Kill Me Now: Notes on the Introduction and First Chapter of Metamorphoses by Emanuele Coccia

(Polity 2021)

 

 

I. 

 

Emanuele Coccia has called his new book Metamorphoses. But he may as well have called it Pantheism, because what this book primarily affirms is the "unity of all living things [...] and the unity of the living being with the matter of the world" [a]. 

 

According to Coccia, pantheism is a hidden tradition with a repressed history within philosophy; a claim which, like many others in this book, is one I doubt the veracity of. For it might be argued, that philosophers simply prefer to use the less religious-sounding term monism to describe unity and the peculiar satisfaction that it gives some people to announce that All is One.

Anyway, let's get down to business ... 

As well as an Introduction and Conclusion, there are five chapters in this book: Births, Cocoons, Reincarnations, Migrations, and Associations. Here, in part one of the post, I'll discuss the first of these chapters and the Introduction.

 

 

II. 

 

Coccia opens his Introduction with a three-word phrase even more provocative than I love you: In the beginning ... 

 

Obviously, he knows this is the opening phrase of the Bible; a translation of the Classical Hebrew expression Bereshith [בְּרֵאשִׁית‎]. And whilst one hopes he's using it with a certain irony, I do worry that he's preparing the way for a religious narrative to follow. 

 

Anyhoo, in the beginning, says Coccia, "we were all the same living creature, sharing the same body and the same experience" [3]. I suppose that's true enough - banal, but true enough [b]. But we might wish to challenge Coccia's following sentence: "And things haven't changed so much since then." [3] 

 

For this is said as if the new forms and modes of existence which have proliferated in the 3.5 billion years since LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor), hardly matter; as if all that really counts is the life force which animates them. For life, clearly, is the essential for Coccia, who, I suspect, would like to write the word with a capital L if he dared.    

 

Coccia challenges his readers to accept the "deepest meaning of the Darwinian theory of evolution" [5] - the one that biologists (allegedly) don't like to think about, as it means regarding species as life games, i.e., "unstable and necessarily ephemeral configurations" [5], rather than substantial entities.     

 

Coccia also wants readers to come to terms with the fact that, as Nietzsche put it, being alive is only a rare and unusal way of being dead:

 

"There is no opposition between the living and the non-living. Not only is every living creature continuous with the non-living, it is its extension, metamorphosis, and most extreme expression." [5]

 

Again, that's true enough, but it's nothing very new; thanatologists, including myself, have been pointing this out for years now: click here, for example, to read a post based on an essay from 2006 in which I attempted to dissolve the distinction between life and death. 

 

And, what's more, some of us have also dared to draw the consequences from this fatal truth; we realise that if all life is essentially the same, then a human life has no more inherent value than that of a cockroach [c], and if there is no difference between living things and the world of dead matter, then there's no point crying over species facing extinction, for example.    

 

This - to use Coccia's own phrase - is the deepest meaning of nihilism and why Ray Brassier is right to argue that philosophy's destiny (and duty) is to acknowledge the fact that "thinking has interests that do not coincide with those of the living" [d].

 

  

III.

 

Does Coccia share this view? Maybe. Take a look at this sentence, for example:

 

"Our adult life form is no more perfect, no more 'us', no more human, no more complete than that of the bicellular embryo that comes directly after the fertilization of the egg ..." [8]  

 

Is Coccia making the metaphysical claim that the soul enters at conception? Is he demanding full rights for the unborn? Or is he suggesting, rather, that it would be fine with him were we to abort human beings at any stage of their development - even long after birth - since each and every form "has the same weight, the same importance, the same value: metamorphosis is the principle of equivalence between all natures" [9]. 

 

If all life is just a game of forms played out on the same plane - and that plane is material actuality (i.e. death) - then it makes perfect sense to say that an embryo is the same as a foetus, a foetus is the same as a baby, and a baby is the same as an adult. It just becomes a question of whether you think their value is inestimable or zero. 

 

 

IV.

 

Coccia makes a big deal of the fact that, like the rest of us, he was born to parents, who were themselves born of their parents, who were born ... well, you get the idea: "Birth is not simply the emergence of the new, it is also the erratic wandering of the future through a limitless past." [14] 

 

He thinks we are too forgetful of this, although the fact that there's a multibillion dollar birthday industry might suggest otherwise; as might the fact that Happy Birthday to You is the most sung song in the world [e].   

 

Coccia, the proud parent of a young daughter, Colette, to whom he dedicates this book, is clearly still in the flush of first-time fatherhood. Thus it is that everything about pregnancy, birth, and babies seems miraculous and makes him gush to his readers about how special his child is:

 

"She arrived barely five years ago and she has changed everything around her, and around me: she has lit up worlds through which she has travelled with a joy and a grace I had never before encountered. She knows all the secrets of metamorphosis - and she has revealed a few of them to me." [x]

If that's the case, then one rather wishes that Colette had written the book ... Perhaps if she had, we would've avoided being told in a section entitled 'Birth and Nature' that there is "nothing more universal" [19] than birth; something that makes me as impatient as it made Roland Barthes over sixty years ago. 

 

In 'The Great Family of Man', Barthes demythologises the idea that events such as birth and death can be understood outside of history:

"Birth, death? Yes, these are facts of nature, universal facts. But if one removes History from them, there is nothing more to be said about them; any comment about them becomes purely tautological. [...] For these natural facts to gain access to a true language, they must be inserted into a category of knowledge which means postulating that one can transform them, and precisely subject their naturalness to [...] criticism. [...] True, children are always born but in the whole mass of the human problem, what does the 'essence' of this process matter to us, compared to its modes which [...] are perfectly historical? Whether or not the child is born with ease or difficulty, whether or not his birth causes suffering to his mother, whether or not he is threatened by a high mortality rate, whether or not such and such a type of future is open to him [...]" [f] 

 

This is the sort of thing that Coccia's book might have usefully reminded us, instead of fobbing us off with lyricism surrounding the fact of birth: "To be born [...] is to experience being a part of the infinite matter of the world [...] It is always Gaia who says 'I' in us." [21] [g]

 

To which I can only say kill me now, or let's move on ... 

 

Every now and then, we come to something that might be interpreted as a philosophical statement. For example; "multiplicity is not simply arithmetical, and it does not negate the profound unity [...] of all living beings" [27]. 

 

But isn't that just saying what Deleuze and Guattari reduced to a simple equation: Pluralism = Monism [h] ...?

 

This is the magic formula which Deleuze learns from his readings of Spinoza and Nietzsche and one might have hoped that Coccia would have at least referred to this. But he doesn't. I don't know why. Perhaps it's because he's worried about becoming trapped in "the enclosed courtyard of traditional books, subjects, and arguments, all sanctioned as 'properly philosophical' by an arbitrary and culturally quite limited canon" [i].    

 

Whatever the reason, Coccia seems unwilling to reference Deleuze; even when, later on in the chapter, he meditates on difference and repetition: "We are all a repetition of a past life. [...] Yet in being so expressed, the past is [...] rearranged, arbitrarily reconstituted, transfigured." [34] 

 

I would've thought this was the perfect opportunity to at least mention Deleuze's powerful critique of representation; one that develops concepts of difference and repetition that are metaphysically prior to any concept of identity [j].

 

Instead, Coccia chooses to discuss the symbolic theory of Sándor Ferenczi - "one of Freud's most brilliant and heterodox students" [34] - who offers such astonishing insights as this: "there is a 'symbolic identity of the womb with the sea and the earth on the one hand, and of the male member with the child and the fish on the other'" [36] [k]. 

 

I've said it before - and I very much suspect I'll be forced to say it again whilst reading this book - kill me now!

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Emanuele Coccia, Metamorphoses, trans. Robin Mackay, (Polity Press, 2021), p. viii. All future page references to this work will be given directly in the post. 

 

[b] Coccia's opening reminds me of D. H. Lawrence's Introduction to Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922), in which he writes: "In the beginning was a living creature, its plasm quivering and its life-pulse throbbing." See Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 69.   

[c] This is not say that you can't value a human life above that of a cockroach, only that this is a matter of personal preference (or prejudice) and has no real foundation as the same life flows through both. The case of Gregor Samsor is obviously instructive here: click here for my take on Kafka's story.

      Later, in a section entitled 'Metamorphosis as Destiny', Coccia again says something that potentially has fatal consequences; namely, that every metamorphic being "is composed and inhabited by [an] otherness, which can never be erased" [38]. If that's the case - if we carry within us everyone and everything, including all other peoples and all other species, then why does it matter if we exterminate them? 

      In some ways, Coccia reminds me of Walt Whitman who has, as D. H. Lawrence would say, broken the mainspring of his own singular being and now asserts: I am everything and everything is me! as he attempts to become in his own person "the whole world, the whole universe, the whole eternity of time". He cannot accept that outside the egg of his Allness, there is genuine otherness, which he is not and cannot become. See the final version (1923) of Lawrence's essay 'Whitman', in Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 148-161. The line quoted above is on p. 151.              

 

[d] Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction, (Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), p. xi.

[e] Later in the chapter, Coccia writes: "Our society is still based on the cult of the dead [...] Birth, on the other hand, remains a mystery and a taboo. [...] We barely talk about it or celebrate it [...]" [25]. This, however, is patently not true; a friend of mine has just had a baby and she never shuts up about the fact, both in person and on social media. And whilst Christian culture attaches great importance to the death of Christ, do we not also celebrate Christmas and Easter - his birth and resurrection?

      To be fair, Coccia, concedes that Christ's nativity is a familiar theme in European art, but argues that what is depicted "is no ordinary birth, but a unique, one-off, unnatural event" [30]. In other words, Christian theology places the birth of Christ outside of any naturalistic framework in order to emphasise its miraculous character.

      Like Nietzsche, who also holds Christianity responsible for throwing filth on the actual origins of life, Coccia argues that we need to liberate ourselves from "this two-thousand-year-old legacy" [32] and reverse its central teachings. However, whereas for Nietzsche this involves reviving the Dionysian mysteries, in order to ensure that every aspect of procreation, pregnancy, and birth awakens the most exalted and solemn feelings, for Coccia, we would do better to imagine that, if God participates in birth, then "he must be incarnated in any natural being whatsoever: an ox, an oak tree, an ant, a bacterium, a virus" [32]. Thinking along this pantheistic line obliges us to see every birth as "a transmission of the divine substance, but above all as a kind of metamorphosis of the gods" [32].

      See the section entitled 'Carnival of the Gods' in chapter one of Metamorphoses, pp. 30-33. And for Nietzsche's Dionysian take on this question, see section 4 of 'What I Owe to the Ancients', in Twilight of the Idols.

 

[f] Roland Barthes, 'The Great Family of Man', in Mythologies, selected and trans. Annette Lavers, (The Noonday Press, 1991), pp. 101-102. 

[g] For those who don't know, Gaia is the primordial Greek goddess and personification of the Earth; she whom all living beings call mother. As well as Ovid's Metamorphoses, Coccia openly admits that his book has been written under the influence of the Gaia hypothesis put forward by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis [182]. It's their work which he wishes to deepen and radicalise, with sentences like this: "Being born means that we are part of this world: we formally and materially coincide with Gaia, with her body, her flesh, her life force." [37]. Obviously, as a reader of Nietzsche, I'm extremely cautious of those who deify nature or believe the earth to be a living being; see The Gay Science, III. 109.      

 

[h] This formula can be found in Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, (University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 20. Deleuze was also influenced in his thinking on this subject by the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus, from whom he borrowed (and adapted) the doctrine of ontological univocity.     

[i] Emanuele Coccia, The Life of Plants, (Polity Press, 2019), p. 167. 

      It's from sentences like this that Coccia attempts to draw what Foucault termed speaker's benefit. That is to say, sentences like this make him appear to be a bit of a rebel, or an outsider, challenging the established order, etc. Which is a bit rich, coming from a man who lectures at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), one of the most selective and prestigious educational establishments in all France. 

[j] I'm referring, of course, to Deleueze's Différence et Répétition, (Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), trans. into English by Paul Patton, (Columbia University Press, 1994).

 

[k] Coccia is quoting from Sándor Ferenczi, Thalassa: A Theory of Genitality, tras. Henry Alden Bunker, (Norton, 1968), p. 45. 

To read my notes on chapter two of Emanuele Coccia's Metamorphoses, click here. 

 

To read notes on chapter three ... click here. 

 

To read notes on chapter four ... click here. 

 

To read notes on chapter five ... click here. 

There is No Tongue That is Not Forked: Notes On Síomón Solomon's Fantasia of Translation

Der Übersetzer - ready at any moment 

to shed their skin and become-other

 

I. 

 

What is the role of the translator? It's an old question: but it remains a fascinating and important question. 

 

And it's a question that the poet and playwright Síomón Solomon has clearly spent a good deal of time thinking about, as evidenced by the Introduction to his translation - and extended remix - of Stephen Hermlin's radio play, Scardanelli (1970), in a newly published text celebrating the life and work of the German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin [1].

 

I'm hoping to discuss Solomon's bold adapatation of Hermlin's audio drama in a later post. Here, however, I wish only to examine his theory of translation [2] which, in a nutshell, posits the translator as an artist in their own right; one who (paradoxically) shows fidelity to a text not by staying as close as possible to it, but by daring to deviate. 

 

Solomon's theory of translation is, therefore, ultimately rooted in a perverse aesthetic; one that queers the text and allows for the birth of an illegitimate (sometimes monstrous) new literary offspring [3]; one that hears strange voices and intertextual murmurings [4] ...  

 

II.

 

Now, of course, there will be many critics who will loathe and despise this model of translation; who will loathe and despise Solomon for what he does with Hermlin's work and for his schizopoetic reading (and re-creation between the lines) of Hölderlin. But I'm not one of them. 

 

In fact, I'm happy to endorse this model which acts "'as a preventative against cultural atrophy and homogenisation'" [5]. And if, as Solomon acknowledges, the translator's cruelty of style results in an inevitable giving and taking of offence, well, that's too bad - can there be art without somebody being disturbed or having their nose put out of joint?  

 

Solomon nails his colours to the mast in the following superb passage:

 

"What we wish to affirm is that [...] the infidelity of [every translation] is not merely an occupational hazard but its transcendental sickness. On this basis, we propose recalibrating the translator's 'success' according to the boldness of [their] betrayals. [...] What is by definition commemorated and celebrated by the translator's Janus-faced remakings is the insufficiency of the source to itself, whose rewriting represents a wager on the literary future. In the necessary corruption of practice, to translate means to return to the origin/al to reimagine it, to complicate and regenerate it, and to recompose its music - even and especially in the teeth of 'misreading' it - through the rash passion for metamorphosis." [6]     

 

Later, Solomon reduces things down to just one (memorable) line that invites readers to imagine translators as a breed of reptilian shape-shifters living and working in a domain in which : "There is no tongue [...] that is not forked" [7].

    

  

Notes

 

[1] Síomón Solomon, Hölderlin's Poltergeists, (Peter Lang, 2020).

      Solomon explains what he means by the term remix to describe his adaptation of Hermlin's play on pp. 13-14 of his Introduction; "we are calling this work a 'remix', aiming as it does to offer a musical variation on a pre-existent artistic matrix [...] influenced by Kenneth Goldsmith's modish conception of translation as renovatory displacement". 

      Readers interested in knowing more about Solomon's reading of Goldsmith can find his three-part post on this topic on Torpedo the Ark: click here. And those who may wish to check out Goldsmith's work for themselves should see Against Translation: Displacement is the New Translation, (Jean Boîte Editions, 2016).  

 

[2] It should be noted that at no time does Solomon refer to his writings on translation as his theory of such and I'm fairly certain he'd wince at the idea, probably insisting that it's more a delirious shared fantasy of translation (of what it might become if pushed to its external limit). Whilst I understand his postmodern concerns and desire to move beyond theory (towards play, performance, and poetry), I'm using the word here for the sake of convenience. However, I have substituted the term fantasia in the title of this post in the hope that this is one that he will very much approve of.    

 

[3] Solomon recalls and transposes Deleuze's self-styled relationship to the history of philosophy as a form of buggery via which he sought to engender monsters; see pp. 9-10 of his 'Translator's Introduction' to Hölderlin's Poltergeists. 

      I have to say, it's a little odd to find Deleuze posing as a sodomite and delighting in fantasies of anal rape (or bum banditry, as Solomon refers to it). Perhaps it betrays the influence of his friend Michel Foucault on his thinking; or maybe he was thinking of D. H. Lawrence, who argued that the power of inspiration always comes from outside and enters us from behind and below.

 

[4] There's a very good reason that Solomon uses the following from Roland Barthes as an epigraph to his work: "Do I hear voices within the voice? But isn't it the truth of the voice that it be hallucinated? Isn't the entire space of the voice an infinite spaciousness?" 

      If, as I do, you accept Kristeva's idea of intertextualité (and/or Bakhtin's dialogism), then the question of translation is made all the more complex; arguably, every text is already a translation at some level and the author a multiple personality who speaks with many tongues masquerading as a unified subject. 

      Clearly Solomon also (more or less) accepts this line of thinking; see footnote 20 in his Introduction where he quotes from Susan Bernofsky's Foreign Words (2005). Bernofsky has also explored the significance of Barthes's work on intertextuality and the death of the author for contemporary theories of translation.   

 

[5] Mark Polizzotti, quoted by Síomón Solomon, 'Translator's Introduction', Hölderlin's Poltergeists, footnote 1, p. 2. 

 

[6] Síomón Solomon, 'Translator's Introduction', Hölderlin's Poltergeists, p. 7. 

 

[7] Ibid., p. 12. 

 

 

For a related post to this one - on Stephan Hermlin's short text 'Hölderlin 1944', trans. Síomón Solomon, click here.   

 

 

As for Lawrence ... A Reply to James Walker

James Walker: Senior Lecturer School of Arts and Humanities

Nottingham Trent University: full profile click here. 

 

 

I. 

 

As torpedophiles will be aware, digital storyteller James Walker is someone I have a fair degree of time for, even if his political views often strike me as all-too-predictably prim and proper. 

 

His graphic novel (co-produced with Paul Fillingham), Dawn of the Unread (2014-16), which celebrates Nottingham's literary heritage, was amusing and his current transmedia project which aims to build an online Memory Theatre inspired by D. H. Lawrence's global wanderings, also promises to be of interest.    

 

A member of the D. H. Lawrence Society Council, Walker assembles and edits a monthly bulletin that is emailed to members of the Society, thereby demonstrating his commitment to circulating all the latest news of Lawrence, but without becoming an uncritical follower of the latter. 

 

Indeed, Walker often seems to regard Lawrence primarily as a figure of fun, rather than as a novelist and poet who might actually have something important to teach us. This helps explain his remark left in a comment to a recent post published here on Torpedo the Ark:          

 

"As for Lawrence, he's a mass of contradictions who needs to be read in context. I wouldn't take quotes from Fantasia too seriously, although at least he was honest enough to call it what it was: this 'pseudo-philosophy of mine'."

 

It's a remark I thought we might examine a little more closely ...

 

 

II. 

 

Firstly, it's true that Lawrence is a mass of contradictions and that there is little point in searching for a coherent or consistent philosophy in his work. Like Nietzsche, Lawrence makes no attempt to systematise his ideas - something which betrays a lack of integrity according to the former. However, he does offer a very distinctive style which is characterised by plurality, difference, and insouciance.

 

In other words, it's a style that enrages the puritan who not only expects but demands logical seriousness and dependability. 

 

Arguably, Lawrence anticipates the figure imagined by Roland Barthes who "abolishes within himself all barriers, all classes, all exclusions, not by syncretism but by simple disregard of that old spectre: logical contradiction" [1]; that anti-Socratic hero who mixes every language and endures the mockery of moral-rational society without shame. 

 

For me, this is one of Lawrence's strengths and at the heart of his appeal; but do I sense a trace of disappointment and/or irritation in Walker's As for Lawrence remark? Does he secretly hope that by reading Lawrence in context - something he says needs to be done, although he doesn't specify what constitutes this context - his work might not only be better understood but, as it were, coordinated within a wider framework of meaning which is clear, coherent, and woven into Truth?

 

Secondly, one might wonder just how seriously Walker would have us take Lawrence's work in Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922). Not too seriously, he says, but what exactly does that mean; who determines what is and is not a serious piece of writing and what is and is not an appropriate reader response? 

 

Again, I might be mistaken, but I get the impression that Walker secretly thinks Lawrence a clown and his work ludicrous. I also suspect he thinks Lawrence something of a fraud. This is why he is quick to remind us of Lawrence's own use of the phrase pseudo-philosophy to describe his thinking in Fantasia. And why he commends Lawrence for his honesty here, as if elsewhere in the book he is flagrantly dishonest and peddling falsehoods.

 

The ironic thing is that Lawrence's pseudo-philosophy remark is one that is usefully read within a wider context; namely, the Foreword to Fantasia in which Lawence amusingly answers his critics, including Mr. John V. A. Weaver of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, who reviewed Psychoanalysis of the Unconscious and coined the term Pollyanalystic which Lawrence then rewrote as pollyanalytics in order to describe his own philosophy.

 

Read within this context, it becomes clear that Lawrence neither regards his own thinking as a pseudo-philosophy nor a "wordy mass of revolting nonsense" [2]. He is using this phrase - as he's using pollyanalytics - in an ironic (rather weary) manner in the face of past criticism and anticipated future criticism. 

 

It also becomes clear that Lawrence takes his philosophical inferences - deduced from the novels and poems -  seriously and he challenges his readers to do so also if they wish to fully understand his work. For Lawrence, underlying all art is a philosophy upon which it is utterly dependent:

 

"The metaphysic or philosophy may not be anywhere very accurately stated" [3] - it may contain a mass of contradictions or be wearing woefully thin - but it is of primary importance and not to be scornfully dismissed as something unworthy of serious consideration.    

 

 

Notes

  

[1] Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller, (Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 3. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 62.  

[3] Ibid., p. 65. 

 

For a follow-up post to this one - in which it seems James Walker might have a point after all and we examine Lawrence's moral conservativism - click here.

The Money Post

Alec Monopoly: Scarface Money Monops (2017) 

Acrylic on canvas with resin (30 x 48 inches)  

artsy.net

 

 

"Money makes the world go around / The world go around / The world go around 

Money makes the world go around / It makes the world go 'round." [1]

 

 

Despite this dynamic aspect - and all too predictably - D. H. Lawrence hated money - hated it! 

 

In one poem, for example, he calls it our vast collective madness and in another he says that money is a perverted instinct [...] which rots the brain, the blood, the bones, the stones, the soul [2]. 

 

In his 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine', meanwhile, Lawrence describes money as a golden wall which uniquely cuts us off from life; "not even the most fanatical dogmas of an iron-bound religion, can insulate us from the inrush of life and inspiration, as money can" [3].

 

Apart from these instances, there are many, many other occasions on which Lawrence delivers this anti-money sermon and even his fictional characters are obliged to trot out the same rhetoric. When not fucking Connie six ways from Sunday, for example, Mellors can't resist informing her that it is money - along with modern technology and forms of popular entertainment - which is to blame for sucking the spunk out of mankind [4].  

 

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, Lawrence's puritanical attitude towards money (and the love of money) aligns his thinking with those one might otherwise regard as his moral, political, and philosophical opponents: Christians, Marxists, and Freudians ...

 

This must surely make one suspicious of his thinking on this subject and question whether, as a matter of fact, money might be thought of in a more positive light; as that which creates happiness, rather than being at the root of all evil. 

 

That was certainly the view of the perverse materialist and utopian socialist Charles Fourier, who argued that happiness consists in having a number of diverse passions and - crucially - having the necessary financial means to satisfy them. In Fourier's ideal state, wealth is redeemed and money not only becomes desirable, but "participates in the brilliance of pleasure" [5].

 

Roland Barthes helps us understand why it is that Fourier insists that les sens ne peuvent avoir toute leur portée indirecte sans l'intervention de l'argent:   

 

"Curiously detached from commerce, from exchange, from the economy, Fourierist money is an analogic (poetic) metal, the sum of happiness. Its exaltation is obviously a countermeasure: it is because all (civilized) Philosophy has condemned money, that Fourier, destroyer of Philosophy and critic of Civilization, rehabilitates it: the love of wealth being a perjorative topos [...] Fourier turns contempt into praise [... and] everything, where money is concerned, seems to be conceived in view of this counter-discourse [...]" [6]

 

To advise his readers to seek out tangible wealth - gold, precious stones, and those luxury goods despised by our ascetic idealists - is, as Barthes says, a scandalous thing to do; a major transgression against the teachings of all those (including Lawrence) for whom money is something base and corrupting. 

      

I have to admit, I'm sympathetic to Fourier's view and have always smiled at a remark often attributed to Bo Derek: Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from the song 'Money, Money', written by John Kander and Fred Ebb for the big screen version of the musical Cabaret (dir. Bob Fosse, 1972). To watch the song being performed by Joel Gray (as the Master of Ceremonies) and Liza Minnelli (as Sally Bowles): click here. 

      Whilst this is still my favourite song written about money, mention might also be made of ABBA's 1976 single 'Money, Money, Money', written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus: click here. And 'Money (That's What I Want)', a rhythm and blues track written by Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford and originally recorded by Barrett Strong in 1959, but which I remember as a single by the Flying Lizards in 1979: click here.          

 

[2] See the poems 'Money-madness' and 'Kill money' in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 421-22. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 363.  

[4] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 217. See also the closing letter written by Mellors to Connie (pp. 298-302), in which he again expresses his hatred for money and complains about the fact that modern people have conflated living with spending.    

[5] Roland Barthes, 'Fourier', in Sade / Fourier / Loyola, trans. Richard Miller, (University of California Press, 1989), p. 85. 

[6] Ibid., pp. 85-86.

 

 

To read another recent post on Fourier, click here. 

Couscous with Rancid Butter: Thoughts on Charles Fourier

François Marie Charles Fourier 

(1772 - 1837)

 

Le bonheur consiste à avoir de nombreuses passions 

et de nombreux moyens pour les satisfaire. 

 

I. 

 

Antisemitic pervert, feminist, and founder of utopian socialism, Charles Fourier (1772-1837) was - to say the very least - an odd duck. 

 

Nevertheless, he inspired a diverse range of thinkers and writers with a queer politics of desire that portrays heteronormative civilisation as inherently repressive and imagines some kind of libidinal revolution in which we can all be free to not only fuck whom we want, but when we want, where we want, and how we want.  

 

It's a politics that I subscribed to at one time and still find vaguely attractive even now, despite living after the orgy in a transsexual world of ambient pornography from which the illusion of desire is absent [1]. 

 

And despite the fact that we never did get the lemonade seas we were promised ... 

 

II. 

In the 20th century, Fourier's seminal importance was widely acknowledged amongst those searching for a form of radical politics outside of the Marxist mainstream; figures including André Breton, Walter Benjamin, and Herbert Marcuse all sang his praises. 

 

It seems clear that Michel Tournier was also writing (to some extent) under Fourier's influence, adapting the latter's rhetoric of sexual liberation for his own purposes. Like Fourier, Tournier privileges non-reproductive forms of eroticism and sticks up for the sexually deviant and marginalised (those whom the world often thinks of as monstrous). And like Fourier, he decries the social restraints and prescriptive norms that seek to regulate love and penalise pleasure.  

 

As one critic notes, for both of the above, "it is on the experence of the 'deviant' that a tolerant and humane social order must be based" [2]. However, whilst Fourier "provided a fantastic blueprint for the whole enterprise" [3], Tournier left details of this nouveau monde amoureux deliberately vague.

 

One suspects that, like D. H. Lawrence, Tournier realised that his role, as a novelist, is to help bring forth new feelings, not to suggest practical reforms [4]. And one can't help thinking he was probably wise to realise this. For as David Gascoigne reminds us, Fourier's "massive and whimsical elaboration of the structures of his ideal community are often so preposterous and parodical that they subvert systematisation even while mimicking it" [5].      

 

 

III.

 

I think my favourite text on Fourier remains that written by Roland Barthes [6]. It's many years since I read this essay and have doubtless forgotten some of the finer points regarding Fourier as a logothete, but I do recall Barthes opening with some très amusant remarks about couscous served with rancid butter. 

 

According to Barthes, the goal of Fourier's project was quite simple: to remake the world (via an obsessive form of writing) for the sake of pleasure. Never mind justice and equality; it's pleasure that counts for Fourier. And not pleasure conceived in a eudaemonic manner (i.e., as a form of ethical behaviour that produces wellbeing), but sensual pleasure that results in actual happiness and what Fourier terms Harmony.

 

The kind of pleasure we find in amorous freedom, fabulous wealth, and those other delights that are often condemned as forms of vice. Fourier dreamed of a world of fine weather, perfect melons, and little spiced cakes; a world in which one can enjoy the company of lesbians and there is no longer any normality.

 

As Barthes points out, this coexistence of passions isn't simply another form of liberalism and Fourier doesn't wish to unite people in the name of humanism: 

 

"It is not a matter of bringing together everyone with the same mania [...] so that they can be comfortable together and can enchant each other by narcissistically gazing at one another; on the contrary, it is a matter of associating to combine, to contrast. [...] There is no noble demand to 'understand', to 'admit' the passions of others (or to ignore them, indeed). The goal of Harmony is neither to further the conflict (by associating through similitude), nor to reduce it (by sublimating, sweetening, or normalizing the passions), nor yet to transcend it (by 'understanding' the other person), but to exploit it for the greatest pleasure of all and without hindrance to anyone." [7].

Ultimately, I don't quite know what to make of M. Fourier - the original 24-hour party person, for whom no day is ever long enough for all the merry assignations and pleasures it promises ... 

 

Ultimately, his erotic utopia in which everyone fucks forever sounds exhausting and one thinks again of Baudrillard's story of the porn star on set who turns to one of the other actors and asks: What are you doing after the orgy? 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm using concepts developed by Jean Baudrillard. His argument is that signs and images have erased all secrets and ambiguity, making sex transparent and, at best, something that is simply acted out over and over again with a kind of ironic indifference, or a sense of nostalgia. Whilst we might perhaps challenge this, I think it certainly fair to say (as Michel Houellebecq says): We're a long way from Wuthering Heights.

      See Jean Baudrillard, 'After the Orgy' and 'Transsexuality', in The Transparency of Evil, trans. James Benedict, (Verso, 1993). 

     The line from Houellebecq is from his first novel, Extension du domaine de la lutte (1994), trans. into English as Whatever by Paul Hammond, (Serpents Tail, 1998) and refers to the progressive effacement of human relationships and passions.       

 

[2] and [3] David Gascoigne, Michel Tournier, (Berg, 1996), p. 91.

 

[4] The passage in D. H. Lawrence that I'm thinking of is this one:

 

"As a novelist, I feel it is the change inside the individual which is my real concern. The great social change interests me and troubles me, but it is not my field. I know a change is coming - I know we must have a more generous, more human system, based on the life values and not on the money values. That I know. But what steps to take I don't know. Other men know better."

 

See: 'The State of Funk', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge Universty Press, 2004), p. 221. 

 

[5] David Gascoigne, Michel Tournier, op. cit., pp. 92-93. 

 

[6] Roland Barthes's essay on Fourier can be found in the much underrated study, Sade / Fourier / Loyola, trans. Richard Miller, (University of California Press, 1989), pp. 76-120.  

 

[7] Ibid., pp. 99-100. 

 

 

For another recent post on Fourier, click here.  

On Myth and Literary Criticism

Northrop Frye (1912-1991) 

Photo by Andrew Danson 
The Canadian Encyclopedia

I.

Many (anti-modernist) writers continue to exploit ancient myths as a literary resource, even when they have ceased to be meaningful in any vital sense. And many critics still like to delve into what Philip Larkin referred to dismissively as the myth-kitty in order to interpret what they might otherwise find impossible to comprehend. 

As Deleuze and Guattari point out, there's nothing easier than to read in this way; "you can always do it, you can't lose, it works every time, even if you understand nothing" [1] and even if the mythological (and related psychological) approach to literature is ultimately reductive; i.e., one that degrades the object of its study.   

II.

I suppose if there is one name above all others associated with myth-crit, it is that of Northrop Frye, author of Anatomy of Criticism (1957), a work whose very title betrays a certain morbidity of thinking and the fact that Frye ultimately regards literary criticism as a mortuary enterprise. 

Frye posits the idea that all literature is founded upon myth - particularly myths concerning the cycle of the seasons and different phases of the agricultural year. Even the most sophisticated fiction can thus be read as archetypal - i.e., full of archetypal characters, archetypal events, and archetypal themes. 

For me, this is a form of monomania: or, at the very least, it is shaped by myopia. For in order to view things in this manner he has to turn a half-blind eye to the huge differences between modern literature and ancient myth, forcing everything individual into what Nietzsche calls a universal mould, so that all sharp corners and distinct outlines are blunted and blurred in the interest of uniformity.       

An archetypal approach will never have much time for precision; it will always deal in approximations and generalities. It is a distorted and deceitful understanding of literature that integrates and coordinates difference into a network of correspondences and similarities so as to "render consistent with one another categories that are no longer compatible in the modern understanding of the world" [2].

Ultimately, Frye and his followers use myth to reinforce the reign of the Stereotype and crush production of the New, thereby preserving the old order or what D. H. Lawrence refers to as the Great Umbrella.

Any contemporary text - even the most avant-garde in character - is immediately coordinated within the archetypal framework and even the most transgressive authors are passed off as myth-makers who are concerned with universal truths and eternal patterns of meaning, rather than singular events and unique individuals.   

Frye effectively covers everything and everyone in a thick layer of maple syrup (or what Barthes terms doxa). Supporters may pretend to locate within his criticism all kinds of potentially liberating elements, but it best serves to support a model of bourgeois realism based on the essential facts of human experience; i.e., those things that go without saying and thus need no further explanation. Far from opening up the future, he uses the past to reaffirm the present.


III.

Like Frye, the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer is another idealist who fantasises about a mythic unconscious and treats myth as a primordial symbolic form; i.e., a kind of non-discursive language that is not only more archaic than logic, but also more vital.

For Cassirer, modern writers who explore the recesses of mythic consciousness should be valued above all others; for they keep us in touch with the very springs of our humanity. But as one critic asks, how can Cassirer and his admirers possibly know this:

"As we have no way of demonstrating that the mythopoeic ability of a modern writer is an archaic residue [...] there is not much point in saying it unless one happens to thrill at the very suggestion that primitive vestiges are present in modern man." [3]

This sounds a little flippant, perhaps, but I think a crucial point is being made here. For despite the "dreary earnestness of so much myth-critical writing", there is little doubt that many readers find the language used strangely seductive, resounding as it does with "awe-inspiring words [...] which promise to [...] put us directly in touch with the eternal and the infinite and the Wholly Other" [4].

In short, the language used by myth-critics is basically a rhetorical trick for soliciting approval from the faithful.

But like Deleuze and Guattari, I'm more interested in critics who suggest experimental methods of reading, rather than simply interpret a text; who ask how a book works, rather than what it means; who concern themselves with surfaces and lines of flight, rather than origins and depths.

For like Deleuze and Guattari, I think the aim of criticism is not to rediscover the eternal or universal, but to locate the conditions under which something new might be produced. Great books are never really concerned with the recounting of past experiences and memories - nor are they a place in which one merely confesses one's dreams and fantasies. They are, rather, sites of becoming and, as such, concerned with multiplicities, not myths.

Notes

[1] Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, (The Athlone Press, 1996), p. 41. 

[2] Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence, (Polity Press, 1994), p. 114.

[3] K. K. Ruthven, Myth, (Methuen, 1976), p. 74.

[4] Ibid., p. 78. 

This post is a revised extract from 'On the Abuses and Disadvantages of Mythology for Life: A Timely Meditation', in Stephen Alexander, Visions of Excess and Other Essays, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010), pp. 219-253. For a related post - also extracted from this essay - on Nietzsche, Voltaire, and myth, click here.

In Praise of Amateurs

Sadly, it seems to me that amateurism is, in this professional era, increasingly looked down upon (with the possible exception being that of amateur porn; the erotic folk art of our digital age).  

Which is a pity: for I tend to be of a Greek persuasion and consider the amateur as a virtuous figure; a free spirit of noble intent; open minded, devoted, and full of passion for their discipline regardless of whether this brings public recognition or generates an income.  

Professionals may regard them with a mixture of suspicion and contempt,* but gentleman amateurs, independent scholars, hommes de lettres, and even dilettanti who take a somewhat gay and carefree approach to the things that delight them, have often made crucial contributions to science, the arts, sport, and society.

Ultimately, as Roland Barthes notes, the true amateur is not defined by inferior knowledge or an imperfect technique. But, rather, by the fact that he does not not identify himself to others in order to impress or intimidate; nor constantly worry about status and reputation.

Also, crucially, the amateur unsettles the distinction between work and play, art and life, which is doubtless why they are feared by those who like to police borders, protect categories, and form professional associations.   

* Note:  I was once told by a career academic that people like me were parasites upon those who did all the hardwork in their field of study. I think the idea was to shame me into feeling irresponsible and immature; or to shame me into an apology, perhaps. But I'll never feel ashamed or apologise for being a lover.   

Clap Trap

It's a clap trap Billy - and you've been caught!

The (now almost compulsory) communal clap-along in support of our NHS heroes and other key workers (since when did locksmiths become so essential?) is a form of collective virtue signalling almost designed to irritate those of us who hate public displays of sentiment and moral correctness as well as the sight of people applauding like well-trained seals hoping to be thrown a fish. 

Doubtless, many clap with naive sincerity and a sense of civic duty and are not just showing off with their saucepans and fireworks, but the entire performance is being cynically orchestrated by politicians and the media and I would rather have a dose of the clap than stand on my doorstep and join in with this depressing (and sinister) display of solidarity.

Like James Delingpole, though I'm never entirely certain what I'll be doing at 8pm on a Thursday evening, there's one thing I know for sure I won't be doing; for like Lionel Shriver, I've always had immunity to the herd. [1]

And if my non-participation annoys the neighbours and marks me out in their eyes as some kind of anti-social ingrate who wouldn't deserve treatment in the event of falling ill with coronavirus, that's unfortunate, but fuck 'em. This is still - despite the hysteria and lockdown - a free country: and freedom is often best expressed as refusal and not-doing, because as Barthes powerfully reminds us: fascism is the power to compel activity. 

It's precisely because I'm not a citizen of the People's Republic of China that I don't have to enthusiastically join in with ritualised adoration of the State and its institutions. Happily, even some healthcare workers are beginning to feel uncomfortable with where all this is going and "don’t care if people clap until their hands bleed with rainbows tattooed on their faces" [2].

They recognise that the NHS shouldn't be transformed into a sacred cow and that the people working within it shouldn't be exempt from criticism; nurses aren't angels and doctors aren't saints or miracle workers and, in fact, to insist otherwise is ultimately insulting to the (all too human and thus sometimes fallible) men and women who perform these roles.

Notes

[1] See: James Delingpole, 'No, I Won't Clap "Our NHS"', Breitbart, (14 May 2020) and Lionel Shriver, 'I have herd immunity', The Spectator, (18 April 2020).

[2] 'I'm an NHS doctor - and I've had enough of people clapping for me', anonymous letter in The Guardian, (21 May 2020): click here. 

For a related post to this one - on protecting the NHS - please click here.

Simon's Dream Home: the Winchester Mystery House

The House at 525, South Winchester Blvd.

I.

If I were a rich man ... I'd build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen, right in the middle of the town. There would be one long staircase just going up and one even longer coming down, and one more leading nowhere, just for show. [1]

Alternatively, I would attempt to purchase the Queen Anne style Victorian mansion in San Jose, California, known as the Winchester Mystery House ...

II.

Originally the residence of Sarah Winchester - widow of the famous firearms magnate - the Mystery House is a chaotic wonder full of many curious and amusing features; a designated historical landmark as well as a popular tourist attraction.

Construction began on the House under Mme. Winchester's personal supervision in 1884 and continued, ceaselessly, until her death in 1922, at which time work immediately came to a halt. The fact that the House remained unfinished was not something that would have troubled Sarah. Indeed, she desired an ever-changing, ever-expanding, building that would make a suitably spooky home for the ghosts of those who had had the misfortune to be killed by the deadly repeating rifles manufactured by her husband's family.  

As one might imagine, building such a house wasn't cheap. But Sarah had inherited more than $20 million dollars following the death of William Winchester in 1881, and also received nearly 50% ownership of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, giving her an income of a $1000 a day (equivalent to c. $26,000 a day now), so she could well afford to indulge her whims, fantasies, and strange obsessions. 

The idea for the House came from a Boston-based medium, supposedly channeling Sarah's late husband. Not wanting to further anger the spirits of the dead, Sarah immediately headed out West and began building her redwood seven-story mansion. No architects were consulted and the house was constructed in a haphazard manner with many queer features, including doors that don't open and stairs that lead nowhere. Whether these and other features were intended to confuse the ghosts isn't clear, but they certainly add to the feeling of unease experienced by visitors. 

Although there are now only four stories and the grounds of the estate are much reduced in size, the Mystery House still has over 150 rooms, including 40 bedrooms and two ballrooms. Originally, however, there was only one working toilet and shower; other washrooms were merely decorative and non-functioning. No expense was spared on the numerous adornments, including a unique stained glass window that featured her favourite spider's web design and the number 13. This window, which was never installed, exists in a storage room along with other priceless treasures. 

One of the windows that was installed was designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, using prismatic crystals which, when struck by sunlight, would cast a fabulous rainbow across the room. Unfortunately, Mme. Winchester decided to place it in a room that recived no natural light, preventing the effect from ever being enjoyed.

After her death, the Mystery House was sold at auction to a local investor and then leased to John and Mayme Brown, who opened it to the public in February 1923. Today, the House is owned by a private company representing the descendants of John and Mayme Brown. It is still open to the public and it still retains the many bizarre elements that reflect Mme. Winchester's unusual beliefs and occult preoccupations.

III.

Whilst a house full of spooks is interesting in itself, what fascinates me philosophically about the above is similar to what fascinated Roland Barthes about the ship on which Jason and his crew sailed, the Argo; a vessel which the Argonauts continually rebuilt and added to, so that they effectively ended up with an ever-new (ever-different) ship, without having to alter either its name or form.

Similarly, the Winchester Mystery House "affords the allegory of an eminently structural object, created not by genius, inspiration, determination, evolution, but by two modest actions (which cannot be caught up in any mystique of creation): substitution (one part replaces another, as in a paradigm) and nomination (the name is in no way linked to the stability of the parts)". [2]

In other words, the Mystery House is an uncanny object of unsteady foundation and no identity other than its form. 

Notes

[1] 'If I Were a Rich Man' is a song from the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof, written by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc. / Concord Music Publishing.

[2] Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard, (University of California Press, 1994), p. 46. 

On Textual Cruising (with Reference to the Case of Camus)

Photo of Albert Camus by Henri Cartier-Bresson (1944): 
with his upturned collar, cigarette, and slicked back hair, 
Camus embodied the essence of French cool in this period

One of the (many) ideas I've absorbed from Roland Barthes is that of textual cruising as a key component of the art (and erotics) of reading. 

To cruise the body of a text is both to slowly drift through it in an aimless but pleasurable manner and to make oneself sensitive to the play of signs and those few details, preferences, and inflections (what Barthes terms biographemes) that seem to reveal something of the author and "whose distinction and mobility might go beyond any fate and come to touch, like Epicurean atoms, some future body, destined to the same dispersion".*

I mention this, because I do often wonder not only about the (intertextual) relationship between written works, but also about the (homotextual) relationship between myself and those authors for whom I feel a good deal of affection and which is absolutely not based on any intellectual appeal.

Take Camus, for example. He's by no means a favourite writer and I have only a very casual relationship with his work. But I'm fond of him nevertheless, in a way I never could be about Sartre - monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo - and it makes me wonder if it isn't simply due to the fact that Camus was so damn good-looking and his biographemes so seductive ...?**

* See: Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola, trans. Richard Miller, (University of California Press, 1989), p. 9.  

** I'm not simply trying to be funny here: one commentator recently described Camus as "the Don Draper of existentialism" and several others have remarked on his physical attractiveness and beautiful writing style. See Adam Gopnik, 'Facing History: Why We Love Camus' The New Yorker (April 2, 2012): click here to read online.

You Need Hands

Single release from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1979)

I.

In his 1925 essay 'Why the Novel Matters', D. H. Lawrence challenges the mind/body superstition by musing on his hand in the act of writing. Why, he asks, should it be regarded as "a mere nothing compared to the mind that directs it".  

Why indeed. For it is the hand which - animated with a life all its own - forms direct knowledge of the strange universe that it touches, grasps, and handles. And it is the hand which plays with a pen upon the page, slipping gaily along and jumping "like a grasshopper to dot an i".*

The hand, says Lawrence, is also capable of rudimentary thought and experiences boredom if obliged to engage in the same activity for too long. Ultimately, it has just as much ontological reality as the brain: "Why should I imagine that there is a me which is more me than my hand is?"    

Why indeed. In fact, the philosopher Martin Heidegger gives the human hand special significance, believing as he does that it is what distinguishes man from all other beasts, including the great apes. Thus, as noted in a recent post on simian aesthetics, whilst Heidegger would readily admit that a chimp possesses prehensile, multi-fingered appendages capable of holding and manipulating objects - including paintbrushes - he would not allow that a chimp has hands in the unique (Daseinesque) manner that human beings have hands.

For Heidegger, there's an ontological abyss between the hand of Picasso, for example, and the hand of Pierre Brassau, that is not simply based on evolved anatomical difference. Derrida, however, has interrogated Heidegger's thinking on the hand and animality and argues that his insistence that apes have no hands (only organs that can grasp) is simply dogmatic speciesism which, as with all such oppositional thinking (or dualism), serves to land him back in the metaphysical soup so to speak.    

II.

Those interested in knowing what Heidegger says in more detail are encouraged to read What is Called Thinking? (1951-52). In this crucial late text Heidegger addresses the question of the human and what defines our unique existence or way of being in the world (i.e., what puts the Da- in Dasein and sets man apart from all other species).

Not wanting to fall back into the ontotheology that sustains traditional humanism, his answer isn't the mind or anything to do with the soul, it is, rather, die Hand; man is a kind of signifying monster who seems to be desperately trying to articulate something and the hand is the organ par excellence with which he gestures, points, and indicates - as well as reaches, receives, carries and welcomes.

Or, as Max Bygraves once wrote:

You need hands 
To hold someone you care for 
You need hands
To show that you're sincere **

You also need hands, as Bygraves goes on to suggest, to wipe away a tear, to hold a new born baby, and to give thanks to God in prayer. I don't know if Heidegger knew this very popular song (a German version entitled Deine Hände by Gerhard Wendland was released in July 1959), but I think he may have liked it (then again, maybe not).   

Insisting that thought is not a disembodied or merely cerebral process, Heidegger argues that man only really thinks when he creatively engages with the world with his hands. If he (somewhat predictably) writes of carpenters and cabinet-makers working away in some hamlet on the edge of the Black Forest, we are surely encouraged to extend what he says to include all people - but not Koko the gorilla or Congo the chimp.

Apes lack hands because they do not dwell within language (and so can never sing along with Max), concludes Heidegger, displaying the same problematic anthropocentrism that has characterised so much Western philosophy.

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Why the Novel Matters', Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 193. 

Martin Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking? trans. Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray, (Harper and Row, 1968). Originally published as Was Heißt Deken? (Max Niemeyer Verlag,1954), the book consists of a series of lectures given by Heidegger in 1951-52 at the University of Freiburg. To read online as a pdf, click here.  

Jacques Derrida, 'Geschlecht II: Heidegger's Hand', trans. John P. Leavey, Jr., in Deconstruction and Philosophy, ed. John Sallis, (University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 161-96. To read online as a pdf, click here. 

* Like Lawrence, Roland Barthes also liked to muse upon the physical act of writing - or what he termed scription - i.e., "the action by which we manually trace signs". Ultimately, for both men, writing is the hand and, in a wider sense, the body: "its impulses, controlling mechanisms, rhythms, weights, glides, complications, flights ..." It hardly needs to be said that Barthes had no time for the typewriter or word processor (in this he has much in common with Heidegger who believed it tore writing away from the essential domain of the hand and mechanically passed the word along, turning it into an element of commerce and communication). See Roland Barthes, The Grain of the Voice: Interviews 1962-1980, trans. Linda Coverdale, (Northwestern University Press, 2009), p. 193.

** Max Bygraves, You Need Hands (Decca, 1958). Written by Max Bygraves (under the name Roy Irwin). Performed by Max Bygraves with The Clarke Brothers and Eric Rogers and his Orchestra. Lyrics © Lakeview Music Publishing Co. Ltd. Click here to play on YouTube. For me, the song has special interest due to the fact that Malcolm chose to record it for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle and his performance of the song with Helen of Troy, in Highgate Cemetery, is one of the more touching scenes in Julien Temple's 1980 film: click here.