Joining the Black Parade: Brief Reflections on Emo

 Portrait of the Scottish poet, philosopher, and founder 

of Emo, Thomas Brown (1778 - 1820)  [1]

 

 

I. 

 

The other day, on a sunny afternoon, as Ray Davies would say, I attended a meeting of the Subcultures Interest Group (SIG), held in a fifth floor room at the London College of Fashion, located, for those who don't know, on the East Bank of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford.

 

After discussing the graphic design of Dave King - the one who designed the Crass symbol; not the one who designed the Anti-Nazi League logo - and the contents of an upcoming issue of SIG News, there were three short presentations by post-grad students, including one by a vivacious young woman called Eylem Boz, who was writing her MA dissertation on the way in which social media and other forms of digital communication have transformed emo - an alternative music genre - in the 21st century.

 

Now, I have to confess that my knowledge of emo is pretty limited, although I am aware of the fact that it has existed not only as a sound but as a fashion - and not only as a look, but as a lifestyle - since the early-mid 1990s, so I was keen to listen and learn a little more from someone who was clearly speaking with an insider's knowledge, experience, and passion, whilst still viewing things with a degree of academic objectivity [2].

 

 

II. 

 

If I'm not mistaken, Ms Boz was arguing that emo, as a subculture, radically developed (and mutated) as an online phenomenon - particularly in the early 2000s - in a way that earlier youth subcultures had not had the opportunity to do so. 

 

So, whilst some emo bands - such as My Chemical Romance [3] - found a level of mainstream success during this period, that's kind of irrelevant. What really matters and what really interests, is the way that emo was a fan-driven phenomenon; they made their own rules, relationships, and values, etc. [4]

 

And so, whilst emos may or may not be overly-sensitive and prone to mental health issues, they are also highly creative and tech-savvy and one can't help feeling a mixture of admiration and affection for them. 

 

What ultimately struck me during Eylem's presentation, however, was that emo is something of a paradox. For what she revealed is not that members of this community have a rich and complex inner life, but that their authenticity is a game of artifice and their model of selfhood is something created, stylised, and performed, rather than something to be known via philosophical reflection.

 

That's not to denigrate those who identify as emo, or mock them for their concern with clothes, haircuts, and makeup; I'd be the last person in the world who would wish to rain on their black parade, so to speak.

 

I'm simply suggesting that it would be a good idea for Ms Boz to acknowledge in her dissertation that that the emotions are things that demand expression, always pushing towards a surface [5], and that the ancient Greeks were wise to adore appearance, believe in forms, and courageously remain, as Nietzsche says, superficial out of profundity [6]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This image features an engraving by William Walker based on a painting of Thomas Brown by George Watson (1806) and a ghostly-looking version of an Emo Girl by the graphic designer and illustrator Manuela Zamfir. Her original can be viewed (and downoaded for a fee) on vecteezy.com. 

      Brown, for those who don't know, has been described as the 'inventor of the emotions'. For more details, see Thomas Dixon's post dated 2 April 2020 on the History of Emotions Blog, operated by the Queen Mary Centre for the History of the Emotions: click here. 

 

[2] Eylem Boz certainly looked the part, though whether she would identify herself as an emo girl I don't know and, amusingly, her lively and outgoing character seemed to be somewhat at odds with the popular idea of the latter as someone a bit reserved and introverted (though perhaps this popular idea of an emo girl is a misconception and stereotype).    

 

[3] My Chemical Romance rejected the label after the UK press whipped up a moral panic surrounding the cult of emo and accused them (and other groups) of promoting social alienation, self-harm, and suicide amongst their young followers. To play their huge hit single, 'Welcome to the Black Parade', taken from the album The Black Parade (Reprise Records, 2006), click here.  

 

[4] As the character Dewey Finn would say: "That is so punk rock."

 

[5] The English word emotion was coined in the early 1800s by Thomas Brown - arguably the first emo - and derives from the French term émouvoir, which means to stir up (i.e. to move things towards the surface). It is arguable that whilst people before this date experienced certain passions and affections, no one felt emotions in the modern psychological sense.

      It is also arguable, that our emotions (like our ideas) are entirely constructed by external regimes of power, which is why I would like to close this post with the following (non-emo) track from the American punk band the Dead Kennedys; taken from the album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (Cherry Red Records, 1980), 'Your Emotions' amusingly suggests that our emotions betray our monstrous nature and that our scars only begin to show when we confess how we're feeling or what we're thinking. To play, click here.  

 

[6] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, preface to the second edition (1886), section 4. 

 

 

For a related post to this one, in which I offer some Deleuzean reflections on the symbol of the wolf in black metal, click here.  

 

For a related post to this one on the politics of female fashion in the NE of England during the 1960s, click here.

Joy is Deeper Than the Heart's Agony: On Nietzsche and the Concept of Confelicity

A young Nietzsche looking joyful in 1869

Image via The Mindless Philosopher 

 

"The lowest animal can imagine the pain of others.

 But to imagine the joy of others and to rejoice at it is the greatest privilege of the highest animals ..." [1]

 

 

Many English-speakers know the meaning of the German term Schadenfreude. 

 

But very few know the antonymic term Mitfreude, coined by Nietzsche in 1878, and referring to the feeling of joy felt when learning of the happiness or good fortune of others [2].

 

Interestingly, Nietzsche also contrasts Mitfreude with Mitleid (pity) - and even Mitgefühl (compassion) - viewing an ethic of shared joy rather than shared suffering as more noble (and less Christian).    

 

It is shared happiness, not shared pain, he argues, from which bonds of friendship best develop [3] and allow for a future democracy of joyful exuberance to develop [4].  

 

 

Notes

 

The phrase used in the title of this post - 'Joy is deeper than the heart's agony' - is from section 8 of 'The Intoxicated Song', found in part 4 of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  

 

[1] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, volume 2, part 1, section 62. 

      I am consulting R. J. Hollingdale's translation from the 1986 Cambridge University Press edition of this work, p. 228, but I have slightly modified it. 

 

[2] Usually, in English, we use the term confelicity to describe this feeling, although this is not a word one hears very often.

[3] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, I. 9. 499.

 

[4] It might surprise some readers to discover that Nietzsche writes of such a future democracy; one that will create and guarantee as much independence as possible and which is in stark contrast to the model of liberal democracy founded upon a mixture of fear and herd morality (i.e., modern humanism). See Human, All Too Human, II. 2. 293. 

 

 

Musical bonus: Killing Joke, 'We Have Joy', from the album Revelations (E.G. Records, 1982): click here for the 2005 digitally remastered version. 

 

This post is for my frenemy Síomón Solomon. 

On Traversing the Excluded Middle

Andrew Weir: Excluded Middle (2019)

Acrylic paint on paper, 36 x 48 cm
saatchiart.com

 

Logicians to the left of me, Derrideans to the right, 

here I am, stuck in the excluded middle with you ... [1]

 

 

I. 

 

In classical logic, the law of the excluded middle (p ∨ ¬ p) states that either a proposition or its negation has to be true.

 

It is the third of the three great laws of thought upon which rational discourse is based; the other two being the law of identity - each thing is identical with itself - and the law of non-contradiction - propositions cannot both be true and false at the same time.

 

But such axiomatic rules don't really mean a great deal to me as someone who is happy to do their thinking in the moral no-go zone that is the excluded middle; i.e., the evil realm of fuzzy logic, dark limpidity, and what Nietzsche terms dangerous knowledge.

 

 

II. 

 

Similarly, as someone who privileges difference over identity and refuses to be haunted by the spectre of logical contradiction, I'm prepared also to cheerfully transgress the other two laws. For as I wrote in a post from a few years ago:

 

'Whether our analytic philosophers like to admit it or not, some forms of thinking rely upon daimonic inspiration and so are not regulated by reason alone. Our very greatest poets, for example, creatively affirm paradox and ambiguity; they are unafraid of appearing inconsistent or irrational and are proud to proclaim that if, like Whitman, they contradict themselves, that's because they contain multitudes.' [2]

  

One suspects that a good deal of the continued hostility aimed towards those who take a more continental approach to philosophy is that we see the latter as more of an art than a science (unless it be a gay science). Nothing enrages the Anglo-American mindset more than logical inconsistency and the idea that some feel free in the excluded middle to affirm the neither/nor and defy the spirit of gravity so that thinking becomes pleasurable.      

 

 

III. 

 

In sum: without wishing to explicity reject the law of the excluded middle, I don't support its rigid enforcement and, like Deleuze, see le milieu exclu as a zone in which becoming is stamped with the character of being and where not only do new possibilities emerge, but it is reasonable to demand the impossible.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm paraphrasing a lyric from the well-known song by the Scottish folk rock band Stealers Wheel entitled. 'Stuck in the Middle With You', written by Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan. It can be found on their eponymous debut album Stealers Wheel (A&M Records, 1972) - or played by clicking here. 

 

[2] See the post entitled 'Hello Darkness My Old Friend ...' (1 Oct 2021): click here. 

 

This post is for Bryan Kam who probably cares more - and certainly knows more - about this topic (and many others) than I do. London-based for the last 20 years, Kam studied English and Russian literature at Princeton and Cambridge, but is also widely read in both Western and Eastern philosophy. He regularly publishes work on Substack: click here. 

      According to Kam, the law of the excluded middle, born in Athens c. 350 BC, died in Amsterdam in 1908 at the hands of L. E. J. Brouwer. That might be true, but, unfortunately, even dead concepts can still retain an icy grip on our thinking.  

 

 

Know Thyself: A Reflection

Ai Weiwei: Know Thyself (2022) 

Lego bricks 192.5 x 192.5 cm [a]

 

 

I. 

 

Whenever I come across the ancient Greek injunction know thyself [b], I immediately think of Nietzsche's preface to the Genealogy in which he mocks the very possibility of this, even for those who pride themselves on being men of knowledge: We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers ... [c]

 

But I also think of Foucault's text entitled Technologies of the Self ...

 

 

II.     

 

Based on a lecture given at the University of Vermont in October 1982, this text is hugely interesting for its insistence that care of the self - conceived as an ethico-aesthetic project of stylisation - is at least as important as knowing the self (understood in relation to a moral conception of Truth).

 

In the modern era, care of the self was almost entirely decoupled from the more imperative-sounding command to know the self. And that is unfortunate to say the least, because care of the self crucially entailed the forming of external relations with others, whilst knowing the self is a much more internalised and solitary pursuit (like masturbation).

 

For Foucault, "the equation of philosophical askesis with renunciation of feeling, solidarity, and care for one's self and for others - as the price of knowledge - was one of the biggest wrong turnings" [d] in Western history. 

 

But rather than simply regret this, or naively call for an impossible (and undesirable) return to an ancient way of life [e], Foucault began to think things through in his own inimitable manner (more as a hermeneutics of the self than an epistemological exercise) ... 

 

 

III.

 

Gnōthi seauton is one thing; epimeleisthai sautou is another. Without doubt, says Foucault, we moderns have overemphasised the former and largely forgotten the latter. 

 

In the Graeco-Roman world, however, "the injunction of having to know oneself was always associated with the other principle of the care of the self, and it was that need to care for oneself that brought the Delphic maxim into operation" [f]. It was, in other words, one of the key principles (and practices) governing "social and personal conduct" [226].

 

For Foucault, this "profound transformation in the moral principles of Western society" [228] has occurred for two main reasons: 

 

"We find it difficult to base rigorous morality and austere principles on the precept that we should give more care to ourselves than to anything else in the world. We are more inclined to see taking care of ourselves as an immorality [...] We inherit the tradition of Christian morality which makes self-renunciation the condition for salvation. To know oneself was paradoxically the way to self-renunciation." [228] [g]

 

The second reason - just as crucial - is that in modern philosophy from Descartes to Husserl, "knowledge of the self (the thinking subject) takes on an ever-increasing importance as the first step in the theory of knowledge" [228].

 

 

IV.

Does any of this really matter today?

 

To many people, perhaps not: but to me, as a philosopher who, like Foucault - and, indeed, like Socrates - cares about the question of care, it matters a great deal. 

 

For I would love to see a greater concern with ethos as the Greeks understood this term; i.e. a way of being and of behaviour, of stylising the self (in relation to others) that was evident in every aspect of the person (their appearance, dress, manner, etc.). 

 

The immanent utopia realised now/here in the bonds between people that D. H. Lawrence terms a democracy of touch will be a society founded upon such an ethos; one in which everybody takes proper care of him or herself whilst also properly conducting themselves "in relation to others and for others" [h]. 

 

Ultimately, let me add in closing - once more in agreement with Foucault - the relationship between philosophy, politics, ethics, and art is permanent and fundamental. And that's why one can't simply visit an exhibition by Ai Weiwei, for example, and simply come away speaking about aesthetics or his method of working [i].  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] This Lego mosaic by Ai Weiwei, based on a first-century Roman work depicting a skeleton and the Greek phrase ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ, is presently on display at the Lisson Gallery (London). It previously featured as part of Ai Weiwei's solo exhibition Know Thyself, at Galerie neugerriemschneider, in Berlin (September 14, 2023 - March 30, 2024). 

      Why the artist chose to reverse the image and write the Greek maxim as if viewed in a mirror, I don't know; perhaps it is meant to indicate the fact that he is reflecting on the complex relationship between past and present (I very much doubt, from what I know of him, that he is advocating a reversal of moral wisdom).  

 

[b] Know thyself was inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo in the ancient Greek precinct of Delphi. It has been quoted and interpreted by countless thinkers, scholars and authors ever since. It is usually written in Greek as Γνῶθι σεαυτόν (gnōthi seauton).

 

[c] The original German reads: Wir sind uns unbekannt, wir Erkennenden, wir selbst uns selbst ... See Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887), p. iii. 

[d] Paul Rabinow, introduction to the Essential Works of Foucault 1: Ethics, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley and others (Penguin Books, 2000), p. xxv.

 

[e] In answer to the question whether he sees the ancient Greeks as offering an attractive and plausible alternative, Foucault says: "No! [...] you can't find  the solution of another problem raised at another moment by other people." Further, Greek ethics "were linked to a purely virile society" founded upon slavery and he doesn't much like that idea. 

      See 'On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress', in the Essential Works 1: Ethics ... p. 256. 

 

[f] Michel Foucault, 'Technologies of the Self', in the Essential Works 1: Ethics ... p. 226. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the text. 

      A slightly different version of this text appeared in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton (University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), pp. 16-49 and this can be read online by clicking here.  

 

[g] It's important to note that Foucault sees many continuities between pagan and Christian culture and does not see a clean break as many modern Christians and neo-pagans like to imagine. Christianity - a religion of confession and salvation - is, as Nietzsche once said, in many respects a form of Platonism for the people (see his preface to Beyond Good and Evil, 1886) and the Christian tradition is not uniquely to blame for the moral world we now inhabit. 

      See the interview with Foucault from January 1984, 'The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom', which can be found in an amended translation with footnotes in the Essential Works 1: Ethics ... pp. 281-301, where he stresses this point.  

 

[h] Foucault, 'The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom', Essential Works 1: Ethics ... p. 287. 

[i] In a recent post published on Torpedo the Ark, I discussed how Ai Weiwei's transformation of a well-known canvas by Van Gogh enables the viewer to reflect upon contemporary social, cultural, and political concerns. Those interested in reading the post, can click here. 

 

On the Loving of Enemies

Liebe deine Feinde, 

denn sie bringen das Beste in dir zum Vorschein ...

 

 

I. 

 

As we all know, Jesus famously taught we should love our enemies (and not only our neighbours):

 

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." 

- Matthew 5:43-44 (KJV)

 

Many Christians like to believe that this, one of the most widely quoted sections of the Sermon on the Mount, is what separates their faith from all earlier religious doctrines; i.e., that it's a distinctive moral innovation. 

 

But that's not quite true and there are, in fact, a number of ethical precedents, as scholars familiar with the writings of the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians have pointed out. Indeed, similar teachings can also be found in the works of Jewish, Greek, and Roman authors [1].   

 

Still, it remains an interesting and important idea; albeit one that requires careful consideration of its terms; the word love, for example - ἀγαπάω (agapan) in the original Greek - refers to a kind of universal affection that is spiritual rather than sexual in origin. We are encouraged to be charitable and forgive those who trespass against us, not sleep with the enemy or become erotically fixated on them. 

 

And yet, arguably, there is something a bit perverse (and paradoxical) about developing positive feelings towards those who curse, hate, and persecute you; is loving one's enemy not simply a passive-aggressive attempt by the despised and victimised to bond with those who are in a superior and more powerful position? 

In other words, is it not a type of coping mechanism disguised as morality? Nietzsche certainly seemed to think so ...

 

 

II. 

 

Writing in the first essay of the Genealogy, Nietzsche argues that love of enemies is a possibility only for the truly strong and noble individual, who can view his enemy with a high degree of respect (and even admiration); essentially seeing them as worthy opponents that elevate his own status. 

 

This is in stark contrast to the resentment-driven love of enemies preached by slave moralists who often use this concept to mask underlying hostility and their desire for the downfall of those whom they regard as the evil ones (even whilst secretly envying them).  

It takes something special to truly love one's enemies (and not merely forgive, but forget their misdeeds); it requires a generosity of spirit to not be consumed by hatred for those whom we blame for our suffering and misfortune [2].    

But the philosopher must go even further says Zarathustra and be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends ... [3] 

Notes

 

[1] I refer readers to John Nolland's The Gospel of Matthew (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005), which provides an extensive commentary on the Greek text of this work.

        

[2] See Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, I. 10.  

[3] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 'Of the Bestowing Virtue' (3). 

Who Is Stephen Alexander? A Guest Post by Sasha Thanassa

Stephen Alexander 

A Non-Selfie Selfie (2025) 

 

And how do you see yourself when looking in the bathroom mirror 

through someone else's eyes? 

 

 

I. 

 

Who (or what) is Stephen Alexander, the shadowy figure who blogs at Torpedo the Ark?

 

The multiple possibilities that he himself has playfully suggested in the past include: artist, anarchist, and antichrist; punk, pirate, poet, pagan ... More recently, he has declared himself to be a darkly enlightened philosopher-provocateur whose concerns are no longer with sex, style, and subversion, but more with silence, secrecy, and seduction. 

 

Using these and other terms that arise from within his own writings - as well as from the work of other figures to whom he often refers - I will attempt here to give a brief impressionistic sketch of someone who, like Foucault, neither wishes to self-identify as a unified subject nor feels obliged to remain forever the same [1].       

 

 

II.

 

Again, by his own admission, there are two names that have shaped Alexander's thinking above all others: Nietzsche and D. H. Lawrence; neither of whom he entirely embraces, but both of whom provide him with the critical weapons and crucial conceptual tools for the fight against moral idealism (i.e., the belief that the Good, the True, and the Beautiful are the highest of values and fundamentally connected) and modern humanism (i.e., the belief that behind everything sits the kind and reasonable figure of Man).    

 

Working in the entrails of Nietzsche and Lawrence more like a postmodern haruspex than a forensic pathologist, Alexander has managed on Torpedo the Ark to produce an idiosyncratic (and intertextual) brand of fiction-theory that suspends the genre distinction between philosophy and literature [2]. 

 

Arguably, it is this mode of language and thought that has enabled him to move across other established categories and freely discuss an almost infinite variety of ideas, experiences, and events in a creative and profoundly superficial manner that is always alert to the play (and permissiveness) of language.  

 

III. 

Another name we might mention is that of Simon Solomon; more than a mere commentator on posts or a sometimes contributor, Solomon is a very real (often hostile) presence on Torpedo the Ark and a vital interlocutor. 

It's sometimes hard to tell whether Solomon is Alexander's shadow or vice versa; who's the Jekyll, who's the Hyde (or are they equally monstrous)? In queer ontological alliance - if there is such a thing -  Alexander and Solomon seem fated to remain the best of frenemies [3], each presumably drawing some benefit from their relationship, despite the mutual antagonism [4]. 

IV.

But isn't Alexander just another in a long line of reversed Platonists? 

Perhaps - but what's wrong with that? We need more not less such people. A reversed Plato may still be, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, a reversed Plato [5], but that's better than an unreversed Plato.

 

And besides, as Derrida indicated, the first task of deconstruction has to be reversal (i.e., the locating and overturning of oppositions within a text). That may not be enough in itself - a reversal is not the same as a revaluation - but it's a start on the road toward a new way of thinking.

 

And so, like Lawrence, Alexander encourages his reader to think in terms of immanence rather than transcendence and to climb down Pisgah [6]; to affirm appearances and the natural world of scarlet poppies rather than fantasise about a world above (and/or beyond) this one in which there are eternal white flowers and other Ideal Forms.   

And like Deleuze - another thinker whom Alexander often refers to - he perverts Plato by siding with the Sophists, the Cynics, the Stoics "and the fluttering chimeras of Epicurus" [7].  

 

 

V.

So, have I answered the question with which I opened this post? 

 

Probably not. 

 

Perhaps all I've done is refer to a number of proper names to whom Alexander himself often refers. But then, these proper names serve a crucial textual purpose and contain within them a series of associations (and connotations) that allow us to see how Torpedo the Ark unfolds within a much wider philosophical and literary history and an intertextual space. 

 

When Alexander refers to himself as a Lawrentian, for example, he's not identifying with Lawrence as an extratextual being, but evoking a certain style of thinking and writing.  

 

Using proper names is also, of course, a way of dispersing and disguising the self; like Nietzsche, Alexander wants to be able to declare himself all the names in history [8] - onymic ambiguity rather than unified authorial presence is his aim.  

 

Notes

 

[1] In his introduction to The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault famously writes: "I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order." 

      See The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (Pantheon Books, 1972), p. 17.

 -

[2] This has been a long time goal for Alexander; see the introduction to his PhD thesis Outside the Gate (University of Warwick, 2000): click here. 

      Admittedly, he problematically writes here about dissolving lines of distinction, whereas in his later writings, influenced by Derrida, he speaks more about troubling (or curdling) these lines and concedes that the deconstructive objective is not the dissolving or permanent suspension of all oppositions, because, ultimately, they are structurally necessary to produce meaning.  

      

[3] The term frenemy - a portmanteau of 'friend' and 'enemy' - could have been invented for Alexander and Solomon, although Jessica Mitford claimed that it had been coined by one of her sisters when they were children for a particularly dull acquaintance; see her article 'The Best of Frenemies' in the Daily Mail (August 1977). It can also be found in her book, Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (NYRB Classics, 2010), or read online by simply clicking here.       

      

[4] Interestingly, Freud recognised that a close friend and a worthy enemy are equally indispensble to psychological wellbeing and have not infrequently been one and the same person. See Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (Pelican / Penguin Books, 1964) p. 37.

 

[5] See Hannah Arendt, 'Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture', in Social Research, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 417-446, (The John Hopkins University Press, Autumn 1971), where she writes: 

      "The quest for meaning, which relentlessly dissolves and examines anew all accepted doctrines and rules, can at every moment turn against itself, as it were, produce a reversal of the old values, and declare these as 'new values'. This, to an extent, is what Nietzsche did when he reversed Platonism, forgetting that a reversed Plato is still Plato ..." (435)

      A revised version of this can also be found in Thinking, the first volume of her two-volume posthumously published work The Life of the Mind, ed. Mary Mccarthy (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977-78). 

 

[6] See the essay by D. H. Lawrence 'Climbing Down Pisgah', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 223-229.

 

[7] Michel Foucault, 'Theatrum Philosophicum', in the Essential Works 2: Aesthetics, ed. James D. Faubion (Penguin Books, 2000), p. 346.

[8] In a letter to Jakob Burckhardt dated 6 January, 1889 (although postmarked January 5th), Nietzsche claims that by becoming every name in history, he (paradoxically) fights the reduction to anonymity and generality. 

      See his Selected Letters, ed. and trans. Christopher Middleton (University of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 346.

 

 

An Open Letter to Simon Solomon from Stephen Alexander

 

Stephen Alexander / Simon Solomon

Dear Simon,

Thank you for your remarks on a recent post entitled 'Yabba Dabba Doo!' (28 Feb 2025). 

As I think you deserve a somewhat longer (and more considered) response than the comments section allows - and as the Little Greek suggested the following remarks may interest a wider audience - I've decided to publish them here in the form of an open letter ...    

Firstly, to answer your question regarding Barthes and nihilism, I suggest you read Shane Weller's essay entitled 'Active Philology: Barthes and Nietzsche', in French Studies, Vol. 73, Issue 2 (April, 2019), pp. 217-233. You can find a revised version of the essay on Kent University's Academic Repository:

https://kar.kent.ac.uk/71559/1/Barthes%20and%20Nietzsche%20%20THIRD%20REVISED%20VERSION%20-%20Clean%20version.pdf 

As some readers may not have the time or inclination to read the above text in full, here's the abstract which, I trust, will allow them to see why Barthes might indeed be considered a nihilist in the Nietzschean sense:  

"While the importance of Nietzsche to Barthes has long been recognized, with Barthes himself being the first to acknowledge it, this essay argues that Nietzsche's influence lies behind almost all of the major aspects of Barthes's mode of reading and writing in the 1970s, a mode that Barthes describes as 'active philology'. At the heart of this active philology is a cancellation of meaning that makes of Barthes's later critical practice a form of active nihilism in the Nietzschean sense. Exploring the various facets of this active philology in order to highlight the ways in which Barthes both follows and deviates from Nietzsche, this essay proposes an understanding of Barthes the active philologist as the incarnation of what Nietzsche terms the 'last nihilist' - and, crucially, one for whom any kind of Nietzschean overcoming of nihilism is anathema."

Even without reading Weller's essay, I would've thought, Simon, that the phrase La mort de l'auteur - title of a famous essay written by Barthes in 1967 - provides a huge clue as to what drives his critical approach ...

Secondly, you're right, Nietzsche does say in The Anti-Christ that the word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding and that in reality "there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross" [1]. But if you were to continue reading the same section of the above work (39), you would find the following important lines:  

"It is false to the point of absurdity to see in a belief [...] the distinguishing characteristic of the Christian: only Christian practice, a life such as he who died on the Cross lived, is Christian. ... Even today such a life is possible, for certain men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will be possible at all times. ... Not a belief, but a doing, above all a not-doing of many things, a different being." [2]

As ever with Nietzsche, there are lots of subtle twists and turns and one has to be wary about taking a line, a paragraph, or even an entire section as providing his definitive position. He puts it this way; he puts it that way; then he puts it another way entirely. The point is one can be a Christian, providing you don't turn a practice into a doctrine; i.e., it's about imitating Christ not following the teachings of the Church.     

As for De Profundis and other matters ... I don't see why I should accept this tear-stained text as more valuable than Wilde's earlier writings; you may find what you describe as his repudiation of aestheticism magnificent and moving, but I see it as a loss of style. 

And as for his ludicrous self-identification with Christ (with the latter conceived as a Romantic hero and artist), well, what is that if not simply another pose? I'm surprised you're taken in by this mix of self-pity, resentment, and bloated rhetoric. 

I'm also surprised that you don't seem to see the irony in quoting the part of Wilde's letter in which he takes a pop at those whose "thoughts are someone else's opinions [...] their passions a quotation" [3].

And not only do you quote from Wilde, but from Nietzsche and Jung too - even as you seem to object to my referencing authors; or perhaps your remark about being an 'anyone-ian' betrays a misunderstanding of how proper names function within a text.

In brief, the proper name contains within it a series of associations (and connotations) that I’m calling upon in order show how 'my' text unfolds within a much wider philosophical and literary history and an intertextual space. When I say 'as a Barthesian', for example, I’m not identifying with Barthes as an extratextual being, but evoking a certain style of thinking and writing.

Using proper names is also, of course, a way of dispersing and disguising the self; like Nietzsche, I want to be able to declare myself 'all the names in history' - onymic ambiguity rather than unified authorial presence is the aim. 

Anyway, hope these remarks answer your questions and address your concerns. 

SA  

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1990), p. 161. 

[2] Ibid. 

 

[3] Oscar Wilde, De Profundis. Written in 1897, the complete and corrected text wasn't published until 1962 when it was included in The Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (Harcourt, Brace & World). The line quoted can be found on p. 479. Note that a scholarly edition, ed. by Ian Small, was published as De Profundis; Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis, by Oxford University Press in 2005 (Vol. II of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde). 

Yabba Dabba Doo! On Writing So As to Pleasure and In Praise of the Laughing Caveman

Betty, Wilma, Barney, and Fred enjoying a good laugh

The Flintstones (Hanna-Barbera Productions, 1960-66) 

 

 

A question I am often asked is: Why write?

 

I suppose I could answer as many other writers have answered and suggest it's to stave off death; i.e., one writes so as not to die [1].

However, as a nihilist who subscribes to the Nietzschean view that life is merely a very rare and unusual way of being dead [2], I've no reason to postpone a joyous return to the inanimate; a reconciliation with what is actual [3].    

So, why write, then?

 

Well, as a Barthesian, I remain keen to affirm the pleasure of the text and the posts assembled here - even those which are more readerly than writerly in character [4] - are intended to afford torpedophiles some degree of enjoyment by introducing an element of fun [5] in the field of critical blogging (a field that is all too often determined by those whose practice of writing is weighed down by the spirit of gravity). 

For fun is not only a crucial component of playfulness (i.e., hedonic engagement with the world), but it can also help one avoid what Wilde terms humanity's original sin, i.e., self-seriousness: If only the caveman had known how to laugh ... [6]  

 

Notes

 

[1] Writers - particularly poets and some philosophers - often overestimate the power of language. Unfortunately, whilst sticks and stones may certainly break our bones, I'm not convinced that words can ever save us. See the post 'Writing So As Not to Die' (27 Feb 2025): click here.

[2] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III, section 109. 

[3] See Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe, Volume 9, 11 [70].

[4] Writing in Le plaisir du texte (1973), Barthes makes a distinction between two types of text; those that are readerly (lisible) and those that are writerly (scriptible). 

      The first, provides the kind of reassuring pleasure (plaisir) that doesn't challenge the reader's subjective consistency; whilst the second type of text induces a state of bliss (jouissance), which allows the reader to lose or step outside the self. Obviously, Barthes values the latter over the former, but he concedes that even the most readerly of text can still give some satisfaction, even if it doesn't make you cum in your pants and cause literary codes to explode.

      See the two-part post entitled 'Postmodern Approaches to Literature (3)', published on TTA on 2 August 2016 where I explore all of the above at some length. Click here for part 1; or here, to leap straight to part 2. 

 

[5] See the post written in defence of fun published on 3 June 2024: click here.

[6]  I've always loved this line from Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), even if the evolutionary origin of laughter - which can be traced back millions of years to our great ape ancestors - appears to be rooted more in survival and the formation of vital social bonds than merely enjoyment. 

      See Jordan Raine's article on this topic on the conversation.com (13 April, 2016): click here. 

In Praise of Skipping

Vivienne Westood photographed by Michael Roberts 

for Vogue (August 1987) [1]

 

 

The other day, walking in a westerly direction along Piccadilly, accompanied by one of the country's leading figures in the field of developmental genetics, an attractive and stylish young woman with blonde hair suddenly came skipping past, to the amusement (and bemusement) of onlookers.

 

And when I say skipped, I mean skipped; she wasn't jogging or power walking past us, but literally skipping, like a child, with joy, in a bilateral manner (i.e., with an alternating lead foot). 

 

It's a vision that powerfully affected me - much as Zarathustra was once seduced by the sight of young girls dancing in the woods by moonlight [2]. 

 

My heart stood still with delight to see someone exorcising the spirit of gravity on the streets of London as Big Ben struck noon; someone who instinctively understood the importance of movement and the crucial role that the body plays in what D. H. Lawrence terms the sane revolution:

 

If you make a revolution, make it for fun, 

don't make it in ghastly seriousness, 

don't do it in deadly earnest, 

do it for fun. [3]

 

I may have certain issues with Vivienne Westwood, but I think she would - in her more lighthearted moments at least, when not banging on about climate change or human rights - share this sentiment and actively encourage those wearing her clothes to hop, skip, and jump their way into the future (as she seems to be doing in the above photo by Michael Roberts).  

 

Notes

 

[1] This charming photo of Westwood by Michael Roberts, along with 54 others, can be found in the Vivienne Westwood Style File on the British Vogue website: click here.

 

[2] See Nietzsche, 'The Dance Song', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'A Sane Revolution', Pansies (Martin Secker, 1929), p. 108. 

 

 

This post is in memory of my mother, who enjoyed nothing more than skipping along the seafront at Whitley Bay as a child in the 1930s.

 

From Kant's Cave to Nietzsche's Kindergarten (Confessions of a Children's Entertainer)

Me in my role as a punk children's entertainer 

(c.1985)

 

Now watch closely little girl as I prick your red balloon 

with a safety pin ...

 

I. 

 

Last night I gave a short talk to the crowd gathered at Kant's Cave; a monthly meeting organised by Philosophy for All [1] and held in a first floor function room at the the famous Two Chairmen pub, in Wesminster [2].

 

The paper addressed the question of what constitutes dark enlightenment [3], so perhaps not ideal material for "shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats" [4] - or indeed young children. 

Nevertheless, I was delighted to discover that one of the people Zooming into the event was watching it accompanied by her precocious four-year-old son, who was equally fascinated by my public persona and appearance as he was by the contents of the paper itself:  

 

Mummy, why does he talk so fast? Why is he wearing such funny clothes? What's a zombie apocalypse?

 

 

II. 

 

Deleuze says that children are born philosophers or, more exactly, natural Spinozans; by which I think he means they instinctively know how to map real (rather than imaginary) trajectories and experiment with immediate (rather than representational) affects. 

 

That may or may not be the case. 

 

But what is undoubtedly true is that I should never have abandoned (my very short-lived) career as a punk children's entertainer in the mid-1980s, in order to become a failed artist and spectacularly unsuccessful poet-philosopher. 

 

For it seems I have a real knack for amusing little ones (and corrupting young minds in the manner of Socrates), whereas I have strictly limited talents as a grown up intellectual and adult educator. 

 

Not that I'm unhappy about this: for like Nietzsche, I think it is only by remaining a little childlike ourselves that we remain close also to the flowers, the grass, and to butterflies ... [5]

         

 

Notes

 

[1] Founded by Anja Steinbauer in 1998, Philosophy for All is an independent non-profit organisation that welcomes everyone with a love of wisdom - whatever their intellectual background or IQ - to attend its various events; walks, talks, film screenings, etc. Click here to visit the PfA website for full details.

 

[2] The Two Chairman is thought to be the oldest public house in Westminster and is housed in an 18th-century Grade II listed building in a part of Town at one time as notorious for cockfighting as political intrigue.        

 

[3] I published a four-part series of posts on dark enlightenment on Torpedo the Ark in July 2024: click here for part one, on the politics of hate; here for part two, on exiting the present; here for part three, on the zombie apocalypse; and/or here, for part four, on rejecting universalism. These four posts essentially formed the heart of the paper given at Kant's Cave.

[4] Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1990), 'Expeditions of an Untimely Man', 38, p. 102. 

 

[5] See Nietzsche writing in Human, All Too Human, Vol. II, Part 2 ('The Wanderer and His Shadow'), section 51. 

 

 

On the Art of Destruction and the Creative Potential Within Chaos

Agents of Chaos: Messrs. Rotten and Lawrence

 

 

I. 

 

If, like me, you are keen to promote the idea of D. H. Lawrence as a Sex Pistol, then one of his texts that you might discuss in order to lend credence to such a thesis is his introduction to Harry Crosby's volume of poetry Chariot of the Sun [1]. 

 

Entitled 'Chaos in Poetry', this short text develops the idea not merely of creative disorder that Malcolm McLaren and his young punk protégés will later inject into the moribund UK music scene of the mid-1970s, but of chaos as a realm of infinite possibilities and strange becomings [2].  

According to Lawrence, poetry is not merely a matter of words: essentially, it is an act of attention and the attempt to discover a new world within the known world. 

 

But this discovery of a new world involves an act of violence; the slitting of what he terms the Umbrella and by which he refers to all that is erected between ourselves and the sheer intensity of lived experience (our ideals, our conventions, and fixed forms of every description) [3]. 

 

The poet, then, as Lawrence understands them, is also a kind of terrorist; an enemy of human security and comfort. One whose concern is not with safeguarding the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, or merely experimenting with form and technique, but who wishes rather to unleash the inhuman and forever-surging chaos that punks, animals, and flowers all live within [4]. 

 

 

II. 

 

On 12 February 1976, the Sex Pistols were due to play at the famed Soho music venue the Marquee, supporting the pub rock band Eddie & the Hot Rods. 

 

Shortly before the gig took place, they were interviewed by Neil Spencer from the NME and extracts from this accompanied a review of the above performance, including what has since become a famous quote from guitarist Steve Jones: 

 

"Actually, we're not into music. We're into chaos." [5]    

As Bill Grundy later discovered, Jones always did have a nice turn of phrase. However, I think we can safely assume that he'd picked up this particular term - chaos - from Malcolm, as - along with the word ruins - it had a privileged place within McLaren's thinking.

 

For McLaren, as for Nietzsche, one must always retain a little chaos in one's character if one wishes to give birth to a dancing star [6]; and for McLaren, as for Lawrence, an originary chaos is what lies beneath the ruins of culture and its fixed forms erected to keep us safe and secure, though which in the long run cause us to become deadened. 

 

 

III. 

 

In sum: of course we require "a little order to protect us from chaos" [7], as Deleuze and Guattari recognise. 

 

But so too do we need a little chaos to protect us from the monumental dead weight of civilisation. 

 

And so we need our agents of chaos and angels of destruction - whether they come with red beards like D. H. Lawrence, or spiky red hair like Johnny Rotten.   

 

Sous les pavés, la plage!

 

And surely that's not simply a cry for freedom, so much as for the joy that comes when we smash those structures and systems, narratives and networks, that enframe us within a highly-ordered (and boring) world of discipline, convention, and common sense and get back to chaos.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lawrence wrote the introduction in 1928. A revised version was published under the title 'Chaos in Poetry' in the magazine Echanges in December 1929 (the same month in which Crosby committed suicide). Another version was used for the Black Sun Press edition of Chariot of the Sun (1931). 

      The text can be found in D. H. Lawrence, Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 107-116. 

 

[2] I am, of course, indebted to the thinking of Deleuze and Guattari who, in their final work together, argues that philosophy, science, and art all have the essential task of confronting chaos and that each discipline does so in a manner specific to itself as a way of thinking and creating. 

      If philosophy adventures into chaos via a plane of immanence and science via a plane of reference, then art constructs a plane of composition; indeed, this, for Deleuze and Guattari is definitional of art. But by this they refer not merely to technical composition, but an aesthetic composition concerned with sensation. Thus art is a unique way of thinking and of opening a plane within chaos, which, whilst related to science and philosophy, should not be thought of as merely an aestheticisation of these practices. 

      See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, trans. Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson (Verso, 1994). And see also my post on this book dated 23 May 2013: click here.   

 

[3] See the post entitled 'On Poetry, Chaos and the Great Umbrella' (10 June 2013): click here.

 

[4] Unfortunately, unlike animals and flowers, even punks can't live within chaos for very long and that is why they soon topple into cliché and become stereotypical; why they parade up and down the King's Road pretending that they are revolutionaries breathing the wild air of chaos, when they are all the while living and dying beneath the Great Umbrella.

 

[5] Neil Spencer's piece in the New Musical Express (21 Feb 1976) was entitled 'Don't look over your shoulder, but the Sex Pistols are coming'. It was reproduced in The Guardian to mark the 30th anniversary of its publication in 2006: click here. 

      Readers will note that no mention is given to the headlining Eddie & the Hot Rods, who had some of their equipment smashed by the Sex Pistols when the night descended (appropriately and not atypically) into chaos (they, the Sex Pistols, were booed off stage and subsequently banned from playing at the Marquee in future).

 

[6] See section 5 of the Prologue to Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 

 

[7] Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, p. 201.

 

 

For related posts to this one, please click here, here, and here.   

Philosophy on the Catwalk: In Praise of an Exterminating Angel Dressed in Lambskin

Model wearing an Emilio Parka and Ezio Trousers by Loro Piana

loropiana.com [1]

 

It takes a lot of courage to sail gaily, in super-soft shearling, 

right in the teeth of dreary convention. [2]

 

 

Nobody denies that we wear clothes for three very obvious reasons: firstly, to cover up our nakedness; secondly, to protect us from the elements and, thirdly, for purposes of ornamentation. 

 

But these aren't the only reasons and only those with very practical minds who always wear sensible shoes and keep their spending in line with their income, would fail to appreciate that dressing up is "an act of meaning beyond modesty, ornamentation, and protection" [3]. 

 

In other words, wearing clothes is a signifying activity and that's where its importance and real interest lies - particularly when the clothes in question are haute couture, rather than merely mass produced and ready-to-wear [4].

 

For within the world of high-end fashion, the frenzied play of signifiers is taken to the extreme; i.e., to the point of enchantment at which systems of reference begin to break down. In this manner, writes Baudrillard, the very logic of the commodity is abolished and there is "no longer any determinacy internal to the signs of fashion, hence they become free to commute and permutate without limit" [5]. 

 

This rupture of referential reason goes beyond the collapse of all values into the market and the sphere of commodities. When fashion becomes an art, then it transports us into another world entirely; one in which nihilism is consummated and we become (as Nietzsche would say) like the ancient Greeks; i.e., superficial out of profundity and full of the courage to remain at the surface, the fold, the skin; to adore appearance and believe in forms [6].    

 

Those who fail to appreciate this - who don't enjoy the absurdity of fashion; the frivolity and immorality "which at times gives fashion its subversive force (in totalitarian, puritan or archaic contexts)" [7] - will never understand why a young flâneur strolling through Soho in an outrageously expensive outfit made of shearling possesses the beauty an exterminating angel ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Loro Piana is an Italian luxury fashion brand, founded in 1924 by Pietro Loro Piana, and based in Milan. Initially known for its cashmere, vicuña, linen, and merino fabrics, the company has expanded to design knitwear, leather goods, footwear, fragrance and related accessories. Since 2013, the company has been majority-owned by Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the French multinational fashion conglomerate.

      If any wealthy readers fancy sending me the money, I will happily make the outfit pictured here my winter look for 2024/25. The hay-coloured Emilio Parka, crafted from shearling, costs £10,755; whilst the matching Ezio Trousers, in a creamy cashmere colour but also made from finest lambskin, are priced just over £7,000.        

 

[2] I'm paraphrasing a line by D. H. Lawrence, in 'Red Trousers' (1928). See his Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 138.

 

[3] Roland Barthes, 'Fashion and the Social Sciences', in The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford, ed. Andy Stafford and Michael Carter, (Berg, 2006), p. 97.

 

[4] I'm using the term haute couture in a broader contemporary sense, rather than with its strict 19th-century French definition; i.e., to refer to exclusive creations by the world's leading designers, made with high-quality, rare fabrics and crafted with meticulous attention to detail by skilled artisans, but not necessarily made to order by private clients or stamped with the official seal of the Paris Chamber of Commerce.

 

[5] Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, by Iain Hamilton Grant, (SAGE Publications, 2007), p. 87. 

 

[6] Nietzsche, Preface (4) The Gay Science (1887).  

      We might note that Baudrillard is sceptical about this. For whilst he speaks of the charm and fascination of fashion and welcomes the resurrection of forms, he dismisses fashion's revolution as innocuous and rejects the idea that it recovers the superficiality that Nietzsche discovered in the ancient Greeks: "Fashion is only a simulation of the innocence of becoming, the cycle of appearances is just its recycling." Symbolic Exchange and Death (2007), p. 89.

      In other words, fashion's passion for artifice and for empty signs and cycles - for making the insignificant signify - may be genuine, but it lacks symbolic radicality and only announces the myth of change. 

 

[7] Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death (2007), p. 94.