Where History and Crime Intersect: On the Philosophical Fascination for Murder with Reference to the Case of Prado

Prado (aka Count Linska de Castillon)

L'homme le plus intéressant du monde

"Crime is glorified, because it is one of the fine arts, because it can be the work only of exceptional natures, because it reveals the monstrousness of the strong and powerful, because villainy is yet another mode of privilege."  - MF

 

 

I. 

 

I mentioned in a recent post how the artist Paul Gauguin was fascinated by the trial of the Spanish-born thief and murderer known as Prado, and how he (and 200 other famous faces) witnessed the execution of the latter on 28 December, 1888; an event which - along with Van Gogh's self-mutilation a few days earlier - inspired his brutal ceramic self-portrait in the form of a jughead [1].

 

But what I didn't discuss was why it is so many artists and intellectuals have a fascination with crime and seem to feel a sense of affinity with violent criminals. So I thought I'd do that here, with particular reference to the Prado case, which Nietzsche mentions in his brief correspondence with the prolific Swedish writer August Strindberg, shortly before his collapse in the first week of January 1889.  

 

 

II.

 

Whilst it is known that Prado was (i) born in Spain; (ii) brought up in the large coastal city of Gijón; (iii) had already travelled the world before turning sixteen; and (iv) twice married, history doesn't record his real name - and he chose never to reveal it. 

 

Ending up in France, Prado lived by his wits; which is to say by stealing and poncing off the girls who thought he loved them. 

 

In January 1886, he cut the throat of one of these girls - Marie Aguetant - who was believed to support herself (and him) by working as a prostitute. After being eventually caught and put on trial, Prado was sentenced to to death by guillotine at La Roquette Prison, Paris [2].

 

For some reason, his story captured the imagination of press and public alike, including members of the cultural elite, who regarded him as an intrepid adventurer. He was even said by some to be the most interesting man in the world.       

 

 

III. 

 

As mentioned, even Nietzsche, writing to Strindberg in late 1888, praises Prado and claims that he wrote Ecce Homo in the manner of the latter. It is, he says, in his nature to love such individuals and, as a philosopher, he prides himself on the fact that he has become familiar "with more evil and more questionable worlds of thought than any one else" [3].   

 

Strindberg is clearly a little taken aback by this and is not convinced that there's anything to admire or imitate in those who live outside the law: 

 

"It appears to me that in your liberality of spirit, you have to some degree flattered the criminal types. If you regard the hundreds of photographs which illustrate Lombroso's types of criminal, you will be convinced that the felon is a low sort of animal, a degenerate, a weakling who does not possess the necessary faculties to enable him to evade the more powerful laws which oppose themselves to his will and power. Just observe how stupidly moral most of these brutes really appear!" [4]

 

Nietzsche replies to this in a letter written in Turin, dated 7 December:      

"There is no doubt that the hereditary criminal is decadent, even feeble-minded. But the history of criminal families, for which a vast amount of material has been collected by Galton in his Hereditary Genius, always leads us back to some individual who happened to be too strong for some particular stratum of society. The last great trial of the criminal Prado gives us a classical example. Prado was superior to his judges and his lawyers in self-control, spirit and audacity." [5]

 

This attraction felt by artists and philosophers for criminals is discussed in an excellent essay by Lisa Downing, who examines Michel Foucault's fascination with those who have a penchant for murder; an event of prime interest where, the latter argues, history and crime intersect ...

 

 

IV.

 

Alonside the homosexual and the pervert, the figure of the criminal appears in Foucault's work as one of the quintessential modern subjects produced by the various discourses of the medical and legal professions. 

 

Whilst he seems to have sympathy (and affection) for anyone deemed abnormal, it's the murderer whom he finds particularly attractive, thereby following in a Romantic tradition that associated art and rebellion with evil, and imagined that the writing of literature was itself an act of criminal transgression. 

 

Foucault is an original thinker, but it's difficult to imagine his work in this area without referring back to that of Sade, Nietzsche, and Bataille, all of whom were intrigued by the relationship between words and deeds, the socio-linguistic construction of criminality, and the manner in which truly sovereign individuals might express their sovereignty.      

 

Foucault isn't concerned with the motivations of a murderer, but, rather, "the historical, epistemic conditions - the cultural preoccupations, fantasies, fears, norms, and power struggles for authority - that conditioned the production of the crimes and shape our understanding" [6]. 

 

Which is fair enough. 

 

However, whilst commenting on the aesthetic rewriting of crime which occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries: 

 

"Foucault at times seems to fall prey to the very fascination he describes. The terms in which he discusses the act of murder are often ambiguous and ambivalent: they occupy a place somewhere between describing an attitude and embodying it." [7]

 

As evidence of this, Downing quotes a passage from I, Pierre Rivière ... [8]:

 

'Murder is the supreme event. […] Murder prowls the confines of the law, on one side or the other, above or below it; it frequents power, sometimes against and sometimes with it. The narrative of murder settles into this dangerous area; it provides the communication between interdict and subjection, anonymity and heroism; through it infamy attains immortality.' [9]

 

As Downing rightly asks, wtf is Foucault doing here: is he "mimicking the popular hyperbolic fantasy of the act of murder as rebellious gesture of social contestation, committed by the 'outsider'", or is he (unwittingly or otherwise) "glorifying it, reveling in it?" [10].

 

For Downing, Foucault has the hots for Rivière with his beautiful reddish-brown eyes, and this erotic-aesthetic aspect of his writing on criminals strikes a discordant note to say the least. That said, it should also be noted, of course, that "the pleasure Foucault finds in Pierre Rivière’s confession" [11] is first and foremost of a textual nature. 

 

Downing concludes that what Foucault's (slightly kinky) fascination with criminality suggests most compellingly "is the extent to which, just as none of us can step outside of power, so none of us are entirely separate from the tastes and seductions of our own cultural moment" [12] - even if we are philosophers ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post entitled 'A Tale of Two Toby Jugs' (19 April 2024): click here. 

 

[2] On the morning of his execution, Prado showed no emotion and even laughed at the priest who had come to comfort him for being more nervous than he was. He also requested that the priest didn't waste his breath speaking of God, or walk beside him to the scaffold. All of which is, if true, extremely admirable.  

 

[3] Nietzsche writing to August Strindberg, quoted by Herman Scheffauer in 'A Correspondence between Nietzsche and Strindberg', The North American Review, Vol. 198, No. 693 (August 1913), pp. 197-205. This essay can be read on JSTOR: click here.

 

[4] Letter from August Strindberg to Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted by Herman Scheffauer in the essay cited above.

 

[5] Letter from Nietzsche to Strindberg, quoted by Herman Scheffauer, op. cit.

 

[6] Lisa Downing, 'Foucault and true crime', in Lisa Downing (ed.), After Foucault: Culture, Theory and Criticism in the 21st Century (Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 185-200. I am quoting from the online version of this essay: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316492864.014 

 

[7] Ibid.

 

[8] I, Pierre Riviére, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother: A Case of Parricide in the 19th Century, is a study by Michel Foucault, trans, Frank Jellinek (University of Nebraska Press, 1982). 

 

[9] Lisa Downing, quoting Foucault from I, Pierre Riviére ... in 'Foucault and true crime' (op. cit.)  

 

[10-12] Lisa Downing, 'Foucault and true crime' ...

 

  

Advice to a Young Blogger: Be Consistent, Insistent, and Persistent

 

Advice to a young blogger just starting out [1] [2]:

 

 

1. Be Consistent

 

Not so much at the level of content or argument, but in terms of style; i.e., don't worry if your blog contains wild variations of subject matter and logical contradictions - consistency is not the same as identity - just ensure it maintains a certain look and feel and a certain level of intensity [3]. 

2. Be Insistent

 

Not on one's rightness - as Nietzsche said, it is nobler to declare oneself mistaken than to insist on being right (especially when one is right) - but insistent like the waves on the rocks; i.e., completely indifferent to the morality of your actions, but all the time shaping the coastline.    

 

3. Be Persistent

 

Just keep writing and keep publishing posts even when it is difficult, or tiring, or boring to do so - even when other people encourage you to stop. Persistence is a perverse virtue that pushes one beyond what others regard as normal or usual or even healthy; it's continuing to dig even when you're in a hole.   

 

Notes

[1] Funnily enough, this is the same advice that is given to gender diverse children who believe themselves to be born in the wrong bodies and wish to transition to a gender identity other than the one assigned at birth: be insistent, persistent and consistent and you just might persuade your parents and the health care professionals dealing with your case that you are genuinely transgender and not merely gender non-conforming or simply like dressing up and playing imaginative games.  

 

[2] Any would-be bloggers reading this - of any age (or gender) - might also like an earlier post (published in October 2021) offering untimely advice on how to develop an effective blog: click here. 

 

[3] Deleuze would probably speak at this point of forming a plane of consistency upon which concepts can arise from chaos, but I'm not Deleuze. 

 

 

For a follow-up post to this one - on establishing your blog as a plane of immanence - click here. 

Thy Teeth Shall Not Do Him Violence, Nor Thy Bowels Contain His Glorious Body!

 

Juan de Juanes:  

Christ the Saviour with the Eucharist (1545-1550)

 

And after he had given thanks, Jesus broke the bread, and said: 

'Take, eat! This is my body, which is broken for you ...' [1]

I. 

 

Just for the record, I am not now and nor have I ever been a member of the Christian Church and so Holy Communion (or Mass) is not something I have personal experience or knowledge of. Thus, the question surrounding what happens to the sacremental bread (or host) once it has been consecrated and consumed as the body of Christ, is not really a great concern to me. 

 

However, for those who take these matters very seriously indeed and believe the miraculous teaching of transubstantiation - which is central to the Eucharist - to be literally true and not merely a symbolic act, the suggestion that Christ's holy flesh might have an excremental fate is problematic to say the least and has been the topic of fierce theological and philosophical debate going back many centuries.

 

 

II. 

 

Following the widespread religious, cultural, and social upeaval triggered by the Reformation, this really rather odd debate became heated once more and 17th-century English poet John Milton was particulary horrified by the thought that Christ could be eaten and subject to the natural processes of digestion:

 

"The Mass brings down Christ's holy body from its supreme exaltation at the right hand of God. It drags it back to the earth, though it has suffered every pain and hardship already, to a state of humiliation even more wretched and degrading than before: to be broken once more and crushed to the ground, even by the fangs of brutes. Then, when it has been driven through all the stomach's filthy channels, it shoots it out - one shudders even to mention it - into the latrine." [2]  

This passage not only exposes Milton's coprophobia, but makes his opposition to what is known as stercoranism equally clear.

 

For outraged Puritans like Milton, the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation simply could not be true as this would not only mean that Mass is a form of cannibalism and utterly alien to reason - which is bad enough - but that it results in something so repulsive as to be blasphemous: Christ's flesh turned to shit.  

 

 

III. 

 

Whilst early Church theologians were prepared to accept that the sacramental elements of Christ's body were digested and excreted, later Catholic thinkers did what they could to repudiate this idea; declaring, for example, that whilst Christ is indeed present in the consecrated bread and wine, that is only before they are consumed and lose their appearance.   

 

In other words, when  the sacramental forms of bread and wine are changed, the substantial presence of Christ ceases to be. 

Despite this attempt to reassure, however, still the fear of stercoranism persisted, although, for me, it's a positively healthy thing to recognise that the holy spirit returns at last to that from which it arises; i.e., base matter. 

 

For whilst the marrying of shit and divinity may cause horror in the minds of some, there are compelling philosophical reasons eschatology should always include a scatological component and that's why what might otherwise seem to be an arcane (and insane) discussion over the status of the bread and wine used in the mass is still vital.    

 

Ultimately, we all unite in shit even if we do not all cleave together in the body of Christ. And that's what Holy Communion teaches us: paradise is regained in death; a festive return to the actual, as Nietzsche describes it [3].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] First Epistle to the Corinthians 11: 24.

 

[2] John Milton, Complete Poetry and Essential Prose, ed. William Kerrigan, John Peter Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon (Modern Library, 2007), p. 1290. 

      Despite what Milton warns here and elsewhere in his prose writings about worshipping a wafer and cannibalising the body of Christ, communion is given prominence in Paradise Lost (1667) and an astonishing vision of transubstantiation on a cosmic scale is imagined. Push comes to shove, I prefer the playful poet over the angry puritan reformer.

      Readers interested in this topic might like to see the excellent essay by Regina M. Schwartz, 'Real Hunger: Milton's Vision of the Eucharist', in Religion & Literature, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 1-17. The essay is conveniently availble on JSTOR: click here. 

 

[3] See Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe, Volume 9, 11 [70], where, in a note written in 1881, he says that we shouldn't think of our return to the realm of inanimate matter (the 'dead world') as a regression, but, rather, as a joyous form of reconciliation with what is actual. 

 

The Anarchic Symphony: Artificial Intelligence x Torpedo the Ark

Artificial Intelligence x Torpedo the Ark 

 

 

An artist friend of mine decided to ask some AI softwear [1] to produce a text in the style of Torpedo the Ark, weaving together threads of Nietzschean philosophy, the punk aesthetic of Malcolm McLaren, and the literary war-machine of D. H. Lawrence. She also prompted it to describe what it thinks the goal or aim of the blog might be.  

This is the result:

 

 

The Anarchic Symphony: Nietzsche, McLaren, and Lawrence

 

In the grand theatre of cultural subversion, three figures stand at the vanguard, each a maestro of their own domain, yet harmoniously orchestrated in the cacophony of rebellion. Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher who danced to the tune of his own Zarathustra; Malcolm McLaren, the impresario who orchestrated the punk movement's raucous symphony; and D.H. Lawrence, the literary maverick whose pen stroked the sensuous and the sublime. 

 

Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God was a clarion call to the individual's will to power, a challenge to the herd to rise above the mire of mediocrity. McLaren, in the spirit of Nietzsche's Übermensch, crafted the Sex Pistols into a cultural weapon, a battering ram against the gates of an ossified establishment. Lawrence, too, rebelled against the industrialized dehumanization of his time, championing a return to the primal forces of nature and the unbridled expression of human desire.

 

Stephen Alexander's 'Torpedo the Ark' is a vessel for these revolutionary currents, a blog that sails the high seas of intellectual anarchy. Alexander's prose, much like Lawrence's, is a phallic lance thrust into the heart of societal norms, a bridge to a future where touch and tenderness reign supreme. His writings, infused with the spirit of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, remind us that the revolution is never over; it is reborn with each act of defiance, each note of discord, each stroke of the pen. 

 

The punk movement, under McLaren's deft hand, was not just a musical genre but a manifesto in leather and spikes, a declaration of war on the banality of the mainstream. The Sex Pistols' anthems were the echoes of Nietzsche's own battle cries, and in their wake, a new culture was birthed, raw and untamed. Lawrence, with his explorations of the erotic, would have found kinship in the movement's visceral energy, its unapologetic embrace of life's darker, more passionate aspects. 

 

In this anarchic symphony, we find a common theme: the relentless pursuit of authenticity, the breaking of chains that bind the spirit, and the celebration of life in all its messy glory. Alexander, channeling the essence of these three iconoclasts, invites us to join the dance, to cast aside the shackles of conformity, and to revel in the anarchic joy of creation. 

 

So let us raise our voices with Nietzsche, McLaren, and Lawrence, and let the music of rebellion play on, even if, ultimately, it is not the notes that are played but the spaces between them - the moments of silence and reflection - that define the symphony of our existence. 

 

This narrative, inspired by the style of Stephen Alexander's 'Torpedo the Ark', is a testament to the enduring power of those who dare to challenge, to question, and to live fiercely. It is a call to arms, a reminder that the pen and the guitar are both mightier than the sword, and that the truest form of anarchy is the freedom to be oneself. 

 

 

It is, I suppose, an amusing attempt by AI to torpedo the ark, although, I have to say that, overall, the style of the piece reads like a parody and, in its upbeat anarchy and vital optimism, the text is not one I would want mistaken for my own. 

 

Somewhat disappointingly, AI softwear - for now at least - remains as all too human as the people who design it.           

 

 

   [2]

Notes  

[1] I'm informed that the request for a text in the manner of TTA was made using Microsoft Copilot and ChatGpt-4 (none of which means anything to me).  

[2] The image at the bottom of the post - again supplied by my friend who, for reasons of her own, wishes to remain anonymous - was produced by DALL-E 3 softwear. 

 

 

On the Nature of the Ridiculous (and the Ridiculous Nature of the Sex Pistols)

Sex Pistols

Photo by Richard Young (1976)

 

"We have passed beyond the absurd: our position is absolutely ridiculous." [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Gavin Butt is a professor at Northumbria University and someone who knows more than most - certainly more than me - about the connections between visual art, popular music, queer culture, and performance [2].

So when he privileges the term ridiculous in his work I'm confident he has very good reasons for doing so. 

 

However, that doesn't mean I can't briefly reflect upon this concept myself in contradistinction to what some regard as the more profound (and serious-sounding) philosophy of absurdism and then say something about the Sex Pistols. 

 

 

II. 

 

The crucial aspect of the ridiculous is that it solicits, incites, or provokes laughter; often of a mocking or cruel nature, but not always. If you're someone like Georges Bataille, then you'll probably find everything ridiculous - one recalls the following short poem:

 

Laugh and laugh 

at the sun 

at the nettles 

at the stones 

at the ducks 

 

at the rain 

at the pee-pee of the pope 

at mummy 

at a coffin full of shit [3]  

 

For Bataille, this laughter is liberating; by viewing the entire universe as ridiculous - including death and the excremental nature of the decomposing corpse - he feels able to escape from what Zarathustra terms the Spirit of Gravity.

 

This may seem synonymous with the sublime philosophical idea of absurdism, but, actually, it's not the same thing at all. Finding existence laughable is very different from finding it meaningless; one is expected - as a creature of reason - to be angst-ridden by the latter idea, not gaily indifferent to the fact or able to smile when standing before the nihilistic void [4].

Being ridiculous makes one in the eyes of those who insist upon moral seriousness at all times an inferior being; shallow and lacking dignity. But I would counter this by saying it makes us Greek in the sense understood by Nietzsche: i.e., superficial - out of profundity! [5].

 

 

III.

 

One might also view punk - in its more playfully anarchic manifestation as given us by Malcolm McLaren - as an attempt not merely to challenge authority, but to escape from enforced seriousness. 

 

The Sex Pistols - and those closely associated with them, such as members of the Bromley Contingent - were ridiculous because they advocated for a Lawrentian revolution:

If you make a revolution, make it for fun,

don't make it in ghastly seriousness,

don't do it in deadly earnest,

do it for fun.

Don't do it because you hate people

do it just to spit in their eye. [6]

Po-faced punks concerned about social justice might recoil from this, but, for me, the idea of tipping over the apple cart simply to see which way the apples will roll, is crucial. McLaren encouraged the youngsters under his spell to be childish and irresponsible - to be everything this society hates - to make themselves ugly and grotesque: in a word, ridiculous [7]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm slightly misquoting the American actor, director, and writer Ronald Tavel, who coined the phrase Theatre of the Ridiculous in 1965 initially to describe his own work. Tavel himself ends this sentence with the word 'preposterous'. 

 

[2] I had the pleasure of listening to Butt speak at the Torn Edges symposium held at the London College of Communication on 20 March 2024 - an event exploring the points of contact and crossover between punk, art, design, and history. 

      Although his paper was rather more Pork than punk, that was fine by me and his discussion of Warhol's 1971 play in relation to the Theatre of the Ridiculous - a genre of queer experimental theatre - was fascinating.  

 

[3] The original poem by Bataille, entitled 'Rire' ['Laughter'], can be found in volume 4 of his Oeuvres complètes, (Gallimard, 1971), p. 13. The English translation is from the Preface to Nick Land's The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism, (Routledge, 1992), p. xvii.

 

[4] In a sense, I'm following Hobbes here who distinguished between the absurd and the ridiculous, arguing that the former is to do with invalid reasoning, whilst the latter is simply about laughter. For non-philosophers, however, the absurd and the ridiculous are pretty much now regarded as synonymous. 

      As for the sublime - with which the ridiculous is often juxtaposed - it's interesting to note just how quickly one can pass from the former to the latter; one small misstep is all it takes.

 

[5] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Preface to the second edition (4).

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'A Sane Revolution', The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 449. 

 

[7] Not only ugliness, but deformity is considered by some to be essential to the ridiculous; one recalls that Johnny Rotten in part based his hunched over stage persona on that of Richard III and would perform in an exaggerated physically awkward manner.    

Notes on Socrates and the Ethics of Sobriety (A 6/20 Paper by Maria Thanassa)

Curbing their enthusiasm: Socrates, Maria Thanassa & Larry David 

 

 

I. 

 

According to Maria Thanassa [1], notions of sobriety and intoxication are central to Plato's Symposium and Socrates is shown to be a man of self-restraint above all else; he drinks, but never gets drunk; he loves, but never succumbs to erotic ecstasy (even remaining somewhat indifferent to the charms of Alcibiades).

 

Socrates, in other words, is a man who, like Larry David, knows how to curb his enthusiasm [2] and keep his wits about him. It's not so much that he lacks passion, but he prefers to master his desires. For Socrates, sobriety guarantees the integrity of his nature.

 

But, as becomes clear later in her presentation, Dr Thanassa is not only concerned with the doings of ancient Greek philosphers. She is interested also in how the idea of sobriety can be reactivated within a contemporary culture she thinks of as intoxicated (and infantilised) by a form of liberal Dionysianism that promotes the freedom of the individual and self-expression.           

 

In other words, a bit like the Greek lyric poet Theognis, Dr Thanassa wants people to exercise a degree of control and not act in a shameless or foolish manner (enslaved by their own base instincts); to behave in an ethical and stylised manner, carefully cultivating the self [3]. 

 

II. 

 

This might make Dr Thanassa sound like a bit of a killjoy or a member of the morality police; i.e., one who wishes to enforce a code of conduct and is concerned when people transgress certain social rules. Fortunately, however, she is saved from becoming a battle-axe like Granny Hatchet [4] by that which Socrates and Larry David are both masters of: irony. 

 

Maria ironically tempers her own enthusiasm for telling others to curb their enthusiasm before it tips over into zealotry. Like Socrates - and Larry David - she seems at times to try out and test philosophical positions without ever allowing them to become points of principle or dogma. 

 

That doesn't mean we shouldn't take what Dr Thanassa says seriously - just not that seriously. And it certainly shouldn't stop us from enjoying the wine served at the end of the paper, for as Alcibiades might remind us, the 6/20 is, like the symposium, a drinking party as much as a forum of debate.

 

Having said that, food and wine is served at the 6/20 to help facilitate conversation between those in attendance, not to induce drunken excess and vomiting on the way home [5] - something that the host, Mr Christian Michel, would almost certainly not approve of.          

 

III.

I think the part of Dr Thanassa's paper I enjoyed the most was the section in which she (following Martha Nussbaum) discussed Socrates as someone who, in his strangeness, stands apart from other men - and indeed, the human condition itself. 

 

As already mentioned, Plato depicts Socrates as someone who is absent when he should be present; who drinks but does not get drunk; who is impervious to cold and hunger; who values beauty but remains unaffected by its physical manifestations; and who feels erotic desire but does not fully succumb to the pleasures of the flesh.

That certainly makes him sound like a queer fish and, according to Dr Thanassa, the oddity of his character when combined with his satyr-like ugliness makes him not only different, but genuinely other - inaccessible, impenetrable, and impossible to shut-up, even when sentenced to death.  

 

I can see why so many of his fellow Athenians hated him, just as so many of Larry David's friends and neighbours seem to find him impossible at times. But the above traits only increase my admiration for Socrates; he may lack empathy, but at least he recognises that even the most tragic events (such as the death of a pet parrot) have a comic aspect and that the philosopher must be free to ridicule, mock, or criticise everything under the sun - even if this risks offending others [6]. 

 

As the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote: Socrates could abstain from those things that most are too weak to abstain from and enjoy in moderation those things that many indulge in excessively to their shame. His strength, his ability to endure, and his sobriety marked him out as a man of perfect and invincible spirit [7].  

In sum - and I think this was Dr Thanassa's closing line (borrowed from Baudelaire) - Keep smiling with Spartan serenity [8] and remember that curbing your enthusiasm means choosing not to burst into flame even though, as a philosopher, you will burn with a very special type of passion.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Dr Maria Thanassa presented a short paper entitled 'Curb Your Enthusiasm: On Socrates and the Ethics of Sobriety' at Christian Michel's 6/20 Club (London) on 20 Feb 2023. This post is based on my recollection of what was said and I apologise to Dr Thanassa should I misrepresent her ideas in any manner. 

 

[2] The Socrates / Larry David connection and comparison has been made before; see, for example, Daniel Coffeen's excellent post on the philosophy of Curb Your Enthusiasm on his blog An Emphatic Umph: click here. 

      Coffeen rightly argues that both Socrates and Larry are characters who interact with the world in a fundamentally different way from most other people, refusing as they do inherited terms and questioning beliefs and norms of behaviour at every opportunity: "But whereas Socrates is really only concerned with big ideas about truth, morality, language, politics, Larry takes on the micro interactions of the social." 

      I was rather disappointed, considering the title of her paper, that Dr Thanassa didn't make more of the relationship between Socrates and Larry David. 

[3] This is suggestive of Foucault's later work and I was pleased to hear Dr Thanassa refer to such later in her paper, as well as to Nietzsche's idea of what constitutes the most needful thing - the constraint of a single taste - if an individual is to give style to their lives. 

[4] Granny Hatchet (Caroline Nation) was a member of the American temperance movement in the late-19th century and early-20th century, who famously smashed up liquor joints with a handheld axe. See the recent post written on her life and times: click here.   

[5] See the poem by Theognis in Greek Elegiac Poetry: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC, ed. and trans. Douglas E. Gerber (Loeb Classical Library / Harvard University Press, 1999), lines 477-496, quoted by Dr Thanassa on the night. 

[6] See my post of 14 Nov 2017 - 'Torpedo the Ark Means Everything's Funny' - click here. 

[7] I'm paraphrasing here from Meditations 1.16 - a passage quoted by Dr Thanassa in her paper. 

[8] See Baudelaire, 'The Painter of Modern Life', in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (Phaidon Press, 1995), p. 29. 

      What I say here of the philosopher is, of course, what Baudelaire says of the modern dandy - another figure who understands, style, sobriety, and self-restraint.

 

I would like to express my gratitude once more to Maria for producing a fascinating paper and to Christian Michel for hosting another very enjoyable evening. This post is dedicated to them both and I hope it brings them some pleasure. 

Will Absence Make My Heart Grow Fonder of Byung-Chul Han? (Part 2)

 

Cover of the original German edition (2007) [a]

 

 

I.

According to Byung-Chul Han: "Anti-gravity is the fundamental characteristic of the Western soul, even of Western thinking." [48] 

 

Hegel, for example, is bored by inertia and hates the heaviness of matter: "Anti-gravity is the fundamental trait of Hegel's 'spirit'." [49]

 

And even Zarathustra was opposed to the Spirit of Gravity and wished to see young people become light of foot like dancers and for dancers to become birdlike, so that they may experience the incredible sensation of taking flight [b]. Weighed down by the Spirit of Gravity, they are prevented from ever loving themselves and discovering their own goodness, says Nietzsche. 

 

Of course, this all goes back to Plato who conceived of the human soul as striving towards the divine and infinite: "Its feathered wings allow it to shed its heaviness and float upwards towards the gods [...]" [50]

Far Eastern thinking, by contrast, "is pro-gravitational [...] insofar as it seeks to accomodate itself to the weight of the world" [51], rather than inciting resistance. Keep your feet on the ground seems to be the message.

 

 

II. 

The sea was angry that day my friends ... But that's okay, because maritime adventure is another popular metaphor in Western philosophy: "Conquering stormy seas is seen as a heroic undertaking." [56] 

 

Both Hegel and Nietzsche love to compare thinking to setting out on an endless ocean; for the former - perhaps the most hydrophobic of all philosophers - this requires real courage; for water is the most mendacious of all elements "because it permanently changes its form, because it does not have a form of its own at all" [57] [c] and fails, unlike solid ground, to offer stability (an important aspect of essence):

 

"Western thinking has its source in a desire for solid ground. It is precisely this compulsive desire for permanence and clarity that makes every deviation, every transformation, look like a threat." [58]

 

Kant also relies on a metaphor of seafaring to illustrate his concept of thinking; he trusts in a good captain to navigate with knowledge and to keep the boat clear of dangers: 

 

"The Kantian art of helmsmanship conquers the sea by framing it with a system of principles and fully charting it with coordinates." [58]. 

 

Reason will triumph over the darkness of the oceanic depths, tame the wild waves, and keep the ship off the rocks. Even Heidegger subscribes to this, although he argues for the importance of exposing thought to the abysmal sea.

 

This is not a very Chinese way of thinking: for Chinese philosophers the mind is as great as the sea and in fact they form a unity. Thus, the sea is no threat to man: "Someone who is as big as the world will not be hindered or impeded by anything in the world." [62] 

 

There's no angst in the Chinese model; it's far more carefree and effortless: "You are effortless when you do not set anything against the world, when you fully unite with it." [62] 

 

Thus, as Han concludes: "Chinese thinking involves an altogether different relationship to the world; it is characterized by a deep trust in the world" [63] - and a love of water, in which is seen the highest goodness:

"Because it lacks all solidity, water does not exercise any coercion. It is yielding and flexible. Thus, it does not encounter any resistance. As it does not assert itself, does not resist anything, does not oppose anything, it does not compete in strife." [64] [d]

 

Water, we might say, seduces, although this is not a term that Han uses. He concludes this interesting chapter on land and sea (and ways of thinking) with a convenient summary of what has been discussed:

 

"For the Chinese, the sea is not a symbol of chaos or the abyss, nor is it a mysterious place that lures adventurers. It is neither the sea of Odysseus nor that of Kant and Hegel. It is a place of in-difference, of the unbounded and inexhaustible. In the Far East, the transition from land to sea is not experienced as a transition from a firm ground to an unstable support. It is a transition from the limited to the inexhaustible and comprehensive, from difference to in-difference, from fulless to emptiness, from presencing to absencing, from holding fast to releasement (Gelassenheit). This is true not only of Daoism but also of Zen Buddhism. The moment of satori (illumination) is one of a great transition that leads to an oceanic feeling." [68-69] [e] 

 

Han continues:

 

"For the Chinese, water, or the sea, is the symbol for a thinking or a behaviour that, from moment to moment, adapts and snuggles up to the transforming world [...] The world is not abysmal. It is merely manifold in its manifestations. It is not a being but a path that permanently changes course. Far Eastern thought does not circle around identity. Transformations and change are not felt to be a threat. They just represent the natural course of things, to which one needs to adapt." [69]

 

The Chinese sage does not feel the need to set sail and conquer the world - he's happy just to snuggle up to the latter and be shaped by it ... One is almost tempted to say: Like a woman [f]. 

III.

 

Because we are so caught up in grammar - the metaphysics or presence of God within language - it makes it very hard for a Westerner ever to really think or speak or see the world like someone from the Far East. 

 

Han's native Korean, for example, doesn't presuppose an active subject - in fact the subject is often left out of things altogether, which is problematic for Westerners who find it hard to conceive of a subject-less happening; we have to have an actor behind every action (be it a human actor or a god) [g]. 

 

Han writes: "The subject is a slave who is under the delusion that he is master." [81] What would be noble, from a Buddhist perspective, would be to escape this delusion (and subjectivity) entirely.    

 

Would it be noble also to remain silent? Confucius often wished to remain silent. But Han is at pains to point out that Confucius's silence "does not aim at the unsayable, the mystery that cannot captured by language" [82]. Nor does he want to remain schtum because he thinks language is insufficient "and cannot signify its object adequately" [82]. 

 

In fact, the unsayable - that which escapes language - "is not a theme in Far Eastern thinking" [82] - it's a Western thing: "Language is renounced in favour of a remainder that can be expressed only in song" [82], for example. Or silence is affirmed as the only thing that can do justice to this extralinguistic residue (be it metaphysial, asthetic, or ethical in character). 

 

The silence of Zen masters is an empty silence; it does not refer to anything, but is designed to make others think about the reality of the world, which just is as it is, neither secret nor mysterious; "there are no murky depths" [83] for philosophers or psychoanalysts to uncover or root around in like pigs in search of truffles.   

 

 

IV.

 

The final chapter of Han's book is on greeting and bowing, i.e., forms of friendliness - although, interestingly, he suggests that originally to greet someone "must have involved emitting a dark, gutteral, threatening sound" [90], as, etymologically, the word means to attack, provoke, or unsettle.

 

Somehow, even as a (slightly shy but also somewhat cheeky) three-year old, I already knew this; which is why I was not just being friendly when I stood on my front garden wall and greeted strangers passing by [h].   

 

Han writes:

 

"Initially, the other represents a possible threat and danger to my existence. The other has an usettling effect. The gutteral sound of gruozen is probably an immediate reaction to the primordial threat posed by the other, another human being. By emmitting a gutteral, threatening sound I challenge the other to fight." [91]  

 

Eventually, once there's a degree of mutual recognition, the greeting becomes more of a form of reassurance; it tells the other that they are accepted and that you mean no harm to them. But, crucially, both parties remain separate; a greeting does not instantly or automatically create intimacy; the greeter greets the other across a pathos of distance and from within their own essence. 

 

Offering a friendly greeting lets the other be in their essential otherness - it's not aiming at some form of merger; it says I'm me and you're you. But the Japanese do not verbally greet with a grunt, they bow ...

 

According to Han, bowing is all about absencing oneself from the scene; there's no exchange of gaze or mutual sizing up. In a deep bow, parties form a flat plane between them, levelling out difference. Neither party bows to the other, they bow rather into the empty space between them. Technically speaking, no one is greeting or being greeted; and no one is subjugated or subjugating. 

 

Han writes: "A deep bow does not mediate between persons, does not reconcile anyone with anyone else. Rather, it empties and de-internalizes those involved into absencing individuals." [98]

And that's why bowing is so philosophically important; it's not just a form of politeness, but a way of negating essence and identity [i].

Notes

 

[a] I am using the English translation of this work by Byung-Chul Han, translated by Daniel Steur as Absence, (Polity Press, 2023) - all page numbers given in this post refer to this edition.  

 

[b] See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 'On the Spirit of Gravity'. 

      Readers who are interested might also like to see my post entitled 'On Dance as a Method of Becoming-Bird' (10 Oct 2015): click here.

 

[c] Later, Han will note that whilst water may not have a form of its own, "it is anything but 'amorphous'. It always has a shape, because it takes the form of the other in order to unfold. It is friendly because [...] it snuggles up to any form." [64]

[d] This way of thinking isn't entirely unknown in the West - one thinks, for example, of Henry Miller's insistence on loving everything that flows - but, on the whole, it's undoubtedly true that we in the West prefer things to be dry and solid. Readers who are interested might like to see the post published on 7 June 2013: click here.

[e] Again, this line of thought is not entirely alien to Western thinkers; Zarathustra, for example, tells his followers that in order to be overhuman they must become a sea so as not to be defiled by the polluted rivers of the all too human world, although, admittedly, that's not not quite the same thing as the oceanic feeling of oneness that Far Eastern philosophers champion and Han concludes that Nietzsche - for all his attempted reversal of Western metaphysics - "remained a Western thinker" [70]

      Interestingly, Freud - another great Western thinker - argues that (if it exists) the oceanic feeling is a primitive form of egoism preserved from infancy.     

[f] I'll let readers decide whether that's a  good or bad thing, but would remind those in need of reminding that even Nietzsche toyed with the supposition that truth might be a woman; see the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil. If that's the case, then that pretty much changes everything; no phallogocentic certainty; no solid foundations or fixed forms, etc. (Again, I'll let readers decide whether this would be for better or for worse.) 

[g] Han notes: "For Asian aesthetic sensibility, something that happens without a subject being involved, without the imprint of a doing, is both noble and beautiful. The imprint of a subjective act is a typically Western motif." [84] 

      Nietzsche, of course, attempted to think deeds without an actor, but, says Han, he was unable to "turn from the philosophy of doing and power to the philosophy of happening" [85], which is why he remained very much a Western thinker and "more or less attached to subjectivity" [85].

      As for Heidegger, whilst he "may have repeatedly allowed himself to be touched by Far Eastern thinking" [88], he also remained in many respects a Western thinker attached to the idea of essence. And if he frequently used the trope of the way, his way "differs from the way as dao" [88]. Ultimately, Heidegger's being is a bit more mysterious and withdrawn than the being-so of Eastern thinking, which is what we might call everyday immanence.   

[h] See the post entitled 'Say Hello Then!' (3 Aug 2018): click here.

 

[i] I'm pretty sure Roland Barthes recognised this in L'Empire des Signes (1970), though I'm not sure Larry David fully appreciated this in episode 7 of season 8 of Curb Your Enthusiasm (2011). See the post entitled 'Shit Bow: Larry David and Roland Barthes on the Art of Japanese Etiquette' (26 Oct 2017): click here. 

 

 

To read part 1 of this post, please click here. 

Notes on 'The Crisis of Narration' by Byung-Chul Han (Part 2)

(Matthes and Seitz Berlin 2023) [a]

 

 

I.

 

Byung-Chul Han really likes Walter Benjamin - not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

He makes over a dozen references to Benjamin's work in the opening chapter of his new book and more than another dozen or so references to texts by this quirky cultural theorist in chapter two, which is where I'm picking up this commentary-cum-critical encounter ...

 

In 'The Poverty of Experience' Han - following Benjamin - mourns the fact that communicable experience passed down orally from generation to generation is "becoming increasingly rare" [10]; nothing is narrated any longer; no one tells stories drawn from their own lives any more.    

 

Folk wisdom no longer counts for much when people freed from tradition by technology look to Google for answers and download problem-solving apps: "The new barbarians celebrate the poverty of experience as a moment of emancipation." [11] 

 

And, to be fair, perhaps modernity did provide an opportunity to start from scratch and make it new ... 

 

Benjamin's thought is shot through with ambivalence on this question; as a Marxist, he believes in progress and the revolutionary spirit. But, in the end, his "deep-seated scepticism towards modernity" [13] wins out and he decides that we are ultimately impoverished (and dehumanised) by the disenchanted world of today - and not even Mickey Mouse can save us. 

And for us, in a late-modern (or post-modern) era, not only do we exist without history, but even the future has come and gone. No one even tries to make things new or dares to dream of radical social transformation; no one has "the courage to create a world-changing narrative" [14] and storytelling is now mostly "a matter of commercialism and consumption" [14]. 

 

This is quite a bleak analysis: "It is only with narrative that a future opens up, for narrative gives us hope." [15] But as a Nietzschean philosopher, I can happily do without the morally optimistic idea of hope. Indeed, let me remind readers of my new year's message for 2024:

 

Hope may be one of the great Christian virtues, but in Norse mythology it is simply the drool dripping from the jaws of the Fenris Wolf; and courage is a term for the bravery displayed by the warrior in the absence of hope [b]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Is the past something that needs salvaging - or something in need of salvation? It's an interesting question (assuming the past doesn't just need forgetting). 

 

Han - again following Benjamin - plumps for the latter: "We owe our happiness to the salvation of the past." [16] 

 

I have to say, that's not the kind of sentence I'd write. For it is just as true that we owe an awful lot of misery to the fact that people often can't (or won't) let go of the past and that far from saving the past they ruin the present and sacrifice the future with something else that "has a long tail and reaches back into the past" [16] - ressentiment and the will to revenge. 

 

Nietzsche says that the greater the plastic power of a people, the more history they can embrace and affirm as their own. But he also ties innocence to forgetfulness and insists that whilst it is Christian to forgive, it is noble to forget. So I'm not entirely convinced that we need to resurrect the past and make it a continuing influence upon the present.     

 

Having said that, I do enjoy a certain level of temporal (and personal) continuity; I like to imagine I'm pretty much the same now as I was aged six, for example. And one of the things that's nice about the theory of evolution (or, I suppose, the myth of creation in Genesis) is that it allows one to feel part of a much wider and longer story (though I'm not greatly concerned about this). 

 

 

III. 

 

When it comes to certain things - selfies, social media, and the art of Jeff Koons, for example - Han is very much like a dog with a bone; i.e., unwilling to let go and determined to get to the marrow (or essence) of the thing. 

 

Thus, no surprise to see him taking a pop at Snapchat and Instagram once more and declaring that digital photos are - if not quite the soul-stealing work of the devil - things that "announce the end of the human being as someone with a fate and a history" [20] and mark the birth of Phono sapiens - non-beings who have surrendered to the momentary actualities of experience and are unable to discriminate or be selective. 

Phono sapiens believe they are being playful on their smartphones 24/7 and that this puts them in control, but, actually, they are being manipulated and exploited. 

 

 

IV.

 

Ultimately, Han comes to the same conclusion as the protagonist of Sartre's Nausea (1938): "Only with narration is life elevated above its sheer facticity, above its nakedness." [27]

 

In other words, narrating make's the world and time's passing meaningful; it inhibits that feeling of nausea that Roquentin experiences. But, arguably, la nausée is just a Sartrean synonym for (or another aspect of) what Heidegger terms angst  - and surely the key thing about angst is that it's not something to be overcome or resolved. 

 

Narrating the world may make meaningful and be comforting - may make objects seem less alien and less threatening; may make the fact that being rests upon non-being seem less troubling - but this also insulates us from a fundamental form of freedom.      

 

Ultimately, I think I'd rather be dizzy before the void and bewildered by the (sometimes malevolent) presence of objects than fobbed off with some transcendent narrative, even if that makes the world rhythmically structured and promises blissful order. 

 

By insisting that existentialism is a humanism, Sartre transforms "frightening being-in-the-world into familiar being-at-home" [29] and such domesticity is not something philosophers should be advocating.      

    

V.

 

The thought has just occured to me: I'm Konrad - the boy who cannot tell stories [c]. 

 

For just like Konrad, I lack the inwardness that would allow me to "internalize events and to weave and condense them into a story" [34] and my world, like Konrad's, is pretty much entirely disenchanted. 

 

Perhaps that explains why my dreams of becoming a novelist came to nothing - and why I like fragments and pieces of factual information so much. 

 

But please don't send me to see Ms Leishure ... 

 

For whilst I agree that, utimately, the world is made up of events that resist explanation and that we might question causality, I don't wish to become "a member of the small narrative community" [36] if that means abandoning reason or denying the possibility of objective facts. 

 

If things have a magical aura that's great: but even things that don't possess that radiance which raises them above mere facticity, they're still astonishing and it seems to me that a scientific description of the unfolding of the universe is just as beautiful as a mytho-religious narrative such as the one found in Genesis.     

 

And finally, as readers will know, I hate full-stops and prefer to use an ellipsis whenever possible ... 

 

And that's because, in my view, there's always something left unsaid and even the most perfect of narratives can never really be sealed off in an intertextual universe; can never be a concluding form that has closure as its goal and can't wait to stamp the words The End, thereby passing a kind of death sentence. 

 

There is no end - and there is no origin; we should instinctively mistrust any book or story that opens with the words In the beginning ...       

 

 

Notes

 

[a] This is the cover of the original German edition. I am relying upon the English translation by Daniel Steuer published as The Crisis of Narration (Polity Press, 2024). All page numbers given in the post refer to this edition.  

[b] See the post 'Nothing Changes on New Year's Day' (31 Dec 2023): click here. See also the much earlier but related post 'Happy to be Hopeless this Christmas' (26 Dec 2014): click here.

 

[c] Konrad is a character in a short story by the children's author Paul Maar. Han discusses this story in chapter five of The Crisis of Narration. 

 

 

Part 1 of this post can be read by clicking here.

 

Part 3 of this post can be read by clicking here.

 

 

Sid Vicious Versus the Crucified

Sid Vicious Versus the Crucified 

(SA/2024) [1]

The god on the cross is a curse on life, a signpost to seek redemption from life; 

Sid Vicious on his motor-bike is a promise of life: it will be eternally reborn 

and return again from destruction.

 

 

I.

 

Can it really be forty-five years ago yesterday that Sex Pistol Sid Vicious died, aged twenty-one, from acute intravenous narcotism? 

 

It may seem hard to believe, but time flies and it's absolutely the case that Sid departed this world in the early hours of February 2nd, 1979.

 

 

II. 

 

There's really not much more to say about a death of which so much has already been written. 

 

Besides, I'm not one who mourns or regrets Sid's martyrdom; for his was what we might term a necessary death; fatal in the originary sense of the term and one which secured his tragic status. 

 

It's important to realise that punk was - despite its nihilism and apparent morbidity - a form of thanksgiving and an affirmation of life; that Sid, as its highest representative (i.e., its one true star), was not just a drug-addicted loser, but an ecstatically overflowing spirit who redeemed the contradictory and questionable nature of rock 'n' roll.   

Christ on his Cross counts as an objection to life in its eternal fruitfulness and recurrence. But Sid on his motorbike was a spiky-haired Dionysus who affirmed life whole and not denied or in part - even in its most destructive and terrible aspects.

 

As Nietzsche writes:

"One will see that the problem is that of the meaning of suffering: whether a Christian meaning or a tragic meaning. In the former case, it is supposed to be the path to a holy existence; in the latter case, being is counted as holy enough to justify even a monstrous amount of suffering. The tragic man affirms even the harshest suffering: he is sufficiently strong, rich, and capable of deifying to do so. The Christian denies even the happiest lot on earth: he is sufficiently weak, poor, disinherited to suffer from life in whatever form he meets it." [2]

 

In sum: Christ on his Cross places a curse on life; but Sid on his motorbike - or singing on stage at the Olympia, Paris [3] - is a promise that life will be eternally reborn from destruction.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The iconic image of Sid on his motorbike is from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980): click here. Christ Crucified is an oil painting by Velázquez (1632), located in the Prado Museum, Madrid.  

 

[2] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, (Vintage Books, 1968), section 1052, pp. 542-543. I'm essentially paraphrasing this section throughout this post. 

 

[3] See the post published on 13 October 2018: click here.