The Slop-ification of Literature: One Night at the UnHerd Club

Poster for 'The slop-ification of literature' with James Marriott, Ed West, 

and Kathleen Stock at the UnHerd Club (London, 8 Dec 2025)

 

 

I. 

 

Located along a 'beautiful side street in London's Westminster', the UnHerd Club is a place where 'intelligent people can come together to talk freely and without fear of retribution'. 

 

In other words, it's a members' club based in one of the wealthiest parts of Town, with a cosy bar and a large library where they hold discussions and debates, lectures, and seminars, or interview well-known authors keen to promote a new book.

 

My friend cynically described it as:  

 

A posh talking shop above a posh restaurant intended to attract the kind of conceited middle class individuals who, laughably, like to imagine themselves part of a persecuted minority for having dared to separate themselves from the semi-literate masses.     

 

Perhaps that's a bit unfair - but it's not far wide of the mark (the clue is in the very name of the club).  

 

II. 

 

Despite my friend's less than favourable impression of the UnHerd Club, he invited me along on Monday to a talk entitled 'The slop-ification of literature', featuring three speakers: 

 

(i) James Marriott, a Times columnist who writes on society, culture and ideas. Before joining the paper he worked in the rare book trade. He is also the author of a weekly newsletter published on Substack: Cultural Capital.

 

(ii) Ed West, an author, journalist and blogger, who has worked as the deputy editor of UnHerd, deputy editor of The Catholic Herald, and as a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. He frequently posts work on his Substack, amusingly called Wrong Side of History.      

 

(iii) Kathleen Stock (OBE), is a British philosopher and writer, whose research interests include aesthetics, fiction, and sexual politics. Her trans critical views brought accusations of spreading harmful rhetoric and obliged her to resign from her post at Sussex University in October 2021. A contributing editor at UnHerd, her articles can be accessed by clicking here.  

 

 

III. 

Essentially, the argument put forward by all three of the above was that due to the rise of accessible AI and the total ubiquity of smartphones, we are now in a post-literate society and belong to a new dark age of endless scrolling.  

 

This, they said, is a very bad thing; because whilst reading books elevates the human spirit, watching videos on social media results in brain rot. We should, therefore, read more and scroll less.  

 

And, err, that was really about it ...

 

It's not that I don't - as a Lawrentian - in part agree with them, but what the speakers didn't seem to fully appreciate is that people are not the passive victims of the tech giants and social media companies; that they willingly yield to the network in which they are integrated; that they love their 24/7 virtual lives and the gadgets that facilitate it such as smartphones and i-Pads.  

 

And what the speakers call brain rot is what most people experience as happiness and they are grateful to YouTube and TikTok etc. for providing them with a world in which they can finally feel safe; a world which anticipates and addresses their needs. 

 

Thus, rather than wanting to spend less time online, most people wish to immerse themselves ever further into the digital realm and become one with their digital selves (their avatars), in much the same way that Narcissus once desired to become one with his own reflection. 

 

It is, ultimately, a kind of religious desire; a wishing to submit to something greater in order to find not freedom but fulfilment (or a kind of fatal satisfaction). People are exalted by belonging to the digital new order beyond feeling or reason; they may lose their minds and their hearts might perish within them, but it's what they want; to participate in a great and perfect network. 

 

 

IV.

 

What the trio of speakers needed to do (but didn't) was place the discussion within a broader philosophical discussion on the question concerning technology; someone mentioned Mark Fisher at some point, but it was Heidegger - not Fisher - who needed referencing. 

 

For Heidegger it is who recognised that the "threat to man does not come [...] from the potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology" [1], rather it's the essence of technology as a form of revealing that he terms enframing [Gestell] wherein the greater danger lies. 

 

To speak about removing smartphones from classrooms or restricting access to social media for those under the age of sixteen, is to entirely fail to understand that the problem has to do with 2,500 years of Western metaphysics and the fall into idealism. 

 

I would politely suggest, therefore, that Marriott, West, and Stock read less Jane Austen and more Heidegger. And more Baudrillard, too; for the latter is another author whose predictions about the world we now inhabit and his insights into digital culture have proved to be extremely prescient [2]. 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Martin Heidegger, 'The Question Concerning Technology', in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (Routledge, 1994), p. 333. 

      See the two-part post 'O Wonderful Machine: Nihilism and the Question Concerning Technology', published on TTA on 26 May 2016: click here to access part one, or here for part two.    

 

[2] See the essay by Bran Nicol and Emmanuelle Fantin entitled 'How the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard predicted today's AI 30 years before ChatGPT', in The Conversation (4 November, 2025): click here. Fantin and Nicol are the authors of a new Baudrillard biography published by Reaktion Books (2025), my thoughts on which are presently being published on TTA; click here to read part one of what will be a four-part post. 

      I think a good book to start with by Baudrillard might be The Ecstasy of Communication (1988), described by Fantin and Nicol as "one of Baudrillard's most prophetic texts, valuable even now, more than thirty years after its publication, as a key to understanding our 'permanently online, permanently connected world'" (Jean Baudrillard, 2025, p. 96); a world where the screen has replaced the mirror and each individual exists in their own kind of bubble, like an astronaut inside their spacesuit.    

 

 

This post is for Thom B. and Nick Cave. 

 

Heidegger's (Absent) Dog

 

Martin Heidegger and Rae based on an image 

created by Ruth Malone using ChatGTP

@goingalongwithheidegger 

 

I. 

 

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

 

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

 

 

II.  

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

III. 

 

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

 

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

 

Notes

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

no doubt to the sounding of the spheres. 

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

And swirl of a tail! 

 

If men were as much men as lizards are lizards 

they’d be worth looking at. 

 

 

Enjoy This Post - Such as it Isn't

Polo: the mint with the hole

Photo by Conell on Flickr (9 April 2018)

 

 

I. 

 

As a child and natural born nihilist, absence always excited more than presence (not necessarily making the heart grow fonder, but the head spin faster); holes, slits, and cracks always fascinated more than wholeness and smooth impenetrability. Pulling the plug was always a much greater pleasure than filling the tub with water.   

 

And the philosophy of negativity still appeals to me today; I spend an inordinate amount of time watching shadows in the darkness and listening to the silence. Althought whether nothingness is an actual feature of ontological reality or one that we merely imagine due to the way we think and speak (i.e., a conceptual fiction rooted in language), I don't really know and, to be honest, don't really care [1].

 

 

II. 

 

Funnily enough, the idea that we can perceive absences is becoming increasingly popular in contemporary culture - and not just amongst philosophers. People seem to be waking up to the fact that whilst how things are matters, so too is it equally vital how things are not and that being rests upon non-being. 

 

In other words, people seem to be responding to the call of the void [2] in ever greater numbers and I have to admit I smiled when I came across an essay written in 2017 by Dan Cavedon-Taylor which argued that we can tactually perceive the absence of a tooth after the dentist has performed an extraction - for wasn't I saying much the same thing in the very first post published here on Torpedo the Ark five years ealier [3].

 

Namely, that the sense of loss is palpable and that a rotten tooth - even after removal - continues to function as a provocation and invisible presence. 

 

Thinkers in both the European and Anglo-American traditions of philosophy have accepted the truth of this. Even Bertrand Russell - about as far away from Heidegger in both philosophical methods and concerns as one can get - conceded that there must exist negative facts. 

 

However, there remain those who argue that "although we can experience absences, and although our absence experiences are often triggered by perceptual experiences, absence experiences are not themselves a perceptual phenomenon" [4] and warn we should not be seduced by those thinkers who suggest otherwise and commit themselves to "the reality of negative features in the world and our ability to perceive them" [5].   

      

Thinkers such as Roy Sorensen, for example ...

 

 

III.

 

Sorensen's work on negative reality [6] - things that are paradoxically present by their absence - tries a bit too hard to be quirky and fun and so quickly starts to irritate, but, nevertheless, he's got some interesting things to say on shadows and holes, for example, and I'm vaguely sympathetic with his attempt to persuade others that these things are entities in their own right (and not just mental constructs that result from human experience and expectation - which was Sartre's position). 

  

I'm not entirely convinced that the hole in a Polo mint can be perceived independently of the matter that surrounds it, but I would certainly agree that the hole cannot be defined purely in terms of the mint sweet; it's an objective feature in itself and to deny this just seems a little silly and a form of metaphysical prejudice that thinks presence is the be-all and end-all and absence of no positive importance or reality because seemingly less tangible.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This is clearly a question that continues to trouble many philosophers, however, including Stephen Mumford, who peddles a form of soft Parmenideanism in his recent book Absence and Nothing: the philosophy of what there is not, (Oxford University Press, 2021). 

      For Mumford, the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides was largely correct to say that the division into Being and non-Being is a false rather than a fundamental division as what exists is everything whilst what does not exist is nothing. For Pamenides, to believe in the existence of both Being and non-Being is contradictory and makes knowledge impossible. He also insists that Being is eternal and indivisible.  

      Unlike Parmenides, however, Mumford does not think that being is essentially fixed and unchanging and he does not rule out the possibility of being able to think about what there is not and even that there might - under certain circumstances - be some form of negative entity that would have to be acknowledged (if only as a theoretical anomaly). 

      Thus, Mumford can, in this way, have his cake and eat it; maintaining his argument that absence and nothingness are not an ontological part of everyday reality, whilst still writing a 200 page monograph on the subject. That's not to dismiss his methodology, but simply point out the convenient nature of making a compromise of this kind.       

 

[2] I don't mean to suggest more and more people have the urge to jump from atop a tall building, but that more and more people are waking up the fact that the void is a space of forgotten possibility and future potential and so has vital existential reality. See my recently published post on this (22 October 2025): click here.  

 

[3] See Dan Cavedon-Taylor, 'Touching Voids: On the Varieties of Absence Perception', in Review of Philosophy and Psychology, Vol. 8, Issue 2, (2017), pp. 355–366. The post on TTA that I refer to is 'Reflections on the Loss of UR6' (24 Nov 2012): click here. 

      Cavedon-Taylor and myself are in agreement that after having a tooth pulled - and after the anaesthetic wears off - the first thing you do is run your tongue along your teeth until arriving at the gap where once a tooth was located: "The gap is experienced as unnerving, and not merely on its initial probing […] Something once experienced as present within your mouth is now experienced as lacking." 

 

[4] Laura Gow, 'A New Theory of Absence Experience', in the European Journal of Philosophy Vol. 29, Issue 1, (March 2021),  pp. 168-181. To read online, click here. 

      And see also Gow's paper entitled 'Empty Space, Silence, and Absence' in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 51, Issue 7, (October 2021), pp. 496-507. Published online by Cambridge University Press (March 2022): click here.  

      In this text, Gow examines two experiences which some philosophers have claimed (mistakenly, in her view) to be paradigmatic examples of absence experience: the experience of empty space and the experience of silence. For Gow, "even if we can see empty space and hear silence [...], such experiences cannot be used in support of the perceptual view of absence experience". 

 

[5] Stephen Mumford, Absence and Nothing: the philosophy of what there is not, p. 2. 

 

[6] See for example his book Seeing Dark Things: The Philosophy of Shadows (Oxford University Press, 2008); or his more recent study, Nothing: A Philosophical History (Oxford University Press, 2022). 

Lest We Forget the Old Creature's Birthday

  The inside of this card reads:  

 

Sobald ein Mensch auf die Welt kommt, ist er schon alt genug zu sterben ... [1]

 

Tout ce qui existe naît sans raison, se prolonge par faiblesse et meurt par hasard ... [2]

 

 

This Wednesday, lest we forget, is Nietzsche's birthday: he was born in Röcken, Germany, on 15 October 1844 [3]. 

 

And whilst the village he was born in has now been absorbed into the expanding town of Lützen, a few miles southwest of Leipzig, the actual house he was born in still stands, next to the church where his father was a pastor, and is now part of a memorial site that includes his grave [4].  

 

Not that Nietzsche was one to make a huge fuss over his birthday; indeed, in 1880, he even forgot it entirely, explaining to his friend Franz Overbeck in a letter that his head was too full of other thoughts (thoughts that made him wonder why anything should matter to him). 

 

Having said that, however, there are Nietzsche scholars who argue that Nietzsche did very much like birthdays; not least because it was a time of gifts and of cake, but also because they signified the beginning of another year and the opportunity to make a fresh start. 

 

After his own mother apparently forgot his 44th birthday in 1888 - his last before his mental breakdown in January 1889 - he sent her a postcard humorously reprimanding her: The old mother has forgotten the old creature's birthday!  

 

This was that perfect day on which everything ripened and he told himself the story of his life ... [5] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Heidegger doesn't do birthday greetings, but if he did, I'm sure he'd say something like this; it's a line from the late medieval text Der Ackermann aus Böhmen (c. 1400), by Johannes von Tepl, quoted in Sein und Zeit (1927).   

 

[2] And this equally amusing existential birthday greeting is by Jean-Paul Sartre, taken from his 1938 novel La Nausée.

 

[3] The same date as King Friedrich Wilhelm IV was born in 1795; a Prussian monarch very much admired by Nietzsche's father and after whom he was named. As Nietzsche would later write in Ecce Homo, this had one main advantage; throughout his childhood it was a day of public rejoicing. See section 3 of  Ecce Homo, 'Why I Am So Wise'. 

      Lest we forget, Michel Foucault, was also born on 15 October (1926); a philosopher who, by his own admission, tried "as far as possible, on a certain number of issues, to see with the help of Nietzsche's texts ..." 

      See Michel Foucault, 'The Return of Morality', trans John Johnston in Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961-1984), ed. by Sylvère Lotringer (Semiotext(e), 1996), pp. 465-73. The line quoted from is on p. 471. 

      And see also my post on being simply a Nietzschean à la Foucault, published on 14 August 2020: click here.

 

[4] The Nietzsche-Gedenkstätte: click here for details (in English).  

      This should not be confused with the Nietzsche-Haus in Sils Maria, Switzerland, where Nietzsche spent seven summers in the 1880s, and which is also now a museum (opened in 1960 and overseen by the Nietzsche House Sils-Maria Foundation): click here.

 

[5] Ecce Homo is the last original book written by Nietzsche before his death in 1900. It was written in late 1888, but not published until 1908. The book offers Nietzsche's own (self-mocking) interpretation of his work and his significance as a thinker.  

 

 

Notes on Jean Baudrillard's 'Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?' (Part 2: Sections VI - XII)

Cover of the paperback edition 

(Seagull Books, 2016)

  

This is a continuation of a post the first part of which can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

VI.

 

The human subject - that product of power, knowledge, and history - with its free-willing moral agency, is also, says Baudrillard, disappearing today, but leaving "its ghost behind, its narcissistic double, more or less as the Cat left its grin hovering" [27].

 

Freed from an actual subject, this ectoplasmic remnant of subjectivity is to be found everywhere today (just like sexuality, freed from the biological reality of sex, is found everywhere but in bodies); enveloping and transforming everything; remaking the world in its own image, ensuring that there's no outside, no otherness, no objective world.  

 

Consciousness has been smashed to smithereens and dispersed into "all the interstices of reality" [28] producing a smart world of interconnected systems and artificial intelligence; a digital utopia. And in such a world, who needs human subjects in the old-fashioned sense? They have become superfluous and so may as well disappear ...

 

 

VII. 

 

But again the question will be raised: have there not been some positive disappearances? Certain diseases, for example, and other threats to human health and safety. 

 

Well, yes, that's true - although it should be remembered that things we thought had gone for good often come back with a vengeance; "we know", writes Baudrillard, "that everything repressed or eliminated [...] results in a malign, viral infiltration of the social and individual body" [30-31] sooner or later.  

 

Disappearance is never the end of the matter any more than appearance is the beginning of the matter: things come and go and eternally return and life itself is nothing other than this vital game of appearance, disappearance, and reappearance [g].

 

 

VIII. 

 

Moving on, Baudrillard brings the discussion around to the image, behind which, he says, something has always and already disappeared: "And that is the source of its fascination" [32]. 

 

In other words, it's not virtual reality that excites us - is anything more boring at last? - it's the fact that behind it lies a vital dimenson of existence, albeit one that is withdrawn and concealed. It's the real - or, more precisely, the disappearance of the real - that excites everyone. 

 

(Baudrillard often seems at pains to stress the total ambiguity of his own position on this issue, which throws up paradox after paradox and "cannot, in any way, be resolved" [32].) 

 

 

IX. 

 

The destiny of the image is to make the revolutionary move from the analogical to the digital. Baudrillard thinks of this as an irresistible process which leads to a world which "no longer has need of us, nor of our representation" [34]; for when "software wins out over the eye" [37] who needs the photographer?  

 

When the photograph is liberated "from both the negative and the real world" [34], this has consequences for objects too; who needs them to be present when they can now be digitally generated (and erased) by AI? 

 

Baudrillard writes:

 

"The traditional photograph is an image produced by the world, which, thanks to the medium of film, still involves a dimension of representation. The digital image is an image that comes straight out of the screen ..." [ 37] [h] and lacks punctual exactitude. 

 

Again, for anyone who cares about the art of photography - "conceived as the convergence of the light from the object with the light from the gaze" [38] - this is not merely an advance in technology, it's a disaster; "the sophistication of the play of presence and absence, of appearance and disappearance" [38] is abolished with the arrival of the digital age. 

 

The world - "and our vision of the world" [39] - is changed forever. It seems you cannot liberate photography via digitalisation, only destroy it with violence inflicted upon the "sovereignty of images" [59], subjecting them to a single perspective.   

 

Now, non-photographers might shrug their shoulders and ask so what. But what is happening in the world of photography is "just one tiny example of what is happening on a massive scale in all fields [...] The same destiny of digitalisation looms over the world of the mind and the whole range of thought" [39-40], so philosophers had better beware too!

 

 

X. 

 

When you replace the "entire symbolic articulation of language" [40] with an endless flow of information, then there are no silences or spaces suspended between illusion and reality in which to pause and think. 

 

Just as photography is about more than the proliferation and circulation of images, thinking is about more than word processing and fact checking - and the further we advance in the direction of digitalisation the further we shall be from "the secret - and the pleasure - of both" [43]. 

 

The brain is not a type of computer. And AI is not a form of thinking and knows nothing of the intelligence of evil [i]. 

 

 

XI. 

 

Should we save silence? 

 

Obviously, as someone who has argued that silence, stillness, secrecy, and shadows should be central to the practice of occultism in an age of transparency - click here - I'm going to answer yes to this question. 

 

But I also think we should preserve the absence; i.e., the nothingness that lies at the heart of the world and which is "as essential to life as are air and wind to the flight of the dove" [j]. 

 

 

XII. 

  

However else we might describe Baudrillard's thinking on the triumph of the machine, it's certainly pessimistic. 

 

Human beings, he concludes, may now be free to "operate within an integral individuality, free from all history and subjective constraints" [62], but it comes at a price: "it is clear that mankind exists only at the cost of its own death" [62]. 

 

In other words, our immortality is achieved only via our own technological disappearance and our "inscription in the digital order (the mental diaspora of the networks)" [92]. 

 

Lawrence would agree: Heidegger would agree: Byung-Chul Han would agree: and I think, ultimately, I agree too (even though I like taking snaps on my i-Phone - many of which end up here on TTA).  

 

And who knows, perhaps if we push the process of digitalisation all the way to its outer limits something surprising will happen and all that has disappeared will reappear in brutal solidity once more (just as impressionism's escape into pure light and colour gave way to post-impressionism and the return of great lumpy bodies and landscapes that made one nostalgic for mud and substance [k]).    

 

Perhaps objects will rediscover their singularity and we'll rediscover our analogue duality on the other side of digital integrity; i.e., the most radical - most demonic - element of human being that is also the most necessary and from which we derive our antagonistic vitalism.  

 

For as Zarathustra said, "'man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him'" [l].  

 

  

Notes 

 

[g] Any Heideggerians reading this might be mumbling the word Unverborgenheit to themselves at this point and I suppose that Heidegger's concept might be borrowed (and adapted) in order to discuss the appearance (disclosure) and disappearance (concealment) of beings and worlds, although Baudrillard makes no such attempt to do so.

 

[h] Later in his text, Baudrillard will describe CGI as an ultimate form of violence committed against the image; one which "puts an end even to the imagining of the image" [45]. 

 

[i] For Baudrillard, the intelligence of evil is a dualistic principle of reversability which underlies the world operating outside of moral reason and challenges the integral reality (and hegemony) of the digital world. In other words, it's a force of instability and conflict that reveals the cracks and contradictions in a system which thinks itself whole and perfect. 

 

[j] Jean Baudrillard and Enrique Valiente Noailles, Exiles from Dialogue (Polity Press, 2007), pp. 134-35.

      This line is quoted by François L'Yvonnet in his Foreword to Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? and he reminds readers that this is a reference to (and rejection of) Kant's idea that a bird would fly even faster and higher were it free of all resistance. For L'Yvonnet, nihilism isn't the affirmation of nothingness, but the forgetting (or negating) of nothingness in order to bring everything to full presence.  

 

[k] I'm paraphrasing D. H. Lawrence writing in 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 182-217. See pp. 197-199 in particular for Lawrence's analysis of impressionism and post-impressionism. 

 

[l] See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann (Penguin Books, 1976), p. 330. The line comes from the section entitled 'The Convalescent', in Part 3 of Zarathustra.  

 

 

Reflections on Megan Rooney's Spin Down Sky II

Temitope Ajose and Leah Marojević performing Megan Rooney's  Spin Down Sky II  

on the opening night of her exhibition Yellow Yellow Blue at Thaddaeus Ropac (London) 

Photo: Camilla Greenwell (12 June 2025) 

 

 

I.

 

On Sunday, I went to see a performance of Megan Rooney's Spin Down Sky II (2025), created in close collaboration with Temitope Ajose [1], Leah Marojević [2], and Tyrone Isaac Stuart [3], which, as well as being an interesting work in itself, also served as the finissage to her solo exhibition Yellow Yellow Blue at Thaddaeus Ropac (London) [4]. 

 

The piece is the latest chapter in Rooney's developing tale of the fatal love between a male moth and a female bolas spider. But, before discussing this, I'd like first to make a few remarks on the title and, in particular, the word spin ...

 

 

II. 

 

Spin - an Old English verb of Germanic origin meaning to draw out and twist fibres of material (including thin air) into thread. 

 

It is, I think, one of those words that Heidegger would think of as elemental, i.e., one of those etymologically complex terms that reveal something fundamental about human being and existence; words that speak us rather than simply communicate information and ideas. 

 

These days, the concept of spinning has entered into many areas of life and the word has taken on multiple meanings depending on context. But I like to think that when Rooney speaks of spinning down sky she refers us to the possibility of making artworks out of the blueness of the Greater Day, or perhaps stretching the very stuff of the heavens so as to send yellow stars spinning like Van Gogh.

 

Of course, if writers spin words into narratives and painters spin colours into artworks, then spiders do something equally amazing by spinning silk into webs. And, as mentioned, at the centre of Rooney's tale is an unusual member of the Araneidae family ...

 

 

III. 

 

For those readers lacking a background in arachnology, a female bolas spider [5] is an orb-weaver that, instead of spinning a typical orb web, hunts at night by using one or more capture blobs consisting of a mass of spun fibre embedded in a sticky liquid on the end of a silk line, known as a bolas.  

 

By swinging the bolas at passing male moths, she hopes to snag her prey rather like a fisherman snagging a fish on a hook (thus it is that they are sometimes also referred to as angling spiders). If, after half an hour, she has been unsuccessful, she will consume the bolas and start again. 

 

On a bad night, she may only catch one or two moths; on a good night, six or seven. The female bolas spider, however, doesn't just leave everything to chance; she lures her favoured prey closer via the production of a scent that mimics the sex pheremones emitted by the female moth, driving the males mad with desire.

 

Having given a little bit of natural history by way of background, I'd like now to say something of the actual performance ...

 

 

IV.   

Spin Down Sky II is a new dance piece developed especially for the exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac. It premiered last month on the opening night of Yellow Yellow Blue. [6] 

 

I was disappointed to have missed it then, but I'm very glad to have seen it now and to have been further ensnared into Rooney's imaginative world, which, it seems, is shaped as much by movement as colour; i.e., a combination of choreography and chromatic chaos (which is why it makes perfect sense to both open and close the exhibition of paintings with a contemporary dance performance).  

 

The sequence of movements and rhythmic articulations unfolding in a unique time and space, both natural and mythical, seemed to me to be cleverly thought out and excellently performed (with, I'm assuming, some degree of improvisation) by the dancers although, I have to confess, I wasn't quite sure who was the moth and who was the spider. 

 

Arguably, however, as their bodies became increasingly entangled in a strangely erotic danse macabre, perhaps that's no longer an issue and binary distinctions around species, sex, life and death begin to curdle. 

 

And speaking of blurred lines ... 

 

The clothing worn by the two dancers had been hand-painted by Rooney, thus inviting us to think about the relationship not only between prey and predator but fine art and fashion; interconnected disciplines which often come together despite the efforts of some who would preserve the purity and status of the former and view the latter as lacking in high aesthetic value and cultural significance [7]. 

 

And then there was the excellent (if slightly too jazzy for my tastes) soundtrack provided by Stuart, with live sax improvisations on the night, obliging us to also consider the three-way relationship between colour, movement, and music. 

 

 

V.

 

Ultimately, Spin Down Sky II matters because, even though a short piece, it allows us to "think through and move across established categories and levels of experience" [8], transporting us to a place where the most profound ideas and feelings live and rise up. 

 

Via creative storytelling - i.e., an act of fabulation - Rooney allows us to step outside the gate and to understand something of the complex and shifting world of relationships - not just between a flying insect and an eight-legged spider, but between us and the natural world, us and art, us and one another - that is central to reality as a web of being and becoming.     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Temitope Ajose is a London-based dance-artist with an interest in myth, psychology and magic. Her creative process unfolds in the playful space that exists between the sacred and absurd. Whilst Rooney conceived and directed Spin Down Sky II, Ajose is credited as the choreographer.   

 

[2] Leah Marojević is a Serbian/Montenegrin/Italian/British queer female independent artist, based in Berlin, whose practice spans dramaturgy, choreography, performance, rehearsal directing, writing, teaching, curation and mentorship. 

 

[3] Tyrone Isaac Stuart is an interdisciplinary artist with over 12 years of professional experience in dance and music. He blends krump, contemporary dance, visual art, and jazz music in his work.

 

[4] Some readers may recall a couple of posts published last month inspired by this exhibition: click here and/or here. 

 

[5] Immature female spiders and (the much smaller-bodied) adult males hunt without a bolas; simply positioning themselves on leaves and grabbing whatever insects they can with their hairy front legs.

 

[6] The bolas spider and night butterfly characters were first explored over two performances of Spin Down Sky at Kettle's Yard (Cambridge), as part of Megan Rooney's first major solo exhibition Echoes and Hours (2024). To watch the full (20 minute) performance on 21 June, please click here. Or for a short (43 seconds) teaser, please click here. 

 

[7] Historically, fashion has been regarded as a craft or applied art, distinct from the more elevated practice of fine art. This perception is rooted in the belief that fashion is frivolous, commercial, and transient, while fine art is profound, timeless, and transcendent. 

      Thankfully, such idealistic stupidity is now no longer so widespread and many people acknowledge that fashion - particularly haute couture and avant-garde designs - can be a powerful form of artistic expression and that the very best runway shows are pure theatre; one thinks, for example, of Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 1999 show and its finale featuring a model (Shalom Harlow) in a white dress, spinning round on a rotating platform, and being spray-painted by robots: click here to watch on YouTube.  

 

[8] Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects (Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 4. 

 

 

This post is for Tom Hunt, who kindly invited me to the performance of Megan Rooney's Spin Down Sky II (27 July 2025).

 

 

I Stood Watching the Shadowy Fish ... Notes on the First Line of D. H. Lawrence's 'The White Peacock'

  

I. 

 

The opening line from Lawrence's debut novel, The White Peacock (1911), reads: 

 

"I stood watching the shadowy fish slide through the gloom of the mill-pond." [1]  

 

It is spoken by Cyril Beardsall; a fairly obvious self-characterisation, even if Lawrence cannot be completely identified with the (artistically inclined but somewhat priggish) narrator of his novel. 

 

Cyril is as enchanted by the intense stillness of the water as he is by the grey-silvery fish and the manner in which the entire scene was "gathered in the musing of old age" [2]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Now, a Heideggerian critic might be tempted to suggest that Cyril knows what it is to not merely inhabit a space and reflect upon it like one of those moon-like philosophers whom Zarathustra condemns [3]. 

 

That he knows how to dwell in the world; i.e., to form a deep and meaningful relationship with all the various elements of his environment, in this case, fish, gloom, water, stillness, and temporality.     

 

For Heidegger, dwelling is a fundamental aspect of Dasein that allows men and women to exist as mortals beneath the sky, upon the earth, and in the presence of gods.  

 

But whilst it allows connection and interrelationship, dwelling is not a way for us to project ourselves into all things; i.e., it's not a form of existential narcissism and Cyril is not merely admiring his own reflection in the mill-pond and desiring to become one with it.   

 

 

III. 

 

Finally, it's interesting to compare the opening of Lawrence's first novel with one of his early poems, 'The Wild Common', whose setting and situation are somewhat similar.

 

In this poem, the young male narrator observes his own reflection on the surface of a pond: "Naked on the steep, soft lip / Of the bank I stand watching my own white shadow quivering to and fro" [4]. 

 

It is only after he plunges naked into the water that he fully appreciates how the natural world has physical reality that is not dependent upon his perception and understanding of it: "Oh but the water loves me and folds me / Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me ..." [5] 

 

And that it is his self, in fact, which has no substantial reality apart from the world of flowers, sunlight, and pulsing waters.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, ed. Andrew Robertson (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 1. 

 

[2] Ibid. 

 

[3] In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche critiques the concept of immaculate perception (i.e., the mistaken idea that we are capable of pure knowledge and a detached, moon-like contemplation of the world free of all desire; emasculated leering, as he calls it). See the section entitled 'Of Immaculate Perception' in part two of Zarathustra.    

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Wild Common' - click here to read online. 

      Note that this is the original version of the verse, written c. 1905-06 and published in Amores (1916). Lawrence later revised it for his Collected Poems (1928), adding new material and finally saying what it was he had started to say (incoherently in his view) when he first wrote it as a young man. This final version can be found in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 5-6.

      For a critical reading of 'The Wild Common', see the first chapter of M. J. Lockwood's, A Study of the Poems of D. H. Lawrence: Thinking in Poetry, (Palgrave Macmillan, 1987). 

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Wild Common'. 

 

 

A Brief Note on the Material Basis of Identity by Jazz Griffin

Jazz Griffin: the Invisible Punk

 (SA/2025) [1] 

 

 

I. 

 

A recently published post on the way in which my memory of the past is inextricably interwoven with the suits I was wearing during the different stages of my life [2] has brought me (once more) to the conclusion that clothes do indeed maketh the man ... [3].  

 

I might not go so far as to say that if we went around naked we'd have no memories, no history, no culture, but, on the other hand, it's certainly the case that items of dress (and other personal objects) play a crucial role in anchoring the self and remembering the past. 

 

Having the memory of a goldfish and lacking a strong sense of self, I'm not at all certain I'd recall the people I've met, the places I've been, or the things I've done, were it not for the fact that I still have (some of) the jackets, trousers, shirts, ties, and shoes stuffed in the back of my wardrobe (although diaries, notebooks, and photo albums obviously act as vital aides-mémoire too).

 

Indeed, I'm pretty sure that had you unstrapped the straps, unzipped the zips, and stripped me of the tartan bondage suit I was wearing (aged 21) in the above photo, I'd have vanished before your very eyes, like Jack Griffin as he slowly unwound his bandages [4]. 

 

 

II. 

 

We might conclude, therefore, that just as it's language that speaks us (and not vice versa) [5], so too do our clothes wear us (so to speak) and not the other way round; something which the most philosophical of fashion historians, designers, and researchers interested in enclothed cognition [6] have long appreciated.

 

In other words, our lives are literally fabricated; cut out and stitched together from a pattern like a well-tailored suit and finished with individual details.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This image is based on a photo from 1984 in which the model is wearing a tartan bondage suit, seditionaries-style boots, and a McLarenettes Punk It Up T-shirt 

 

[2] See the post entitled 'Suits You, Sir!' (5 July 2025): click here.

 

[3] The idea that clothing plays a crucial role in not only how men and women present themselves to the world and are perceived by others, but in actually constructing identity is, of course, as old as the hills and variations of the phrase clothes maketh the man can be traced back, like most things, to the Ancient Greeks. For those who spoke Latin, like Erasmus, author of a famous collection of proverbs and adages at the beginning of the 16th century, the phrase read: vestis virum facit. 

      Those moralists who think the opposite - i.e., that clothes don't make the man - and who drone on about inner qualities and a person's true character or substance being more important than appearance are, in my view, philosophically naive.

      Readers who are interested in this can click here for a post published on 31 May 2023 that touches on the topic with reference to the coronation of King Charles III. And for a post on how clothes maketh the woman - with reference to the queer case of Nellie March in D. H. Lawence's novella The Fox (1922) - click here.          

 

[4] Jack Griffin is the name of the chemist played by Claude Rains in the 1933 film The Invisible Man, directed by James Whale, and loosely based on the novel of that title by H. G. Wells (1897). Click here for the big reveal scene on YouTube. 

 

[5] This idea of language speaking man is usually attributed to Heidegger. It challenges the traditional view of language as a tool humans use to express themselves by suggesting that the internal logic, structure, and history of language actively shapes our thinking and understanding of the world. See, for example, what he writes in his essay 'Language', in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (Harper Perennial, 1975), pp. 189-210. 

 

[6] Enclothed cognition refers to the influence that clothing has on the wearer's thoughts, feelings, actions, and behaviours. The term was coined by Hajo Adam and Adam D. Galinsky who have been experimenting in this area since 2012. See their study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology Volume 48, Issue 4, (July 2012), pp. 918-925. The abstract and excerpts from the report can be read here.  

 

 

Finally, readers who want to know more might like to read Memories of Dress: Recollections of Material Identities, ed. Alison Slater, Susan Atkin, and Elizabeth Kealy-Morris (Bloomsbury, 2023). Do note, however,  that I've not yet read this collection of essays, so can't says whether it's worth the RRP of £85 for the hardback edition (or even the RRP of £28.99 for the paperback). 

 

 

Heaven and How to Get There

Revival Movement Association

revivalmovement.org 

 

 

I. 

 

One of the ironic consequences of mass migration from sub-Saharan Africa is that there are suddenly lots of evangelical Christians on the street corners, preaching the gospel and reaching out as missionaries. 

 

In other words, having been colonised and converted by bible-bashing Europeans in the nineteenth-century, they are now attempting to undo secular modernity and effectively plunge us back into a world of religious mania.   

 

Thus it was I was given a little leaflet this morning, encouraging me to turn away from sin and put my faith and trust in Lord Jesus Christ, Saviour, as well as promising to reveal not only what Heaven is like, but, more importantly, how to get there.  

 

 

II. 

 

According to the leaflet, Heaven is a wonderful place whose beauty is incomparable:

 

The God of the Bible is a God of beauty, and this is why Heaven will be perfectly beautiful. It will be so beautiful that it cannot be compared to anywhere here on earth.   

 

Note how Heaven is capitalised, but earth is not: Nietzsche would argue that this provides a crucial insight into the Christian mindset; to the fact that Christianity prioritises that which comes after life whilst, at the same time, devaluing material (mortal) existence and is therefore profoundly nihilistic [1]. 

 

But let's leave aside the anti-Christian case against Heaven until later and continue with our reading of the leaflet ... 

 

Interestingly, no sooner are we told about the beauty of Heaven than we are informed that this is its least important aspect. What matters far more is the fact that Heaven is the place where all the purest, humblest, most unselfish people the world has ever known finally come together as one flock. 

 

And, to top it off, Jesus Christ Himself is there - as well as God in all His glory! Thus, in Heaven, we will finally have the opportunity to see God with our own eyes! 

 

I find the emphasis on this selling point a little perplexing; I'm no bible scholar, but didn't Jesus say somewhere or other that blessed are those who who have not looked upon the face of God and yet still believe in his majesty? Are we not encouraged to doubt our own eyes on the grounds that the senses can deceive us? [2]  

 

 

III. 

Moving on ... The little leaflet also tells us that Heaven is a place of happy reunions - i.e., a place where the dead and the living can catch up and renew relations, reminisce about old times, etc. 

 

There's no consideration of the fact that not everyone wants to meet with their former friends, partners, and family members - and certainly not if we are then never more to part. For as Larry David (mistakenly) reveals to his wife Cheryl in an episode of Curb, the great attraction of an afterlife is the thought of being free and single once more and able to make a fresh start: click here [3].  

 

 

IV. 

    

Clearly, as much as those who long for Heaven hate earthly life, the thing that really motivates their faith is fear of death, as this (inadvertently hilarious) passage makes abundantly clear:

 

Another great truth about Heaven is that there will be no death there. We will never have to endure the heartbreak of watching a loved one passing away. We will never again have to watch the undertaker as he screws down the coffin lid on the one we loved, there will be no black ties, no funerals passing through the streets, no standing by an open grave and watching a coffin lowered into it, no listening to the clods of earth as they fall remorselessly on the box that contains the remains of the one we love so much and whose death has left us so sad and broken. Thank God there is no death in Heaven!

 

Now, experiencing Angst - as Heidegger was at pains to explain - is a fundamental aspect of being human. Angst isn't merely a form of anxiety born of thanatophobia; rather, it is how Dasein grasps the idea of finitude and confronts the void at the core of existence [4].

 

In other words, angst allows us to understand that being-in-the-world rests upon non-being. An unsettling thought, perhaps, but ultimately a liberating one that dares us to live and become who we are (or find authenticity and accept responsibility for our own choices, as Heidegger would say).    

 

And those who would deny us this - and who would, in effect, rob us even of our own deaths - deserve our contempt.  

 

V. 

 

Finally, as to how to get to Heaven ... 

 

There is, apparently, only ONE way: and that is by accepting Jesus as your Lord and Saviour:  

 

Jesus is the only way, and no man can come to the Father except through HIM. If you reject Him you shut the door to heaven on yourself. 

 

Well, that's unfortunate, perhaps, because I do reject Jesus - and I don't even think, like Lawrence, that there are many saviours and that man can secure himself a spot in paradise via a number of paths leading to God [5]. 

 

And - just to be clear - I wouldn't want to go to a Heaven in which the purest, humblest, most unselfish people are all gathered; because these people are very often nothing of the kind and they seem to spend a good deal of their time revelling in the misfortune and torment of those burning in that other place, which, let us remind ourselves, has a sign above its gates declaring: Built in the name of eternal Love [6].  

 

Ultimately, I stand with the naked and damned and not the smug and saved in their new white garments; and I choose to be amongst the scarlet poppies of Hell rather than in a Heaven "where the flowers never fade, but stand in everlasting sameness" [7].   

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche speaks of afterworldsmen who create a vision of paradise born of suffering, impotence, and an impoversished form of weariness: "It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth and invented the things of heaven [...] They wanted to escape from their misery and the stars were too far for them." See Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1969), p. 60. 

 

[2] See John 20:29. The KJV reads: "Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." 

 

[3] Curb Your Enthusiasm season 4, episode 9: 'The Survivor' (2004), dir. Larry Charles, written by Larry David, starring Larry David and Cheryl Hines.    

 

[4] See Heidegger, Being and Time, Division I, Chapter 6, where Heidegger not only discusses Angst as a fundamental mood, but relates it to his important notion of Sorge (usually translated into English as care and which provides the basis for Heideggerian ethics).   

 

[5] See the fragment of text written by Lawrence given the title 'There is no real battle ...' in Appendix I of Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 385. 

      In this piece, Lawrence argues that "the great Church of the future will know other saviours" and that the reason he hates Christianity is because it declares there is only one way to God: "'I am the way' - Not even Jesus can declare this to all men. To very many men, Jesus is no longer the way. He is no longer the way for me." 

 

[6] This idea of the sign is found in Dante's Inferno Canto III. Lines 5 and 6 of which read: Fecemi la divina podestate / somma sapïenza e ’l primo amore (My maker was divine authority / the highest wisdom and the primal love). But note that Nietzsche says it displays a certain philosophical naivety on the part of the Italian poet and that if there is a sign it is placed rather above the entrance to Heaven, with an inscription reading: Built in the name of everlasting Hate. See my post - 'A Brief Note on Heaven and Hell' (18 October 2014): click here. 

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 144.