Aux armes et caetera

 Photo of Serge Gainsbourg by Jean-Jacques Bernier (1985)

Allons enfants de la Patrie / Le jour de gloire est arrivé! 

It's Bastille Day - one of the few dates in history genuinely worth celebrating.

I pretty much love all things French: the wine, the women, the food, the literature, the philosophy, the fashion, the music, the arrogance, the joie de vivre and the je ne sais quoi. But most of all I love Serge Gainsbourg who, somewhat ironically, most beautifully and brilliantly embodied the very essence of France and the spirit of 1789.

And perhaps my favourite Gainsbourg story (amongst several possible contenders) concerns his reggaefied version of the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, which so outraged and disgusted the paramilitary forces of the French far-right. It was an obvious provocation, with affinities to both the Jimi Hendrix version of The Star Spangled Banner and the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen and there were calls made for Gainsbourg to be stripped of his citizenship. 

Events came to a head when Gainsbourg went on tour with his Jamaican musicians to promote his new album, Aux Armes Et Caetera (1979). In Strasbourg, an ex-paratrooper presented the mayor with a petition demanding that the show be cancelled and threatening violence if it went ahead. 

Despite this - and in courageous defiance of the forces of reaction and racism - Serge took to the stage, alone, and sang the anthem in its original version, much to the confusion and consternation of those in the crowd who had come to disrupt proceedings, before walking off with a gesture of 'Fuck you!'

Two years afterwards, just to ensure he would have the final word in the affair, Gainsbourg purchased the original manuscript of La Marseillaise by Rouget de Lisle. It almost bankrupted him to do so, he said, but it was a question of honour.

Vive la France! Vive la Revolution! Et vive Gainsbourg! 

A Short Sermon on Anti-theism

The creeping religiosity of everyday life here in the UK - not to mention the appalling acts of violent atrocity carried out by the faithful all over the world - means that it unfortunately becomes necessary to voice a view on the subject. 

And so, for the record, my view is this:

(1) All the world's major religions wholly and often wilfully misrepresent the origins of the cosmos and of life on earth. Where they don't get things wrong due to the ignorance of their founders and prophets, they lie due to the desire of their priests and spiritual leaders to keep everyone else ignorant. 

(2) All the world's major religions are based upon anthropomorphic conceit and human arrogance and yet they all aim to make men, women and children subservient and fearful.

(3) All the world's major religions are forms of cruelty that exercise power over the mind by punishing and torturing the flesh via practices that include sexual repression, blood sacrifice, and genital mutilation.   

(4) All the world's major religions are nihilistic death cults that fantasise and call for the end of the world so that they might then establish a reign of saints and zombies afterlife, or achieve a state of total non-being. 

(5) Inasmuch as points 1-4 are true - and it seems to me that they are irrefutable - then we might legitimately conclude that all the world's major religions (and not just the monotheisms of Abrahamic origin) are forms of violent psychosis, or a hatred of the real. 

Thus, in my view, it is not sufficient to declare oneself agnostic on the question of religion, although, obviously, it is always preferable that an individual honestly admits their ignorance, rather than absurdly claim to know God's will. Nor is it enough, today, to simply call oneself an atheist: one has to actively declare an interest and take up the challenge by affirming nothing short of anti-theism in the courageous manner of Christopher Hitchens, for example, who wrote:

"I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effects of religious belief, is positively harmful."

- Letters to a Young Contrarian, (2001)

Like Hitchens, I think religion poisons everything and has been the one great curse upon mankind. If I could, I'd happily tear down every church, mosque, synagogue, temple, shrine or holy place and build schools, science museums, libraries, observatories, art galleries, theatres, gymnasia, dance academies and botanical gardens on the sites.  

As I am unable to do so, however, I simply encourage everyone to keep reading, keep thinking, keep laughing, and keep challenging all those who would establish earthly authority in the name of heavenly power.

On the Stuttering of Language

I recently had an interesting and enjoyable evening at Europe House, where bilingual Spanish/English writers Isabel del Rio and Susana Medina were discussing their work and promoting new books.

Both women seemed keen to advance the idea that by writing in two languages simultaneously they were evolving a new literary genre that was beyond simple translation. Although their argument was coherent and their experimental practice of writing in the space between different cultures perfectly commendable, I'm afraid I wasn't convinced that anything radically new was on offer.  

In fact, I agree with Deleuze that great writers always and already inhabit their native languages like foreign agents and bring writing to a crisis in some manner by carving out a nonpreexistent language within their own tongue:

"This is not a situation of bilingualism or multilingualism. We can easily conceive of two languages mixing with each other, with incessant transitions from one to the other; yet each of them nonetheless remains a homogeneous system in equilibrium, and their mixing takes place in speech. But this is not how great authors proceed ... they do not mix two languages together, not even a minor language and a major language .... What they do, rather, is invent a minor use of the major language within which they express themselves ... They are great writers by virtue of this minorization: they make the language take flight ... ceaselessly placing it in a state of disequilibrium .... They make the language itself scream, stutter, stammer, or murmur."

- Gilles Deleuze, 'He Stuttered', Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael E. Greco, (Verso, 1998), pp. 109-10. 

Language Death

 Language Death, by Orooo on deviantart.com

Is English just a language like any other? 

I don't think so: rather, it seems to me that English is a kind of monstrous metalanguage. Even we might think of it as a kind of voracious black hole into which other tongues collapse and die, leaving behind a few words like seeds, which will blossom as part of an ever-expanding global English or übertongue.

And this is why English-speakers are notoriously monolingual: for they already speak every other language under the sun. 

  

Dr Bayard's Cough Drops

Some of the things that make happiest in life are small and inexpensive pleasures carried forward from and reminiscent of childhood. Such as a bag of sweets. 

The very names are often enough to trigger delight: black jacks, sherbet pips, kola cubes, love hearts, lemon bonbons, strawberry bonbons, pear drops, glacier mints, jelly tots, wine gums, humbugs ... the list is a long and delirious one of lip-smacking, gob-stopping wonder. 

Heaven, it seems, is sugar-rich and full of artificial colours.  

But these days, having succumbed to middle-age, I must almost shamefully confess that my confectionery of choice happens to be a very smooth aniseed-flavoured cough drop invented by a French physician in 1949 and still made to his original secret recipe at a factory in Portugal. 

Recommended by pharmacists the world over, Dr Bayard's cough drops are more than just medicinal wonders; they are also - like Ferrero Rocher - a welcome addition to any social occasion. Or so we are told by the manufacturers in their rather charming attempt at English: "Even in a friends gathering they're always a success!" 

If they lack the anarchic and childlike character of the best of British sweets and trade instead on grown-up bourgeois credentials, they remain eccentric enough in a European manner to make one smile and delicious enough to ensure I keep sucking them. I do worry though that I'm on a slippery slope towards Werther's Originals.

Storming the Angel-Guarded Gates

There has been such a long and intimate relation between philosophy and anal sex that one might almost wonder if there isn't some level of causality involved; does the perverse love of wisdom result of necessity in a desire for the apples of Sodom?

What even those who shy away from such a conclusion cannot deny is that the history of the former might easily be conceived in terms of the latter, as happily confessed by Deleuze, who tells us that his own early method of doing philosophy involved the taking of an author from behind and in this way producing monstrous offspring.
 

D. H. Lawrence also values the anus as a site of libidinal and philosophical experimentation. Indeed, he boldly suggests that it might provide a gateway to paradise and several of his novels contain scenes in which buggery is promoted as a way of overcoming organic shame and rediscovering a kind of bestial innocence.  

It requires a cock in the arse, decides Connie, even to purify and quicken the mind.

We Belong to our Bacteria

Thanks to recent discoveries in microbiology, it is now known that we are composed of 90% bacteria. Thus, in cellular terms, we are just 10% human. 

This means we are not quite the self-contained, self-sufficient individuals made in the image of God that we pride ourselves on being. Rather, we are germ collectives and might do best to think of our bodies as elaborate vessels specially evolved for the growth and spread of our bacterial inhabitants, rather than designed to house an immortal soul.      

For creationists and other believers in human uniqueness, this must surely be a challenge to their faith. It was tricky enough when they simply had our genetic closeness to apes and a single common ancestor to contend with. Now they have to deny - or explain - the presence of 100 trillion bacteria, on our skin, in our mouths and intestines, or swimming across the surface of our eyes, many of which serve in the vital business of sustaining our life, but some of which, given half-a-chance, will kill us.

Have pathogens also been designed by a loving God? It's unlikely.

And so it's probably best if we put aside the bible and forget notions of intelligent design. Even we might finally decide to abandon the idea of Almighty God and learn to love our bodies in all their alien complexity: I, for one, welcome our microbial overlords.

Even the Dead Don't Rest in Peace

Georges Bataille was not mistaken when he spoke of death as a shipwreck into the nauseous and repeatedly emphasized the excremental nature of the corpse which, thanks to putrefaction, rapidly dissolves into noxious base matter. 

First to go, as home to the greatest number of bacteria, are the digestive organs and the lungs. The brain also soon liquifies, as it is nice and soft and easy to digest. The massively expanding numbers of bacteria in the mouth chew through the palate and transform grey matter into goo. Quite literally, it runs out of the ears and bubbles like snot from the nose; in this manner, we're all destined to lose our minds. 

After three or four weeks, all of the internal organs will have become soup. Muscle tissue is frequently eaten not only by bacteria, but also by carnivorous beetles. Sometimes the skin gets consumed as well, sometimes not. Depending on the weather and other environmental conditions, it might just dry out and naturally mummify. Whatever remains, however, will be obliged to lie in a stinking pool of organic filth, or a coffin full of shit. 

Burial might serve to prolong the process of decomposition, but it certainly doesn't prevent it or delay it indefinitely. As Mary Roach in her amusing study, Stiff (2003), writes: "Eventually any meat, regardless of what you do to it, will whither and go off." Only the skeletal structure beneath the soft pathology of the flesh will last for any significant period of time. But bones too - just like laws and monuments - are ultimately destined to crumble into dust.

Thus we have little real choice but to accept the biological fact that life dies. But is this the end of the story? No. The truth is, we never stop dying because, in a material, non-personal, inhuman manner, we never stop living. In other words, it's mistaken to confuse our individual death with non-being.

"Is it because we want to believe in the loyalty of our substance that we make this peculiar equation?" asks Nick Land.* Probably the answer to this is yes. But it's a somewhat shameful answer. 

For whether we like to believe it or not, matter is always struggling to escape essence and to abandon complex existence; always seeking to return to a state of inanimate and blissful simplicity. Our bodies have no allegiance to life and do not seek to stave off disintegration or shut out death. They grow into the embrace of the latter (we term this ageing) and our mass of atoms enjoy a veritable orgy of delight after having broken free from their temporary entrapment in life.

Unfortunately for them, they don't get to enjoy their freedom for long. For death proves to be but a "temporary refreshment ... before the rush back into the compulsive dissipation of life".* Which is to say, atoms are so vigorously recycled at death that they don't ever get to rest in peace. 

It further means that we, the living, all house and reincarnate the carbon atoms of the departed and in this way the souls of the dead might be said to re-enter and pervade the souls of the living. Thanks to the conservation of mass, we can legitimately declare ourselves to be 'all the names in history'.    

* See: Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation, (Routledge, 1992), p. 180. 

Lesbophobia

There's an astonishing exchange in Chapter XIV of Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, in which Mellors reveals to Connie the short and unhappy history of his relationships with women, beginning with a schoolmaster's daughter who was pretty and romantic, but sexless; and ending with Bertha Coutts, his wife, who enjoyed sex, but could only achieve orgasm by grinding her own coffee. 

Mellors is contemptuous of the first type; the idealistic women who love everything about love, except  fucking. But it is the latter type whom he really hates and seems to fear; the active type like Bertha, that like to bring themselves off by wriggling and shouting and clutching at themselves. These women, says Mellors, who dare to seek clitoral stimulation and require more than vaginal penetration by the penis in order to come, are mostly lesbian:

"'And do you mind?' asked Connie.

'I could kill them. When I'm with a woman who's really lesbian, I fairly howl in my soul, wanting to kill her.'

'But do you think lesbian women are any worse than homosexual men?'  

'I do! Because I've suffered more from them. In the abstract, I've no idea. When I get with a lesbian woman, whether she knows she's one or not, I see red.'"

- D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (CUP, 1993), p. 203. 

This passage - one that has long troubled and rightly angered many female readers and critics of Lawrence - demonstrates why we are justified in using the term lesbophobia as something distinct from the more commonly theorized phenomenon of homophobia. 

Clearly, there is an added component of sexism in lesbophobia and, indeed, a violent element of misogyny. I think the only admirable thing about this passage is that it doesn't seek to disguise the latter. Rather, it explicitly demonstrates how quickly misogyny turns murderous. 

Sadly - shamefully - lesbophobia seems to be something that is increasing in our society; or, at any rate, something that it is increasingly OK to articulate. The fact that many gay men and straight women are also guilty of directing abuse or acting in a prejudicial and discriminatory manner towards lesbians is doubly sad and shameful.

Thankfully, this is not Southern Africa and we do not witness the horror of corrective rape in the UK. But such vile hate crime flourishes when good people do and say nothing. Or when writers and intellectuals who should know better, appear to aggressively enforce heteronormative values and condone the gang rape and murder of women who don't wish to submit to male sexual power and phallic authority (women who want none of that). 

On Intuition

Intuition Card, by Linnea Vedder Shults (2009)

Last night, in discussion with an old musician and a young neuroscientist, the question arose of intuition.

Intuition, of course, is the favourite faculty of those who like to denigrate reason and act in accordance with what they believe to be an unmediated and direct perception of reality. For such people, knowledge is non-inferential and is mysteriously circulated in the blood, or located in the gut. They speak of inner wisdom and the unconscious. Sometimes they speak also of hearing voices and exercising psychic abilities. 

The young neuroscientist, Ms Camargo, whilst not wanting to abandon the idea of intuition as an untenable piece of folk psychology, was nevertheless far more comfortable speaking about the brain and physiological processes rather than soul, spirit, or other spooky stuff.

The old musician, however, Mr Van Hooke, was a convinced believer in spiritual powers and spoke not only of intuition, but also inspiration, originality, and creative genius for good measure. Indeed, such was his conviction that he seemed genuinely shocked and outraged when I mildly suggested that such notions might at the very least be open to interrogation. 

As, unfortunately, I didn't get the opportunity to explain to him my concerns with the superstitious notion of intuition on the night, I'd like to do so now.

  

For me, the common understanding of the mind is profoundly mistaken and once we develop a more accurate and non-metaphysical account, then popular notions like intuition and desire will prove to be as untenable as belief in the promptings of demons. At best, intuition is simply the retrieval of a memory.

Of course, I appreciate that we feel certain things strongly and that introspective or experiential evidence can seem very convincing. But can we trust it or assume it to be true? If it turns out to be as determined by society and culture as we now know our perception of the world to be, then it's likely that what we naturally intuit or instinctively feel to be the case is largely determined by doxa (i.e. received opinion expressed in a language based on agreed rules of grammar, syntax, and stereotype). 

Thus it's not coincidental that we understand what our inner voice tells us, because it conveniently speaks in sentences with a linguistic compositional structure that we recognise. However, as Patricia Churchland argues, it's extremely unlikely we're going to find anything that even remotely resembles the alphabet inside the structure of actual brains.

Mr Van Hooke, like many other people, passionately wants to defend the folk psychology with which he is so familiar and comfortable. And, to be fair, it has provided a very successful model of mental processes. But, as a philosopher, I'm aware that the success of a theory is no guarantee that it legitimately represents reality. Even attractive theories - of vitalism, for example - have to be laid to rest at some point in the name of intellectual integrity.

Eliminative materialism has unsettling consequences and I'm not pretending otherwise; not just for our conception of the mind, but for many other aspects of human activity. As Jerry Fodor once famously declared: "If commonsense psychology were to collapse, that would be, beyond comparison, the greatest intellectual catastrophe in the history of our species ..."

True, but so what? This doesn't constitute an argument against the naturalization of the mind, a task which demands and deserves to be accomplished, whatever the consequences. And who knows, perhaps out of such a catastrophe something good will come - that's my hunch anyway.