Reflections on Monique Wittig's Les Guérillères (1969) 2: Fragments of Myth & Memory

Blazing genital / the eternal circle is your symbol [a] 

 

 

Opening Remarks 

 

Having explored part one of Monique Wittig's novel Les Guérillères (1969) [b] in twenty fragments from a lesbian utopia, here we are going to reflect on (and summarise) part two. 

 

Again, let me confess from the outset that as much as I admire this text, it's one that I find difficult to follow at times due to its rejection of a linear structure. But then, of course, it wasn't written for me - lacking as I do a vagina and preferring fact and forgetfulness over myth and memory. 

 

 

II. Twenty Fragments of Myth & Memory 

 

(i) 

 

Part two opens with a story told by someone called Sophie Ménade - which simply has to be a pseudonym [c]. Her tale is an imaginative retelling of several older myths, including the biblical story found in Genesis of Eve and the serpent, and is designed to subvert ancient wisdom (inherently phallogocentric as it is). 

 

In Sophie's version of events, a naked black woman with a beautiful, glistening body walks through a colourful, vibrant orchard. She possesses a "hortative head of hair" (32) made of thousands of musical snakes that give her advice. 

 

Her favourite snake, Orpheus, does not tempt her toward sin or downfall, instead, he encourages her to eat the fruit in the centre of the garden and persuades her that all things which sparkle are good (even if all that glitters is not gold). 

 

I guess the idea is that we can trust our senses and should judge by the immediate, visceral experience of beauty as it is communicated to us - something that D. H. Lawrence would approve of, even if he speaks of things that glow rather than sparkle [d]. 

 

Sophie Ménade closes her address to the women by promising that, one day, they will have a clear understanding of a solar myth that will instruct them how to walk the earth as sun-women: 

 

"At these words the women begin to dance, stamping the ground with their feet. They begin a round dance, clapping their hands, giving voice to a song from which no coherent phrase emerges." (32) [e] 

 

(ii) 

 

Although they lead quite a hippie-ish lifestyle, the women are first and foremost warriors and live to make war not love and to demonstrate "their strength and their courage" (32) on the battlefield. 

 

The clue, of course, is in the word guérillères. 

 

(iii) 

 

Literacy is something else that matters greatly to these women: not a moment passes without one of them writing something in a great public register, or else reading aloud some passage. Interestingly, this is one of the main differences between Wittig's text and William Burroughs's novel The Wild Boys (1971) [f]. 

 

For although both books function as speculative, mythic fiction that uses experimental prose to narrate the violent overthrow of global heteropatriarchy by armed, gender-segregated combatants - and both authors believe that traditional narrative structures are inherently tied to oppressive systems of thought, meaning that language itself must be fractured - Wittig views language as a contestable area that can be reclaimed and rewritten, whereas Burroughs sees it as an alien virus used by the state to programme human behaviour. 

 

Ultimately, his goal is not to write a queer new language, but to destroy language entirely so as to achieve absolute silent consciousness. 

 

(iv) 

 

One of the women - Phiomèle Sarte [g] - loves to sing while squatting on her heels and swinging her breasts from side to side. When she finally stops singing, she falls face down on the floor, spent with joy and exhaustion, and has to be carried home to her bed. That, or left on the grass to sleep in the sun. 

 

One critic explains that this is a primal, ritualistic act that is all about reclaiming bodily autonomy and experiencing the kind of pleasure that the French call jouissance. The fact that, after she has collapsed, she is cared for shows the sense of community and mutual support among the women. 

 

Of course, that's a reading that insists on the novel as a utopian work of allegorical fiction. More literal-minded readers might worry that the woman is mentally ill and clearly needs medical assistance rather than being left to lie on the grass or dumped back home to sleep it off (they might even call this neglectful behaviour). 

 

(v) 

 

It seems that the glenuri are not the only strange creatures found in Wittig's novel ... 

 

Meet the julep - an animal "without head or tail that [...] spins on itself without uttering a sound" (33), so named because of its "predilection for rosewater" (35). Sometimes it is covered with scales; "at others it is covered with feathers" (33). It can sometimes emit a faint but unpleasant odour (a bit like garlic). 

 

The little girls have tried to tame them: "They put them on a leash to drag them behind them. But even pulling with all their might they cannot succeed in making the juleps budge." (35) 

 

Again, all of this means nothing to me, I'm afraid: I don't even find it particularly whimsical. 

 

However, I've read that some feminist scholars think that the julep is an allegorical symbol for the clitoris: that by representing the latter as an independent creature Wittig isolates it from old ways of thinking and establishes it as an autonomous site of female pleasure [h]. 

 

I'm not entirely convinced by this, but, in the absence of any better theory, I'm happy to accept it. 

 

(vi) 

 

This made me smile: 

 

"The women say that they perceive their bodies in their entirety. They say that they do not favour any of its parts on the grounds that it was formerly a forbidden Object. They say that they do not want to become prisoners of their own ideology. [...] For example they do not [...] say that the vulvas are like black suns in the shining night." (35) 

 

And the reason it made me smile is because this is precisely what they do and say ...! [i] 

 

Obviously, as a novel, Les Guérillères has no index. But if it did, the word vulva would feature at least ten times more than any other term. For as I said in the first part of this post, this is a book of aggressive vulva activism and cunt awareness - a space in which philosophers and insects quickly lose their way. 

 

Having said that, see fragment (x) below. 

 

(vii) 

 

The women are warned: Beware of dispersal! Do not abandon the collectivity! If I were one of their number, it's precisely at this point I would scat like a cat and sever all ties. 

 

(viii) 

 

Considering the women are meant to be happy holding hands, drinking, laughing, playing, etc., an awful amount of weeping goes on in Wittig's book. Particularly in the winter months when they roll in the snow and "sobs rack their bodies" (37). 

 

Sometimes, it is so cold that "the frost solidifies their tears" until they "shine and sparkle on their cheeks" (37). Which is strange, because I thought they were living on tropical islands in the equatorial region, where it would normally snow on the highest mountain peaks. 

 

Or is this a memory of an earlier time and place? I feel a bit lost. And a bit confused. And, to be honest, a bit bored. 

 

(ix) 

 

I don't know why, but the story of Adèle Donge and the meticulous embalming of her corpse (described in some detail), reminded me of the scene in David Fincher's Fight Club (1999) when the dead body of Robert Paulson is laid on the table and everyone begins to chant his name (even though in Project Mayhem each member is stripped of their individual identity). 

 

Her name is Adèle Donge ... Her name is Adèle Donge ... 

 

And it's a name heavily layered with historical, literary, and thematic meaning. For her surname is a reference to Marie Donge, the protagonist of Georges Simenon's famous 1942 novel La Vérité sur Bébé Donge. 

 

In the book, Mme. Donge is a desperate housewife who cannot take it anymore and so quietly and meticulously poisons her unfaithful husband with arsenic. By taking the surname and placing it into a setting of free, armed warriors, Wittig liberates the figure of the oppressed wife, transforming her from a domestic victim into a venerated, legendary figure of a sovereign female collective. 

 

As for the first name, Adèle, this derives from the Germanic word for noble. Now, of course, in a traditional patriarchal context, nobility is tied to lineage and male inheritance. But in Les Guérillères, it is earned on the battlefield and comes with death and the quasi-sacred ritual of her embalming. 

 

Her body is preserved like that of an ancient Egyptian queen and revered by her sisters, just as Bob Paulson was turned into a martyr and accorded posthumous status by his brothers-in-arms. In other words, in both Wittig's novel and Fincher's film, we witness the creation of a new sovereign mythology achieved through mourning and remembrance. 

 

(x) 

 

To be fair to the women, they do, at some point, realise that it's just as silly to worship the cunt as it is the phallus and that they must "examine the principle that has guided them" (44) and not exhaust themselves in symbolism or become trapped by their own anatomy. 

 

If you really want to rediscover the body and what it can do, then one must listen to Artaud: lose the organs and reject the metaphysical overcoding and bio-functional organ-isation of the body into the organism [j]. 

 

(xi) 

 

The feminist rejection of the domestic life and of work which has traditionally been regarded as suitable for them is celebrated in a huge bonfire of various objects and machines, including sewing-machines, typewriters, knitting-needles, ironing-boards, saucepans, brooms of every bristle, vacuum cleaners, washing-machines, etc. 

 

"They heap them on to an immense pyre to which they set fire, blowing up everything that will not burn. Then, starting to dance round it, they clap their hands, they shout obscene phrases, they cut their hair or let it down." (45) 

 

While part of me smiles, the problem with this kind of action is that it's so easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater - but then, les guérillères probably don't care too much about that; they want to be Amazons, not mothers, and reject the biological and social reduction of women to mere reproductive vessels. 

 

If they do become pregnant and are obliged to eventually give birth, they view the latter as another kind of bloody battle and see the baby not so much as a bundle of joy but as something that has been captured. 

 

(xii) 

 

Torpedophiles will know that I have had a long interest in the strangely erotic relationship between women and snakes - see the post titled 'Ophidicism' (18 August 2013), for example. 

 

And so, I was happy to discover that some of Wittig's warrior women enjoy coiling snakes around their bodies and engaging in ancient pagan practices that involve putting lips to scales and ritually kissing serpents. 

 

(xiii) 

 

The women decide to produce a new (post-patriarchal) dictionary in which the word hate has been redefined as a form of vital energy. 

 

Now that's something I would support: for like William Hazlitt, I'm of the view that there's a real pleasure to be found in hating things - that hate is more than merely a reactive form of love and that, ultimately, it's hate, not love or truth, that will set you free [k]. 

 

(xiv) 

 

Great gatherings of uniformed women all marching in unison - possibly even more depressing than great gatherings of uniformed men all marching in unison. 

 

I hate great gatherings. I hate uniforms. And I hate the sight of people marching. 

 

And the sight of horses wounded and maimed by war is simply heartbreaking - far more so than the sight of human combatants bleeding or missing limbs. 

 

(xv) 

 

Les guérillères mourn all women who are victims of male violence and who have been hanged, beheaded, or "broken alive on the wheel in a public square" (50). 

 

As far as they are concerned, all these women are daughters of Eve and to the one who asks the nature of their crime they answer: "It was identical with that of the woman of whom it is written that she saw that the tree of the garden was good to eat [...] and that it was the tree requisite for gaining understanding" (50). 

 

(xvi) 

 

Flags are flown and trumpets sounded: let the war against men commence! The women laugh and shout and spit blood in the midst of battle, stepping over the bodies of fallen comrades: 

 

"The women say they have learned to rely on their own strength. They say they are aware of the force of their unity. They say, let those who call for a new language first learn violence. They say, let those who want to change the world first seize all the rifles. They say that they are starting from zero. They say that a new world is beginning." (52) 

 

They say a lot of things. But I say (after Foucault) that they should beware of the fascism ingrained in their own behaviour and idealism that causes the love of power and violence, the desire for Year Zero. 

 

(xvii) 

 

"They say that it is better to die than to live as slaves." (57) 

 

That's true, some famous figures (and former slaves) including Frederick Douglass, Samuel Sharpe, and Harriet Ann Jacobs have all agreed on this point, arguing that when a person is legally and economically reduced to the status of property or livestock, then the only way they can affirm their humanity is by consciously choosing their own death (the ultimate expression of free will). 

 

But I don't think this should be allowed to pass without at least some resistance. For such idealism - which often seems to equate death with a form of escape and freedom - very often has fatal consequences not just for those who subscribe to it [l]. 

 

Critics of this supposed noble truth - one that is ironically born of slave morality - point out that equating death with freedom is, at best, a logical fallacy and often betrays a religious mindset. For death is not the gateway to the freedom that awaits in the afterlife. Death is the stripping away of all essence and agency; a festive return to the material realm. 

 

Further, many historians point out that staying alive under oppression is its own form of defiance and that survival allows for the possibility of future rebellion, the preservation of culture, and to act as a historical witness. 

 

(xviii) 

 

A stylised performance that mimics combat movements, a war dance was traditionally used to prepare for battle, celebrate victory, or honour spiritual and tribal values. 

 

Wittig's warrior women begin their dance by stepping forward lightly, moving in a circle, holding hands and carefully observing the music. But, as they become more ecstatic, they leap about like young horses, stamping the ground and beating out the rhythm of a dance dedicated to the goddess Minerva. 

 

(xix) 

 

This is the sort of paragraph that one might have expected to see Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood used on a shirt design for SEX or Seditionaries, or that Jamie Reid might have incorporated into a piece of artwork for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, describing the Sex Pistols: 

 

"They say that they foster disorder in all its forms. Confusion troubles violent debates disarray upsets disturbances incoherences irregularities divergences complications disagreements discords clashes polemics discussions contentions brawls disputes conflicts routs débâcles cataclysms disturbances quarrels agitation turbulence conflagrations chaos anarchy." (57) 

 

(xx) 

 

I'm not a pacifist. But I don't like those who glorify modern warfare and thrill to the thought of exterminating their enemy. And so, I don't much care for this from the very end of part two of Les Guérillères: 

 

"Their favourite weapons are portable. [...] There is every kind of rifle. There are machine guns and rocket-launchers. [...] The objective is not to gain ground but to destroy the greatest number of the enemy [...]" (58) 

 

I refer readers to the end of section (xvi) above re fascism and would remind them also of what Nietzsche says about honouring one's adversary - not seeking their annihilation. 

 

Having a worthy enemy should be a point of pride; their strength forces you to raise your own game and overcome your own weaknesses. Ultimately, it might be the case that not only does one find one's best enemy in one's best friend, but one locates one's best friend in one's best enemy. 

 

The true warrior does not seek to humiliate or crush an opponent, but happily engage in struggle with them. Unfortunately, it seems that in war as in love, woman is more barbarous than man ... [m] 

 

 

Notes 

 

[a] In her 1969 novel Les Guérillères, Monique Wittig uses the recurring letter 'O' as a powerful graphic and poetic device to primarily symbolise three things: female anatomy and sexuality (the vulval ring); a new point of origin free from old values that enables women to completely reinvent language, culture, and society (the mathematical zero); the unity of the lesbian sisterhood and community of warrior women (the circle of trust). 

 

[b] Considered a pivotal text by feminist and lesbian thinkers, Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig was originally published by Les Editions de Minuit (1969). David Le Vay's 1971 English translation has been used in numerous editions, including the Beacon Press edition (1985) and the University of Illinois Press edition (2007). 

      Here, I am using the /ubu Editions e-book (2007). This free digital publishing project - created as part of UbuWeb - is an online archive for avant-garde writing founded by the American poet and cultural provocateur Kenneth Goldsmith. 

 

[c] I say this because the name 'Sophie Ménade' is simply too good (too convenient) to be true; the forename being the French spelling of the Greek word for wisdom [σοφία] and the surname meaning a wildly excited (possibly violent) woman who is either divinely inspired or a little bit crazy. It comes from the Greek term μαίνομαι (maínomai), which is where the female followers of Dionysus took their name from. 

 

[d] See Lawrence's essay 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 192, where he rejects the folk wisdom of base-born proverbs that denigrate beauty and cause us to doubt our own senses. "If you can't trust the impression which things make on you", he writes, "you are a fool." 

      See also the article 'Sex Appeal' in the same volume, pp. 143-148, in which he writes of beauty as an experience. 

 

[e] Again, one can't help but be reminded of Lawrence who also speaks of women in a time to come who belong neither to men nor their children nor even themselves, but to the sun. See D. H. Lawrence. 'Sun-women', in The Poems Vol. 1, ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 456. 

 

[f] I recently wrote a post titled 'Dancing in the Rain' (3 Sept 2016) which discusses Burroughs's Wild Boys novel in relation to the song by Duran Duran. 

      One day, I will write the comparative study I promised on Wittig's novel and Burroughs's book. While their violent revolutionary fantasies share much in common and both works read like ancient epic poetry or future tribal histories rather than traditional novels, their ultimate political destinations represent two entirely different poles of radical separatism. 

      In brief, Wittig celebrates the total destruction of phallocracy to liberate the female body and construct a world based on collective sisterhood (which eventually incorporates men who surrender their patriarchal power). Burroughs's utopia, on the other hand, is an exclusively male, homoerotic universe that eliminates women completely (his future world relies on cloning, not sexual reproduction). She wants an egalitarian society free of sex and class dynamics; Burroughs envisions his wild boys one day abandoning the Earth and mutating into alien space beings. 

 

[g] A name that playfully suggests this woman is a lover of songs with existential meaning. In Greek mythology, Philomela is an Athenian princess who after some great tragedy befalls her is transformed by the gods into a nightingale. And Sarte ... well, I probably don't need to explain the cultural and philosophical resonances of this name (even when missing an 'r'). 

 

[h] Feminist theorists have been keen to posit the clitoris as a highly sensitive and complex organ that challenges religious, social, medical, and literary frameworks that have traditionally ignored, denied, or downplayed female pleasure. 

      One might recall Lady Chatterley's lover, Oliver Mellors, raging about the clitoris (or what he calls the beak). In his phallocentric view, a mature woman should only achieve orgasm through vaginal penetration by the penis. Clitoral stimulation is, in his opinion, an immature, inferior, and even unnatural way for a woman to derive pleasure. See chapter 14 of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). 

 

[i] This claim that the women do not "say that vulvas with their elliptical shape are to be compared to suns, planets, innumerable galaxies" or that the cunt "is the primal form which as such describes the world in all its extent, in all its movement" is repeated on p. 37. But despite this insistence, I still think that this is what many of the women believe. 

 

[j] See Antonin Artaud's 1947 text (performed as a radio play) Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu (To Have Done with the Judgment of God), in which he declares that there is 'nothing more useless than an organ' - even our sex organs. See also Deleuze and Guattari's development of Artaud's thinking in Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980). 

 

[k] See the post 'And Hate Shall Set You Free' (15 Aug 2025). And see also the much earlier post 'Torpedo the Ark Means: I Hate Everything' (15 Nov 2014). 

 

[l] Indeed, it might be argued that this is often a luxury belief; that romanticising death over slavery is often an attitude held by those who are not actually facing the immediate reality of being killed. 

      The American Founding Father, Patrick Henry, for example, did not die violently, nor did he ever have to choose between literal death or slavery. Instead, he lived a relatively long and prosperous life and died peacefully at home. When he delivered his famous 'Give me liberty, or give me death!' speech at the Second Virginia Convention in March 1775, he was speaking rhetorically and using slavery as a political metaphor (his actual objection was to British rule and the imposition of taxes by the Crown - and it might also be noted by those who appreciate a little irony that he himself was a major slaveholder). 

 

[m] I'm paraphrasing Nietzsche's line from Beyond Good and Evil (1886): "In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man." Trans. from the German by R. J. Hollingdale in the Penguin edition (1990), IV. 139, p. 101.

 

 

Sniffing Out Otherness: D. H. Lawrence and His Racially Sensitive Nose

D. H. Lawrence and his nose: described rather unkindly by 

Mabel Dodge Luhan as 'podgy, almost vulgar' [1] 

 

I.  

 

In a recent post [2], I mentioned how the sense of smell was very important for D. H. Lawrence. 

 

Indeed, without saying as much, one gets the impression that, like Nietzsche, he located his own peculiar genius in his hypersensitive nose, the nostrils of which formed "the great gate from the wide atmosphere of heaven to the lungs" [3] - and you thought them merely two small holes!

 

For Lawrence, our sense of smell is rooted in the lower centres of the body - the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion - and the shape of the nose depends on "the direct control of the deepest centres of consciousness" [4]. It is not simply determined by an interplay of anatomical structure, genetics, and evolutionary adaptation to climate. 

 

Lawrence - in case you hadn't noticed - doesn't have much time for conventional scientific descriptions of the body and its organs. And he would have hated and despised the modern quest for a perfect nose involving the cosmetic surgical procedure known as rhinoplasty. 

 

For better or for worse, Lawrence would have advised people to keep the hooter they've been blessed with - be it short and snub, long and beaky, high and arched, or thick and squat. For the nose reveals one's true character; that is to say, "it almost inevitably indicates the mode of predominant dynamic consciousness in the individual" [5] and the primary centre from which they live.        

 

If Lawrence had his way, not only would there be human excrement piled up in the streets (either don't ask, or see the post linked to in note 1 below), but kissing would be replaced by nose rubbing, as the latter involves "a more sensitive and a deeper sensual salute" [6] than the mere pressing of lips.   

 

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, one of the things that Lawrence used his heightened sense of smell for was to sniff out the racial otherness of the passenger sitting next to him on public transport. 

 

In one of his more contentious and controversial passages, Lawrence writes that if "an Arab or a negro or even a Jew" [7] sits down next to him on the train, then that individual is not known to him in a way that a middle-class white Englishman is known: 

 

"As he sits next to me, there is a faint uneasy movement in my blood. A strange vibration comes from him, which causes a slight disturbance in my own vibration. There is a slight odour in my nostrils. And above all, even if I shut my eyes, there is a strange presence in contact with me." [8] 

 

Lawrence being Lawrence, however, he rather likes this - arguing that it allows for a real thought-adventure beyond mere knowing and understanding. And so, rather than simply insulate himself from contact with racial otherness, he affirms the disturbance of his blood and admits that something vital passes from the stranger; "because, after all, there is some peculiar alien sympathy between us." [9]  

 

 

III.  

 

Lawrence's view of race is, then, by no means simple and straightforward. It is, as sympathetic critics like to say, nuanced (by which they mean full of contradictions and inconsistencies). 

 

Despite a misconception that still lingers in some quarters, Lawrence certainly wasn't a conventional racist, even if he subscribed to an essentialised form of racial mysticism that celebrated primitivism on the one hand and what used to be called exotic otherness on the other. As he once told Jessie Chambers, for him, white skin is unnatural and ultimately only black is beautiful (even if not personally desirable to him) [10]. 

 

Having said that, Lawrence often expresses "shock, disgust and disappointment" [11] when he actually encounters people belonging to different cultures or ethnicities - especially "when a people or culture proved insufficiently primitive or different" [12] for the purposes of his philosophy. 

 

It's one thing discovering that Apaches have "an unbearable sulphur-human smell [...] that takes the breath from the nostrils" [13], but it was even more upsetting for Lawrence - the savage pilgrim - to discover "sameness where otherness was to be expected" [14]. 

 

Thus, when he reads fiction written by African Americans or visits Harlem in NYC - "that dismal region of hard stone streets" [15] - it is disconcerting to find that the black man is just another modern, urban American very little different from the white man apart from the colour of his skin. 

 

"One likes to cherish illusions about the race soul, the eternal negroid soul, black and glistening and touched with awfulness and with mystery" [16], writes Lawrence, but that becomes impossible when one actually comes into contact with people of colour (or when one's nose is blocked).  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Mabel Dodge Luhan, Lorenzo in Taos (Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), p. 49. 

 

[2] The post I'm referring to is titled 'On D. H. Lawrence and the Human Stink' (23 Aug 2026). 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 100. 

 

[4] Ibid. 

 

[5] Ibid., p. 101.

 

[6] Ibid. To be fair, Lawrence may have a point here; the traditional Eskimo greeting - often mischaracterised as mere nose-rubbing - is an intimate gesture where family members and/or loved ones press faces in order to inhale and familiarise themselves with each other's scent. 

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'On Being a Man', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 214. 

 

[8] Ibid., p. 215. 

 

[9] Ibid. 

 

[10] This conversation between Lawrence and Jessie Chambers is recalled in her memoir - D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 111.

 

[11] Laura E. Ryan: 'You are white - yet a part of me': D. H. Lawrence and the Harlem Renaissance (PhD thesis submitted to The University of Manchester, 2019), p. 40.  

      Dr Ryan's fascinating work in this area has significantly helped shape my thinking in this post - particularly section III - and I look forward to reading her newly published book D. H. Lawrence and Black Modernism: Transatlantic Influence and Confluence (Bloomsbury, 2026). I am also delighted to be contributing an essay on Lawrence's proto-punk sensibilities to a forthcoming collection she is co-editing (with Dr Jo Jones) for Edinburgh University Press. 

 

[12] Ibid. 

 

[13] D. H. Lawrence, 'Indians and an Englishman', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 116. 

 

[14] Laura E. Ryan: 'You are white - yet a part of me': D. H. Lawrence and the Harlem Renaissance (2019), p. 43. 

 

[15] D. H. Lawrence, 'Review of Nigger Heaven, by Carl Van Vechten, Flight, by Walter White, Manhattan Transfer, by John Dos Passos, and In Our Time, by Ernest Hemmingway', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 308. For a lively discussion of Lawrence's visit to Harlem, see the Introduction to Laura E. Ryan's, 'You are white - yet a part of me' (pp. 27-28). 

 

[16] Ibid. 

 

On D. H. Lawrence and the Human Stink

Jaume Serra Cantallops: Bad Smell 

saatchiart.com  

 

'There was a basic perfumatory theme to the odour of humanity: a sweaty-oily, 

sour-cheesy, quite richly repulsive basic theme that clung 

to all humans equally ...' [1]

                                                                                           

 

I.

 

Although the popular idea that most people in the pre-modern past rarely washed and smelled constantly of sweat, excrement, and other foul odours is largely a myth, it can be agreed that they certainly lived in a far less deodorised and sanitised world than you and I have been reared within.    

 

One can only assume that because everyone lived in the same malodorous human environment, people in the pre-modern past were largely indifferent to the natural body odours of their fellow citizens (although they remained acutely sensitive to any smells that suggested disease). 

 

 

II. 

 

Personally, as someone with hyperosmia [2] on the one hand and osmophobia [3] on the other, I have to confess I'm glad I was born in the modern world - with indoor plumbing, plenty of hot water, and a huge range of soaps, shower gels, and shampoos available. 

 

That, however, puts me at odds with D. H. Lawrence, who argues that vital human sympathy rests upon our natural odour and that "the flow of spontaneous warmth" [4] between people has collapsed today precisely because we have become physically repulsive to one another. He writes: 

 

"While the old sympathetic flow continues, there are violent hostilities between people, but they are not secretly repugnant to one another. Once the heart is broken, people become repulsive to one another [...] They smell in each other's nostrils." 

 

Confirming what I say above, Lawrence then writes in the same text:

 

"It has been said often enough of more primitive or old-world peoples, who live together in a state of blind mistrust but also of close physical connection with one another, that they have no noses. They are so close, the flow from body to body is so powerful, that they hardly smell one another, and are hardly aware at all of the offensive human odours that madden the new civilisations. [...] And this is basically true." 

 

For Lawrence, then, once the blood-sympathy breaks - and only the nerve-sympathy remains - then men begin to smell to one another. This is revealed not only by the fact that we get gleaming white bathtubs, wash basins, and toilets, but in the novels of James Joyce and those "awful advertisements [...] about 'halitosis', or bad breath". 

 

Lawrence - who is dying of tuberculosis at the time of writing - is also irritated by the modern person's horror for "coughing, spitting, or any of those things" and seems to suggest that he'd rather see human excrement in the street than piles of litter and old rubbish.  

 

 

III. 

 

Again, I'm afraid I have to differ with Lawrence on this last point - and I can't say I'm thrilled by the fact that some local authorities in Europe and the UK are now having to erect signs explicitly asking people not to shit in public and post multilingual or pictogram-based instructions on how to use a toilet correctly. 

 

Some might think of this as cultural enrichment and a revival of an older form of human sympathy, but I don't.  

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, trans. John E. Woods (Hamish Hamilton / Penguin Books, 1987), p. 154. Note that I have slightly modified the quote.  

 

[2] Hyperosmia is the medical term for an intense or heightened sensitivity to smells. 

      Nietzsche had this condition and exploited it to his philosophical advantage to sniff out moral and cultural corruption, often boasting that his genius lay in his nostrils. See Nietzsche, 'Why I Am a Destiny' (1), in Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1979), p. 126.   

 

[3] Osmophobia is a specific fear or psychophysiological aversion to (usually bad) odours that can trigger headaches, nausea, and other symptoms of migraine.    

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to Bottom Dogs by Edward Dahlberg', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 121. All following quotes from this text are also found on p. 121 of this book. 

 

 

For a fun follow up post to this one on how Lawrence used his nost to sniff out racial otherness (25 Aug 2026), click here.  

 

Fragments from an Open Letter to an Anonymous Demon

Illustration by Fareha Islam in

The Stuyvesant Spectator (2026) [1]

  

 

Opening Remarks 

 

A recently published post on the maxim (and showtune) 'It's Not Where You Start' (18 Aug 2026) now comes with a pointy-tailed pair of comments attached by an anonymous critic, which I thought it might be fun to address at some length here in the form of fragments from an open letter.     

 

This is not because I wish to pick a fight or stage some kind of performative confrontation - nor is it an attempt to butter parsnips, as my anonymous critic puts it [2]. 

 

The suggestion that these are merely empty words assembled for the sake of a post misses the functional reality: the comments section has an inconvenient word limit. Also, by publishing the material here it hopefully becomes accessible to a wider number of readers.      

 

Finally, two more things to note: firstly, all quotations in the text are from the comments written by the above (italicised terms are also ones used by them). 

 

Secondly, whilst I will endeavour to address my anonymous demon critic in a courteous manner, as requested, this is nevertheless a critical rebuttal of their arguments which I think naive and moralistic; the sort of uplifting twaddle I would expect from an enthusiastic sixth-form teacher inspired by the disastrous example of John Keating [3]. 

 

 

I. 

 

Dear Anonymous, 

 

You find it bizarre that I should refer to beings sired by the Devil and ask if I can "helpfully point toward one or two of them knocking around the planet", before then making a rather cheap and unfunny joke referencing two cinematic examples of such. 

 

Perhaps you are forgetting that in a previous comment added to an earlier post [4], you explicitly described yourself as demonic spawn. But even if you haven't forgotten this - and are simply engaging in a form of revisionism - to take an obviously metaphorical phrase and treat it as a literal, biological claim is a ridiculous rhetorical failure. 

 

Pointing out that The Omen (1976) and Rosemary's Baby (1968) are "just films", is to treat an everyday figure of speech with the pedantic literalism of a young child - or a deliberately obtuse internet troll. Most readers will recognise that the phrase 'spawned by the Devil' is a humorous narrative trope. To imply that I am referencing actual demons is to set up a straw man just so you can then feel clever in mocking it. 

 

As for your parenthetical remark - "Unless we're missing something" - I read this as a passive-aggressive attempt to establish yourself as the voice of reason and make me seem like the one obsessed with the supernatural. 

 

In other words, you are pretending to be an objective and slightly puzzled reader looking for literal movie monsters, while fully knowing that you are the person the phrase demonic spawn refers to. It's an ironic turning of the tables, but hardly very courteous and betrays the fact you come to the comments section not to discuss ideas, but perform and compete.    

 

I'm fine with that: but don't complain when I decide to play the same game and join you on the stage. One cannot adopt a demonic persona one week and then feign confusion when that exact persona is referenced the next. That's not being protean, just a bit of a prick.

 

II. 

 

Moving on, we come to your defence of "bloody hard work" and "bringing out the best (or possibly worst) of what one has in oneself". 

 

This, you insist, "isn't a cliché or trite formula", but a "life-affirming idea", thereby positioning yourself as a moral vitalist (someone who views both good and evil as active forces of agency), as well as one who likes to roll their sleeves up and graft (whether this corresponds with the reality of your own life is something I'd be interested to know).   

 

I don't oppose the values of "resilience, persistence, and perseverance" - ironically, the 2,780 posts published on Torpedo the Ark over the last fourteen years demonstrate my adherence to (or embodiment of) precisely these qualities. I'll return to this point later when addressing your accusation of laziness. 

 

However, I do challenge the above as foundational ideals within Christianity that were weaponised by modern bourgeois society [5] - as does Nietzsche, in both his sane and crazy periods. 

 

As he notes in Daybreak (§ 173), for example, the relentless praise of hard work is part of a strategy to keep individuals productive and predictable members of the herd. By draining the individual of their energy through constant economic activity, society successfully prevents the dangerous, disruptive emergence of genuine creative endeavour [6].

 

Thus, when you champion hard work over idleness you are not being a radical vitalist, but, rather, acting as an anti-Nietzschean shill for the capitalist machine. 

 

And if you care to re-read the section in The Gay Science that you quote from (§ 290), you'll note that Nietzsche doesn't in fact use any of the three terms you defend. Giving style to one's character requires rigorous artistic discipline, not submissiveness to God or economic compliance with the world of work. 

 

Thus, I'm sorry to say that you have misunderstood his philosophy in relation to this question, falling back as you do into a moral liberal framework. 

 

 

III. 

 

Still on Nietzsche ... You state that his concept of slave morality "isn't a stupid attack on underdogs [...] wanting to succeed" and that's true - but only because the English term was not part of 19th-century German vocabulary (although it is now a loanword I believe).

 

But even if you love underdogs, I doubt Nietzsche would have had much time for them: what is the letzte Mensch if not the ultimate underdog; hardworking, happy, self-preserving - and he's gonna finish on top once all the top dogs holding positions of power and authority have been neutered. 

 

This certainly sounds like a canine version of the Sklavenaufstand in der Moral and you'd have to be barking to deny it.   

 

 

IV.

 

Abandoning philosophical argument entirely, you then shift to a (cod-psychological) diagnosis of my character:

 

"In his statement that 'starting positions such as wealth, access to education, and social connections heavily determine the direction and final outcome of life' and that people 'lucky enough to have a good start will invariably finish ahead of the game', we learn the truth of Stephen Alexander's own ressentiment, bitterness, and fundamental laziness."

 

So much for your earlier plea for courtesy! 

 

And it rather surprises me that a demon spawned by the Father of Lies and concealed in anonymity should be so concerned with learning the truth.  

  

More importantly, your character diagnosis fails on a purely empirical level: you provide no evidence of my ressentiment or bitterness and the 2,780 published posts on Torpedo the Ark over the last fourteen years render your accusation of fundamental laziness absurd. 

 

As a writer, my job is to write. And the millions of words written on TTA demonstrate a significant degree of intellectual discipline and creative endurance. To accuse me of "fundamental laziness" is, therefore, an odd thing to say - a kind denial not just of evidence, but reality.     

 

Actual laziness is more likely revealed by vague promises of "one day creating something self-astonishing", just as the safety of anonymity allows one to critique the labour of others without ever exposing one's own work to scrutiny.   

 

 

V. 

 

Ultimately, your text reads less like a diabolically clever critique and more as a conventional strategy typical of those who dismiss systemic realities in favour of individual exceptionalism. When the structural unfairness of an economic system is exposed, the immediate reflex of its beneficiaries is to pathologise the critic - rebranding political awareness of inequality as mere resentment or envy. 

 

In attempting to counter this by naming exceptional historical anomalies like Nelson Mandela and Edith Piaf, you rely entirely on what is known as survivor bias [7]. Unfortunately, simply pointing to a few extraordinary outliers does not disprove the statistical reality that baseline social structures trap the vast majority of people. 

 

You warn intelligent readers to be wary of anyone who uses phrases like in reality - and that is often good advice, as the phrase is frequently abused - but exercising a degree of rhetorical caution does not allow one to flatly deny that a reality exists. 

 

To suggest that simply because a phrase can be used to disguise doxa the underlying material conditions of human life disappear, is a bizarre leap of logic. It allows you to comfortably ignore the brutal, measurable statistics of poverty and structural disadvantage by treating them as mere linguistic disputes.

 

 

VI.

 

You end your commentary with an additional insult aimed my way, a reading of Aesop's story to do with the tortoise and the hare, and a couple more big names dropped - Samuel Beckett and Derek Walcott - just to add a final literary flourish. 

 

Ignoring Walcott if I may, let me first reply to the insult, then move on to the well-known Greek fable, and then, very briefly, say something about Beckett and his idea of failing better ... 

 

(i) 

 

Your assertion that because I do not turn my criticism into self-criticism - "the telos of all genuinely philosophical criticality" - I am therefore "unable or unwilling to acknowledge [my] own bullshit" is a tu quoque fallacy wrapped up in pseudo-Hegelian terminology. 

 

You invoke the word telos to give your argument a fancy intellectual veneer, but the argument itself is merely an attempt to deflect. By declaring that the ultimate goal of philosophy is self-criticism, you attempt to shift the focus away from your own logically flawed positions and put my character on trial once more.

 

But a critique of what Byung-Chul Han calls the burnout society does not require an author to issue a disclaimer admitting that they, too, participate in the market economy. Obviously, I'm implicated in the world I discuss. But to suggest that a writer must tack on a confession of their own personal flaws and failings to every structural analysis before that analysis can be validated is ridiculous. 

 

(ii) 

 

I'm afraid to say, having consulted the text, your reading of 'The Hare and the Tortoise' is a modern piece of revisionism. It's clever and imaginative, but far removed from the original story and to rewrite an ancient animal fable as a journey of self-actualisation is to strip it of textual and historical reality.  

 

You insist the tortoise emerges as the winner not because he beats his opponent per se, but because he remains "faithful to himself, non-stressed, and relentless" and ultimately "overcomes himself". 

 

In other words, the tortoise accepts his own nature, stays calm, and fights his own limits instead of fighting his long-eared rival. He symbolises what we would today call mindfulness and zen focus in a noisy and hectic world. 

 

But that is certainly not how the Ancient Greeks understood the story: they were far more pragmatically-minded and for them, the tortoise wins because he crosses the finish line ahead of an arrogant and complacent adversary; it's a political warning against the dangers of leporine hubris [8].

 

For the Greeks, wasting divinely-given talents and strengths was a severe moral failing that invited cosmic retribution. The tortoise won because the hare self-sabotaged, not because the slow-moving reptile was morally superior due to his resilience, persistence, and perseverance.

 

Ultimately, you admire the tortoise for the same reason you love the underdog: because you - like Aesop - support the slave revolt in morality [9]. 

 

The lesson of his fable for a lower-class Greek was this: if you are weak, you cannot beat the powerful through brute force or speed. You must quietly exploit their arrogance, keep your head down, stay humble, work hard, and keep moving forward while they destroy themselves.

 

(iii) 

 

This desire to turn art into uplifting motivational guff is further exposed by your misuse of Samuel Beckett. To borrow his 'fail again - fail better' idea from Worstward Ho! (1983) in order to celebrate "people who achieve things" is an outrageous move. 

 

Beckett was not auditing a business seminar or offering tips for personal reinvention and to enlist the high priest of mid-century nihilism into your campaign for personal productivity is a masterclass in bad faith. 

 

I refer you to my post of 11 June 2013 in which I write: 

 

"Beckett is absolutely not telling us that if at first we don't succeed, we should try, try again in the hope and expectation that such endurance is bound to pay off. Rather, he's saying that no matter how hard you try, no matter how many times you fail, you will never succeed: that success is not even an option. For we are destined to fail: such is the tragic character of our mortal being. The fact that Beckett affirms this and finds in it a source of darkly comic satisfaction, demonstrates that his is what Nietzsche would term a pessimism of strength." 

 

The post concludes: 

 

"The fact that his words are to be found on a wide variety of motivational posters, mugs, and fridge magnets is something that should cause laughter amongst Beckett enthusiasts. For observing people draw comfort and inspiration from lines they have naively misunderstood is, as one commentator notes, like watching someone innocently throw a stick for their dog, not realising that it is in fact a human shin bone they've just picked up in the park."  

That, dear demon, makes a good place also to end this letter. 

 

With kind regards,

 

SA 

   

 

Notes

 

[1] This image by Fareha Islam illustrated a piece by Michelle Huang titled 'A Letter from the Devil' in The Stuyvesant Spectator, Issue 14, Volume 112 (11 August, 2026). 

      The Stuyvesant Spectator is a bi-weekly newspaper produced by students at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. It was first published in 1915.

 

[2] Interesting that the anonymous critic - who may or may not be a demon (we'll come to this shortly) - should fall back once more on a proverbial saying in order to express themselves. For one of the issues I have with their criticism is precisely that they often substitute common folk wisdom for philosophical insight. 

      The fact that this particular English proverb from the 17th century betrays a suspicion of fine words (i.e., complex language which they believe lacks sincerity and is empty of meaning) is also very telling. They seem to imply that simple words invested with common sense are best - and that actions matter more than any form of speech, which is an unusual (self-loathing) position for a writer to adopt.   

 

[3] John Keating was the character played by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society (dir. Peter Weir, 1989), whose unorthodox teaching methods and romantic idealism had tragic results. 

      Keating was the sort of teacher who inspired passion and encouraged free-thinking, but failed to warn his impressionable young students of the risks they were taking (and consequences that would follow) by acting in defiance of authority and convention. The sort of teacher who posed as a rebel having established a well-paid career for himself.   

 

[4] See the comment dated 14 August 2026 attached to the post 'On the Temptation of Christ' (07 Aug 2026). 

 

[5] Obviously, there are differences between early Christian culture and bourgeois society. The former, for example, directs these ideals - conceived as gifts of God's grace or fruits of the Holy Spirit rather than acts of human will or indicators of individual agency - toward spiritual salvation; while the latter ties resilience, persistence, and perseverance to material success, upward mobility, and personal achievement. 

      Over time, however, a fanatic religious work ethic fed directly into middle-class capitalist culture, as famously argued by Max Weber in his classic study of 1905, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. For Weber, Calvinism in particular created the unique mindset necessary for modern capitalism to thrive; the pursuit of wealth was repackaged as a moral calling, transforming hard work into a moral duty (and idleness into a sin).  

 

[6] See Nietzsche, Daybreak, ed. Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 105. Nietzsche explicitly calls the blessing of work a covert strategy to suppress the individual. 

      It is worth remembering also that he insists on idleness as the crucial condition from which philosophy is born and sees perseverance as an Asiatic - specifically Chinese - mode of life suitable for "industrious ants". See Daybreak, § 206 (p. 127 in the above edition).   

 

[7] Survivor bias is a form of cognitive and logical error. It occurs when an analysis focuses exclusively on the winners or survivors of a particular process while completely ignoring the vast, nameless cohort of those who failed or perished. D. H. Lawrence became acutely aware of this dynamic when observing the mechanics of American society:

      "It is not till you live in America, and go a little under the surface, that you begin to see how terrible and brutal is the mass of failure that nourishes the roots of the gigantic tree of dollars." See 'Introduction to Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 119.

      Ultimately, survivor bias is not merely an intellectual oversight; it is an ideological deception weaponised by the powerful to convince the powerless that systemic barriers can be overcome by sheer force of will and a lot of hard work. The organisers of the National Lottery rely on precisely the same psychological trick: they spotlight a microscopic handful of winners and declare "It could be you", deliberately obscuring the mathematical reality that, for the overwhelming majority of ticket holders, it never will be. 

 

[8] The Greeks also viewed the fable's underlying concept as a logical paradox; how could a slow-moving creature defeat a fast one - was it possible that motion itself was merely an illusion, as the philosopher Zeno argued?  

 

[9] According to early writers like the ancient historian Herodotus, Aesop was an enslaved person on the Greek island of Samos who later gained his freedom.  

 

Why I Hate the Maxim (But Not the Showtune): It's Not Where You Start

Tommy Tune and ensemble performing in 

the Broadway musical Seesaw (dir. Michael Bennett, 1973)

 

Your final return will not diminish / And you can be the cream of the crop -

It's not where you start, it's where you finish / And you're gonna finish on top! [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Commenting on my temptation of Christ post (7 August 2026), an anonymous demon makes some fascinating points and encourages readers to investigate certain non-canonical texts classified as biblical apocrypha. 

 

But they also write this: "It's not where writers begin but where they end that generally tells the final truth of their legacy ..."  

 

In other words, they take a disappointing turn into tired cliché by dressing up a maxim that is repeatedly used by sports psychologists, motivational speakers, self-help authors, and sparkly showbiz types rather than those who are genuinely spawned by the Devil and delight in speaking falsehoods rather than mere platitudes.  

 

 

II. 

 

Just to be clear: I'm not denying the phrase it's not where you start, it's where you finish may have some truth content - and it certainly expresses a comforting, universally understood sentiment, which is precisely why it remains popular among those who have experienced failure or feel themselves to be slow starters in life.

 

But I hate it and regard it as a belonging to an underdog narrative: You too can overcome base origins or personal misfortune and achieve the greatness you deserve! In this way, it reinforces what Nietzsche termed the slave revolt in morals [2].   

 

Philosophically, it's suspect too in promoting the idea of agency - i.e., that your individual choices and effort matter more than your initial circumstances or fate: The future, my friends, is unwritten - so climb up that ladder and go for it!  

 

In reality, of course, starting positions - such as wealth, access to education, and social connections - heavily determine the direction and final outcome of your life. Those who are lucky enough to have a good start will invariably finish ahead of the game. 

 

Song lyrics asserting if you start at the top, you're certain to drop and that nobody starts a winner [3] are - to not put too fine a point on it - a load of old cobblers, no matter how enthusiastically they're performed.  

 

Ultimately, this uplifting maxim is a banal piece of pseudo-wisdom that ignores systemic inequalities, while encouraging all and sundry to believe that they might be rewarded by the bitch-goddess Success.   

 

It's one thing for some all-too-human commentator like Alex Guillien [4] to buy into the myth of it's not where you start, it's where you finish, but I expect so much more in the way of satanic insight from my more demonic readers ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] From the song 'It's Not Where You Start', which featured in the American musical Seesaw (1973); music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by Dorothy Fields. The Broadway show was based on William Gibson's play Two for the Seesaw (1958). Click on the link provided to listen to the original Broadway cast recording, provided to YouTube by DRG Records. 

      Alternatively, if you wish to see multi-talented Tommy Tune and Co. perform the song - which was the big showstopper - then click here. Funnily enough, although I hate the maxim, I love the song and this performance - choreographed by Michael Bennett - is fabulous; it quite literally has it all (including confetti and balloons). 

 

[2] The original German expression used by Nietzsche is der Sklavenaufstand in der Moral and it appears in the First Essay of Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887). 

 

[3] See note [1] above. 

 

[4] Alex Guillien, It's Not Where You Start, It's Where You Finish, Medium (14 June 2016). 

      While researching this post, I was obliged to read some really piss-poor pieces by authors concerned with wellness, fitness, and inspiration, but I think that this one by Guillien best encapsulates all that I find so objectionable about the endlessly upbeat optimism of those who believe that "opportunities are ever-present", that success is "the progressive realization of a worthy goal" and that the aim in life is to become the "best version of YOU!"   

 

 

On the Politics (and Philosophy) of Empathy

 A coloured detail from a lino-style illustration by Space Ink

Visit: SpaceInkShop on etsy.com  

 

 

I.

 

Interestingly, whilst the word empathy has Ancient Greek roots, the complex modern concept it refers to originates in 19th-century German aesthetics: Einfühlung described the projection of self into a work of art [1]. 

 

This term was translated into English and given a wider psychological meaning by Edward B. Titchener in 1909. Since then, the word has become central to ethical and political debates - serving as something closely related to, yet distinctly separate from, older concepts such as sympathy and compassion. 

 

 

II.  

 

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk famously expressed his dislike for the word empathy, viewing it as a type of false coinage [2] privileged by the radical left to manipulate and exploit human feeling for ideological ends. 

 

Taken to its logical extreme, Kirk argued, empathy is not only socially damaging, but suicidal for those who fail to recognise it as an irrational and pathological form of behaviour that, in a Nietzschean sense, is "more dangerous than any vice" [3]. 

 

 

III. 

 

The specific term - suicidal empathy - was coined by Lebanese-born Canadian marketing professor Gad Saad, a long-term opponent of political correctness and social justice activism (or what is frequently termed wokeism) in academia. 

 

According to Saad, when an individual or a governing class is psychologically conditioned to believe that empathy is the highest moral virtue, then their decision-making process becomes fatally compromised [4]. 

 

Thus, for example, we might witness the rights of illegal migrants - belonging to cultures with beliefs, values, and customs entirely alien (and in some cases openly hostile) to those of the native population - being prioritised, even when it risks national security. 

 

 

IV. 

 

Obviously, this is a controversial idea.

 

Popularised by figures such as Kirk, Elon Musk, and others on the right of the political spectrum concerned with rapid demographic and cultural change in the West, it is fiercely contested by those who - wishing to abolish not only national borders but all barriers between self and others - preach that love is universal and unconditional.  

 

For the latter, sympathy no longer suffices. Only the deeper sentiment of empathy as total identification promises to heal the world via a process that, somewhat paradoxically, involves the simultaneous celebration of diversity while negating all differences between people in the name of Humanity. 

 

It's clearly a post-Christian vision (and as such one that would horrify Nietzsche).

 

And yet, ironically, those on the right who wish to defend the nation state, often turn to a medieval Catholic doctrine - ordo amoris - to justify their rejection of empathy. While they may feel a moral obligation to love strangers and sympathise with their hardships, they believe their primary duty is to care for their own family first, followed by their neighbours, and then members of the wider community and nation. 

 

Only after these obligations are met can the interests of the rest of the world be taken into consideration [5].

 

 

V.

 

As a Nietzsche scholar back in the day, I did not have to deal with the word empathy [Einfühlung]. In fact, I'm not sure it even appears in his writings [6]. 

 

For as indicated, while the verb sich einfühlen existed in German Romantic poetry, the noun Einfühlung was only popularised as a term in aesthetics in the 1870s. By the time it became a concept in German psychology (thanks to Theodor Lipps), Nietzsche was already pushing up daisies.  

 

Heidegger, meanwhile, preferred to speak of Mitsein and offered no specific theory of empathy per se. In fact, he critiqued the concept, arguing that there was no conceptual need for such, as human beings are already ontologically with-one-another rather than existing as merely isolated individuals. 

 

In other words, it's not Einfühlung that explains human solidarity and connectedness - relationality is fundamental to Dasein and we are always already living in a shared world [7].

 

 

VI. 

 

One philosopher who did write about empathy, however, was Wittgenstein - and he had some interesting things to say on the subject involving beetles in jars ... [8]

 

Actually, let me qualify that: Wittgenstein did not write extensively about empathy, but his later philosophy radically challenges how we understand the minds, emotions, and pain of others. 

 

For Wittgenstein, there are no hidden mental or emotional states - so we don't need to be mindreaders [Gedankenleser] or empaths who can mystically intuit and experience the moods and feelings of others. There's no need either, argues Wittgenstein, to look inside ourselves to understand others.

 

Emotions are not private inner states; they are tied to language games and public expressions and behaviours; i.e., to shared forms of life [Lebensform]. Thus, to understand another person doesn't require a spiritual merger or total identification. Empathy is an everyday mechanism built directly into our communal practices. 

 

But that means, of course, that when behaviour or language diverges too far from our shared background (due, for example, to species divides), true empathic understanding may reach a limit: If a lion could speak, we couldn't understand him [9].

 

And this remains true even if the lion speaks perfect English, because it unfolds into being in a world completely alien to our own.

 

Similarly, when encountering people from entirely different cultural frameworks, we cannot simply feel how or what they feel. Such understanding requires slow, patient immersion into a common language-game. 

 

Unfortunately, we live in an era where no one has the time or patience for that - an age where an increasing number of people only want to interact with those to whom they feel instant kinship or can immediately identify as one of their own. 

  

Notes

 

[1] Readers who would like to know more may care to read Robert Vischer's Über das optische Formgefühl: Ein Beitrag zur Aesthetik (1873), in which he discusses how viewers comprehend an artwork by projecting themselves (and their feelings) into its forms. For Vischer, this was a universal process; human beings having an innate capacity to empathise not only with other people and living organisms, but also inanimate objects. As this idea fell from favour in aesthetic theory during the early 20th-century, it was picked up by thinkers working in other fields of study - including psychology.

      A section of this work is available in Empathy, form, and space: problems in German aesthetics, 1873-1893, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou (Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities / University of Chicago Press, 1994).

 

[2] What Kirk said was this: "I can't stand the word empathy, I think empathy is a made-up, New Age term, and it does a lot of damage. Sympathy is a better word because empathy means you are feeling what another person felt, and no one can feel what another person feels." He concedes, however, that as a political tool, empathy has been highly effective. 

      Quoted by Mark Powell, in 'The ten biggest lies about Charlie Kirk', in the Australian edition of The Spectator (19 Sept. 2025). 

 

[3] Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1968), § 2, p. 116.  

      The line in full reads: "What is more harmful than any vice? Active sympathy for the ill-constituted and weak - Christianity ..."

 

[4] See Gad Saad, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind (Broadside Books, 2026). Critics of the book have described it as a racist attempt to dehumanise others and undermine the natural human virtue of empathy.

      In an essay in The Guardian titled 'Loathe thy neighbour: Elon Musk and the Christian right are waging war on empathy' (8 April 2025), Julia Carrie Wong discussed Saad's book among other works critical of empathy and described what was going on as a far-right attempt to "dismantle and discredit one of the essential tools for any society - our capacity to recognize and respond to suffering". 

      She continues: "We should see the campaign against empathy [...] for what it is: a flashing red light warning of fascist intent", and ends her essay by declaring: "Empathy is not a sin, a toxin, or an evolutionary dead end. It is a tool, and like all tools it can be a weapon. We are going to need it."

 

[5] In 2025, the American vice-president JD Vance's invocation of ordo amoris to defend the foreign aid policies of the second Trump administration caused quite a fuss. Even the Pope joined in, criticising Vance's interpretation of the doctrine saying that love has to be shown for all without exception. 

      Now, I'm no theologian - I'm not even a Christian of any denomination - but it does seem to me that ordo amoris is essentially an order of rank which does, in fact, establish a hierarchy of care. Certainly in the work of Augustine and, later, Thomas Aquinas, special regard is due to be paid to those persons with whom one has a more intimate connection, thanks to contingent factors such as the time and place of one's birth.

      Readers who wish to know more are encouraged to read Augustine's De doctrina Christiana. This crucial theological text consists of four books that describe how to interpret the Scriptures. The first three books were published in 397 and the fourth was added in 426. An English translation by R. P. H. Green was published by the Clarendon Press in 1995.  

      See also, Summa Theologiae, by Thomas Aquinas, in which the idea of ordo amoris is developed alongside all the major theological teachings of the Church. This text was unfinished at the time of his death in 1274. The first English translation, published in 1911, was attributed to the Fathers of the English Dominican Province as the actual translator, Laurence Shapcote, wished to remain anonymous.

 

[6] When Nietzsche discussed our feelings for others - particularly others who were suffering or misfortunate in some manner - he usually spoke (for the most part negatively) about pity [Mitleid] - seeing it as a depressive, life-denying emotion inherited from Christianity (Zarathustra warns against it as a dangerous temptation). 

      However, Nietzsche did posit a noble model of compassion or sympathy rooted in strength and wellbeing; a generous form of fellow-feeling based not only on shared pain, but shared joy - a genuine rejoicing with others [Mitfreude].

 

[7] See Heidegger Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, (Blackwell, 1962), p. 162. 

 

[8] Wittgenstein introduced his famous beetle in a box thought experiment to challenge the idea that our inner feelings are private objects. See § 293 of Philosophical Investigations (1953). 

     In brief, the analogy challenges the ridiculous idea that empathy relies upon the (psychic) ability to peek inside someone else's Schachtel so as to see what they are feeling (what their Käfer looks like). Empathy is about connection, not inspection: you do not need to see the beetle to act with compassion. You simply need to respond to their public behaviour; if someone is crying, just put an arm round them and offer them a hanky to dry their eyes. 

 

[9] This is one of the most famous lines in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Blackwell, 2008), p. 190.    

 

 

Thanks to Ruth Malone for help with the Heidegger section.