's novel remains the definitive literary work detailing the phenomenon of the London mob at its height. 

      It's also more than likely that McLaren would have been (at least vaguely) familiar with Christopher Hibbert's King Mob: The Story of Lord George Gordon and the Riots of 1780 (Longmans, 1958), which provides a colourful reading of the historical record. 

      And finally, it should be pointed out that McLaren certainly knew of (and admired) the newsletter King Mob Echo produced by the British offshoot of the Situationist International, with whom he was acquainted whilst an art student in the 1960s (see Gorman 2020, pp. 95-98).

 

[8] Julien Temple, director of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980), speaking in the audio commentary [2:13] provided as a bonus to the DVD release of the film in 2005: click here. Temple is speaking with the writer Chris Salewicz. Interestingly, while Malcolm sees the Sex Pistols as Dickensian, Temple prefers to think of them as a bit Chaucerian. 

 

 

Gilles Deleuze on D. H. Lawrence's Three Manners of Relating to the Sun

Enculage (A Portrait of Deleuze and D. H. Lawrence) 

(SA/2025) [1]

  

'Men should group themselves into a new order of sun-men ... 

walking each in his own sun glory, with bright legs and uncringing buttocks' [2]

 

 

I.

 

The first thing to say is that Deleuze's writing is not always easy to understand. 

 

Even the Google AI assistant admits that his work is difficult due to its density and the fact that he employs highly specialised language, makes numerous obscure references to other philosophers and disciplines, and rarely bothers to explain himself to the reader who is left to think through his esoteric concepts as best they can (filling in gaps and making vital connections as they go).   

 

However, as with other French thinkers of his generation, I think one is rewarded if one only makes the effort and puts the time in to read Deleuze, carefully, and with a certain generosity of spirit. Of course there will be times when he'll make you roll your eyes or sigh with exasperation, but so too will there be moments of joy and revelation.  

 

 

II. 

 

From November 1980 to March 1981, Deleuze gave a lecture-seminar series entitled Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought. 

 

In the 14th of these seminars (there were fifteen in total), he discusses the two definitions of the body given us by Spinoza: one concerned with the relation of movement (i.e., the kinetic understanding of the body) and one concerned with the power of being affected (i.e., the dynamic understanding of the body) [3]. 

 

Half way through the seminar, however, Deleuze digresses in order to consider writers and artists who share an obsession with the sun and asks how their solar-infused thinking might connect to the work of Spinoza. 

 

One of these writers is D. H. Lawrence and it's Deleuze's remarks on Lawrence - someone he names along with Nietzsche, Kafka, and Artaud as a true heir to Spinoza (whether he knows it or not) - that most interest me here ...

 

 

III. 

 

According to Deleuze, the body is composed not so much of organs, but of an infinity of extensive parts: 

 

"These extensive parts belong to me according to a certain relation, but these extensive parts are perpetually subject to the influence of other parts which act upon them, and which don't belong to me."

 

So, to give a rudimentary example, skin is something Deleuze considers his and which forms an important part of his body. But the solar energetic particles that act as heat upon his skin are external forces. Skin cells might act "according to a certain relation that is precisely characteristic" of his body, but SEPs "have no other law than the law of external determinations". 

 

Whenever one exclaims 'I'm hot!' one is admitting that an external body (the sun) acts on one's own body. To perceive that one's skin is beginning to burn is to become conscious of the fact that one inhabits a universe that is not mind dependent or under human control (and that one really should've applied some additional sunscreen).   

 

Okay: so far, so straightforward; but also, so what? 

 

Well, according to Deleuze, this example allows us to gain a concrete understanding of what is meant by pantheism - a concept found not just in the work of Spinoza, but also in the writings of D. H. Lawrence; an author who "constituted for himself a kind of English pantheism" and promoted his own form of sun-worship [4]. 

 

Deleuze wants to know how sun-loving pantheists like Lawrence live and feel and he posits that there are, "generally speaking, three ways of being in relation to the sun" ... 

 

 

IV.

 

Firstly, there's the wrong way: the way of the majority of modern holidaymakers. Those whom Lawrence thinks vulgar and contemptible; those who lie naked like pigs on fashionable beaches: 

 

"He finds that these people live poorly. There you have his idea. It was also Spinoza's idea that people live poorly, and if they are wicked, it's because they live poorly; fine. They live poorly, they dump themselves onto the beach, and they understand nothing about the sun. If they were to understand something about the sun, after all, says Lawrence, they would come out of it more intelligent and improved." 

 

As soon as they put their clothes back on, they are as grey and as filled with bitterness as before; "they lose nothing of their virtues and vices". Essentially, they remain at the most basic and naive level of knowledge and think of the sun as no more than some kind of tanning machine in the sky; or something that "makes the thermometer rise!" [5].      

 

 

V.

 

The second manner of relating to the sun is one that is a bit more knowledgeable, though not merely in a theoretical or abstract sense; these people have a "practical comprehension of the sun" and, at the same time, they know how to compose the relations of their body in greater relation to the sun.   

 

Such a person might be a 19th-century still life painter who goes out into nature:

 

"He has his easel; this is a certain relation. He has his canvas on the easel; this is another relation. There is the sun, and the sun does not remain immobile. Fine, so what is he going to do? What is it that I’m calling this knowledge of the second kind? He will completely change the position of his easel; that is, he is not going to have the same relation to his canvas depending on whether the sun is high, or the sun is about to set." 

 

Van Gogh is a good example of such (even if he was eventually driven a little crazy by the sun) [6]. 

 

It was by being out in the elements and by lying on the ground in order to get just the right angle to paint the setting sun that Vincent learnt how to compose relations and raise himself to "a certain comprehension of causes". And it was only at that point that he could begin to describe himself as a sun-lover (i.e., one posessing a genuine affinity with the sun, even if it leads to madness). 

 

This is the second kind of knowledge; a completely different state from the one in which the holidaymaker tans his hide in the sun:

 

"Here, at the second level, there is already a kind of communion with the sun. Peruse Van Gogh's letters; it's obvious that when he is painting these huge red suns, it's obvious that this is what he is. Not that the sun is brought down to him; it's he who begins to enter into a kind of communication with the sun."

 

 

VI. 

 

And what about the third manner of relating to the sun and the third kind of solar knowledge?

 

It's here that Deleuze turns to Lawrence's poetry and fiction in which the sun plays a central role and there is what might be called in abstract terms "a mystical union" between man and sun.  

 

For Deleuze, this union with the sun is not a religious metaphor and nor is it a question of identification, even if it allows one to affirm the sun as God and to become a sun-man or sun-woman, opening like a flower before the sun and able to announce: 

 

I am that I am

from the sun,

and people are not my measure. [7]  

 

Deleuze notes that only when one attains this third kind of knowledge, does one arrive at this mode of intrinsic distinction. And as a result of this: "the rays by which the sun affects me are the rays by which I affect myself, and the rays by which I affect myself are the rays of the sun that affect me". 

 

In other words, it's a game of solar auto-affection - not identification; "the internal distinction between his own singular essence, the singular essence of the sun, and the essence of the world" is maintained in Lawrence's work. 

 

Reading Lawrence's late texts on the sun, Deleuze informs his students, "can trigger an understanding of Spinoza that you would never have had if you had stayed solely with Spinoza". Which is why, of course, in order to understand any philosopher - not just Spinoza - one needs to read literature and study art and "accumulate a thousand other things as well that have value by themselves".      

 

VII.

 

And so, in sum ...

 

Van Gogh has unique experience with the sun, as proved by his paintings; and from Lawrence's writings we learn that he too had "a special involvement with the sun" (one that we might describe as  libidinal paganism).     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Deleuze uses the term enculage to describe his preferred method of engaging with other authors. This is usually translated into English as buggery, though I think I would use the more contemporary-sounding (if more vulgar) assfucking:  

      "I saw myself as taking an author from behind and giving him a child that would be his own offspring, yet monstrous. It was really important to me to be his own child, because the author had to actually say all I had him saying. But the child was bound to be monstrous too, because it resulted from all sorts of shifting, slipping, dislocations, and hidden emissions that I really enjoyed." 

      Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, trans, Martin Joughin (Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 6. 

 

[2] Lines from Lawrence's poem 'Sun-Men', in Pansies (Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1929), pp. 149-150. 

      I thought they not only anticipated the text to follow, but also related to the sun-drenched portrait of Deleuze and Lawrence above, bearing in mind the title (explained in note 1 above) and Lawrence's use of the phrase uncringing buttocks.

 

[3] Gilles Deleuze, 'Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought' (Session 14, 24 March 1981), transcribed by Sandra Tomassi and Madeleine Manifacier, augmented by Charles J. Stivale, English translation by Timothy S. Murphy (for Web Deleuze); augmented by Charles J. Stivale. 

      All quotations from Deleuze in this post are from this work as it appears online. Click here to read courtesy of The Deleuze Seminars project, which aims to translate into English Deleuze's seminar-lectures given at the University of Paris 8 at Vincennes/St. Denis, between 1971 and 1987, and to make them freely available.     

 

[4] See my essay 'Sun-Fucked', which is available to read on James Walker's Digital Pilgrimage website under the title 'Sun-Struck: On the Question of Solar Sexuality and Speculative Realism in D. H. Lawrence' (14 Jan 2019): click here. 

      For those who don't fancy such a long read may prefer to see the two short posts published on Torpedo the Ark extracted from the above essay: click here and here.

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Oh wonderful machine!', in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 554. 

 

[6] See the post written on Van Gogh's ear and the dangers of sun-gazing (25 Jan 2014): click here.  

[7] See the poem 'Aristocracy of the Sun', by D. H. lawrence, in Pansies (1929), p. 152.