Reflections on Simon Critchley's Philosophical Short Cuts (Part 1)

Simon Critchely: Bald (Yale University Press, 2021) 

Essays edited by Peter Catapano 

Cover design by R. Black

 

 

I don't know Simon Critchley: but he's one of the Simons that I can't help admiring and to whom I feel a vague connection, that is part philosophical in nature and part generational; we share many of the same ideas and points of reference and we were all born in the same decade [a]. 

 

Having said that, there are differences between me and the Simons, including Herr Professor Critchley, whose collection of essays Bald (2021) I'd like to discuss here in an amicable if still critical manner. Readers might best see this post then as less the staging of a confrontation or a reckoning [Auseinandersetzung] and more an attempt to offer an insightful commentary in the same kind of engaging, jargon-free - or bold and bald - style that Critchley adopts in this work.  

 

Note: whilst there are thirty-five essays in Bald - all originally published in the New York Times - I'll not be discussing each of them here; just the ones that really catch my interest or which I find particularly provocative [b]. The titles in bold are Critchley's own. And all page numbers refer to the 2021 edition shown above. If the post becomes overly-lengthy - as these posts often do - I'll publish it as two (or possibly even three) parts.   

 

 

Happy Like God  

What is happiness? 

 

In an attempt to answer this question Critchley calls on Rousseau, who provides him with the idea that happiness might simply be the feeling of existence; a feeling that fills the soul entirely. 

 

Perhaps in order to update the language slightly, Critchley reframes this feeling as one of "momentary self-sufficiency that is bound up with the experience of time" [5]. Happiness, in other words, is learning to enjoy the nowness of the present (no regrets and no longing for a better tomorrow). 

 

Achieve a state of joyful reverie and, says Rousseau, you become like God - and Critchley doesn't demur, which is slightly strange for an atheist, but indicates the direction his thinking often takes; i.e., towards secular mysticism (whether this makes him a crypto-theologian more than a critical theorist is a question we can return to later).   

 

And where and when is Critchley happiest? 

 

Sitting by the sea, or in his lover's bed; happiness can be a solitary state, but "one can also experience this feeling of existence in the experience of love" [6]. Maybe: though I'm not sure that love is ever that blissfully straightforward and Critchley is honest enough to admit that even the most oceanic feeling of happiness is outrageously short lived: "Time passes, the reverie ends and the feeling for existence fades." [6].

 

Didn't Goethe once say that no one can enjoy looking at a beautiful sunset for more than a few seconds without getting bored; and I remember also Johnny Rotten once characterising love as less than three minutes of squelching noises. 

 

In other words, we are incapable of being permanently happy (or even happy for long) [c].  

 

 

How to Make It in the Afterlife 

 

As a thanatologist, what I like about Critchley is that, sooner or later and no matter what the topic - he's going to speak about mortality. And sure enough, we quickly pass from happiness to death and the relation between them, which he discusses in relation to ancient Greek philosophy (his other specialist subject). 

 

The key is: live a good life and die a noble death and happiness will be yours. Which means that "happiness does not consist in whatever you might be feeling [...] but in what others feel about you" [13]. 

 

In other words, happiness is something posthumously ascribed - a very unmodern view, but one worth considering; particularly if the adoption of such a view encourages us to live in a more beautiful manner so as to be remembered with smiling fondness.  

 

 

The Gospel According to Me

 

That's a nice title. And it's a crucial short essay attacking the search for individual authenticity, which Critchley rightly recognises is born of a "weak but all-pervasive idea of spirituality [...] and a litugy of inwardness" [15]. 

 

This ideal of authenticity - which was central to existentialism before becoming central to New Age therapeutic culture - is basically a type of selfish conformism; something which "disguises acquisitiveness under a patina of personal growth, mindfulness and compassion" [16]. 

  

Those who think the quest for authenticity is an ethical practice, might be surprised to find Critchley dismiss it as a form of passive nihilism. Passive nihilism and the zen fascism of the 21st century American workplace. For when the office is such a fun place to be and encourages you to be yourself and express yourself, then "there is no room for worker malaise" [17] or class war and in in this way authenticity becomes "an evacuation of history" [17] [d].    

 

I like it when Critchley nails his colours to the mast and pops his political hat on; exposing not just the fantasy of authenticity, but the evils of the workplace - even those that allow us to wear our favourite T-shirt "and listen to Radiohead" [17] on our i-Phones while at our desk. 

 

And I like it too when he relates his philosophical and political critique to literature; pointing out, for example, that Herman Melville, "writing on the cusp of modern capiatlism" [19] in the mid-19th century, had already twigged that "the search for authenticity was a white whale" [19]; i.e., an obsessive quest that is "futile at best and destructive at worst" [19] [e].   

 

 

Abandon (Nearly) All Hope

 

Having demolished the ideal of authenticity, Critchley now attacks the ideal of hope: is it, he asks, such a wonderful thing? 

 

Obviously, I don't think so and I've long been an vociferous opponent of this Christian virtue: see the post dated 6 Feb 2022, for example, on Shep Fairey's Obama poster: click here. Thus, I was pleased to see that Critchley is also hostile to the idea, regarding it from a Graeco-Nietzschean perspective as a form of moral cowardice that "allows us to escape from reality and prolong human suffering" [20].    

 

Hope, says Critchley - contra Obama - is not audacious; it is mendacious; something exploited by our religious teachers and political leaders alike. And what we need is not blind hope but clear-sighted courage in the face of reality (including the courage to abandon hope). 

 

Or, to put that another way, "skeptical realism, deeply informed by history" [25], that knows how to smile like Epictetus (the slave turned Stoic philosopher admired by Nietzsche).    

 

 

What Is a Philosopher? 

 

An idiot who falls down the well (like Thales); or one who takes their time ...? 

 

Probably a combination of both: 

 

"The philosopher [...] is free by virtue of his otherworldliness, by the capacity to fall into wells and appear silly" and this freedom "consists in either moving freely from topic to topic or simply spending years returning to the same topic" [71] [f].   

 

Critchley endorses this Socratic defnition further by agreeing that the philosopher is also one who is indifferent to convention; shows no respect for rank; never joins a political party or a private club. Of course, this kind of attitude and behaviour can get you in trouble - Socrates  was ultimately put on trial and condemned to death for impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens [g]. 

 

Thus, Critchley (amusingly) decides: "Philosophy should come with the kind of health warning one finds on packs of European cigarettes: PHILOSOPHY KILLS" [72]. 

 

It is thus not only a perverse love of wisdom - a form of erōtomaniā (see below) - but a risking of one's own life; i.e., a practice of joy before death. 

 

Critchley concludes (in a slightly confessional, slightly self-dramatising manner):

 

"Nurtured in freedom and taking their time, there is something dreadfully uncanny about philosophers, something either monstrous or godlike, or, indeed, both at once." [73]

 

 

Cynicism We Can Believe In

 

Ancient cynicism is "not at all cynical in the modern sense of the word" [83], writes Critchley. 

 

And that's certainly true; ancient cynicism was a rigorous philosophical way of life that involved self-debasement in order to make its case, whilst modern cynicism, on the other hand, is "an attitude of negativity and jaded scornfulness" [83]; often no more than a fashionable pose.  

 

The modern cynic isn't expected to live like a dog, eat raw squid, or masturbate in the market place and his cynicism lacks the moral and political radicalism of the hardcore cynicism that Diogenes practiced. 

 

But in a world like ours - self-interested, lazy, corrupt, and greedy - "it is Diogenes's lamp that we need to light our path" [85]. Though I think we can do without the flash-wanking or pissing in public, thank you very much.    

 

 

Let Be - An Answer to Hamlet's Question

 

For Heidegger, letting be [Gelassenheit] is a fundamental granting of freedom, born not of indifference, but an active concern for otherness and a refusal to see the world as something to be manipulated and exploited. In other words, it's a form of care. 

 

Critchley - who certainly knows his Heidegger - prefers to think the idea of letting be in relation to Shakespeare's Hamlet, however. In response to the play's famous ontological question - 'To be, or not to be?' - he says 'Let be'. 

 

But in order to let be, requires, he says, the cultivation of "a disposition of skeptical openness that does not claim to know aught of what we truly know naught" [107]. 

 

He elucidates:  

 

"If we can cure ourselves of our longing for some sort of godlike conspectus of what it means to be human, or our longing for the construction of ourselves as some new prosphetic god through technology, bound by the self-satisfied myth of unlimited human progress, we might let be." [107] 

 

I think we can all agree this would be a good thing. But it's not going to happen, of course; man is the creature who just can't help interfering and organising and wanting to be master of the universe; Homo sapien is also Homo importunus.   

  

 

Notes

 

[a] The other Simons include Reynolds and Armitage - see the post dated 17 Jan 2026: click here - and also the monstrous figure of Síomón Solomon; see the post dated 19 Jan 2026: click here. 

 

[b] Readers will note that I don't for example, refer to any of the five essays in the section entitled 'I Believe'. Essentialy that's because I don't know anything about (or have much interest in) Mormonism, Russian literature (Dostoevsky), or Danish philosophy (Kierkegaard). 

      Nor do I share the (quasi-religious) faith of a football fan and find Critchley's paean to Liverpool FC a bit cringe if I'm honest. Does he really believe that football teaches us something important about our humanity and that being a Red inculcates a set of purely noble values: "solidarity, compassion, internationalism, decency, honour, self-respect and respect for others" [63] -? (Opposing fans sometimes accuse Liverpool supporters of moralising sentimentality and hypocrisy, but we can leave this for another post, another day.) 

      The essay on money - 'Coin of Praise' - I did read and found myself nodding in agreement with the idea that our financial system essentially rests on faith; i.e., money is the most ideal of all material things and our one true God. But saying that didn't seem to justify an entire section in this post.      

 

[c] See the follow up piece entitled 'Beyond the Sea' (pp. 7-11), in which Critchley addresses some of the comments and criticisms he received from readers of 'Happy Like God'. Crucially, he recognises that happiness in the moment is often topped by happiness of the memory of our happiness in the moment; that the best kind of happiness isn't ecstatic, but melancholic.  

 

[d] Michel Foucault famously dismissed what he called the Californian cult of the self in comparison to the ethico-aesthetic stylisation of self as practiced by the ancient Greeks and modern dandies. See 'On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress', in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (Penguin Books, 1991), p. 359. 

      And see also what Foucault writes on the 'arts of existence' and 'techniques of self' in The History of Sexuality 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 1992). 

 

[e] Critchley also refers to his hero Shakespeare, reminding readers that no one is more inauthentic than Hamlet and that the depiction of his radical inauthenticity "shatters our moral complacency" [19] as witnesses to the drama that unfolds.    

 

[f] I would suggest that just as there are two types of philosophical freedom, so too are there are two types of philosopher; I belong to the first type, who flit from topic to topic; my friend Síomón Solomon belongs to the latter type and enjoys the freedom to return and ruminate upon the same problems over and over. This naturally enough produces a different type of thinking and writing style.

 

[g] Critchley notes: "Nothing is more common in the history of philosophy than the accusation of impiety" and philosophy has "repeatedly and persistently been identified with blasphemy against the gods" [72]. Because their attitude is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as one of not giving a fuck, philosophers are often regarded as "politically suspicious, even dangerous" [72].  

 

 

 

God Save Jean Genet

Sex Pistols ft. Jean Genet (SA/2026)

Photo credits: Sex Pistols by Bob Gruen (1976) 

and Jean Genet by Brassaï (1948)   

 

Beauty is the projection of ugliness and to achieve harmony in bad taste 

is the height of style ...

 

 

I.

 

Jean Genet (1910–1986) was a seminal French writer and political activist whose life was defined by his transition from a marginalized outcast to a celebrated avant-garde icon. 

 

Born to a prostitute mother and placed into foster care, he spent his youth banged up in reformatories and prisons for crimes including theft and vagrancy [1], before joining the Foreign Legion at eighteen, from which he was dishonourably discharged on grounds of indecency (that is to say, well, I think we can all imagine what he was caught doing). 

 

After this, Genet stole and slept his way round Europe as a tea leaf and rent boy, before ending up in and out of prison in Paris; experiences that served as the primary inspiration for his lyrical debut novel, Notre-Dame des Fleurs (1943) [2].

 

Genet's later work - which includes novels such as Journal du voleur (1949) [3] and plays such as Les Bonnes (1947) [4] - is renowned for its stylised (but uncompromising) exploration of power and the beauty of evil, as well as the subversion of social hierarchies and the transgression of traditional morality (often giving iconic status to outlaws and outcasts, punks and queers).   

 

 

II.

 

Genet was championed by both Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul Sartre [5] and, in his later years, following the events of May '68, he became increasingly active politically, advocating for all kinds of oppressed groups and radical causes and participating in various demonstrations. 

 

In 1970, Genet spent three months in the United States at the invite of the Black Panthers, before then spending six months visiting Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan [6]. He also became pally with Foucault during this time and, in his experimental text Glas (1974), Jacques Derrida contrasted Genet's ideas on crime, homosexuality and all the reste with Hegel's philosophy, in order to deconstruct traditional concepts of the law, family, and the ideal of Wholeness (or the Absolute) [7].   

 

Like Joe Strummer, Genet expressed solidarity with the Red Army Faction (or Baader-Meinhof Gang); a militant far-left group designated as a terrorist organisation by the West German government, publishing an article titled Violence et brutalité in Le Monde (2 Sept. 1977) [8]. 

 

Whilst Strummer was, of course, simply posing in a T-shirt - the Clash specialised in radical chic - Genet was driven by a deep-seated hatred for Western imperialism and French bourgeois society in particular; in 1985, the year before his death, he informed a shocked interviewer from the BBC that he loathed France so much that he had even supported the Nazis when they invaded Paris. 

  

 

III. 

  

Whilst Genet never collaborated with the Sex Pistols - nor ever refer to them in his writings or interviews - it's tempting to imagine that he would have found McLaren and Westwood's tiny shop at 430 King's Road a conceptual space very much to his liking, promoting as it did anarchy, sexual deviance, and the kind of transgressive behaviour that he seemed so excited by.

 

And if we define the denizens of 430 King's Road as Peter York once famously defined them - "the extreme ideological wing of the peculiars" [9] - or, alternatively, recall the description of them from the trailer to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) - "a kamikaze gang of cat burglers and child prostitutes" [10] - then it's possible that Genet would have identified with the Sex Pistols and acknowledged how his legacy found youthful expression via punk [11]. 

 

But, again, just to be clear - there is no evidence of a direct relationship between Jean Genet and the Sex Pistols and I don't remember Malcolm ever mentioning his name, whereas he would often refer to other poets and playwrights he admired, such as Oscar Wilde and Joe Orton. The speculative connection suggested here is largely based on the fact that both McLaren and Genet understood style as a form of refusal and aligned themselves with the counterculture. 

 

On the other hand, however, it's worth noting that while Genet may have appreciated the SEX and Seditionaries aesthetic, by the mid-1970s he had become increasingly cynical about art and theatrical rebellion and so it's possible that he would have dismissed punk as just another fashion and commercial commodification, rather than something genuinely subversive or dangerous - who knows? 

  

 

Notes 

 

[1] Genet's mother raised him for the first seven months of his life before placing him for adoption (one likes to believe she did so with good intentions and was putting the child's interests first). According to his biographer, his foster family was loving and attentive. Neverthless, his childhood involved numerous attempts to run away and incidents of petty criminality (even whilst the obviously bright boy got good grades at school). Eventually, aged fifteen, Genet was sent to a brutal penal colony, where he spent three unhappy years. 

 

[2] The first English edition, trans. Bernard Frechtman, was published as Our Lady of the Flowers in 1949. 

 

[3] The first English edition, trans. Bernard Frectman, was published as The Thief's Journal (1964).

 

[4] This work was again first translated into English by Bernard Frechtman and was published as The Maids by Grove Press in the United States (1954), and by Faber in the UK (1957). A famous film adaptation, dir. Christopher Miles and starring Glenda Jackson and Susannah York, was released in cinemas in 1975.

 

[5] When Genet arrived in Paris, he sought out and introduced himself to Jean Cocteau and the latter, impressed by his writing, used his contacts to help get Genet's first novel published. 

      Later, in 1949, when Genet was threatened with a life sentence after notching up ten convictions, Cocteau and other prominent intellectuals, including Jean-Paul Sartre, successfully petitioned the French President to have the sentence set aside. In gratitude - and perhaps realising there was more money to be made from art than crime - Genet stayed on the straight and narrow after this (or, at any rate, he avoided being caught doing anything that might return him to a prison cell).

      By this date, Genet had completed five novels, three plays, and numerous poems, many controversial for their explicit and often deliberately provocative portrayal of homosexuality and criminality. In 1952, Sartre wrote a long analysis of Genet's existential development (from vagrant to writer), entitled Saint Genet. Profoundly affected by Sartre's analysis, Genet did not write for the next five years, during which time he became emotionally attached to Abdallah Bentaga, a tightrope walker. Following Bentaga's suicide in 1964, Genet entered a period of depression and attempted to end his own life.

 

[6] A memoir detailing his encounters with Palestinian fighters and Black Panthers was published posthumously; see Un captif amoureux (Gallimard, 1986). Translated into English by Barbara Bray and with an introduction by Edmund White, it was published by Picador as The Prisoner of Love (1989).      

 

[7] The English translation of Derrida's book, by John P. Leavey, Jr. and Richard Rand, was published by the University of Nebraska Press, in 1986. A more recent translation, by Geoffrey Bennington and David Wills, was published with the title Clang by the University of Minnesota Press in 2021. 

 

[8] This Le Monde piece can be found in Jean Genet, The Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews, ed. Albert Dichy, trans. Jeff Fort (Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 171-177. 

      According to the blurb for this book, Genet affirms a heroic politics of protest and revolt with "an uncompromising outrage". In other words, it's that depressing mix of militant asceticism and pathological narcissism that I genuinely despise. In fact, the only thing I hate Genet for more is his reported sexual abuse of the eleven-year-old daughter of his friend and fellow writer Monique Lange. Viewers interested in knowing more about this should see the unconventional docu-drama Little Girl Blue (2023), written and directed by Mona Achache, and starring Marion Cottilard: click here to watch the trailer.

 

[9] This wonderful description of McLaren and company was coined by Peter York in an article entitled 'Them' which appeared in Harpers & Queen (October 1976). It was quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329. 

 

[10] Click here to watch the trailer to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980); the film that incriminates its audience. The narrator is the famous BBC newsreader John Snagge.

 

[11] Of all the Sex Pistols, I think it would have been guitarist Steve Jones whom the Frenchman would have found the most appealing. For as Glen Matlock once rightly observed, it was Jones who was the true spirit of the band and "like a character out of Jean Genet book [...] a real livewire scoundrel, unabashedly so".   

      Matlock was speaking in an interview with Matt Catchpole; see 'Trigger Happy - Sex Pistol Glen Matlock on Life as a Solo Performer and New Album Good To Go' (26 June, 2018): click here. Matlock later repeats this observation in an interview with Dave Steinfeld; see  'Glen Matlock - Truth or Consequences: Talking with the original Sex Pistol about politics and punk rock', on the website Rock and Roll Globe (18 May 2023): click here. 

 

 

For a sister post to this one on Joe Orton, click here. 

  

Musical bonus: Sex Pistols, 'L'Anarchie Pour Le UK', from the album The Great Rock n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979), uploaded to YouTube by Universal Music Group: click here. The vocalist is Loius Brennon and he is backed by his merry band of street musicians on accordian and fiddle.  

 

Sijia Yao's Cosmopolitan Love and Utopian Vision: Or How to Have D. H. Lawrence Spinning in His Grave (Part 2: Sections VI-X)

Sijia Yao: Cosmopolitan Love: 

Utopian Vision in D. H. Lawrence and Eileen Chang 

(University of Michigan Press, 2023)

 

 

This is a continuation of a post the first part of which (sections I-V) can be accessed by clicking here.  

 

 

VI. 

 

Nineteen-year-old Yvette Saywell may have had a sexual relationship with a married gipsy named Joe Boswell, but for Lawrence's most notorious tale of adultery we have to turn to the case of Lady Chatterley and her lover ... 

 

The seemingly modern - and yet actually anti-modern [e] - relationship between Connie and Mellors, says Yao, is not merely a crossing of the boundaries of "class, convention, and ideology" (69), it's a "transgressive love that institutionally challenges the local and global norms of modernization" (69). 

 

Again, whilst I have in the past argued something very similar, over the years (and in light of work by Foucault) I've become increasingly sceptical about the politics of desire [f] put forward by figures such as Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, and, indeed, Lawrence. 

 

So, whilst I agree that warmhearted fucking and phallic tenderness are all well and good, I'm not sure these things are enough to bring about a revaluation of values or help us "breathe the air of freedom" (71) by overthrowing Western modernity. 

 

And whether the union of Connie and Mellors furthers the deconstruction of capitalist society and constitutes "an organic new life" (76), is also highly debatable; they might just become the kind of self-involved and self-contained couple that Rawdon Lilly so despises; "'stuck together like two jujube lozenges'" [g].          

 

 

VII.

 

And so we arrive at chapter 4 and the utopia of transcendental love ... The chapter which I suspect will really get my goat. But let's see. It opens thus:

 

"After defying both local and global discourses to reach a cosmopolitan freedom, Lawrence [...] discovered that freedom lies not necessarily somewhere outside but inside a heart that longs for an alternative utopian existence. The longing for utopia develops into an increasingly stronger theme in [his] later writings, displaying [his] redemptive attempts to create a new language of God's love." (95)

 

Lawrence, argues Yao, believes in projecting love into another mysterious dimension; one which is "intimately connected to the depth of time and the cosmos" (95). His ultimate goal, as a priest of love, is to "replace the eroded religious tradition" (95) of his own culture.

 

Sex is the means not only to human wholeness, but to a mystical union with the mysterious cosmos and the vast universe: "The intimate interrelation between [...] two lovers forms the bridge between humanity and the Absolute" (100), writes Yao (approvingly). Continuing:

 

"The more completely and profoundly the lovers are sexually connected, the more sacred and transcendental their passionate love becomes. Through sexual union, lovers achieve the ultimate, mystical marriage in order to fulfill their unknown desire." (102)

 

I mention Foucault in passing above, I now think we must quote him in an attempt to counter some of this sex mysticism ...

 

Referring directly to Lawrence's work at several points, Foucault discusses how the concept of sex as an omnipresent meaning, a metaphysical form of agency, and a universal signified, "made it possible to group together, in an artificial unity, anatomical elements, biological functions, conducts, sensations, pleasures" [h], becoming in the process "the most speculative, most ideal, and most internal element in a deployment of sexuality organised by power in its grip on bodies and their materiality" [i].  

 

In the imaginary element that is sex, we mistakenly believe we see our deepest and most primal selves reflected. One day, Foucault muses, "people will smile perhaps when they recall that here were men - meaning ourselves - who believed that therein resided a truth every bit as precious as the one they had already demanded from the earth, the stars, and the pure forms of their thought" [j]. 

 

The irony is that in subjecting ourselves to the austere monarchy of sex, we think we have somehow liberated ourselves.  

 

 

VIII. 

 

And so we come to The Escaped Cock ... (which was actually Lawrence's preferred title - showing his ability to laugh even at his own phallic philosophy - not The Man Who Died, as Yao informs readers).

 

This final great work of fiction represents Lawrence's attempt to "replace Christianity with a secular practice of healing and rebirth" (103), says Yao, though I think it would be better (and more accurate) to say Lawrence attempts to place Christianity back within a wider (pagan) religious context via a libidinally material - but nevertheless sacred - practice of healing and rebirth.  

 

But hey, I'm not her editor ... 

 

 

IX.

 

Moving toward the end of her fourth and final chapter, Yao repeats the claim that Lawrence attempts to "cross boundaries of human domain in time and space through the lived experience of love" (111) and whilst that's  not a sentence I could ever imagine writing personally, I suppose for those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like (although I have no idea what it means to "explore the transcendental dimension of utopia" (111-112)). 

 

Perhaps a Lawrence scholar can enlighten me on this point. And perhaps they can also confirm or deny the truth of this claim made by Yao: "Lawrence optimistically believes that utopia can ultimately be achieved triumphantly, and he consequently always concludes his stories with consummation and revelation." (112)  

 

I see that with The Rainbow - but not with his other novels. In fact, I had always thought that Lawrence was known (and often criticised) for leaving his works with open-ended, ambiguous, or inconclusive endings, thereby avoiding the conventional, neat resolutions typical of Victorian literature. Even Lady C. ends a little droopingly with the lovers separated and who's to say they will ever be reunited or that Mellor's will ever regain potency? 

 

 

X.    

 

In conclusion ...

 

For Sijia Yao, Lawrence is to be highly esteemed as a writer for developing an aesthetico-political project "in which love as an ethical feeling plays a crucial role in creating cosmopolitan connections" (117) and sharing with his readers a "vision of peace and freedom that can resist violent nationalism and hegemonic discourse" (117). 

 

She continues: Lawrence adopts love as his "mode of engagement with the multidimensional world" (117), because love, for Lawrence, "is a primal living force in its dynamic and undefinable state, which is tightly interconnected with utopia" (117) and it is the concept of utopia that "fulfills the possibility of a jump from personal love to cosmopolitan engagement" (117).   

 

Ultimately, I suppose whether one chooses to see Lawrence as a utopian or not depends on how one imagines his democracy of touch and how one interprets his injunction to climb down Pisgah. I agree with Yao that Lawrence's work has socio-political significance and philosophical import. But, unfortunately, she and I completely disagree as to the nature of this. 

 

Although, having said that, Yao nicely surprised me with the final paragraph in her book, in which she writes:

 

"While utopia itself would be a fixed state, the longing for utopia defines a particular relationship that leaves abundant space for possibilities. This mode of cosmopolitan love does not try to offer a solution but rather an attitude that welcomes a plasticity of the utopian vision." (122)

 

Now why didn't she say that at the beginning ...! 

 

 

Notes

 

[e] When it comes to the question of whether adultery is très moderne or actually anti-modern, Yao is very good: 

      "One can easily argue that adultery can be understood as a modern relationship because it dissolves traditional bonds. [...] However, adultery in Lawrence [...] is an antimodern relationship because the traditional bonds are themselves now modern forms of relationship that exclude love. The structure of modernity is still built upon the preexisting traditional norms [...] thereby breeding alienation and disconnection. Hence, the prevailing forms of relationship are so suffused with modern alienation that only adultery can be a pure form of love that opposes this alienation. Adulterous love surpasses, undermines, and destroys the existing order to set up an alternative basis for modern society." (69)  

 

[f] See, for example, my post titled 'Lady Chatterley's Postmodern Lover' (9 Sept 2023): click here.   

 

[g] This humorous remark made by Rawdon Lilly can be found in D. H. Lawrence's novel Aaron's Rod, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 91.

      Even the narrator of Lady Chatterley's Lover is aware of the danger that Connie and Mellors will end up in a world of their own; see p. 213 of the Cambridge edition ed. Michael Squires (1993).  

 

[h] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 1998), p.154.  

 

[i] Ibid., p. 155. 

 

[j] Ibid., pp. 157-158.

 

 

Jean Baudrillard: Notes on a Biography by Emmanuelle Fantin and Bran Nicol (Part Three)

Reworked front cover image to Jean Baudrillard 

by Emmanuelle Fantin and Bran Nicol 

(Reaktion Books, 2025)

 

 

I.

 

Baudrillard liked objects. And he liked gift giving. And, perhaps surprisingly, he liked that desert of the real that is the United States; the place where the future is always present. And in the mid-late '70s his fascination with America flourished. 

 

Fantin and Nicol note: "Baudrillard loved the United States, especially the empty apparently transient communities he visited while working in San Diego." [69] 

 

They continue: "As a 'primal scene', the United States was often a touchstone for Baudrillard's interpretation of contemporary reality, providing ready examples of what he was diagnosing." [70] 

 

He even wrote one of the great books on America: Amérique (1986) [a]; a kind of conceptual (and cinematic) travel guide to a hyperreal land where "things unfold as pure fiction [and] the question of being real or unreal was not relevant anymore" [103] [b]. 

 

It was an earlier work, however  - Oublier Foucault (1977) - which really put the cat among the Parisian pigeons ...

 

Forget Foucault essentially sealed Baudrillard's fate; "the book reinforced the impression of Baudrillard as outsider-within, and had profound and lasting implications for his career" [73]. 

 

Why? Because respected intellectuals, including Foucault himself, now regarded him as a snake in the grass. Deleuze and Guattari even described publication of the essay as "a shameful and irresponsible act" [73] and he was excommunicated from philosophical circles:

 

"Ten years after Forget Foucalt, in the late 1980s, Baudrillard confessed he still felt 'quarantined' as a result of the influence of Foucault allies in the university system and media." [73]

 

The irony is, the essay isn't actually as critically dismissive as the provocative title might suggest. Nevertheless, it was a challenge laid down to Foucault and "the intellectual establishment as a whole" [74]. Baudrillard was essentially exposing (and diverting) the logic of Foucault's system of thought; seducing it, as he would later say [c].       

 

 

II.  

 

One of the criticisms of Simulacra and Simulation is similar to a criticism often made of Torpedo the Ark: namely, that it is little more than "a collection or recollection of material (essays, articles, notes, lectures)" [82] previously written and that such self-recycling can make the project "seem like one vast, never-ending conversation or monologue" [82].    

 

That might, at some level, be true. But it also reflects the consistency of my preoccupations and beautiful obsessions. 

 

 

III.

 

Published in the same year as De la séduction, came another of Baudrillard's key texts: Les stratégies fatales (1983) [d] ...

 

Fatal strategies are strategies that "push the logic of a system as far as it could go, to force it to reckon with its own contradictions, or to implode" [90]. According to Baudrillard, objects are fond of such strategies in their battle with know-it-all subjects.

 

It was another book loved by the art crowd, particularly in the United States (so good on them). Though, perhaps predictably, Baudrillard would soon piss them off by declaring contemporary art was "staging its own disappearance by becoming a commodity" [94] and that those who regarded themselves as Simulationists had completely misunderstood his work. 

 

"Many New York artists who had acknowedged Baudrillard's influence considered this rejection a betrayal [...]" [94]. That's unfortunate, but Baudrillard didn't want a legion of loyal followers and wasn't trying to produce a manifesto of some kind.   

 

 

IV. 

 

1987: Baudrillard quits academia and his writing becomes post-theoretical; the five books in the Cool Memories series (written between 1980 and 2004 and published between 1987 and 2005) are "fragmentary, aphoristic, more poetic" [99] in style.  

 

For Baudrillard, writing in such a way was intended as an effront to the canonical form of the well-argued and formerly structured essay: "Each Cool Memories volume can be skimmed, or started on any page" [107] and each "is filled with often dissociated lines, notes, poetical snippets, dream narratives, desires, fantasies, speculations, bits of political commentary, passages of travel writing" [108].   

 

The secret of the world, like the devil, is, Baudrillard suggests, always in the detail ... 

 

 

V. 

 

It is during the 1980s that Baudrillard also began to take photography seriously; "an activity he practised enthusiastically and with considerable talent" [100], as demonstrated by the fact that his pictures are still exhibited all over the world [e]. 

 

Photography "complemented his theory, offering him another way to reflect - and reflect on - the society he explored in his books" [101]. 

 

As someone who also likes to take snaps - albeit on my i-Phone and not on a camera which makes them digital images rather than photographs in a true sense - I understand Baudrillard's passion for taking pictures and I would suggest that Torpedo the Ark be understood as an attempt to "capture the world through fragments and snapshots, rather than fully fledged logical analyses" [101]. 

 

Whether these fragments and snapshots also "provide enticing views" [101] into my own biography and personality is debatable (although, if so, let's hope these views are restricted and one retains a certain degree of mystery).   

 

 

VI.

 

Like all the best photos, Baudrillard's are "distinctive for what they do not include" [111]. He was "uninterested in capturing individuals, animals, events or dramatic or violent scenes - anything that would provide an 'aura' of personal feeling" [111]. 

 

Baudrillard wanted to allow objects to present themselves as objects in all their strangeness and for the world to think us.   

 

All his images are "defamiliarized because of the choice of perspective - an object often appears through a close-up or as a fragment of a wider view - or the peculiar effects of the light on colour" [111]. They are rarely titled. 

 

Of course, as Fantin and Nicol remind us, Baudrillard's relationship to the image is somewhat paradoxical and conflicted; he was torn "between an absolute captivation by images and an impulse to condemn the very idea of the image" [111] as something demonic; as something "at the heart of the problem of simulation in contemporary society" [112], contaminating the real and making the world ever more obscene. 

 

Nevertheless, perhaps it is the solitary photograph in all its stillness and silence wherein the saving power lies [f]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Translated into English by Chris Turner as America and published by Verso Books in 1988.

 

[b] Fantin and Nicol spend quite a bit of time discussing Baudrillard's America; see pp. 101-106. 

 

[c] For Baudrillard, seduction is an ironic and playful counterforce to production; where the latter brings things forth and gives them a value, the former is a process of diverting from that value and from identity. 

      See Baudrillard's brilliant text, De la séduction (1979); translated into English as Seduction by Brian Singer (St. Martin's Press, 1990). 

      With this book, Baudrillard finally becomes who he is; "casting off the established mode of academic writing" [77]. Feminist critiques of the concept - which Fantin and Nicol discuss and, ultimately, agree with, saying that seduction cannot be cleansed of misogyny - are, I think, misunderstandings.    

 

[d] The English version was published as Fatal Strategies, trans. Philip Beitchmann and W. G. J. Niesluchowski (Semiotext[e] / Pluto Press, 1990). 

 

[e] Baudrillard first took up photography, the authors of this biography inform us, "when the hosts of a conference in Japan [...] presented him with a miniature camera as a gift" [110]. Despite his success with the camera, Baudrillard never thought of himself as a photographer, but always just a "'maker of images' that were intended to make the world more unintelligible" [110].

      See Jean Baudrillard, Photographies (1985-1998), Christa Steinl and Peter Weibel (Hatje Kantz, 1999).  

 

[f] This is important: photographs must be seen individually in order to counter the Spectacle. When displayed as a collection of images in a gallery, they are "absorbed into the art sysem" [115] and have an aesthetic meaning imposed upon them. The role of the photographer - as an artist - is also brought to the fore and that's another problem.  

 

 

Part one of this post can be read by clicking here.

 

Part two of this post can be read by clicking here. 

 

Part four of this post can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

Are We the Gods of Our Own Image? Notes on the Virtual Beauty Exhibition (Somerset House 2025) Part 2 (Sections V-VIII)

 

Qualeasha Wood: It's All For U (If U Rlly Want It) (2024) [a]

Arvida Byström: A Daughter Without a Mother (2022) [b] 

 

Photos taken by Maria Thanassa on her i-Phone at the 

Virtual Beauty exhibition (2025): somersethouse.org.uk

 

'We used to check our reflections in bathroom mirrors. Now, we check them in selfies ... on TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram. 

A flick of the screen shows our face, but a little smoother, a little more symmetrical, with a glow. 

In this world, we don’t just see ourselves. We edit ourselves. We curate.' - Matthilde Friis

 

Part One of this post (sections I - IV) can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

V.

 

One of the curators of the Somerset House summer exhibition - Virtual Beauty (23 July - 28 September 2025) - Mathilde Friis, has written a short essay in which she argues that at the heart of the show is a political question; not whether "beauty is liberating or constraining, but how we use it, and who gets to decide" [c].

 

It's almost as if she substitutes the word beauty for another word; one beginning with 'p' that many of those exploring issues around visual culture, sexuality, gender and identity from a post-feminist and post-Foucauldian perspective still insist is the great clue to everything: power.   

 

The problem with this is it's easy to become entangled within a discursive network of power and easy to conceive of the latter in a rather old-fashioned (overly simplistic) manner that fails to recognise its simulated nature and its ultimate dissolution into a realm of seduction and signs without referents (as Baudrillard would say) [d]. 

 

Power is not an underlying structure; nor is it a thing that one can possess and wield. The minute you use the word power in all sincerity you have failed to grasp that it's a kind of convenient fiction and, whether you intend to or not, you reify power as a static entity or object that can be analysed. 

 

And so, if we are to become the playful "makers of our own image" [e], as Friis suggests, let it be in the name of something else other than power/knowledge (one is almost tempted to suggest impotence and forgetfulness).  

 

VI.

 

The strange thing with the Virtual Beauty exhibition is just how indebted to the past it felt at times: a sneaky reference to Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto (1985) here; a little bit of Naomi Wolf's Beauty Myth (1990) hinted at there. 

 

Matthilde Friis mentions both authors and both books in her essay. Admitting the limitations of cyberfeminism - techno-utopias tend to always bump against the limits of physical reality - she also wonders if the digital world really offers endless opportunities for reinvention and liberation, or just the same old bullshit repackaged and recycled; "are we escaping the beauty myth, or just rewriting its code?" [f].   

 

Probably the latter: 

 

"The internet didn't erase gender or racial boundaries. It replicated them. Platforms that promised liberation were embedded with old biases. While the medium was new, the pressures remained the same." [g]

 

Thus, whilst beauty in 2025 may no longer just be about makeup, fashion, and hairstyle - but also "pixels, data, and code" [h] - old standards and stereotypes persist and old concerns to do with sexual objectification, for example, or how beauty still plays upon certain racial characteristics, return to trouble us anew. 

 

And so we come to the two works I wish to briefly discuss here: firstly, Qualeasha Wood's It’s All For U (If U Rlly Want It) (2024); and, secondly, Arvida Byström's A Daughter Without A Mother (2022) ... 

 

 

VII.

 

Some readers might be wondering if, as a straight white cis male, I'm qualified - or even entitled - to comment on the work of black queer artist Qualeasha Wood. I understand the concern and admit that there's a racial and sexual history here which, as Mysia Anderson says, simply must be acknowledged and taken into account [i].   

 

Having said that, however, it would seem absurd to pretend I hadn't seen and didn't very much like Wood's contribution to the Virtual Beauty exhibition; a clever and amusing combination of traditional textile techniques and glitch aesthetics [j] that exposes (and critiques) how the femme body is shaped, commodified, and circulated online via popular social media platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram. 

 

Her tapestry cleverly reclaims her own image and, fabricated as it is in woven jacquard (embroidered with glass seed beads), it constitutes a form of defiance to (and subversion of) the relentless digital age and its beloved glass screens.  

 

The medium is the message, as everyone used to say ... [k]

 

  

VIII. 

 

I will always have time for works which involve the use of dolls; some readers may recall my fascination with Amber Hawk Swanson's Amber Doll project (2007-10), for example, that I posted about back in 2013 and which the artist details on her website here. 

 

And so I was naturally drawn to the work of Arvida Byström, a young Swedish artist and photographer who, according to a recent press release, "travels in an aesthetic universe of disobedient bodies, fruits in lingerie, tulips and AI sex dolls" [l].

 

A Daughter Without A Mother (2022) is a mixed media installation that, on the one hand, critically examines how even AI can be used to replicate sexual stereotypes and thus collaborate in the pornification of the female body (and, indeed, the entire culture), whilst, on the other hand, inviting viewers to "contemplate the complexities of identity and intimacy" [m] associated with realistic looking sex dolls.     

 

I wouldn't say it's a great work: or even her best work. But it does return us to a question she has raised before concerning female fantasy figures who lack mothers and might best be described as the daughters of men (i.e., born of the pornographic imagination and styled according to male desires, values, and ideas; Eve, Aphrodite, Galatea, Maria ... et al). 

 

Another theme that Byström's work in the exhibition touches on is the question of why human beings have always dreamed of creating perfect copies of themselves whilst, at the same time, they possess a deep-rooted fear - automatonophobia - of replicants; be they dolls, cyborgs, or clones.     

      

Perhaps that's why, in the end, she seems to get such relief from having ripped off the head of poor Harmony ...

 

 

 

Arvida Byström:  

A Daughter Without a Mother (2022)

Notes

 

[a] Qualeasha Wood: It's All For U (If U Rlly Want It) (2024): woven jacquard, glass seed beads, and machine embroidery. The exhibition label informs us: 

      "Using webcam self-portraits, the artist reclaims visibility, challenging systems of control while highlighting the tension between self-expression and the pervasive influence of socia media and digital technologies." 

 

[b] Arvida Bystrom: A Daughter Without a Mother (2022): mixed media installation, including a short film (36 secs). The exhibition label informs us:  

      "Originally conceived as a performance piece [...] the work critically examines how AI is used to replicate beauty standards, perpetuating the sexualisation of the female body and contributing to its objectification."

 

[c] Matthilde Friis, 'From the Selfie to the Avatar: Beauty, Bias, and the Digital Self' (2025). This essay written to accompany the Virtual Beauty exhibition is available on the Someret House website: click here.   

 

[d] See Jean Baudrillard's Forget Foucault, trans. Mark Polizzotti (Semiotext(e), 2007).

      In 1976, Baudrillard sent an essay with the title Oublier Foucault to the magazine Critique (where the latter worked as an editor). Published the following year, it made Baudrillard a notorious figure within philosophical figures; for not only did he pretty much sum up Foucault's work (on power and sexuality) as a mythic discourse, but he also ridiculed the revolutionary politics of desire being peddled at that time by Deleuze and Guattari.  

       Forget Foucault ecourages readers to move beyond Foucault's cratology, rather than become trapped by its logic and thus prevented from thinking the complex dynamics of contemporary culture in a manner more appropriate to the times.      

 

[e-h] Matthilde Friis, as cited and linked to in note [c] above. 

 

[i] Just for the record, I've been thinking through questions to do with racial fetishism, sexual objectification, the visual representation of female bodies, etc., since 1991: my MA dissertation was on the position and portrayal of women in Nazi Art and Society; my initial PhD proposal was on the figure of the prostitute and the construction of illicit female sexual identity; and there are many posts published on Torpedo the Ark dealing with these and related topics from a perspective informed by my reading of feminist and queer theory (go to labels and find them for yourself).    

 

[j] For my discussion of glitch aesthetics, see the post entitled 'Glitch: the Art of Error and Imperfection' (28 June 2023): click here.  

 

[k] I'm sure I don't need to remind readers that this phrase - 'the medium is the message' - was coined by the communications theorist Marshall McLuhan to suggest that how the message is relayed matters more than the actual content; it's the medium - such as TV or the internet - that ultimately shapes our understanding of the world and ourselves, and how we interact with others, etc.

      See Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man (1964). The phrase 'the medium is the message' is found in chapter one and suplies the chapter title.    

 

[l] The press release was for an exhibition featuring Byström's work entitled Abyss (26 June - 26 July 2025) at Galerie Kandlhofer (Vienna, Austria): click here.  

 

[m] Quoted from the Virtual Beauty exhibition label describing Arvida Byström's: A Daughter Without a Mother (2022).