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“The body of the voice / the voice of the body”. Vocal Performance Art and its connection to the cognitive unconscious

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Since the beginning of my research on Vocal Performance Art1 it has always fascinated me how intensely the pioneering singer-composer-performers of this discipline have been seeking for new approaches to the cognitive unconscious. It has been a crucial experience to many of them, (1) that through the body voice, or voice of the body, there would be a direct connection to a non-verbal universal language that would

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Registratie performance Jenny Yi-Jen Song (HQ)

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Reflection improvisation in music Jenny Song

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View, organize, and share photos and videos with iCloud Photos on the web. Changes will sync across your devices with iCloud.

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Words for Speculaas project With E.A.T and Lara Benevides

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Pythia (; Ancient Greek: Πυθία ) was the name of the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. She specifically served as its oracle and was known as the Oracle of Delphi. Her title was also historically glossed in English as the Pythoness.

The name Pythia is derived from Pytho, which in myth was the original name of Delphi. Etymologically, the Greeks derived this place name from the verb ( púthein) 'to rot', which refers to the sickly sweet smell from the decomposing body of the monstrous Python after it was slain by Apollo.

The Pythia was established at the latest in the 8th century BC, (though some estimates date the shrine to as early as 1400 BC), and was widely credited for her prophecies uttered under divine possession ( enthusiasmos) by Apollo. The Pythian priestess emerged pre-eminent by the end of the 7th century BC and continued to be consulted until the late 4th century AD. During this period, the Delphic Oracle was the most prestigious and authoritative oracle among the Greeks, and she was among the most powerful women of the classical world. The oracle is one of the best-documented religious institutions of the classical Greeks. Authors who mention the oracle include Aeschylus, Aristotle, Clement of Alexandria, Diodorus, Diogenes, Euripides, Herodotus, Julian, Justin, Livy, Lucan, Nepos, Ovid, Pausanias, Pindar, Plato, Plutarch, Sophocles, Strabo, Thucydides, and Xenophon.

Nevertheless, details of how the Pythia operated are scarce, missing, or non-existent, as authors from the classical period (6th to 4th centuries BC) treat the process as common knowledge with no need to explain. Those who discussed the oracle in any detail are from 1st century BC to 4th century AD and give conflicting stories. One of the main stories claimed that the Pythia delivered oracles in a frenzied state induced by vapours rising from a chasm in the rock, and that she spoke gibberish which priests interpreted as the enigmatic prophecies and turned them into poetic dactylic hexameters preserved in Greek literature. This idea, however, has been challenged by scholars such as Joseph Fontenrose and Lisa Maurizio, who argue that the ancient sources uniformly represent the Pythia speaking intelligibly, and giving prophecies in her own voice. Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, describes the Pythia speaking in dactylic hexameters.

The Delphic oracle may have been present in some form from 1400 BC, in the middle period of Mycenaean Greece (1750-1050 BC). There is evidence that Apollo supposedly took over the shrine with the arrival of priests from Delos in the 8th century, from an earlier dedication to Gaia.

The 8th-century reformulation of the Oracle at Delphi as a shrine to Apollo seems associated with the rise in importance of the city of Corinth and the importance of sites in the Corinthian Gulf.

The earliest account of the origin of the Delphic oracle is provided in the Homeric Hymn to Delphic Apollo, which recent scholarship dates within a narrow range, c. 580-570 BC. It describes in detail how Apollo chose his first priests, whom he selected in their "swift ship"; they were " Cretans from Minos' city of Knossos" who were voyaging to sandy Pylos. But Apollo, who had Delphinios as one of his cult epithets, leapt into the ship in the form of a dolphin ( delphys, gen. delphinos). Dolphin-Apollo revealed himself to the terrified Cretans and bade them follow him up to the "place where you will have rich offerings". The Cretans "danced in time and followed, singing Iē Paiēon, like the paeans of the Cretans in whose breasts the divine Muse has placed "honey-voiced singing". "Paean" seems to have been the name by which Apollo was known in Mycenaean times.

The omphalos in the museum of Delphi

G. L. Huxley observes: "If the hymn to (Delphic) Apollo conveys a historical message, it is above all that there were once Cretan priests at Delphi." Robin Lane Fox notes that Cretan bronzes are found at Delphi from the eighth century onwards, and Cretan sculptures are dedicated as late as c. 620-600 BC: "Dedications at the site cannot establish the identity of its priesthood, but for once we have an explicit text to set beside the archaeological evidence." An early visitor to these "dells of Parnassus", at the end of the eighth century, was Hesiod, who was shown the .

There are many later stories of the origins of the Delphic Oracle. One late explanation, which is first related by the 1st century BC writer Diodorus Siculus, tells of a goat herder named Coretas, who noticed one day that one of his goats, who fell into a crack in the earth, was behaving strangely. On entering the chasm, he found himself filled with a divine presence and the ability to see outside of the present, into the past and the future. Excited by his discovery, he shared it with nearby villagers. Many started visiting the site to experience the convulsions and inspirational trances, though some were said to disappear into the cleft due to their frenzied state. A shrine was erected at the site, where people began worshipping in the late Bronze Age, by 1600 BC. After the deaths of a number of men, the villagers chose a single young woman as the liaison for the divine inspirations. Eventually, she came to speak on behalf of the gods.

According to earlier myths, the office of the oracle was initially possessed by the goddesses Themis and Phoebe, and the site was initially sacred to Gaia. Subsequently, it was believed to be sacred to Poseidon, the god of earthquakes. During the Greek Dark Age, from the 11th to the 9th century BC, a new god of prophecy, Apollo, was said to have seized the temple and expelled the twin guardian serpents of Gaia, whose bodies he wrapped around the caduceus. Later myths stated that Phoebe or Themis had "given" the site to Apollo, rendering its seizure by priests of the new god justified, but presumably having to retain the priestesses of the original oracle because of the long tradition. It is possible that the myths portray Poseidon as mollified by the gift of a new site in Troizen.

Diodorus explained how, initially, the Pythia was an appropriately clad young virgin, for great emphasis was placed on the Oracle's chastity and purity to be reserved for union with the god Apollo. But he reports one story as follows:

Echecrates the Thessalian, having arrived at the shrine and beheld the virgin who uttered the oracle, became enamoured of her because of her beauty, carried her away and violated her; and that the Delphians because of this deplorable occurrence passed a law that in the future a virgin should no longer prophesy but that an elderly woman of fifty would declare the Oracles and that she would be dressed in the costume of a virgin, as a sort of reminder of the prophetess of olden times.

The scholar Martin Litchfield West writes that the Pythia shows many traits of shamanistic practices, likely inherited or influenced from Central Asian practices, although there is no evidence of any such association at this time. He cites the Pythia sitting in a cauldron on a tripod, while making her prophecies in an ecstatic trance state, like shamans, and her utterings unintelligible.

According to William Godwin, the tripod was perforated with holes, and as she inhaled the vapors, her figure would seem to enlarge, her hair stood on end, her complexion changed, her heart panted, her bosom swelled, and her voice became seemingly more than human.

Since the first operation of the oracle of the Temple of Delphi, it was believed that the god lived within a laurel (his holy plant) and gave oracles for the future with the rustling of the leaves. It was also said that the art of divination had been taught to the god by the three winged sisters of Parnassus, the Thriae, at the time when Apollo was grazing his cattle there. The Thriae used to have a Kliromanteion (oracle by lot) in that area in the past and it is possible that such was the first oracle of Delphi, i.e. using the lot (throwing lots in a container and pulling a lot, the color and shape of which were of particular importance).

Three oracles had successively operated in Delphi - the chthonion using egkoimisi (a procedure that involved sleeping in the holy place, so as to see a revealing dream), the Kliromanteion and finally the Apollonian, with the laurel. But ever since the introduction of the cult of Dionysus at Delphi, the god that brought his followers into ecstasy and madness, the Delphic god gave oracles through Pythia, who also fell into a trance under the influence of vapors and fumes coming from the opening, the inner sanctum of the Oracle. Pythia sat on top of a tall gilded tripod that stood above the opening. In the old days, Pythia was a virgin, young girl, but after Echecrates of Thessaly kidnapped and violated a young and beautiful Pythia in the late 3rd century BC, a woman older than fifty years old was chosen, who dressed and wore jewelry to resemble a young maiden girl. According to tradition, Phemonoe was the first Pythia.

Though little is known of how the priestess was chosen, the Pythia was probably selected, at the death of her predecessor, from amongst a guild of priestesses of the temple. These women were all natives of Delphi and were required to have had a sober life and be of good character. Although some were married, upon assuming their role as the Pythia, the priestesses ceased all family responsibilities, marital relations, and individual identity. In the heyday of the oracle, the Pythia may have been a woman chosen from an influential family, well educated in geography, politics, history, philosophy, and the arts. During later periods, however, uneducated peasant women were chosen for the role, which may explain why the poetic pentameter or hexameter prophecies of the early period were later made only in prose. Often, the priestess's answers to questions would be put into hexameter by a priest. The archaeologist John Hale reports that:

the Pythia was (on occasion) a noble of aristocratic family, sometimes a peasant, sometimes rich, sometimes poor, sometimes old, sometimes young, sometimes a very lettered and educated woman to whom somebody like the high priest and the philosopher Plutarch would dedicate essays, other times who could not write her own name. So it seems to have been aptitude rather than any ascribed status that made these women eligible to be Pythias and speak for the god.

The job of a priestess, especially the Pythia, was a respectable career for Greek women. Priestesses enjoyed many liberties and rewards for their social position, such as freedom from taxation, the right to own property and attend public events, a salary and housing provided by the state, a wide range of duties depending on their affiliation, and often gold crowns.

During the main period of the oracle's popularity, as many as three women served as Pythia, another vestige of the triad, with two taking turns in giving prophecy and another kept in reserve. Only one day of the month could the priestess be consulted.

Plutarch said that the Pythia's life was shortened through the service of Apollo. The sessions were said to be exhausting. At the end of each period the Pythia would be like a runner after a race or a dancer after an ecstatic dance, which may have had a physical effect on the health of the Pythia.

Several other officiants served the oracle in addition to the Pythia. After 200 BC, at any given time, there were two priests of Apollo, who were in charge of the entire sanctuary; Plutarch, who served as a priest during the late first century and early second century CE, gives us the most information about the organization of the oracle at that time. Before 200 BC, while the temple was dedicated to Apollo, there was probably only one priest of Apollo. Priests were chosen from among the main citizens of Delphi, and were appointed for life. In addition to overseeing the oracle, priests would also conduct sacrifices at other festivals of Apollo, and had charge of the Pythian Games. Earlier arrangements, before the temple became dedicated to Apollo, are not documented.

The other officiants associated with the oracle are less well known. These are the (, 'holy ones') and the (, singular prophētēs). Prophētēs is the origin of the English word prophet, with the meaning 'one who forespeaks, one who foretells'. The prophetai are referred to in literary sources, but their function is unclear; it has been suggested that they interpreted the Pythia's prophecies, or even reformatted her utterances into verse, but it has also been argued that the term is a generic reference to any cult officials of the sanctuary, including the Pythia. There were five hosioi, whose responsibilities are unknown, but may have been involved in some manner with the operation of the oracle.

In the traditions associated with Apollo, the oracle gave prophecies during the nine warmest months of each year. During winter months, Apollo was said to have deserted his temple, his place being taken by his divine half-brother Dionysus, whose tomb was also within the temple. It is not known whether the Oracle participated with the Dionysian rites of the Maenads or Thyades in the Korykion cave on Mount Parnassos, although Plutarch informs us that his friend Clea was both a Priestess to Apollo and to the secret rites of Dionysus. The male priests seem to have had their own ceremonies to the dying and resurrecting god. Apollo was said to return at the beginning of spring, on the seventh day of the month of Bysios, his birthday. This would reiterate the absences of the great goddess Demeter in winter also, which would have been a part of the earliest traditions.

Once a month, thereafter, the oracle would undergo purification rites, including fasting, to ceremonially prepare the Pythia for communications with the divine. On the seventh day of each month, she would be led by two attended oracular priests, with her face veiled in purple. A priest would then declaim:

Servant of the Delphian Apollo
Go to the Castallian Spring
Wash in its silvery eddies,
And return cleansed to the temple.
Guard your lips from offence
To those who ask for oracles.
Let the God's answer come
Pure from all private fault.

The Pythia would then bathe naked in the Castalian Spring, then drink the holier waters of the Cassotis, which flowed closer to the temple, where a naiad possessing magical powers was said to live. Euripides described this ritual purification ceremony, starting first with the priest Ion dancing on the highest point of Mount Parnassus, going about his duties within the temple, and sprinkling the temple floor with holy water. The purification ceremonies always were performed on the seventh day of the month, which was sacred to and associated with the god Apollo. Then, escorted by the hosioi, an aristocratic council of five, with a crowd of oracular servants, they would arrive at the temple. Consultants, carrying laurel branches sacred to Apollo, approached the temple along the winding upward course of the Sacred Way, bringing a young goat kid for sacrifice in the forecourt of the temple, and a monetary fee.

Inscribed on a column in the pronaos (forecourt) of the temple were an enigmatic "E" and three maxims:

These seem to have played an important part in the temple ritual. According to Plutarch's essay on the meaning of the "E at Delphi" (the only literary source for the E inscription), there have been various interpretations of this letter. In ancient times, the origin of these phrases was attributed to one or more of the Seven Sages of Greece.

Pythia would then remove her purple veil. She would wear a short plain white dress. At the temple fire to Hestia, a live goat kid would be set in front of the altar and sprinkled with water. If the kid trembled from the hooves upward it was considered a good omen for the oracle, but if it did not, the enquirer was considered to have been rejected by the god and the consultation was terminated. If it were a good omen, however, the goat would subsequently be sacrificed to Apollo. In turn, the animal's organs, particularly its liver, were examined to ensure the signs were favorable, and then burned outside on the altar of Chios. The rising smoke was a signal that the oracle was open. The Oracle then descended into the (Greek for 'inaccessible') and mounted her tripod seat, holding laurel leaves and a dish of Kassotis spring water into which she gazed. Nearby was the (Greek for 'navel'), which was flanked by two solid gold eagles representing the authority of Zeus, and the cleft from which emerged the sacred pneuma.

Petitioners drew lots to determine the order of admission, but representatives of a city-state or those who brought larger donations to Apollo were secured a higher place in line. Each person approaching the oracle was accompanied with a proxenos specific to the state of the petitioner, whose job was to identify the citizen of their polis. This service, too, was paid for.

Plutarch describes the events of one session in which the omens were ill-favored, but the Oracle was consulted nonetheless. The priests proceeded to receive the prophecy, but the result was a hysterical uncontrollable reaction from the priestess that resulted in her death a few days later.

At times when the Pythia was not available, consultants could obtain guidance by asking simple yes-or-no questions to the priests. A response was returned through the tossing of colored beans, one color designating "yes", another "no". Little else is known of this practice.

Between 535 and 615 of the Oracles (statements) of Delphi are known to have survived since classical times, of which over half are said to be accurate historically (see List of oracular statements from Delphi for examples).

Cicero noted no expedition was undertaken, no colony sent out, and no affair of any distinguished individuals went on without the sanction of the oracle.

The early fathers of the Christian church believed demons were allowed to assist them to spread idolatry, so that the need for a savior would be more evident.

View of Delphi with Sacrificial Procession by Claude Lorrain

In antiquity, the people who went to the Oracle to ask for advice were known as "consultants", literally, "those who seek counsel". It would appear that the supplicant to the oracle would undergo a four-stage process, typical of shamanic journeys.

Step 1: Journey to Delphi-Supplicants were motivated by some need to undertake the long and sometimes arduous journey to Delphi in order to consult the oracle. This journey was motivated by an awareness of the existence of the oracle, the growing motivation on the part of the individual or group to undertake the journey, and the gathering of information about the oracle as providing answers to important questions.

Step 2: Preparation of the supplicant-Supplicants were interviewed in preparation of their presentation to the Oracle, by the priests in attendance. The genuine cases were sorted and the supplicant had to go through rituals involving the framing of their questions, the presentation of gifts to the Oracle and a procession along the Sacred Way carrying laurel leaves to visit the temple, symbolic of the journey they had made.

Step 3: Visit to the Oracle-The supplicant would then be led into the temple to visit the adyton, put his question to the Pythia, receive his answer and depart. The degree of preparation already undergone would mean that the supplicant was already in a very aroused and meditative state, similar to the shamanic journey elaborated on in the article.

Step 4: Return home-Oracles were meant to give advice to shape future action, that was meant to be implemented by the supplicant, or by those that had sponsored the supplicant to visit the Oracle. The validity of the Oracular utterance was confirmed by the consequences of the application of the oracle to the lives of those people who sought Oracular guidance.[53]

Modern photograph of the ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi

The ruins of the Temple of Delphi visible today date from the 4th century BC, and are of a peripteral Doric building. It was erected on the remains of an earlier temple, dated to the 6th century BC, which itself was erected on the site of a 7th-century-BC construction attributed to the architects Trophonios and Agamedes.

The 6th-century BC temple was named the "Temple of Alcmaeonidae" in tribute to the Athenian family who funded its reconstruction following a fire, which had destroyed the original structure. The new building was a Doric hexastyle temple of 6 by 15 columns. This temple was destroyed in 373 BC by an earthquake. The pediment sculptures are a tribute to Praxias and Androsthenes of Athens. Of a similar proportion to the second temple it retained the 6 by 15 column pattern around the stylobate. Inside was the adyton, the centre of the Delphic oracle and seat of Pythia. The temple had the statement " Know thyself", one of the Delphic maxims, carved into it (and some modern Greek writers say the rest were carved into it), and the maxims were attributed to Apollo and given through the Oracle and/or the Seven Sages of Greece ("know thyself" perhaps also being attributed to other famous philosophers).

The temple survived until AD 390, when the Roman emperor Theodosius I silenced the oracle by destroying the temple and most of the statues and works of art to remove all traces of paganism.

Priestess of Delphi (1891) by John Collier, showing the Pythia sitting on a tripod with vapor rising from a crack in the earth beneath her

There have been many attempts to find a scientific explanation for the Pythia's inspiration. Most commonly, these refer to an observation made by Plutarch, who presided as high priest at Delphi for several years, who stated that her oracular powers appeared to be associated with vapors from the Kerna spring waters that flowed under the temple. It has often been suggested that these vapors may have been hallucinogenic gases.

Recent geological investigations have suggested that gas emissions from a geologic chasm in the earth could have inspired the Delphic Oracle to "connect with the divine." Some researchers suggest the possibility that ethylene gas caused the Pythia's state of inspiration, based on the matching symptoms, ethylene's use as an anesthetic, and the smell of the chamber, as described by Plutarch. Traces of ethylene have been found in the waters of the Castallian spring, which is now largely diverted for the town water supply of the town of modern Delphi. However, Lehoux argues that ethylene is "impossible" and benzene is "crucially underdetermined." Others argue instead that methane might have been the gas emitted from the chasm, or and , arguing that the chasm itself might have been a seismic ground rupture.

Oleander, in contemporary toxicological literature, has also been considered responsible for contributing symptoms similar to those of the Pythia. The Pythia used oleander as a complement during the oracular procedure, chewing its leaves and inhaling their smoke. The toxic substances of oleander results in symptoms similar to those of epilepsy, the "sacred disease", which could have amounted to the possession of the Pythia by the spirit of Apollo, rendering Pythia his spokesperson and prophetess. The oleander fumes (the "spirit of Apollo") could have originated in a brazier located in an underground chamber (the antron) and have escaped through an opening (the "chasm") in the temple's floor. This hypothesis fits the findings of the archaeological excavations that revealed an underground space under the temple. This explanation sheds light on the alleged spirit and chasm of Delphi, that have been the subject of intense debate and interdisciplinary research for the last hundred years.

Regardless of which fumes existed in the chasm, winter months would bring cooler weather, decreasing release of gasses in the chamber. This offers a plausible explanation for the absence of summer deities in winter months. A toxic gas also explains the reason why the Pythia could only venture into her oracular chamber once a month, both to coincide with the correct concentration of gases, and to prolong the already-short lifespan of the Pythia by limiting her exposure to such fumes.

Beginning during 1892, a team of French archaeologists directed by Théophile Homolle of the Collège de France excavated the site at Delphi. Contrary to ancient literature, they found no fissure and no possible means for the production of fumes.

Adolphe Paul Oppé published an influential article in 1904, which made three crucial claims: No chasm or vapor ever existed; no natural gas could create prophetic visions; and the recorded incidents of a priestess undergoing violent and often deadly reactions was inconsistent with the more customary reports. Oppé explained away all the ancient testimony as being reports of gullible travelers fooled by wily local guides who, Oppé believed, invented the details of a chasm and a vapor in the first place.

In accordance with this definitive statement, such scholars as Frederick Poulson, E. R. Dodds, Joseph Fontenrose, and Saul Levin all stated that there were no vapors and no chasm. For the decades to follow, scientists and scholars believed the ancient descriptions of a sacred, inspiring pneuma to be fallacious. During 1950, the French hellenist Pierre Amandry, who had worked at Delphi and later directed the French excavations there, concurred with Oppé's pronouncements, claiming that gaseous emissions were not even possible in a volcanic zone such as Delphi. Neither Oppé nor Amandry were geologists, though, and no geologists had been involved in the debate up to that point.

Subsequent re-examination of the French excavations, however, has shown that this consensus may have been mistaken. Broad (2007) demonstrates that a French photograph of the excavated interior of the temple clearly depicts a springlike pool as well as a number of small vertical fissures, indicating numerous pathways by which vapors could enter the base of the temple.

During the 1980s, the interdisciplinary team of geologist Jelle Zeilinga de Boer, archaeologist John R. Hale, forensic chemist Jeffrey P. Chanton, and toxicologist Henry R. Spiller investigated the site at Delphi using this photograph and other sources as evidence, as part of a United Nations survey of all active faults in Greece.

Jelle Zeilinga de Boer saw evidence of a fault line in Delphi that lay under the ruined temple. During several expeditions, they discovered two major fault lines, one lying north-south, the Kerna fault, and the other lying east-west, the Delphic fault, which parallels the shore of the Corinthian Gulf. The rift of the Gulf of Corinth is one of the most geologically active sites on Earth; shifts there impose immense strains on nearby fault lines, such as those below Delphi. The two faults cross one another, and they intersect right below where the adyton was probably located. (The actual, original oracle chamber had been destroyed by the moving faults, but there is strong structural evidence that indicates where it was most likely located.)

They also found evidence for underground passages and chambers, and drains for spring water. Additionally, they discovered at the site formations of travertine, a form of calcite created when water flows through limestone and dissolves calcium carbonate, which is later redeposited. Further investigation revealed that deep beneath the Delphi region lies a bituminous deposit, rich in hydrocarbons and full of pitch, that has a petrochemical content as high as 20%. Friction created by earthquakes heat the bituminous layers resulting in vaporization of the hydrocarbons which rise to the surface through small fissures in the rock.

It has been disputed as to how the was organized, but it appears clear that this temple was unlike any other in ancient Greece. The small chamber was located below the main floor of the temple and offset to one side, perhaps constructed specifically over the crossing faults. The intimate chamber allowed the escaping vapors to be contained in quarters close enough to provoke intoxicating effects. Plutarch reports that the temple was filled with a sweet smell when the "deity" was present:

Not often nor regularly, but occasionally and fortuitously, the room in which they seat the god's consultants is filled with a fragrance and breeze, as if the adyton were sending forth the essences of the sweetest and most expensive perfumes from a spring

De Boer's research caused him to propose ethylene as a gas known to possess this sweet odor. Toxicologist Henry R. Spiller stated that inhalation of even a small amount of ethylene can cause both benign trances and euphoric psychedelic experiences. Other effects include physical detachment, loss of inhibitions, the relieving of pain, and rapidly changing moods without dulling consciousness. He also noted that excessive doses can cause confusion, agitation, delirium, and loss of muscle coordination.

Anesthesiologist Isabella Coler Herb found that a dose of ethylene gas up to 20% induced a trance in which subjects could sit up, hear questions and answer them logically, though with altered speech patterns, and they might lose some awareness and sensitivity in their hands and feet. After recovery, they had no recollection of what had happened. With a dose higher than 20%, the patients lost control over their limbs and might thrash wildly, groaning and staggering. All these hallucinogenic symptoms match Plutarch's description of the Pythia, whom he had witnessed many times.

During 2001, water samples from the Kerna spring, uphill from the temple and now diverted to the nearby town of Delphi, yielded evidence of 0.3 parts per million of ethylene. It is likely that in ancient times, higher concentrations of ethylene or other gases emerged in the temple from these springs. While likely in the context of the ethylene gas theory, there is no evidence to support the diminishing ethylene concentration statement.

Frequent earthquakes produced by Greece's location at the clashing intersection of three tectonic plates could have caused the observed cracking of the limestone, and the opening of new channels for hydrocarbons entering the flowing waters of the Kassotis. This would cause the admixture of ethylene to fluctuate, increasing and decreasing the potency of the drug. It has been suggested that the waning of the Oracle after the era of Roman Emperor Hadrian was due in part to a long period without earthquakes in the area.

1. ^ "'Pythia main entry Random House Dictionary (American), further down Collins Dictionary (British)". Dictionary.com. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04.

2. ^ October 2006, Heather Whipps 31 (31 October 2006). "New Theory on What Got the Oracle of Delphi High". livescience.com. Archived from the original on 16 September 2020.

3. ^ "Delphic Oracle's Lips May Have Been Loosened by Gas Vapors". Science. August 14, 2001. Archived from the original on March 8, 2021.

4. For an example, see Lewis Farnell, ^ The Cults of the Greek States Archived 2023-06-20 at the Wayback Machine, 1907, vol. IV, p. 189. "But all this came to be merely considered as an accessory, leading up to the great moment when the Pythoness ascended into the tripod, and, filled with the divine afflatus which at least the latter ages believed to ascend in vapour from a fissure in the ground, burst forth into wild utterance, which was probably some kind of articulate speech, and which the Ὅσιοι [Osioi], 'the holy ones', who, with the prophet, sat around the tripod, knew well how to interpret. ... What was essential to Delphic divination, then, was the frenzy of the Pythoness and the sounds which she uttered in this state which were interpreted by the Ὅσιοι [Osioi] and the 'prophet' according to some conventional code of their own."

5. Mikalson, Jon D. ^ Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars. Univ of North Carolina Press, 2003. ISBN 9780807827987. p. 55.

6. ^ Dietrich, Bernard C. (1992-01-01). "Divine Madness and Conflict at Delphi". Kernos - Revue internationale et pluridisciplinaire de religion grecque antique [Kernos - International and multidisciplinary review of ancient Greek religion] (5). doi:10.4000/kernos.1047. ISSN 0776-3824. Archived from the original on 2023-03-10.

7. Martin L. West, ^ Homeric Hymns, pp 9-12, gives a summary for this dating, at or soon after the inauguration of chariot-racing at the Pythian Games, 582 BC; M. Chappell, "Delphi and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo", Classical Quarterly 56 (2006:331-48)

8. As Robin Lane Fox observes in discussing this origin of the Delphic priesthood, in Travelling Heroes in the Epic Age of Homer, 2008:341ff.

9. Huxley, "Cretan ^ Paiawones". Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 16 (1975:119-24) p. 122, noted by Fox 2008:343.

10. Smith's ^ Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology notes on this point Ovid, Metamorphoses i. 321, iv. 642; Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica iv. 800; Servius, commentary on the Aeneid iv. 246; pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke i. 4. § 1; Pausanias x. 5. § 3; Aeschylus, The Eumenides opening lines; see excerpts in translation at Theoi Project: Themis.

11. D. S. Robertson, "The Delphian Succession in the Opening of the Eumenides" ^ The Classical Review 55. 2 (September 1941, pp. 69-70) p. 69, reasoning that in the three great allotments of oracular powers at Delphi, corresponding to the three generations of the gods, "Ouranos, as was fitting, gave the oracle to his wife Gaia and Kronos appropriately allotted it to his sister Themis." In Zeus' turn to make the gift, however, Aeschylus could not report that the oracle was given directly to Apollo, who had not yet been born, Robertson notes, and thus Phoebe was interposed. However, the usual modern reconstruction of the sacred site's pre-Olympian history does not indicate dedications to these earlier gods.

12. ^ Martin Litchfield West, The Orphic Poems, p.147. "The Pythia resembles a shamaness at least to the extent that she communicates with her [deity] while in a state of trance, and conveys as much to those present by uttering unintelligible words. [cf. Spirit Language, Mircea Eliade]. It is particularly striking that she sits on a cauldron supported by a tripod, reiterating the triad of the great goddess. This eccentric perch can hardly be explained except as a symbolic boiling, and, as such, it looks very much like a reminiscence of the initiatory boiling of the shaman translated from hallucinatory experience into concrete visual terms. It was in this same cauldron, probably, that the Titans boiled Dionysus in the version of the story known to Callimachus and Euphorion, and his remains were interred close by".

13. Herbert W Parke, ^ History of the Delphic Oracle and H.W. Parke and D.E.W. Wormell The Delphic oracle, 1956 Volume 1: The history attempt the complicated reconstruction of the oracle's institutions; a recent comparison of the process of select at Delphi with Near Eastern oracles is part of Herbert B. Huffman, "The Oracular Process: Delphi and the Near East" Vetus Testamentum 57.4, (2007:449-60).

14. ^ "Plutarch * On the Failure of Oracles". Penelope.uchicago.edu. Archived from the original on 2024-02-13.

15. Allyson Szabo ^ Longing For Wisdom: The Message Of The Maxims 2008 ISBN 1438239769 p8

16. Eliza G. Wilkins (April 1927). ^ "ΕΓΓΥΑ, ΠΑΡΑ ΔΑΤΗ in Literature".(subscription required) Archived 2024-02-13 at the Wayback Machine Classical Philology Volume 22, Number 2, p. 121. doi:10.1086/360881. JSTOR 263511.

17. ^ "The Delphic Oracle | Wise Counsel Research Associates". Archived from the original on 2013-12-26. sighted 14/5/2013

18. Trudy Ring, Robert M. Salkin, Sharon La Bod, ^ International Dictionary of Historic Places: Southern Europe; Page 185; [1] Archived 2023-05-13 at the Wayback Machine

19. J.Z. De Boer, and J. R. Hale. "The Geological Origins of the Oracle of Delphi, Greece", in W. G. McGuire, D. R. Griffiths, P Hancock, and I. S. Stewart, eds. The Archaeology of Geological Catastrophes. (Geological Society of London) 2000. Popular accounts in A&E Television Networks. History Channel documentary Oracle at Delphi, Secrets Revealed, 2003, and in William J. Broad, The Oracle: The Lost Secrets and Hidden Message of Ancient Delphi. (New York: Penguin) 2006.

20. Lehoux, 2007 ^ The delphic oracle and the ethylene-intoxication hypothesis. Archived 2018-01-25 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 4 December 2017.

21. Mason, Betsy. ^ The Prophet of Gases Archived 2008-12-08 at the Wayback Machine in ScienceNow Daily News 2 October 2006. Retrieved 11 October 2006.

22. ^ Stadter, Phillip A. (18 December 2014). "Plutarch and Apollo of Delphi". Plutarch and his Roman Readers. pp. 82-97. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198718338.003.0006. ISBN 978-0-19-871833-8. Archived from the original on 8 December 2022.

23. The Oracle at Delphi Archived 2012-04-02 at the Wayback Machine Medb hErren

24. Broad (2007), p. 155-7

25. In the French excavation report on the temple, ^ Fernand Courby shows that the adyton was unlike those found in other temples as it was not central, but on the southwestern side, interrupting the normal symmetry of the Doric temple. It was divided into two areas, one small area 9 by 16 feet for the oracle, one for the supplicant. Modern research reported by Broad (p. 37) suggests that both the supplicant and the Pythia descended a flight of five steps into a small room within the temple with its own low ceiling. Walter Miller has argued that the stone block of 3.5-4 feet that Courby described as being part of the floor was in fact the site where the oracle sat. It showed a square 6-inch hole, widening to 9 inches, immediately under the triangular grooves for the tripod. Strange channels, possibly to carry water from the spring, surrounded the tripodal grooves. That these had in fact carried waters for long periods was confirmed by the layers of travertine that encrusted it. Nothing like this has been found at any other Greek temple. Holland (1933) argues that these channels and the hollow nature of theomphalos found by the French would channel the vapors of intoxicant gases.

26. Broad (2007), p. 198. Methane (15.3 parts per million) and ^ ethane (0.2 ppm) were also detected in the Kerna sample. However, the intoxicating effects of ethylene are more powerful than those of methane or ethane.

Herodotus, The Histories, at the Perseus Project

Homeric Hymn to Apollo, at the Perseus Project

Pausanias, Description of Greece, (ed. and translated with commentary by Sir James Frazer), 1913 edition. Cf. v.5

Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum ("On the Decline of Oracles"), De Pythiae Oraculis ("On the Oracles of the Pythia"), and De E apud Delphos ("On the E at Delphi") in Moralia, vol. 5 (Loeb Library, Harvard University Press)

Bouché-Leclercq, Auguste, Histoire de la divination dans l'Antiquité, volumes I-IV, Paris (1879-1882)

Bowden, Hugh (2005). Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle: Divination and Democracy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-53081-1.

Broad, William J. The Oracle: Ancient Delphi and the Science Behind Its Lost Secrets, New York, Penguin Press, ISBN 978-0-14-303859-7 (2007); hardcover edition The Oracle: the lost secrets and hidden message of ancient Delphi, Penguin Press, ISBN 1-59420-081-5 (2006)

Burkert, Walter Greek Religion, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-36280-2 (1985); Orig. in German (1977)

Connelly, Joan Breton Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece, Princeton University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-691-12746-8

Courby, Fernand, Feuilles de Delphi: Tome 2, Topographie et Architecture, La Terrace du Temple (1927)

de Boer, Jelle Zeilinga, John Rigby Hale & Henry A. Spiller, "The Delphic Oracle: A Multidisciplinary Defense of the Gaseous Vent Theory." Clinical Toxicology 40.2 189-196 (2000)

Dempsey, T., Reverend, The Delphic oracle, its early history, influence and fall, Oxford, B.H. Blackwell (1918)

Dodds, E. R. The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley, University of California Press (1963)

Etiope, G., D. Christodoulou, M. Geraga, P. Favali, & G. Papatheodorou, "The geological links of the ancient Delphic Oracle (Greece): a reappraisal of natural gas occurrence and origin", Geology, 34, 821-824 (2006)

Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy, Python; a study of Delphic myth and its origins, New York, Biblio & Tannen, ISBN 0-8196-0285-X (1959; 1974)

Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy, The Delphic oracle, its responses and operations, with a catalogue of responses, Berkeley : University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-03360-4 (1978)

Foster J., Lehoux D.R., "The Delphic Oracle and the ethylene-intoxication hypothesis", Clinical Toxicology, 45, 85-89 (2007)

Goodrich, Norma Lorre, Priestesses, New York : F. Watts, ISBN 0-531-15113-1 (1989); Harper Collins, Perennial, ISBN 0-06-097316-1 (1990)

Guthrie, William Keith Chambers, The Greeks and Their Gods (1950)

Harissis H.V. 2015. "A Bittersweet Story: The True Nature of the Laurel of the Oracle of Delphi" Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. Volume 57, Number 3, Summer 2014, pp. 295-298.

Holland, Leicester B., "The Mantic Mechanism at Delphi", American Journal of Archaeology 37 pp. 201-214 (1933)

Lehoux D.R., "Drugs and the Delphic Oracle", Classical World, 101, 1, 41-56 (2007)

Maass, E., De Sibyllarum Indicibus, Berlin (1879)

Maurizio, Lisa, "The Voice at the Centre of the World: The Pythia's Ambiguity and Authority" pp. 46-50 in editors Andre Lardinois and Laura McClure Making Silence Speak: Women's Voices in Greek Literature and Society, Princeton University Press (2001)

Mikalson, Jon D. Ancient Greek Religion. Blackwell Ancient Religions. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2005.

Miller, Water, Daedalus and Thespis Vol 1, (1929)

Mitford, William, The History of Greece (1784); cf. v.1, Chapter III, Section 2, p. 177, "Origin and Progress of the Oracles"

Morgan, Catherine. Athletes and Oracles, Cambridge (1990)

Nilsson, Martin P. (Martin Persson). Cults, Myths, Oracles, and Politics in Ancient Greece. With Two Appendices: The Ionian Phylae, the Phratries. New York, Cooper Square Publishers, 1972.

Parke, Herbert William, A History of the Delphic Oracle, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, ASIN B002NZWT0Y (1939)

Parke, Herbert William, Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy in Classical Antiquity, Routledge, London, ISBN 978-0-415-07638-8 (reprinted 1992)

Piccardi, Luigi, "Active faulting at Delphi: seismotectonic remarks and a hypothesis for the geological environment of a myth", Geology, 28, 651-654 (2000)

Piccardi L., C. Monti, F. Tassi O. Vaselli, D. Papanastassiou & K. Gaki-Papanastassiou, "Scent of a myth: tectonics, geochemistry and geomythology at Delphi (Greece)", Journal of the Geological Society, London, 165, 5-18 (2008)

Potter, David Stone, Prophecy and history in the crisis of the Roman Empire: a historical commentary on the Thirteenth Sibylline Oracle, cf. Chapter 3 (1990)

Poulson, Frederick. Dephi Gleydenhall, London (1920)

West, Martin Litchfield (1983), The Orphic Poems, Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-814854-2.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Pythia (; Ancient Greek: Πυθία ) was the name of the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. She specifically served as its oracle and was known as the Oracle of Delphi. Her title was also historically glossed in English as the Pythoness.

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#EnergyFlows

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1 Writing on the cusp of an energy revolution, D.H. Lawrence bridges the gap between modernity and modernism. Whilst the material conditions of modernist texts are steeped in vorticist energy flows of literary production, 1 this exemplifies but one aspect of the wider modernist mania with nervous energy, electrical charge and telecommunication that finds its ultimate playground in the chronic metropolis. In contrast, the Victorian age of invention, transport and finance was literally energised by notions of the "vital spark," which described a moral narrative of energy as work and waste. 2 Degeneration and exhaustion had become root metaphors of energy death in an entropic disordered universe. The intellectual conversion of nineteenth-century exhaustible mechanistic energy into twentieth-century continual radiant energy 3 gave rise to a dynamic cosmos in which an energised modernity now feeds on the unpredictable and destabilising movements of atomic particles and associates it with the peculiar "modern" sensitivity of restlessness and agitation. Energy thus seems to be the essence of modernity itself. It demarcates modern existence as one of energy production and consumption.

2 The debt modernist writers pay to this energy revolution is a creative one. Morrisson, for example, explores the resemblances between the newly conceptualised quantum world and the modernist fictional world, as both converge on the fizzying interactions between unstable entities. Characters leap in and out of existence in the same way particles do. 4 The constant vibrations of subatomic particles erase the boundaries of material form and process. This is attractive to writers like Lawrence, who concern themselves with the modernist "crisis of representation." 5 Radiant energy supplies the idea of endless transformations of diffracting energy waves, vibrations and rhythms - what Bergson refers to as "uninterrupted continuity." 6 Energy and literature combine thus in an "energised modernism" in which the harnessing of the electron connect with human mental and spiritual energies in cycles of transformation and acceleration. The shared understandings of scientific advances and artistic creativity commute the unfamiliar nanoworld of particle physics into the familiar world of social attraction and repulsion. 7

3 However, not just urban and globalised modernity captivates energetic modernists, but also the cycles and rhythms of the natural world. The White Peacock (1911), originally intended to be called "Nethermere," has frequently been examined as a post-pastoral, but not enough attention has been given to the landscape of Nethermere as a conduit of energy flows. Through writing the valley of Nethermere, Lawrence's powerful visualisations of the natural world is at times lyrical, at times elegiac. But Instead of merely focusing on the elegiac idealisation of landscape and the people working in relation to it, Lawrence unveils the turbulence of life at molecular and microbial level. This posthumanist perspective illuminates Lawrence's ability to layer meaning and to transgress the story of expulsion from a perceived pre-industrial paradise and allows for a reading in which the human tragedy of expulsion is mitigated by the eternal becomings of the nonhuman world. Perceived through new understandings of spacetime that infiltrate the fabric of the narrative and unpick solid matter, the novel furthermore reveals the insubstantial and permeable materiality that underpins life.

8 Sam Halliday, "Electricity and Homosexuality: from 19 -century American Sexual Health Literature t (...)

4 The classical vitalist idea that all organic matter is energised by a dynamic force that is qualitatively different from "mere" physical or chemical forces, coupled to an evolutionary teleological idea underpinned by Bergsonian , the idea that living things become progressively more animated, is replaced by the vitality of non-teleological communications across the non-human world. These undulating feedback loops of organic and inorganic systems communicate through intensities. 8 Intensity flows, or electric charge, thus underpin the connection between modernist and post-humanist investigations of narratives and illustrate a sensitivity to the environment as alive with continual energy exchanges. Matter is now no longer a stable surface but an entangled constant motion, and the entanglement is instantaneous and everlasting.

5 The critical reflection of reconceptualising energy as one of intensity flows responds to Lawrence's critique of humanity's seeking of control over the environment (and failing). His fraught relationship with post-pastoral anxieties that are visible also in other modernist writings, ., in constructions of countryside as , 9 disrupts nature writing. His writing may, therefore, be considered a response to Friedman's demand for more consideration of "the planet" in the "planetary perspective" of modernism, 10 in which the nonhuman, rather than the human, perspective on local ecologies is foregrounded as witness to the perceived traumatic changes traditionally extolled by modernists, thereby decentering these traditional viewpoints.

12 Cf. Whitworth, 125; Crossland, 86-7.

13 Hayes considers Lawrence "essentially ignorant" of the New Physics. Nancy K. Hayes, "The Ambivalent (...)

6 In 1906, just after Einstein formulated his theory of special relativity, Lawrence worked as a student teacher at University College Nottingham, where he also began work on a piece that would become The White Peacock (1911). Rachel Crossland outlines how Lawrence had a thorough grounding and pervasive interest in new scientific theories, which he followed in publications such as The Teacher . 11 The topical importance of a post-Newtonian universe for Lawrence, in which interactive molecular movement did away with unrefined causality, is noted widely. Commentators acknowledge Lawrence's enthusiasm for the New Physics, but they also identify this relationship as ambivalent. 12 Lawrence's actual understanding of the New Physics can only be extrapolated, 13 and some commentators, under the routine ascription of Lawrencian worship of the primitive and intuitive, highlight Lawrence's violent "antiscientific animus." 14 Yet neither party overlooks Lawrence's interest in the vitality of quivering connections between the self and its non-organic surroundings illustrated by quantum physics. 15 Lawrence's writing, therefore, inscribes environmental agency that is not metaphysical, but chemico-physical.

7 Lawrence's engagement with the New Physics can serve, therefore, as a case study for what Whitworth presents as a popular appeal of scientific discovery during modernism's ascendancy. The popular interest in multiple and simultaneous interactions and the unstable self takes the New Physics beyond the moralising Victorian usage of evolution or dissipation. 16 Lawrence's polarities, however, "locked together in tense dynamic interplay," 17 speak to a movement away from binary towards allotropic states. Seen through an allotropic lens, existence dissolves from sequential material states into the fluidity of energy states that have a rhythmic, oscillating rather than linear quality. The allotrope allows Lawrence to think of the dynamic instability of simultaneous states, not merely about self and other, even though, as Gibbons notes, this thinking is admittedly less clearly developed before 1911. 18 Whilst most of Lawrence's direct engagement with scientific ideas stem from the late 1910s and early 1920s, the seeds were sown in the threshold between the old and the new century that also saw popular and modernist engagements with these theories.

8 Lawrence is also admired by posthumanists as someone who could tie his writings to becomings, the continually unfolding process of existence. 19 The White Peacock (1911), Lawrence's first novel, can therefore serve as a pre-cursor to investigations of matter and energy that later inform, ., the intensities of radiation permeating The Rainbow (1915). As matter is multiplied by the speed of light squared, it discloses the hidden stores of energy that connect the living and the non-living material of the cosmos. Energy as a cosmological constant provides the weave and weft of the existential fabric called life. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde claims that Lawrence's work could, therefore, be considered foundational to the discipline of ecocriticism, in which life expands from purely humanist concerns to the relationships of human and non-human existence. 20

9 Perhaps the most lucid investigation into Lawrence's posthuman affinities to date is Jeff Wallace's D.H. Lawrence, Science and the Posthuman , who dedicates some space to Lawrence and The White Peacock under the heading of "Animals." 21 Wallace's focus on animality, however, largely ignores those energetic relationships in The White Peacock that exist beyond fauna. The novel's engagement with, what Lawrence later called in Terra Incognita the "rich world of contact," 22 a living, dynamic relationship with something beyond the human, is, however, more than simply ecological, but a grappling with flows and intensities that link up the concerns of energetic modernism and posthumanism.

10 Energy flows in The White Peacock interest Lawrence beyond a simple duality of the primitive vs the civilised, or the blood-conscious vs the mind-conscious, which is often proffered as recuperation of the one against the other. 23 Flows help him think about the world as existing in simultaneous energy states. This investigation proposes that it is this de-centred perspective on energy flows that not only illustrate modernism's affiliation with quantum worlds, as shown specifically in Lawrence's writing of the valley of Nethermere, but Nethermere also becomes a contact zone in which Lawrence is able to examine the intersections of "human modernities with the earth's non-human species, diversities, and cosmic rhythms" 24 demanded by a planetary modernism.

11 As noted, the key development in thinking about energy in modernist terms is no longer merely one of waste and dissipation, but also one of radiance. The vitality of radiant energy presents a contrast to the more conservative conception of human consciousness as the highest symbol of organic vitalism. The idea of radiant energy, however, must be taken further than the nervous energy that infuses much of modernist depictions of social relationships. Vitality, therefore, relates to radiance of non-human and non-organic matter through the underlying physics of vibration. In what follows, therefore, this paper not only re-visions modernist thinking on energy, but also heeds Fiona Becket's dictum that the "greening of modernism [...] needs Lawrence." 25

12 Lawrence's powers as a writer of landscape is not undisputed. Mason (1977), for example, is highly critical of the, as he considers them, purple and lush passages in The White Peacock . He scolds Lawrence's tendency to lists animals, trees, flowers and birds. 26 Other critics suggest, however, that Lawrence's ability to present nature in minute and botanically correct detail both at the symbolic and realistic level allows his readers to experience rather than read about the landscapes. 27 The valley of Nethermere is depicted by Lawrence in a concrete metaphorical language, fulsome of alliteration, consonance, onomatopoeia, as well as rhythmic repetitions of gerunds and adjectives. These manipulations of prose rhythms and sound patterns and textures evoke an impression of the flux and change on a material level that connects Lawrence to the modernists' tradition. Lawrence's style reflects the idea of trespass, seen not just as a political transgression, but as a subversive action of energy flows and vibrations in a quantum world. I propose, therefore, a reading of the environment as oscillating at molecular level. As Lawrence notes later, in such discussions it is prudent to "Start with the Sun." 28

13 The sun represents the most direct idea of vibrating energy-matter. In thermodynamic thought, the network of flows between the personal and the solar construct an energetic assemblage of photon and neuron. The Sun's photonic bombardment of the young Earth, more importantly, resulted in the transformation of its primitive anoxygenic atmosphere to one with molecular oxygen - and thus life. 29 This oxygenic photosynthesis is the precursor to what Marder has termed the actual energy of plants photosynthesizing. 30 Photosynthesis is an entanglement of photon exchange with oxygen, as light mingles with metabolic life in electrochemical gradients. The penetration of matter by photon is a trespass that overturns the Victorian energetic polarities of potency and falling-off by emphasising the circularity of energy-matter. Lawrence attempts to subvert any cause-and-effect thinking through the photo-voltaic quality of his narrative language. Its key quality is that of incandescence. In a key chapter in The White Peacock, the sun is at first absent, unable to light the candle-like flowers of the horse-chestnut tree ( 220), yet later on it catches "in the up-licking scarlet sorrel flames ( 224). Cyril observes how "[a] rosy campion flower caught the sun and shone out" ( 214). The reactive, heliotropic quality of flowers is intensified, as they are made to spark, glitter and catch sunlight like fire. Radiant energy crackles with electric intensity, as well as exothermic combustion. It illuminates the moment in which photon and chlorophyll co-mingle, thus going beyond linear transformations of energy as envisaged by the Laws of Thermodynamics. Light dissolves the outlines of stable forms, and conversely forms the chromatic display of the pink orchids that "stood palely" and "yearned darkly for the sun" ( 22). The electromagnetic radiation of the sun diffracts across the chromatic range of flowers throughout the novel, revealing sunlight as an energy oscillation that plays on a range of different frequencies.

14 In The White Peacock, the sun is, however, more often than not, setting: "The gold turns to red, the red darkens, like fire burning low" ( 59). This crepuscular atmosphere has aided interpretations of the novel as belonging to an outcrop of fin-de-siècle writing. Throughout the narrative Cyril experiences "black and substantial" shadows ( 136), the gloom of trees folding over everything, as well as the "chill shade" of clouds ( 204) on an otherwise sunny day. In the poignant final chapter, Cyril goes down the path 'un-sunned'. Yet trees also provide "a grateful shade" ( 6), a "green shade" ( 231) that nevertheless contains the intensity of the sun. A t night, and in shadow, solar radiation no longer reaches the environment, but energy persists in the grey body radiation of the environment that is chiefly in the infra-red zone of the solar spectrum. The solar irradiation that has been absorbed by the vegetation is now emitted as heat. An anthropocentric reading of shadows solely as ominous symbols of fin-de-siècle degeneration omits such a nuanced presentation, and weakens our understanding of Lawrence's idea of a multiple connections with the cosmos. The perceived deadly force of disintegration presaged by decadent movements is, in fact a dynamic interaction at the threshold that speaks to modernism's interactions with decadent tropes. 31 The modernist dilemma of formal narrative uncertainty is resolved through a trespass of permeated matter that presents now as simultaneous heat and light vibrations.

32 Crossland, 142. cf. Arthur Eddington: "I am standing on the threshold about to enter a room. It is (...)

15 The vibrations are perhaps most effectively inscribed in ultraviolet light, which only bees and other insects can perceive. Swarms of bees have become central to an understanding of Lawrence's New Physics, as well as being a reminder of Eddington's flies illustrating the insubstantiality of matter. 32 The insect-flower-sun assemblage in The White Peacock illustrates symbiotic existence in the web of life. Bees appear as a clambering unrest, intoxicated by the flowers, clinging madly and excitedly to extract the nectar and distribute pollen. They are also entangled with the sun. At the beginning of the novel, the newly-hatched bees are dependent on the sun to dry their wings ( 2), and bees are mentioned anytime "hot sunshine stood as in a bowl" ( 6). At Annable's funeral "the hot sun pushed his way, new little suns dawned and blazed with real light" while the trees are "voiced with a hum of bees" ( 155). The acoustic energy of bees buzzing thickens the atmosphere already viscous with the vibrations of thermal energy. At the scene of Annable's fatal accident, the sunshine on the quarry appears "to thicken and sweeten", and the catkins are "murmuring with bees" ( 153), serving to heighten the sense of life oscillating beneath the anthropocentric concerns of the human tragedy.

16 Photons are emitted when electrons are vibrated and travel as waves across space-time. Water particles also vibrate, and their captive energies create similar wave forms.

17 William James wrote in 1910 that the ripple of the brook symbolises descending cosmic energy. 33 Lawrence depicts the mill-brook in Nethermere in a scientific (rather than figurative) way to signal modernist interest in water as oceanic altered state of consciousness beyond the human. 34 The rhythms of the ripples and waves, the physical oddity of water, its polar molecule - all this means that energy flows even in the deceptive stillness of the millpond. It is, in Lawrence's oxymoronic words, "intensely still" ( 1), thereby hinting at the reduction of kinetic energy of water molecules that occurs when water is a liquid but is as yet not frozen into the absolute stillness of rigid crystals . As water reacts to electric charge, the chorus of clumps of H O denotes the "tumult of life," the potential energy of the outwardly motionless atmosphere. The seemingly nostalgic tone of "once quickened" hints also at the enduring state of energy, as the excited chemical compounds of water molecules perform an ageless, constant dance of attraction and repulsion beyond the ken of the observer. The tumult of the water becomes increasingly explicit. At first, water slides "sleepily among" stones ( 6), but soon enough we can discern the "foamy race" ( 11), as the mill brook was "swirling along, hurrying, talking to itself, in absorbed intent tones" ( 87). The brook "fell over little cascades in its haste" ( 128), and evermore "hurried along singing" ( 204). The "foamy race" of a downward current conforms more happily to our ideas of kinetic energy. There is, however, a further cascade that exists at molecular level, a natural proton gradient, a "trembling instability of the balance" 35 that precipitated the tumult of life nearly four billion years ago.

18 The water also rides the air-waves and invariably drenches the atmosphere with air heavy with moisture. Often paired with unforgiving wet, the moving air leaves vegetation drenched, limp, withered and ragged. This kinetic energy of water is replicated in the turbulence of air particles which, separated by vast distances, move about with incredible velocities at molecular level. Driven by changing temperatures and pressures, its destructive forces constantly push unseen against the material world. In friction with the environment turns air into waves of vibrating particles , producing sound that "rumbled and roared hoarsely overhead" ( 87). In The White Peacock the "booming" quality of moving air whips up the water and swishes the branches of trees ( 11). Intensities are central to Lawrence's language. The air blows fierce and heavy, as it "blanched the sycamores, and pushed the sullen pines rudely" ( 220).

19 These elemental assemblages continue via another wave of energy, that of scent. The "sharp-scented mint" exemplifies the ripples of dynamic motion that attack in puffs of air pressure, as people move through the landscape and "checks the breath" ( 11). The intensity of the brief terror of suffocation combines with the heat of the sun: "the honeysuckle had to ceased to breathe, and all the other scents were moving in the air" ( 224). At the same time vegetation is felled in trembling and quivering waves, sending out chemical distress calls that we perceive as smells. The resonance of the particular frequency of cut grass vibrates in revelation of the chemical bonds that are leapfrogged by the electrons. Hence the air above the meadow being scythed is filled with the intensities of death messages. Vegetation interacts with elemental forces, destructive and resistant at the same time, forever triumphant in its energetic vitality.

20 The weathering evident in The White Peacock is a symbol of elemental trespass. It is more than merely meteorological, but an entangling of air, water and material bodies and a leakage between living and non-living matter. Nethermere is a borderland of constantly shifting energy states though physical, chemical and biological weathering, in which matter is broken down in contact with the earth's atmosphere. The rotten trees and sodden vegetation foreshadow energy transformations that are more closely associated with the earth's soil.

21 Soil develops through complex chemical and biological processes, one of which is degradation of organic matter. Cyril, for example, returns to Nethermere at the end of the novel to a sodden vegetation and the smell of cold rotting leaves, a habitual symbol of the iterative cycles of growth and decay. This type of process is another type of respiration (other than photosynthesis), namely the cellular respiration of microbial breakdown of organic matter. The earthy and the ethereal coexist in these changes in energy that infuse the land and make it fertile. Every time the flowers are becoming "brown balls of rottenness" ( 32), they are teeming, at the same time, with the microbial life that sustains the environment. Lawrence wrote in 1909 how the wastefulness of life is "on the whole, beautiful," 36 and the valley of Nethermere invites constant becomings, because intensities and energy states are constantly shifting. This "dance of death" ( 81) is further evoked through aerial contagion of particles of moisture, scent and light. This kind of trespass is often narrowly considered representative of degenerating human relationships. 37 The White Peacock could thus be considered anti-modernist in its energetic depiction of soil ecology, 38 but it is also an indication of a modernist appetite for defamiliarization.

22 It hints at vegetational subversive power of infecting the political structure. Agrarian capitalism in The White Peacock is depicted in a state of disorder and neglect. Instead of separation, uniformity and repetition of productive farm land we encounter coagulation. A sense of paralysis is conveyed, for example when Strelley Farm garden is described as "not very productive, save of weeds, and perhaps, tremendous lank artichokes or swollen marrows" ( 52). The derelict farm, similarly, is "a forest of the tallest nettles [...] choked with a growth of abnormal weeds" ( 60). The repetition of "weeds" and the paralytic quality of its stranglehold on produce seemingly devalues the landscape and divides the natural world into profitable and non-profitable assets.

23 A common reading of The White Peacock is as a post-pastoral, in which the implied "blood-intimacy" 39 of the agricultural community comes into conflict with modern rational life. Described as a doomed Arcadia, 40 or, in Lawrence's own words, a "decorated idyll running to seed in realism," 41 the pastoral pitches an idyllic rural economy against the harsh, desolate life of urban capitalist environments. Human consolation, as Bate notes, is afforded through the beauty and peacefulness of the landscape and its timeless rituals. 42 Wallace consequently claims Lawrence's "romantic, pantheistic sense of undistinguishable oneness with nature" makes the "restorative potential of natural beauty" desirable. 43 These readings, however, neglect the energetic aspect of soil ecology, in which the microbiome, and not the human agent, rules.

24 Profitable agriculture was made possible through the management of the nitrogen cycle, a microbial symbiosis in which nitrogen acts as a catalyst for biological processes and as a building block of organic life. Evidence of nitrification via man-made industrial processes is often used to date the Anthropocene. 44 The metabolic rift of soil chemistry, however, makes this process difficult in wet soils. Hence the frequent references to a sodden landscape in The White Peacock speak to the bacteria that free nitrogen gas rather than the fertilisers that fix nitrogen for agricultural production.

45 Cf. Sandra M. Gilbert, "Apocalypse now (and then). Or, D.H. Lawrence and the swan in the electron," (...)

25 This energetic aspect of soil ecology is more than just a political statement about the decline of an 'old' agricultural world. Nethermere vibrates with the pulsating energy of a star, and the valley is racked with a vitality that thrives on sexual energies ( 28) contained within the lamina of the bulb. Orchids are, for example, "stunted with harsh upbringing," yet they remain "magnificent in their powerful colouring, crushing the pallid lady smocks, washed-out wild gillivers" ( 220). The energy extolled on their growth is extended manifold in their sexual exuberance, which seems at first to indicate nature off balance. It riffs on the Victorian notion of "waste" and recalibrates it into the vitality of e.g., the bulb, storage of recreational powers, erupting into a conflagration of vitality ( 53). 45

26 Everywhere we are reminded of the heavy growth that "chained" the environment into perceived paralysis ( 206). Strelley Mill garden, for example, produces a final yield of "heavy out-reaching boughs of red and gold" cherries, and immense vegetables that lay prostrate, heavy crop of oats, with heads of grain "weighted with drops of gold" ( 250). Lawrence evokes the sexual excess of vegetal life in threatening terms, by means of abnormal, swollen, tremendous, splendid and immense fruit. The espalier tree in Strelley Mill garden, for example, yields a treasure of plums, "great mist-bloomed, crimson treasures, splendid globes" that "fell heavily, thudding down among the immense rhubarb leaves below" ( 53). The perceived lack of "productiveness" is, therefore, belied by the inhuman but superb proportions of the produce.

27 Sexual energy, bringing forth life in the guise of fruit and seed, is coupled with the energetic conflagration of decomposition. The elm tree is choked by ivy, the wood-pigeon has tumbled dead from a branch, and the saxifrage is silently devoured by snails. The footsteps of human visitors crush the vegetation. They do not notice the life at microscopic level, where "the little grey lichens held up ruby balls to us unnoticed" ( 210). Lawrence seemingly evokes the melancholic idea of the pointlessness of existence: "What did it matter, when all the great red apples were being shaken from the tree to be left to rot" ( 210). This seeming indifference, Bate notes, results in a demoralising bleakness of existence. 46 But it is only the human perspective that speaks of spoil, rot and degradation. Viewed from a posthumanist perspective, nature throbs with energy, as chemical reactions dissolve the fruit for energy and growth, the elm sends forth its multitudinous seed and the woodpigeon quickly becomes nurturing organic matter.

28 Lawrence's environment is thus transformed beyond the picturesque or poetic into a vital playground of microbial life. It is not a childlike vision of mystical -naturalness and strangeness, but instead a constant becoming that destabilises humanity's lordship. It is a modernist celebration of radiant energy in the form of resonance. The shifting forms of energy - kinetic, mechanical, potential - that ultimately defaults on modern consumerist and capitalist conceptions of energy as resource, is joined by the electro-chemical processes that have been found to generate electric fields in organisms. 47 The excitability of receptors in biological cells expresses itself as a vibration that communicates across the electric layer penetrating the earth's crust. The whole planetary surface acts as an electro-chemical power plant, as electric charges diffract in waves across the molecular interface of the bio- and the lithosphere. Hence even the lithosphere is irrefutably alive in various energy states.

49 Jason W. Moore, "The Capitalocene, Part I: On the nature and origins of our ecological crisis," in (...)

29 The earth's crust, a thin layer of rock, topped with an even thinner layer of soil, interacts most widely with human activity in the form of agriculture, and also through a "culture of extractivism." 48 This is considered a continuation of the so-called "Great Acceleration" facilitated by the exploitation of energy resources referencing the Anthropocene, or, as Jason Moore termed it, the "Capitaloscene." 49 Energy matter, if perceived a cultural commodity, is simply dead stuff to be consumed. This is most directly exemplified by coal mining, with its double bind of class and empire. In terms of its geology, Nottinghamshire is most celebrated, of course, for its extensive carboniferous deposits of coal. It is a highly active and energy-rich environment, in which earth-movements "elevated the strata and at the same time buckled them up into a series of ridges [...] and intervening depressions." 50 Its geology tells the story of the upheavals of distant ages, in which vegetation has turned to coal through enormous pressures. The coal measures have in turn been buried in hundreds of feet of alluvium, the sandy deposits that speak of distant floods, and the Permian sandstone in turn carved by the passage of rivers that have deposited earth, sand and gravel that is quarried in the Nottingham region. Lawrence thus responds in a nuanced way to this rivering of time, in which landscape's political function has a deeper significance than the overt economic affordances of a new rural order. This extended political function is encased in an awareness of the interconnectedness of energy flows driven by the vast sway of the earth's centre.

30 The vitality that interests Lawrence so profoundly is, therefore, not the restless energy of modern life, which finds its common ontological expression in coal-fuelled, electrified urban environments, but an inherent actual energy that connects the organic and the nonorganic. His references to the pit and the glare of the iron works on the margins of Nethermere are nods to energy as a resource to be extracted and exploited. What follows, logically, is the idea of depletion and degradation - all noted pastoral tropes in alliance with the encroaching symbols of the industrial age. But energy is not only simply something that is harvested, consumed and exhausted, but an actual spontaneous vitality inherent in the nonorganic universe. An emphasis on the materiality of place, scoping the topographic and geographic realities of the changing landscape, brings us to an understanding of how energy flows exist in the world as matter. The spirit of place, which Lawrence later tellingly evokes as a "vibration", 51 references the kinetic energy waves inherent in the earth.

31 Sandstone and coal stand at the threshold of organic and nonorganic demarcations. The "vibrations" Lawrence describes are literal, as coal deposits shift, a geomorphic movement that intensifies with the constant mining that is ongoing in the Anthropocene. The landscape of Nottinghamshire is thus gradually being "undermined" and riven with energy oscillations that penetrate perceptibly from deep earth to the surface rock. The environment vibrates with the energy transfers of human and nonhuman, organic and nonorganic work. The vibrations of crystalline structures straining to resume their interrupted shape account for the imperceptible movements of rocks and metals, in which energy builds up only to be released in the catastrophic avalanche of rocks that bury Annable, who has rushed towards becoming-imperceptible.

32 Deleuze and Guattari write that the imperceptible is the immanent end of becoming, its "cosmic formula." 52 The idea is that, ultimately, we slip between our material being into an undefinable particle existence, a haecceity, in which thresholds are crossed. When Cyril happens upon Annable buried under stones, he only perceives "a pile of stones and earth and crushed vegetation" ( 153). Hence Annable has become crushed lithology, a becoming-imperceptible through movement. The Einsteinian revolution has dissociated solidity from absolute form, hence, as Rodowick (1997) notes, "a stone is not a solid object, but a mass that vibrates." 53

33 Matter, often perceived to be inert, waiting for "formation" via the imposition of energy, is opposed to the symbioses of organisms and the electro-chemical processes that bind them. Tim Ingold (2013) argues against this form-receiving ideology and for a morphogenic notion of form-taking. 54 Matter is merely a stoppage in the inherent flow that creates a particular shape, hence Annable has stopped the flow of the rock, and in the process shaped his own body into the matter. Matter is thus actively involved in flow and becoming, and this form-generating growth is linked to organic growth. It questions notions of the solid physical obduracy of matter and introduces ideas of "haecceities as unformed particles, a swarm." 55 This quantum leap at a moment of crisis and transition strikes at the core of modernism's ontological problem. 56 The stones dislodged, the body displaced, both merge in processes that have also formed the precarious Permian sandstone in deep time. Annable's imperceptibility underneath the pile of stones is aggregated with the high-intensity energy that fills the atmosphere with sounds, sparks and glows and heavy scents ( 153).

34 Both light, air and water, photon and polar molecule, as well as the microbiome of the soil and the lithography of the landscape, refer to a world without clearly defined boundaries. Boundary making is a result of the Anthropocene, as the material landscape is acquired, separated, enclosed and surveilled. This back history of forced expulsions and dispossessions in the countryside brought about the cherished "wildernesses" of Romantic imagination. Nottinghamshire is famed for its forests and established ducal seats, with parks and woodlands that are, in fact, the socio-historical result of closed off real-estate. The tension between land ownership and land usage reverberates in The White Peacock , and the idea of "trespass" features prominently. Annable, the gamekeeper, is introduced to Nethermere to persecutes trespassers, but this moral obligation only applies to human transgressors. In many instances, trespass is enacted by non-human life, and simultaneously prevents human access. The "great lilac-bush that had once guarded the porch now almost blocked the doorway" ( 2). In the controversial chapter "Shadows in Spring." Cyril goes to meet Annable at the abandoned church, where grass "overgrew the threshold" ( 147), and a staircase "was filled with ivy and rambling roses - impassable" ( 148). This vibrational communication of the substrate illustrates the agency of non-human matter.

35 Energy flows, in which the incessant movements of electrons and protons in quantum waves through permeable membranes sidestep a totalising ownership of the material environment, allow for a more dynamic understanding of trespass. One energy that is resisted in the novel is, therefore, that of a centrifugal movement towards separation, represented by the transformation of natural boundaries into frontiers. The whole valley of Nethermere is, in fact, encircled by a "dishevelled border-land" ( 46), which depicts not just a territorial fusion that fertilises new understandings about the "other" through physical encounters, but a frontier land that can shock into renewal. The idea of "trespassing" is, therefore, performed as a subversive practice, which re-wilds the farmed environment after the dispersal of the tenant-farmers. Here, work is done continuously in overcoming energy barriers. It emerges as an in-betweenness of the boundary-states of allowed/forbidden significant of a posthuman deterritorialised sensibility.

36 In The White Peacock , renewal comes about through permeation. The term "becoming" signals the shifting and fluid flows of intensities, 57 oscillating back and forth between contact points. Deleuze and Guattari write in A Thousand Plateaus : "A becoming is not a correspondence between relations. But neither is it a resemblance, an imitation." 58 It is a coexistence, a symbiosis - a hybridity that neither extinguishes nor creates something else or new, but already holds the multiplicitous possibilities of becoming-other within. It is a becoming on the molecular plane, a shifting of energies across porous matter. The allotropic states of water molecules, for example, become more energetic in gaseous form. Hence, although water vapour, in the form of mist, is often perceived to be still and diaphanous, it enacts a violent dynamic quality that outshines its solid state. Hence, in The White Peacock, mist "licked and wreathed up the shores" ( 193) and swathed the hedges. This watery threshold, as Michelucci terms it, 59 is not simply a reminder of the existence of an "other," but a place of becoming-other. The environment at and around Nethermere is, therefore, not merely an allegory for human vanity and/or happiness, but a consciousness that exists in an allotropic state of becoming .

37 In Nethermere, light, water, air, earth and stone are "cosmogonic" elements separated at a threshold of the finite and the infinite. 60 Light is particle and wave, oscillating in the borderland of the shadows and penetrating the green chlorophyll, itself a pigment borderland of animal and vegetal life. Water, a "non-place," is in its pure state hostile to life, but at the same time it is the cradle of life. It infiltrates Nethermere as marsh and swamp, and the air as mist. It is the ultimate energy store of proton-rich and proton-poor molecules, triggering the proton waterfall of potential energy. The air in Nethermere is full of scents and contagions that are carried on the turbulences and penetrate all corners. The earth is rich with microbial activity, in which life thrives and communicates in electro-chemical waves across the earth's crust. These vibrations speak to the form-giving nature of energetic matter, rather than to a morphogenetic passivity. In terms of temporal rather than spatial boundaries, The White Peacock refers more heavily to autumn and spring than to other seasons, as this is the time when the equinox refutes any ascendancy of day over night - or vice versa. These circannual oscillations of seasonality delineate a sensitivity to photoperiodic changes, as the light-energy levels are depicted as a flat iteration of liminal seasons.

61 Jacques Derrida, Positions. Trans. Allan Bass (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981), 41.

38 As mentioned, modernist energy lives not just in content, but also in form of literary production and provides us with new understandings of time and space. Lawrence's rhythmic repetitions that foreground a movement back and forth through recessive planes, cosmic periods of peri- and aphelion, natural diurnal and seasonal rhythms, are translated into trancelike, incantatory micro-rhythms of, ., the blood pumping through the body. Lawrence inscribes the environment by employing what may be termed an energetic "green language," an ecolect of narrative power that goes beyond the consensus of metaphor. It is not a derivative language that reduces the landscape to a set of dichotomies but a Derridean "double gesture [...] to overturn the hierarchy at a given moment." 61 It uses constant shifts between micro-and macro-perspectives to decentre the human point of view. More than that, however, it vibrates as a free energy that regulates mental energy in the form of sensation.

39 Lawrence's use of "green" language is, therefore, not just about compensatory and restorative qualities of nature, but about erasing the demarcation between the human and the natural in the larger cycles of change often referred to as "deep time." 62 His is a modernist, animistic language that undoes the human as the main signifier. 63 Hence, Lawrence's geological language mimics the subtle movements of the earth as well as the quick movements of the organic rhythms. In epiphanic moments and shifts in perspectives that veer between the panoramic and the microscopic, "deep time" becomes traceable, although such shifts in narrative points of view caused critics to comment Lawrence's supposed "bungling" of the White Peacock . 64

40 The White Peacock is a novel about shivers of energy that cross between organic and nonorganic, human and nonhuman. Lawrence's language deterritorialises energy currents that leak everywhere in the narrative. For example, the energy of organic decay, illustrated in George Saxton's demise, speaks to the contagion immanent in the cosmos. The adjectival onslaught of "soft," "pale," "rotten" and "clammy" ( 324) exploits the interplay between the material and social. Paired with "a flow of thick, sweet sunshine" that "drifts" on a "dim afternoon" past George "not touching him" however, the scene signals shifts between solid and liquid that flouts all rules or materiality. It replays the scene of Annable's death, when sunshine also appears "to thicken and sweeten" ( 153).

65 Gilbert, 236, 238. DOI: 10.1080/14688417.2018.1531721

41 This viscosity of the atmosphere causes alarm and triggers a revulsion of touch visible in Cyril's haptic gaze. The air seems to touch us back in a mental image of corruption, illustrated by the dimness of the light affecting our vision, but also by the sweetness attacking our olfactory receptors. Such language amply illustrates why Lawrence is considered an "ultimate pre-postmodernist" by Sandra Gilbert, 65 who enacts the complex relationships between the characters in the story without foregrounding them as the important reference points from which the narrative must be understood. Overt references in The White Peacock to the "holy communion of pure wild things" ( 129) must not be reduced to an anthropocentric yearning for religious communion, but as a factual statement that communion is, and will always be, there - in the Energy F/flows that envelop the cosmos and all matter within.

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Energy F/flows through the Environment in The White Peacock

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This paper argues the case for a new reading of D.H. Lawrence's The White Peacock (1911) against the popular interest in the New Physics theories developed at the turn of the twentieth century. Such a reading focuses on energy as an elemental cosmogenic force in the environment and illustrates a new understanding of material relationships.

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Keywords mentioned in the first introductory presentation 4 March:

Using feet as sound tool during performance

·      Improvisation with music and performance

·      Working in eat collective and music collective

·      Exercising with interaction music and body movement, and voice and body movement, with a strong focus on improvisation

·      Inspired by shamanism, in which the shaman is a medium for sending trough energy , and bringing energy in balance again

·      Maybe there’s a connection here with the Pythia’s concerning the Greek oracles. An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. The word oracle comes from the Latin verb ōrāre, "to speak" and properly refers to the priest or priestess uttering the prediction.

·      Pythia was the name of the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. She specifically served as its oracle and was known as the Oracle of Delphi. Her title was also historically glossed in English as the Pythoness. At Delphi the divine words of Apollo were conveyed by the enigmatic priestess, the Pythia. Later ancient sources claim that she was in a state of wild frenzy which resulted in incoherent words and statements. It was believed that this was due to intoxication from vapors rising from a chasm in the floor of the Temple of Apollo. Strabo, an ancient geographer, and historian, referred to these vapors as pneuma — the ancient Greek word for gas but also breath and spirit.

·      Relation energy and letting go trauma.

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Creativity Lecture 3: Creativity - Abduction or Improvisation?

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Tim Ingold is Professor of Social Anthropology and Head of the School of Social Science at the University of Aberdeen. He has carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Lapland, and has written on the role of animals in human society, on language and tool use, and on environmental perception and skilled practice. His key publications include: Evolution and Social Life (Cambridge University Press), Tools, Language and Cognition in Human Evolution (co-edited, with Kathleen Gibson, Cambridge University Press), The Perception of the Environment (Routledge) and Lines: A Brief History (Routledge).

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The Rhizome - A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari

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Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth | Ep. 6: 'Masks of Eternity'

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John Cage: 4'33'' / Petrenko · Berliner Philharmoniker

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Post 3 Meridith Monk Music and Performance

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Post 3 Meridith Monk Music and Performance

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Award-winning musician Meredith Monk explains her creative process, and why Buddhism's paramitas, or perfections, are always in the mix.

I've always thought that making art is like jumping from the edge of a cliff. At the beginning of every new work-and every day of work-is the unknown. Being an artist is being unsure, asking questions, stumbling around with only an inkling of what will manifest and tolerating the fear of hanging out in the unknown. When curiosity and interest become more present than discomfort, the mystery becomes enjoyable and its exploration vivid and vibrant.

Just as in meditation practice, the artist aspires to start fresh, free from past solutions, glories and failures. One begins with emptiness, without a conceptual framework that filters natural impulses, without striving to make a recognizable "product," simply engaging in a process and getting out of the way of the work.

Each piece presents its own world. Part of making a piece is exploring its principles, listening to what it wants. The sense is that the piece already exists-it's just a matter of uncovering it.

Naturally, this is easier said than done and some days go more smoothly than others. I remember being in an artists' colony with an Irish painter who cheerfully announced at dinner that it had been a bad day; nothing had come easily for her. "But," she said, "I'll try me hardest again tomorrow." I remember her statement as I work through my own resistance to sitting down and trying again. That attitude has inherent spaciousness: there is enough time and space for another effort. One could relate it to the willingness in meditation practice to come back again and again to the breath.

The parallels between dharma and making art are many. As the years go on, I realize more and more that there is no separation between the two: making art is a bodhisattva activity. The inner transformation and growth that results from dharma practice flow into the work, and the work in turn becomes an offering.

My artistic process includes three aspects: solitary creative work, work with others developing the piece, and performance. All three aspects involve the paramitas. Discipline, exertion and patience are invoked in the daily solitary work. In my case, this work might involve composing at the piano; producing ideas, images or structures at a desk; generating vocal or movement material in the studio, or editing video. The paramita of generosity begins by working with an "anything-is-possible" mind, allowing whatever arises to be, knowing that discovery comes when least expected. That generosity expands when the material is developed with other performers. Finally we share the vision with the people who experience the piece.

Producing a work is like making soup. You begin with individual vegetables in the soup: carrots are carrots, onions are onions, potatoes are potatoes. Then you put your vegetables into the stock and simmer. For a while, the vegetables are still vegetables, but little by little they become part of the liquid. Finally they boil down to an essence. Nothing extraneous is left, only the inevitable and delicious mixture the soup has become. Similarly, I try to let the elements of a work exist on their own until it is time to put them into a form. Part of the artistic process is distinguishing between the mind of judgment, which anticipates results and cuts off impulses, and the mind of discriminating intelligence, which sees clearly and at the right time what needs letting go.

After working alone for months, sometimes years, creating materials and making sketches of a piece, I begin rehearsing with my ensemble. My practice and study of dharma has helped me to appreciate and honor more than ever this aspect of the work. I begin by presenting the shards of material that I have been creating alone; then we explore its different components, expanding, inverting and transforming them in myriad ways. The rehearsals are lively, raw, and full of laughter and hard work. There is always a sense of sadness when it is time to weave all the elements together: the excitement of potential has now by necessity become a form.

Live performance allows for vulnerability and immediacy. Everyone is in the same place at the same time. Energy moves from performer to audience and back again. During the performances that I remember most vividly, I have been aware of a simultaneous pinpointed focus and expansive openness-there has been no separation between me and what I perform. The other performers have been attuned to the subtlest changes of energy, and we have communicated without words, neither pushing nor pulling in any way.

There is an element of renunciation in this way of working. A performer gives up instant gratification and habitual modes of seeking attention and love. Instead, there is an awareness of immersing oneself in the material and being part of a larger whole. The performers' honesty and willingness to remain genuine offer the possibility of an openhearted and unmanipulated situation during which the audience can experience transformation. In a sense, the performer becomes transparent, a conduit of fundamental energies and impulses that are beyond discursive thought.

As in dharma practice, creativity means staying present throughout the process; when desperation and anxiety enter, one remembers to go back to the breath, the space, stillness. One moves through delusions of success and failure, fame and humiliation, to an intent to create a work that is of benefit. This process demands the skillfulness, courage, faith and clarity of a warrior. In my experience, meditation practice has only expanded my vision.

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The Art of Being Present -- Meredith Monk - Lion's Roar

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"I've always thought that making art is like jumping from the edge of a cliff," writes Meredith Monk.

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FICTION & NON-FICTION - books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets
BOOKS
BOOKS. The final chapter?
- Book Lovers
FICTION & NON-FICTION - books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets
BOOKS
BOOKS. The final chapter?
- Book Stories
FICTION & NON-FICTION - books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets
FICTION & NONFICTION ARCHIVE
Archive K-L
LITERARY NEWS & EVENTS - art & literature news, in memoriam, festivals, city-poets, writers in Residence
Art & Literature News
MUSEUM OF LOST CONCEPTS - invisible poetry, conceptual writing, spurensicherung
Automatic writing
FICTION & NON-FICTION - books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets
BEAT GENERATION
Kerouac, Jack
FICTION & NON-FICTION - books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets
DRUGS & MEDICINE & LITERATURE
Opium-Eaters

1. Chiquita a poem by Bret Harte

2. Anne Bradstreet: For Deliverance From A Fever

3. Keith Douglas: Desert Flowers

4. Lilia Hassaine: Panorama

5. The Eagle by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

6. Break, Break, Break by Alfred Lord Tennyson

7. freda kamphuis: kanteling

8. When I Waked, I Cried To Dream Again: Poems by A. Van Jordan

9. Aftermath by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

10. Charles Péguy: Paris double galère

Or see the index

1. AUDIO, CINEMA, RADIO & TV (217)

2. DANCE & PERFORMANCE (57)

3. DICTIONARY OF IDEAS (178)

4. EXHIBITION - art, art history, photos, paintings, drawings, sculpture, ready-mades, video, performing arts, collages, gallery, etc. (1,488)

5. FICTION & NON-FICTION - books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets (3,688)

6. FLEURSDUMAL POETRY LIBRARY - classic, modern, experimental & visual & sound poetry, poetry in translation, city poets, poetry archive, pre-raphaelites, editor's choice, etc. (4,621)

7. LITERARY NEWS & EVENTS - art & literature news, in memoriam, festivals, city-poets, writers in Residence (1,598)

8. MONTAIGNE (110)

9. MUSEUM OF LOST CONCEPTS - invisible poetry, conceptual writing, spurensicherung (54)

10. MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY - department of ravens & crows, birds of prey, riding a zebra (110)

11. MUSEUM OF PUBLIC PROTEST (135)

12. MUSIC (215)

13. PRESS & PUBLISHING (90)

14. REPRESSION OF WRITERS, JOURNALISTS & ARTISTS (111)

15. STORY ARCHIVE - olv van de veestraat, reading room, tales for fellow citizens (16)

16. STREET POETRY (46)

17. THEATRE (185)

18. TOMBEAU DE LA JEUNESSE - early death: writers, poets & artists who died young (338)

19. ULTIMATE LIBRARY - danse macabre, ex libris, grimm & co, fairy tales, art of reading, tales of mystery & imagination, sherlock holmes theatre, erotic poetry, ideal women (219)

20. WAR & PEACE (120)

21. · (2)

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Old Angel Midnight is a treasure trove of Kerouac's experiments with automatic writing, a method he practiced constantly to sharpen his imaginative reflexes.

Recorded in a series of notebooks between 1956-1959, what Kerouac called his "endless automatic writing piece" began while he shared a cabin with poet Gary Snyder.

Kerouac tried to emulate Snyder's daily Buddhist meditation discipline, using the technique of "letting go" to free his mind for pure spontaneous writing, annotating the stream of words flowing through his consciousness in response to auditory stimuli and his own mental images.

Kerouac continued his exercise in spontaneous composition over the next three years, including a period spent with William Burroughs in Tangiers. He made no revisions to the automatic writing entries in his notebooks, which were collected and transcribed for publication as originally written.

Old Angel Midnight attests to the success of Kerouac's experiment and bears witness to his commitment to his craft, and to the pleasure he takes in writing: "I like the bliss of mind."

"Kerouac's ambition to capture the living moment (crucially for him, recapitulating memory) developed poetic form in 1954 with his collection San Francisco Blues, and it reached greater fulfilment with the sixty-seven free-association passages of Old Angel Midnight. This new edition from City Light Books adds one more, found among Kerouac's papers by John Sampas, concluding 'Eyes of Ray Charles see Me here realize O Holy.' Mostly written during April 1956 when Kerouac shared a shack with Gary Snyder in rural Mill Valley, outside San Francisco, Old Angel Midnight was likely facilitated by the 'letting go' technique he observed from Snyder's Buddhist meditation." - Jules Smith - The Times Literary Supplement

"Tried to warn all of you, essence of stuff wont do
- God why did you make the world?
Answer: -Because I gwt pokla renamash ta va in
ming the atss are you forever with it?
I like the bliss of mind.
Awright I'll call up all the fuckin Gods, right now!
Parya! Arrive! Ya damn hogfuckin lick lip twillerin
fishmonger! Kiss my purple royal ass baboon! Poota!
Whore! You and yr retinues of chariots & fucks! Devadatta!
Angel of Mercy! Prick! Lover! Mush! Run on
ya dog eared kiss willying nilly Dexter Michigan ass-
warlerin ratpole! The rat in my cellar's an old canuck who
wasnt fooled by rebirth but b God gotta admit I was born for
the same reason I bring this glass to my lip - ?
Rut! Old God whore, the key to ecstasy is forevermore
furthermore blind! Potanyaka! God of Mercy!"
Excerpt from 'Old Angel Midnight' by Jack Kerouac

Old Angel Midnight
Jack Kerouac
Preface by Ann Charters, Michael McClure
Collection City Lights/Grey Fox
Publisher City Lights Publishers
Paperback, $13.95
Pages 94
Publication 2016
ISBN-10 087286703X
ISBN-13 9780872867031

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FICTION & NON-FICTION - books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets BOOKS BOOKS. The final chapter? - Book Lovers FICTION & NON-FICTION - books, booklovers, lit.

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Old Angel Midnight Pt. 1 by Jack Kerouac read by A Poetry Channel

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Negative Capability: Kerouac’s Buddhist Ethic

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Allen Ginsberg writes about Jack Kerouac and the Buddhist background that infiltrated both his life and his literary work.

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Dear  Jenny,

Jenny we had a talk about being in the moment and improvisation. It’s not strange that John Cage and Fluxus were inspired by Zen philosophy (post 1). They found a combination between improvisation and Zen Philosophy. Also think of Jack Kerouac  (see post 2)

Also performance artist Merith Monk makes use of performance in relation to improvisation and eastern philosophy (post 3):

We talked about energy and the invisibility of it. We related it to the wheel, Wuxing  (post 4)

Also Joseph Campbell goes into energy, he talks about how gods are manifestations of different energies (post 5). Check:

It’s also about change and transformation. Also check out Herman de Vries (post 8).

I had the idea you want to write about individualism and the communal aspect in improvisation. How in the improvisation there’s a flow of energy and change of identity? Here is a relation with the idea of the rhizome (post 6).

Tim Ingold wrote very interestingly about Creativity and improvisation (post 7).

Best regards,

Hille

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CharlotteJarvis#FemaleSperm

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At the very moment we enter the world our bodies are defined by gender.

It is the first piece of information we ask about a baby - Is it a boy or a girl? Historically, the upmost importance has been placed on this perceived dichotomy. It is the basis of traditional notions of family, politics, culture and medicine, underpinning the patriarchal and normative societies that have for the most part dominated human history.

Yet in the 21 st century, advances in science and technology necessitate a reimagining of our physical boundaries. Our bodies have become liminal spaces - sites for transformation, hybridization and magic. Our parts no longer belong to us. We are co-created and reimagined. Stem cell technology, personalized medicine, transplantation and augmentation ask what is a human body? Can we define it? Should we try? In Technologies of Gender Teresa de Lauretis describes another perspective existing in the "social spaces carved in the interstices of institutions and in the chinks and cracks of the power-knowledge apparati". Lauretis talks about the need to find a "view from elsewhere" - a different context for dialogue which exists in between paradigms. Artist Charlotte Jarvis believes this can be found at the intersection between art, science and ethics.

Over the past six years I have been working on a series of pieces collectively titled Corpus, which aim to find alternative spaces of discourse for the human body. The first two parts, Ergo Sum and Et In Arcadia Ego, used stem cell research, genetic engineering and oncological technologies to place the body in between states - disrupting the site, mutating the contents, and confronting im/mortality. These pieces used my own cells to decontextualise existing scientific processes in order to reveal their social and emotional meaning. In the third part of Corpus I am collaborating with Prof Susana Chuva de Sousal Lopes in Leiden and Kapelica Gallery / Kersnikova Institute in Ljubljana to place my body at the intersection of gender. The piece is called In Posse and we are attempting to make semen from my ("female") cells.

Throughout history, semen has been revered as a magical substance - a totem of literal and symbolic potency. Patriarchal societies have described semen variously as life force, substance of the soul, a drop of the brain, divine, equal to ten drops of blood and that which sows the seeds of virtue in the female soul. In Posse aims to rewrite this cultural narrative; to use art and science to disrupt the hierarchy.

In Posse is being developed in three parts - firstly, we are on a journey to grow spermatozoa (sperm cells) from my body. At the same time, we have developed a female form of seminal plasma (the fluid part of semen). Finally, we are re-enacting the ancient Greek festival of Thesmophoria (a creative contextualization of the project).

In Leiden Susana and I are using Human induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (HiPSCs) derived from my blood and skin to grow spermatozoa. These cells have XX chromosomes - the genetic marker of what we describe as physically 'female'. The first stage is to attempt to erase one of these X's. We are doing this through accelerated mutation, scanning and selection. The second stage is to use CRISPR to add specific genes found on the Y chromosome (XY being the genetic marker for 'male') that initiate male gamete (sex cell) production. We will then attempt to grow a healthy colony of these gender mutated HiPSCs. The final stages will involve encouraging this colony to differentiate into the sperm producing cells found in adult testicles. Prof. Lopes has received the prestigious 1.5 million euro VICI grant to make this part of the project - funding a team of five scientists over five years. We have just completed the first year of this research.

The Seminal plasma has been developed in Ljubljana at the Biotehna lab, which is part of Kapelica Gallery and the Kersnikova Institute. The base of this is plasma is extracted from the blood of (so far) over 300 women, trans and non-binary people from 10 different countries. The plasma collected is then incorporated with thirteen other organic compounds which make up seminal fluid. These include proteins, fructose, lactic acid and cellulose. Making the seminal fluid is a continuing collective act - a symbolic rejection of patriarchal hierarchy.

The final part of the project is the festival of Thesmophoria, being developed with MU Hybrid Arthouse in Eindhoven. This is where myself and participating women call the female semen into existence. Little is known about the original festival because men were forbidden from participating; and thus it was largely undocumented. We use my own female semen as a starting point for reimagining the Thesmophoria with multiple groups of womXn at different sites across the world. The festivals build on the scant extant details and rumors about the Thesmophoria - a feast, the burial of a pig, "ritual obscenity", serpentine and phallic offerings, etc. - and create new collaborative rites and rituals around the donation of blood and associated laboratory protocols involved in making the project. Participants get to decide for themselves how much or little they wish to document and share with the public. Thus far, festivals have taken place in Slovenia, the Netherlands and the UK. A large-scale festival is scheduled for May 2021 in Greece.

The project is exhibited as a multimedia digital installation involving multiple films which move between screens and projection installed within and across a feasting table, an altar and various ritual objects. The female seminal plasma - at whatever point in its journey it has reached - forms a focal point for this installation and there is also a surround-sound audio-scape documenting one of the Thesmophoria rituals which plays on loop. Where possible, we enact a Thesmophoria with local women wherever the project is exhibited.

It is my plan to enact and film a grand-scale Thesmophoria in Greece itself - taking the festival back to its historical roots. Our aim was to do this in May 2020 - which would have been just two months before the birth of my first child. However COVID-19 made this impossible. Our new plan is to enact the Greek festival in April 2021, and to use the experience of pregnancy, birth and now motherhood to illuminate and recontextualise the project.

In Posse, and all my work over the past decade, is broadly about enacting a transformation through collaborative practice. I have been seeking some kind of scientific transubstantiation; attempting to shift the context within which we view scientific advancement to reveal broad existential questions, and to challenge pre-existing assumptions about human bodies. What has been a great surprise to me over the past year is how effectively pregnancy and birth does these things already.

It is a dark testament to the distortive lens of pervasive patriarchal power structures that the pregnant female body is so ubiquitously used as a symbol of dichotomous gender roles, of heteronormativity and traditional, stereotypical definitions of sex. I have been shocked by the embodied experience of pregnancy and specifically by what a queering experience it has been.

My experience of pregnancy and motherhood has been a palpable demonstration of the body's mutability. It has required me to inhabit the positions of being both binary and singular at the same time. I have possessed new and different body parts, multiple hearts, extra ovaries and a new brain. I have been forced to accommodate and love a parasite so that the boundary between myself and her is completely opaque. My brain has been hijacked by this new being - some as yet dormant part of my mind took over and usurped my logical brain when we became two, so that at least for a couple of weeks I felt possessed - a body repurposed to serve another.

If we talked about mutating bodies, hybridised beings, of additional body parts and of blurring the physical and genetic boundaries between individuals in the context of new science and technology it would be seen as truly radical. Equally, if we developed methodologies for one individual to control the mental mechanisms of another, we would consider it profoundly dystopian - we would want to examine the existential implications of this kind of hypnosis. The fact that we have throughout our history traditionally failed to philosophise, analyse to learn from pregnancy and birth in this way is just another reason why we really need to fuck the patriarchy.

In Posse is a Latin term with a literal meaning of 'before we are born'. It refers to something which is possible, which has potential, but is yet to be called into existence. We are striving for a form of technological, biological and creative activism. In Posse seeks to use science and art to undermine traditional notions of patriarchal power and to examine the meaning of gender now and in the future.
........................................https://cjarvis.com/
All images copyright and courtesy of Charlotte Jarvis

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Art, Consciousness, Culture, Nature, Science

About Charlotte Jarvis

I am an artist and lecturer working at the intersection of art and science. My practice often utilises living cells and DNA: I have recorded music onto DNA, seen my heart beat outside of my body and am currently making the world's first female sperm. My work explores the body as a liminal space - a site for transformation, hybridisation and magic. I make large-scale multimedia installations and performances for international solo and group shows. I have been resident artist at a number of institutions, including the European Bioinformatics Institute, The British Council in Argentina and the Hubrecht Institute. I have been peer-review published in Leonardo Journal in the USA and am currently a lecturer at The Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths University London. I am an Exoplanet obsessive, lover of space opera and collector of GMO body parts. View all posts with Charlotte Jarvis

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In Posse: Making female sperm - Interalia Magazine

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Charlotte Jarvis is an artist and lecturer working at the intersection of art and science. Her practice often utilises living cells and DNA: "I have recorded music onto DNA, seen my heart beat outside of my body and am currently making the world's first female sperm.

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7 oktober - 27 november 2022

Geboorte is een voorwaarde voor het voortbestaan van de mens, en - net als de dood - een gegeven. Rondom dat gegeven, de reproductie van het leven, heeft de mensheid door de eeuwen heen tal van sociale, religieuze, culturele, economische, politieke, medische en technologische systemen gevormd. Deze systemen zijn diepgeworteld en lijken soms onveranderlijk, maar hoeven dat niet te zijn.

Zo stelt de Franse schrijver en filosoof Paul B. Preciado in een essay voor Art Forum dat de macht tegenwoordig niet meer bevochten wordt op het terrein van de productie van de dingen, maar op dat van de reproductie van het leven. 'It is there, in the field of reproduction-sexual, social, cultural-that we confront the most crucial dimension of contemporary power. It is the relationship of power to life that is mutating most drastically.' En waar macht in het geding is, worden juist heersende systemen kritisch tegen het licht gehouden. Daarbij kunnen ontwerpers en kunstenaars volgens Preciado een belangrijke rol spelen, want "we must apply the principle of cultural recombination to our strategies of producing and reproducing life, so as to transform our technologies of power and (politically) mutate".

Reproduction Otherwise, te zien bij MU van 7 oktober tot 27 november, zoomt in op recente creatieve scenario's en artistieke perspectieven op de radicaal veranderende praktijken rond en visies op menselijke voortplanting. Aan de hand van het werk van zeven ontwerpers/kunstenaars - sommige innig samenwerkend met wetenschappers, andere werkend vanuit een queer perspectief, of een combinatie van beide - wordt dit complexe, muterende systeem rondom het 'het maken van leven' bevraagd. Want hoe en waarom willen en kunnen wij mensen in de toekomst mensen maken? En welke rol spelen biologie, cultuur en sociale patronen, maar ook technologie, economie en macht daarbij?

De tentoonstelling laat het nadrukkelijk niet 'als vanouds' over aan the powers that be - politiek en geloof, medici en wetenschap - om zich over al deze kwesties te buigen, maar geeft ontwerpers en kunstenaars de ruimte om 'cultureel te recombineren', zoals Preciado het noemt.

Want reproductie gaat niet alleen over vrouwen, mannen en kinderen; over seks en liefde, over generaties, kerngezinnen of 'labor'. Reproductie gaat ook over alternatieve vormen van samenleven, het diep menselijk verlangen naar een verhaal over waar we vandaan komen en waar we heen gaan. Het gaat over de individuele en collectieve keuze voor of tegen voortplanting, en de mogelijkheden dan wel restricties die de maatschappij daarbij oplegt. Het gaat over keuzes die, mede door de ontwikkeling van medische wetenschap en technologie, steeds diverser lijken, maar dat niet voor iedereen ook zijn, omdat ze veelal binnen de heersende denkwijzen en machtsstructuren beschouwd worden. En het gaat over alle mogelijke complexe gevolgen die reproductie met zich meebrengt: ethisch, juridisch, medisch en menselijk.

Het gesprek over reproductie gaat ons daarom allemaal aan: omdat het gaat over leven en over hoe we de toekomst van het menselijk (samen)leven willen zien. Niet omdat we ons god wanen, maar omdat we mensen zijn.

Deelnemende kunstenaars
Ani Liu, Charlotte Jarvis, Future Baby Production (Ewen Chardronnet & Shu Lea Cheang), Kuang-Yi Ku, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Puck Verkade, Victorine van Alphen

Grandmom Mom - Kuang-Yi Ku, Photo: Tsung-Han Tsai
UNBORN0X9 - Future Baby Production
In Posse - Charlotte Jarvis, Photo: Hanneke Wetzer

The Surrogacy (Bodies are not Factories) - Ani Liu

IVF-X, Victorine van Alphen
Surrogate - Lauren Lee McCarthy

Surrogate - Lauren Lee McCarthy Unborn - Puck Verkade

Hoeveel controle zouden we moeten kunnen uitoefenen op een ongeboren kind -
of op het lichaam dat een ongeboren kind draagt?

Een groot nest, waarin je kunt zitten, biedt uitzicht op de speels absurde, korte film Unborn (2021) van de Nederlandse kunstenaar Puck Verkade. We volgen in de film een duif, belichaamd door Verkade zelf, die bezig is haar nest te bouwen. Terwijl ze stokken en takken verzamelt, denkt ze na over haar toekomst. Bouwt ze een nest omdat ze dat wil, of omdat duiven dat nu eenmaal horen te doen? Haar twijfels en verwarring slepen haar mee naar een absurde parallelle wereld waarin ze wordt achtervolgd door een boze kraai. Unborn is een ogenschijnlijk vrolijke maar ook schrijnende allegorie die het huidige klimaat, waarin politici abortusrechten nog altijd tegenhouden of zelfs terugdraaien, aan de kaak stelt. Verkade's ei herinnert ons aan het belang van lichamelijke autonomie, terwijl ze openlijk nadenkt over complexe gevoelens van twijfel, schuld, schaamte en kwetsbaarheid.

Wat gebeurt er als dat natuurlijke proces van geboorte botst met onze geïndustrialiseerde drang naar controle en maakbaarheid? En hoeveel controle zouden we moeten kunnen uitoefenen op een ongeboren kind - of op het lichaam dat een ongeboren kind draagt? Wat betekent familie wanneer snel ontwikkelende reproductieve technologieën - waaronder in-vitrofertilisatie, ei- en spermadonatie, invriezen van embryo's, DNA-testen en genbewerking - onze relaties veranderen? Existentiële vragen als deze ontrafelt de Amerikaanse multi-mediakunstenaar Lauren Lee McCarthy op een directe en persoonlijke manier in het doorlopend project Surrogate (2021) - een combinatie van performance, film en installatie. In Surrogate werpt McCarthy zich in verschillende interviews met potentiële ouders op als draagmoeder, waarbij de ouders gedurende de zwangerschap via een app alle aspecten van haar dagelijks leven kunnen bepalen en monitoren. Daarnaast voert ze een indringend gesprek met haar grootmoeder, wat duidelijk maakt hoe onze ideeën over ouderschap en geboorte in slechts een paar generaties ingrijpend zijn veranderd. Surrogate laat zien hoe complex het kan worden als voorheen intuïtieve processen als voortplanting worden onderworpen aan de verregaande mogelijkheden die nieuwe technologie biedt.

Grandmom Mom - Kuang-Yi Ku, Photo: Tsung-Han Tsai

De Taiwanese bio-kunstenaar, social designer en voormalig tandarts Kuang-Yi Ku biedt een ander perspectief op draagmoederschap. In landen waar draagmoederschap legaal is, zijn recent gevallen geweest waar onvruchtbare dochters of schoondochters hun moeders bereid vonden draagmoeder te worden. Het radicaal speculatieve project Grandmom Mom (2021) gaat nog een stap verder. In het International Geriatric Pregnancy Center kunnen toekomstig ouders hun eicellen en sperma in vitro laten bevruchten om vervolgens in de baarmoeder van de gepensioneerde (schoon)moeder van het stel te plaatsen. Door de biologische aspecten rond leeftijd en zwangerschap op te rekken, en de ethische en sociale implicaties van reproductieve technologieën ter discussie te stellen, graaft het project diep in de ingewikkelde en tegenstrijdige emoties van ouder-kind relaties en familiestructuren en stelt het beide vormen van 'labor' door vrouwen nadrukkelijk op scherp.

...het einde van zwangerschappen zoals we ze tot nu toe kennen, maar ook het mogelijke einde van de bevoorrechte relatie tussen moeder en kind...

UNBORN0X9 (2018-now), is opgezet door Shu Lea Cheang en Ewen Chardronnet en het collectief Future Baby Production. Het stelt vragen over de ontwikkeling van foetussen in kunstmatige baarmoeders buiten het lichaam, wat in medische termen ectogenese heet. UNBORN0X9 verkent de rol van verloskundige praktijken in de steeds technologischer wordende menselijke voortplanting. Ook speculeert het op nieuwe vormen van binding en ouderschap wanneer in de cyborg-toekomst kunstmatige baarmoeders een hoofdrol gaan spelen.

Ectogenese stelt ons voor verschillende ethische uitdagingen, zoals het einde van zwangerschappen zoals we ze tot nu toe kennen, maar ook het mogelijke einde van de bevoorrechte relatie tussen moeder en kind en de evolutie van de mores in een maatschappij waar seksualiteit en voortplanting gescheiden zijn. Het bevraagt de begrippen moederschap, vaderschap, koppel en gezin. Maar ook het risico op een nieuwe vorm van commodificatie van het menselijk lichaam. Als installatie schetst UNBORN0X9 een esthetische science-fiction verbeelding rond verloskunde. Ultrasone soundscapes, audiovisuele beelden en een leestafel en wand vol literatuur, samengebracht in een klinische ruimte, scheppen 'een gevoel van verwachting' dat halverwege de tentoonstellingsperiode zal worden vervuld door het binnenbrengen van de door Future Baby Production in het kader van het Europese Art4Med-programma gecreëerde ectogenetische baarmoeder.

Zijn ectogenese en artificiële baarmoeders voor velen al science fiction, de Engelse biokunstenaar Charlotte Jarvis gaat, innig samenwerkend met vooraanstaande wetenschappers, nog een stap verder. Zij legt zich de laatste jaren toe op projecten waarin DNA, stamcellen en reproductieve technologie gecombineerd worden met activistische en feministische verbeeldingskracht. In Posse (2018) maakt gebruik van CRISPR-Cas9: technologie om levensvatbaar sperma uit Jarvis' vrouwelijke cellen te creëren. Jarvis werkt hier al enkele jaren aan samen met Susana Chuva de Sousa Lopes, professor in de menselijke gametogenese en embryologie aan het Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum die er zelfs een prestigieuze Vici Beurs van NWO mee in de wacht sleepte. Naast de harde wetenschap wekt het project echter ook een eigentijdse vorm van de Thesmophoria tot leven, een mysterieus women-only vruchtbaarheidsfestival uit de Griekse Oudheid. Daarvoor creëert Jarvis nieuwe, gezamenlijke riten en rituelen rond bloeddonatie en de bijbehorende laboratoriumprotocollen. Beide elementen bij elkaar opgeteld ondermijnt In Posse traditionele ideeën van patriarchale macht en onderzoekt het de betekenis van gender en geslacht, nu en in de toekomst.

Iets soortgelijks willen Jarvis en Chuva de Sousa Lopez bereiken met twee nieuwe projecten die deels voortkomen uit en samenhangen met In Posse. Het eerste heet Organ of Radical Care: Una Matriz Colaborativa (2021), waaraan ook de Argentijnse scheikundige en dichter Patricia Saragüeta bijdraagt. Voor dit project wordt nieuwe wetenschap gebruikt om in het lab een baarmoeder te kweken die een bevruchte eicel kan herbergen. Deze is echter samengesteld uit menstruatiebloed van meerdere vrouwen, transgendermannen en non-binaire personen. Het doel is om ook 'mannelijke' cellen te incorporeren door 'mannelijke' fibroblasten om te vormen tot endometriumcellen. Als ze hierin slagen, is het een wereldprimeur. In de expositie manifesteert het project zich uiteindelijk in de vorm van een glassculptuur met cellenwand, poëzie en een audiovisuele installatie.

Het derde en laatste deel van Charlotte Jarvis' bijdrage aan Reproduction Otherwise heet In Loco Parentis (2022), en bestaat uit een giga-kaart die het onderzoek van Jarvis, Chuva de Sousa Lopez en Saragüeta samenbrengt. Om deze kaart te maken vroegen zij potentiële stamceldonoren, ethici en wetgevers om hun kijk op het uit pluripotente stamcellen van meerdere mensen maken van een kunstmatig embryo. Het is complex onderzoek omgeven met tal van ethische en juridische kwesties. In de meeste landen gelden strenge regels voor embryo-onderzoek, als het al is toegestaan. Toch tekent zich op meerdere plekken en ook in Nederland langzaam beweging af. Zo pleitte het wetenschappelijk instituut van het CDA er onlangs voor om het kweken van embryo's toe te staan. De vraag is waar we de grenzen leggen: hoe worden de embryo's gevormd, op welke basis, door wie en waarvoor mogen ze gebruikt worden? Maar ook van wie zijn ze in embryonale staat, en wanneer vormt een embryo zich tot persoon?

'Labor' kent in het Engels een dubbele betekenis: het staat zowel voor werken als voor baren. Maar waar werken doorgaans hoog gewaardeerd wordt, wordt het krijgen van kinderen nog altijd ondergewaardeerd. Chinees-Amerikaans kunstenaar Ani Liu deed in 2019 research bij MIT in Boston naar cyborgs en mens-machine-hybrides toen ze zwanger werd van haar eerste kind. Ondanks haar kennis van genderstudies en de manier waarop technologie de grenzen van onze biologie steeds verder oprekt, werd zich tijdens haar zwangerschap bewust van de impact die het krijgen van en zorgen voor een kind op haar heeft, als vrouw en als kunstenaar. Sindsdien richt Liu zich in haar werk op hoe lichaam en politiek, gender en maatschappij zich tot elkaar verhouden, waarbij ze reproductie, zorg, werk en moederschap centraal stelt. In de afgelopen jaren creëerde ze daarom een reeks werken onder de noemer Ecologies of Care, waarvan er twee te zien zijn in Reproduction Otherwise. The Surrogacy (Bodies are not Factories) (2021) is een 3D geprint model van de baarmoeder van een varken die wat wegheeft van een grote parelketting op een lichtgevend voetstuk. Liu ontdekte dat er een experimentele techniek bestaat die intersoortelijke zwangerschap heet: hierbij draagt de ene diersoort de foetus van een andere soort. De witte substantie in de bollende vormen van The Surrogacy, bij nadere inspectie geïnsemineerde foetussen van varkens en mensen, roept een tal van ethische vragen op: kunnen we dierlijke baarmoeders, net zoals organen van bijvoorbeeld varkens, voor menselijke doeleinden gebruiken? En willen we überhaupt deze kant op?

Liu's tweede installatie, getiteld Untitled (Feeding Through Space and Time) (2021), maakt de symbiotische relatie tussen de reflexen van haar lichaam en het ritme van de kolfpomp tastbaar. Door een kluwen van plastic, die veel gebruikt wordt in de voedselindustrie, stroomt ruim 22 liter speciaal gefabriceerde artificiële moedermelk: net zoveel als Liu maandelijks met haar lichaam produceerde om haar tweede kind te voeden als ze zelf aan het werk was.

Hoe zou het zijn om je hybride, zelf gegenereerde cyborg-baby te maken en ontmoeten?

De menselijke grip op de reproductie van het leven, die is ingezet in de tweede helft van de 20ste eeuw met de opkomst van de pil, de eerste in vitro fertilisatie, de legalisering van abortus en de medicalisering van spermadonor- en draagmoederschap, is nog altijd in volle gang. Maar we leven nu in een meer hybride realiteit. Hoe zou het bijvoorbeeld zijn om je hybride, zelf gegenereerde cyborg-baby te maken en ontmoeten? Die vraag resulteerde in de tegelijk griezelige maar ook tot de verbeelding sprekende installatie IVF-X (2019) van Nederlandse filosoof en mediakunstenaar Victorine van Alphen. Ze verdiepte zich, in samenwerking met de VR Academy, in 21ste eeuws moederschap aan de hand van de vraag: (Why/How) do future (wo)men need/want/create babies?

IVF-X houdt het midden tussen een filosofische fertiliteitskliniek en een gepersonaliseerde performance waarin post-menselijk ouderschap vorm krijgt. De procedure kan zowel door één persoon als door twee mensen samen doorlopen worden en duurt zo'n 20 tot 25 minuten. Door het doorlopen van vier fases, in een combinatie van analoge, sensuele, theatrale en institutionele rituelen, ontmoet je uiteindelijk je cyborg baby die op basis van (gezamenlijke) keuzes is ontstaan. IVF-X verwijst naar een futuristische versie van echte in vitro fertilisatie-klinieken voor kunstmatige inseminatie: met behulp van VFX, virtuele effecten, verkent de installatie mogelijkheden om verder te gaan dan de menselijke vorm. Wat zijn onze meest intieme reproductieve verlangens en dilemma's, hoe gaan we voorbij biologische beperkingen en hoe verhouden we ons tot deze nieuwe vormen van zijn?

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Geboorte is een voorwaarde voor het voortbestaan van de mens, en - net als de dood - een gegeven. Rondom dat gegeven, de reproductie van het leven, heeft de mensheid door de eeuwen heen tal van sociale, religieuze, culturele, economische, politieke, medische en technologische systemen gevormd.

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#Kintsugi

As a philosophy, kintsugi is similar to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, an embracing of the flawed or imperfect.
Kintsugi can relate to the Japanese philosophy of mushin (無心, "no mind"), which encompasses the concepts of non-attachment, acceptance of change, and fate as aspects of human life.

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Repair work (right) on Mishima ware hakeme-type tea bowl with kintsugi gold lacquer, 16th century

Small repair (top) on Nabeshima ware dish with hollyhock design, overglaze enamel, 18th century, Edo period

Lacquerware is a longstanding tradition in Japan and, at some point, kintsugi may have been combined with maki-e as a replacement for other ceramic repair techniques. While the process is associated with Japanese craftsmen, the technique was also applied to ceramic pieces of other origins including China, Vietnam, and Korea.

Kintsugi became closely associated with ceramic vessels used for chanoyu ( Japanese tea ceremony). One theory is that kintsugi may have originated when Japanese shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a damaged Chinese tea bowl back to China for repairs in the late 15th century. When it was returned, repaired with ugly metal staples, it may have prompted Japanese craftsmen to look for a more aesthetically pleasing means of repair. On the other hand, according to Bakōhan Saōki (record of tea-bowl with a 'large-locust' clamp), such "ugliness" was considered inspirational and Zen-like, as it connoted beauty in broken things. The bowl became valued even more highly because of these large metal staples, which looked like a locust, and the bowl was named 'bakōhan ("large-locust clamp").

Collectors became so enamored of the new art that some were accused of deliberately smashing valuable pottery so it could be repaired with the gold seams of kintsugi. It is also possible that a pottery piece was chosen for deformities it had acquired during production, then deliberately broken and repaired, instead of being trashed.

Goryeo wine ewer with gold lacquer repair. It was repaired by a Japanese collector in the early 20th century.

As a philosophy, kintsugi is similar to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, an embracing of the flawed or imperfect. Japanese aesthetics values marks of wear from the use of an object. This can be seen as a rationale for keeping an object around even after it has broken; it can also be understood as a justification of kintsugi itself, highlighting cracks and repairs as events in the life of an object, rather than allowing its service to end at the time of its damage or breakage. The philosophy of kintsugi can also be seen as a variant of the adage, "Waste not, want not".

Kintsugi can relate to the Japanese philosophy of mushin, which encompasses the concepts of non-attachment, acceptance of change, and fate as aspects of human life.

Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated... a kind of physical expression of the spirit of mushin....Mushin is often literally translated as "no mind," but carries connotations of fully existing within the moment, of non-attachment, of equanimity amid changing conditions. ...The vicissitudes of existence over time, to which all humans are susceptible, could not be clearer than in the breaks, the knocks, and the shattering to which ceramic ware too is subject. This poignancy or aesthetic of existence has been known in Japan as mono no aware, a compassionate sensitivity, or perhaps identification with, [things] outside oneself.

-  Christy Bartlett, Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics

There are a few major styles or types of kintsugi:

Crack, the use of gold dust and resin or lacquer to attach broken pieces with minimal overlap or fill-in from missing pieces

Piece method; if a replacement ceramic fragment is not available and the entirety of the addition is gold or gold/lacquer compound

Joint call, the use of a similarly shaped but non-matching fragment to replace a missing piece from the original vessel creating a patchwork effect

The key materials of kintsugi are: ki urushi (pure ), bengara urushi (iron red urushi), mugi urushi (a mixture of 50% ki ururshi and 50% wheat flour), sabi urushi (a mixture of ki urushi with two kinds of clay), and a storage compartment referred to as a furo ("bath" in Japanese) where the mended pottery can rest at 90% humidity for between 2 days to 2 weeks as the urushi hardens. Traditionally, a wooden cupboard and bowls of hot water were used as the furo. Alternatively, thick cardboard boxes are sometimes used as the furo as they create a steady atmosphere of humidity or large vessels filled with rice, beans, or sand into which the mended pottery is submerged.

Nanking reticulated basket, c. 1750, mended with metal staples

Staple repair is a similar technique used to repair broken ceramic pieces, where small holes are drilled on either side of a crack and metal staples are bent to hold the pieces together. Staple repair was used in Europe (in ancient Greece, England and Russia among others), South America, and China as a repair technique for particularly valuable pieces.

Influence on contemporary art, design, and culture

Kintsugi is the general concept of highlighting or emphasizing imperfections, visualizing mends and seams as an additive or an area to celebrate or focus on, rather than absence or missing pieces. Modern artists and designers experiment with the ancient technique as a means of analyzing the idea of loss, synthesis, and improvement through destruction and repair or rebirth. While originally ignored as a separate art form, kintsugi and related repair methods have been featured at exhibitions at the Freer Gallery at the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.

Examples of contemporary artists and designers who incorporate kintsugi techniques, aesthetics, and philosophies in their work include:

British artist Charlotte Bailey, who was inspired by kintsugi to create textile works involving the repair of broken vases; her practice involves covering the shards with fabric and stitching them back together using gold metallic thread.

American artist Karen LaMonte, who creates monumental sculptures of women's clothing worn by seemingly invisible human figures; when a kiln explosion broke a number of these works, LaMonte used kintsugi techniques to repair the ceramic sculptures with gold.

New York designer George Inaki Root, who worked with Japanese artisans to create a line for his jewelry company Milamore entitled "Kintsugi"; Root told that the designs were inspired by themes of beauty and brokenness, and his longstanding connection to kintsugi philosophies.

Los Angeles artist Victor Solomon, who was inspired by kintsugi practices and philosophies to create "Kintsugi Court", a fractured public basketball court in South Los Angeles he repaired with gold-dusted resin. The project was finished in 2020 to coincide with the restart of the NBA season, which had been paused due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Poltchageist, a generation 9 , is partially based on kintsugi. It uses matcha, rather than gold, to repair cracks.

Precious Scars is a helmet in Destiny 2 that was shattered and subsequently repaired with the kintsugi technique. It's exotic perk, also called kintsugi, temporarily increases your health and the health of your teammates after reviving them or being revived yourself. Additionally, killing an enemy heals nearby allies.

The third full-length album by the Welsh rock band Holding Absence, titled The Noble Art of Self Destruction, embodies a visual and lyrical theme based on kintsugi. According to frontman Lucas Woodland, he felt kintsugi was a metaphor for overcoming trauma and growing from it.

Christy, James; Holland, Henry; Bartlett, Charly Iten (2008). Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics. Herbert Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University. ASIN B009F3YENM.

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Lacquerware is a longstanding tradition in Japan and, at some point, kintsugi may have been combined with maki-e as a replacement for other ceramic repair techniques. While the process is associated with Japanese craftsmen, the technique was also applied to ceramic pieces of other origins including China, Vietnam, and Korea.

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#RobinKimmerer#Biology#Mosses#Medicine

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Robin Wall Kimmerer can recall almost to the day when she first fell under the unlikely spell of moss. "It's kind of embarrassing," she says. "I've always been engaged with plants, because I grew up in the countryside. That was my world. But mosses I'd set aside in my mind as not worthy of attention. I was studying to be a forest ecologist. That little green scum on the rocks: how interesting could it really be? Only then there came a point when I'd taken every botany class our university had to offer, except one: the ecology of mosses. I thought I'd do it, just so I could say that I'd taken them all. It was love at first sight. I remember looking with a lens at these big glacial erratic boulders that were covered in moss, and thinking: there's a whole world here to be discovered." Ever since, she has rarely left her house for a walk without such a lens on a string around her neck.

Kimmerer, a professor of environmental biology and the director of the Centre for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York in Syracuse, is probably the most well-known bryologist at work in the world today. She may be, in fact, the only well-known bryologist at work today (bryology is the study of mosses and liverworts), at least among the general public. But her unlikely success - her fans include the writer Robert Macfarlane and the Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Richard Powers, who gives daily thanks for what he calls her "endless knowledge" - hardly arrived overnight. In 2013, Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma, quietly published a book called Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants - a (seemingly) niche read from a small US press.

For a long time, nothing happened. Last year, however, it suddenly appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. It has since sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide. Thanks to this, her first book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, is now also to be reissued in the UK, no fewer than 18 years after its first publication.

The times we live in are creating a longing for a connection to land and nature: what I call a longing for belonging

Is Kimmerer surprised by these developments? Yes, and no. "There was no marketing push," she says. "The books were sold hand to hand. I think it's almost a case of critical mass. But I also think that the times we're living in are creating a longing for a connection to land and nature: what I call a longing for belonging. Both books provide a doorway to that kind of belonging, and maybe, too, we're finally coming to value those things that are not entirely tied up with commerce."

This, she believes, could be just the moment for the steadiness and intricacy of moss. "In the pandemic, people talk of lockdown," she says. "But I like the phrase 'sheltering in place', which suggests that we might have come to pay attention to the things that we have, rather than the things we don't have, spending time in our garden or in the woods, finding solace in landscape." Looking at mosses close up is, she insists, a comforting, mindful thing: "They're the most overlooked plants on the planet. But they're gifts, too. They provide us with another model of how we might live."

Read Kimmerer's book and you're unlikely ever again to waste precious gardening time scraping moss from paving stones. You may even find yourself trying to encourage its growth. As she reveals, beneath your feet, barely visible to the eye, is another world: a rainforest in miniature, though you'll need to fall to your knees to see it properly. (At the scale of a moss, walking over it is like flying over a continent at 32,000 feet.) The most primitive of plants, mosses lack flowers, fruits and seeds, have no roots, and no vascular system to conduct water internally, and yet there are 22,000 species, even if most are still so little known to the public that only a few have been given common names. The undisputed masters of their chosen environments, mosses succeed by inhabiting the places other plants cannot.

Red bogmoss on the shores of Loch Maree, Wester Ross, Scotland. Photograph: espy3008/Getty Images/iStockphoto

"We're busy looking for biological, ecological and cultural solutions to climate chaos," says Kimmerer. "But mosses, which have been with us ever since they arose, 400 million years ago, have endured every climate change that has ever happened." Quite apart from what she regards as their unique beauty, their mere existence should, she thinks, lead us to ask certain questions. Why are they so resilient? What can they teach us? What secrets might they hold?

Can mosses help us to read the state of the planet? "We don't know if they can in macro ways," Kimmerer tells me (she's speaking to me on Zoom from upstate New York). "But in small ways, yes. They are great indicators of air quality, and of heavy metals in the environment; because they have no epidermis, they're intimate with the world. They're storytellers. If I see a certain kind of moss, I'll think, Oh, I know you... you wouldn't be here unless there was limestone nearby. There are mosses that tell the story of land disturbance, and there are mosses that only come in after fires, and they're habitats, too, for tardigrades and rotifers [minute aquatic animals], for algae, and all sorts of other things. They are the coral reef of the forest, a microbiome in which the species of the bacteria that live in the angles of their leaves are different, say, to those on their rhizoids [the filaments found on their thallus, or plant body]."

Mosses can reproduce in more than one way - via spores or, in extremis, by means of cloning - and they tolerate stress like few other plants, going into suspended animation when conditions aren't right. A moss can lose up to 98% of its moisture and still survive to restore itself once the supply of water is restored. Even after 40 years of dehydration in a musty specimen cabinet, mosses have been fully revived after a quick dunk in a Petri dish.

"This is a primary adaptation to their role as the first colonisers of the land," she says. "There was no soil here then - nothing for roots to grab on to, and no way to conserve water - so this was an evolutionary imperative. It's quite remarkable, though not all mosses have it. Others have evolved to live in continuously wet places."

In Gathering Moss, Kimmerer attempts to trace the hidden history of these ancient plants (so little has been written down). Northern people, she discovers, traditionally lined their boots and mittens with soft mosses for insulation. Carolus Linnaeus, the so-called father of modern plant taxonomy, reports that he slept on a bedroll of portable Polytrichum moss as he travelled among the indigenous Sami of Lappland. Pillows made of Hypnum mosses were said to induce special dreams in the sleeper. Fishermen once used moss to clean freshly caught salmon. Most amazing of all, moss was often used for nappies and sanitary towels: as Kimmerer notes, Sphagnum moss can absorb 20 to 40 times its weight in water, a feat that easily rivals the performance of Pampers. Has all this given her any clues as to how moss might be used in the future? They are, alas, not good to eat (she has tried). But a lot of research is currently going on into their secondary chemistry, including their antimicrobial capacities. "This makes sense," she says. "Because they have long been a part of traditional medicine."

Tetraphis pellucida: 'Their architecture is so beautiful.' Photograph: Alamy

Does she have a favourite moss? Is it, perhaps, Schistostega pennata, otherwise known as goblin's gold, a moss she describes in her book as "a paragon of minimalism" for its ability to live in caves with little natural light? (It makes use, not of leaves, but of a fragile mat of filaments known as the protonema, and seems almost to shimmer in the gloom.) Kimmerer laughs. "That's a hard one," she says. "But I think it would be Tetraphis pellucida, a moss that hedges its bets reproductively [growing almost exclusively on rotten stumps and logs, it has uniquely specialised means of both sexual and asexual reproduction]. I love them. Their architecture is so beautiful."

In her book, she describes her efforts to inventory the individual shoots in Tetraphis colonies - a dense colony can have 300 shoots per square centimetre - marking each one with a bright pink plastic cocktail sword so she can find it again when she returns the following year (from this process she learns huge amounts about the moss's life cycle). She likes to imagine the baffled conversations of the hikers who might stumble on these mossy logs, bizarrely decorated with swizzle sticks.

There will be heartbreaking losses. But the evolutionary creativity of the plant world will renew itself

It is moss, she tells me, that keeps up her spirits when it comes to global heating. "It's going to be 100 degrees upstate today," she says. "That's wrong, though these extremes are no longer out of the ordinary. We expect them. Of course I worry that people are not going to do what needs to be done; that we're already too late. But I have faith in photosynthesis. The plants know what to do. They know how to sequester carbon. They know how to cool the air. They know how to build capacity for ecosystem services and biodiversity. Will the world be different? It will. Will there be tremendous losses? There will. Heartbreaking losses. But the evolutionary creativity of the plant world will renew itself. Plants will figure out how to come back to a homeostatic relationship with the planet."

Even as she notices the alarming fact that bloom times are arriving ever earlier, she is also increasingly aware of the natural movement of plants: "We've fragmented the planet in such a way that their natural migration routes are broken up. So it's our responsibility now to assist that migration, to essentially help forests to 'walk'. We have to help them get to where they need to go." Will we be here to witness a new world, the one that she believes will be regenerated for us by the plants? She hesitates. "I have less faith in that."

Goblin's gold (Schistostega pennata) is highly reflective, having tiny 'lenses' within the structure. Photograph: Nature Picture Library/Alamy

The engine of her next book will be "ecological compassion" for plants. She would like people to come to understand them as sovereign beings in their own right, if not people. "The research in plant intelligence that is being done is already revolutionising science," she says, "so my next project is designed to elicit in the reader a sense of compassion and justice for them. I would like people to recognise their culture. Take off your anthropocentric lenses, and you will see that they have very rich cultural lives."

Do plants have rights? Should they be given more protection under the law? She smiles. "My greatest hope for my book is that it will make perfect sense of their rights. Such rights are not for us to bestow. I believe that they have their own inherent rights."

Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer is published by Penguin (£9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

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Robin Wall Kimmerer: 'Mosses are a model of how we might live'

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The world's favourite moss scientist reveals the secrets of these primitive plants - and what they might teach us about surviving the climate crisis

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#Touching#Childhood#Calm#Saveness#Protection

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#Depression

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#Touch#Materiality

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#FemaleSperm

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Female sperm can refer to either:

1. A sperm which contains an X chromosome, produced in the usual way in the testicles, referring to the occurrence of such a sperm fertilizing an egg and giving birth to a female.

2. A sperm which artificially contains genetic material from a female.

This article focuses on the second definition.

Since the late 1980s, scientists have explored how to produce sperm where all of the chromosomes come from a female donor.

Creating female sperm was first raised as a possibility in a patent filed in 1991 by injecting a woman's cells into a man's testicles, though the patent focused mostly on injecting altered male cells into a man's testes (to correct genetic diseases). In 1997, Japanese scientists partially confirmed such techniques by creating chicken female sperm in a similar manner. "However, the ratio of produced W chromosome-bearing (W-bearing) spermatozoa fell substantially below expectations. It is therefore concluded that most of the W-bearing PGC could not differentiate into spermatozoa because of restricted spermatogenesis." These simple transplantation methods follow from earlier observations by developmental biologists that germ stem cells are autonomous in the sense that they can begin the processes to become both sperm and eggs.

One potential roadblock to injecting a woman's cells into a man's testicles is that the man's immune system might attack and destroy the woman's cells. In usual circumstances, when foreign cells (such as cells or organs from other people, or infectious bacteria) are put into a human body, its immune system will reject such cells or organs. However, a special property of a man's testicles is that they are immune-privileged, that is, a man's immune system will not attack foreign cells (such as a woman's cells) injected into the sperm-producing part of the testicles. Thus, a woman's cells will remain in the man's testicles long enough to be converted into sperm.

However, there are more serious challenges. Biologists have well established that male sperm production relies on certain genes on the Y chromosome, which, when missing or defective, lead to such men producing little to no sperm in their testicles. An analogy, then, is that a cell from a woman has complete Y chromosome deficiency. While many genes on the Y chromosome have backups (homologues) on other chromosomes, a few genes such as RBMY on the Y chromosome do not have such backups, and their effects must be compensated for to convert cells from a woman into sperm. In 2007, a patent application was filed on methods for creating human female sperm using artificial or natural Y chromosomes and testicular transplantation. Key to successful creation of female sperm (and male eggs) will be inducing male epigenetic markings for female cells that initially have female markings, with techniques for doing so disclosed in the patent application.

In 2018, Chinese research scientists produced 29 viable mice offspring from two female mother mice by creating sperm-like structures from haploid embryonic stem cells using gene editing to alter imprinted regions of DNA. Experts noted that there was little chance of these techniques being applied to humans in the near future.

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Female sperm can refer to either: A sperm which contains an X chromosome, produced in the usual way in the testicles, referring to the occurrence of such a sperm fertilizing an egg and giving birth to a female. A sperm which artificially contains genetic material from a female.

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本篇為讀Ernest Mandel《馬克思主義入門》的筆記心得

馬克思主義（Marxismus）在歷史上曾經風靡一時，但在現代社會，馬克思的無產主義社會，似乎時常會被視為獨裁、暴政、天真....的代表詞彙。有個朋友知道我正在讀這本書時，緊張的跟我說「欸！你要小心，我朋友讀過馬克思後，就變得怪怪的。」（啊？原來馬克思主義還是一種邪教？）

但在讀完 《馬克思主義入門》 這本書之後，我產生了兩個體悟：

1. 我們會覺得馬克思主義很笨，有可能是因為我們都不曾經驗過最殘酷的資本主義。

2. 我們覺得馬克思主義是烏托邦，但理想馬克思社會可能正在悄悄實現

接下來，我會試圖介紹馬克思主義哲學的精華。

要理解馬克思主義，我認為第一個重點是需要認識 馬克思主義提出的時代背景。 我們會覺得無產社會的點子很爛，有可能是因為我們不曾體驗過馬克思時代那萬惡的資本主義時期。現代的資本家雖然也很有錢，可能也很讓人很嫉妒，但平均而言，一般人仍然有機會靠著自己的努力，過上一個不算太差的生活。
因此馬克思所批評的資本主義，並非是當今的資本主義。
1.工業革命時期悲慘的無產階級

馬克思時代的資本主義社會是如何的呢？

恩格斯（Friedrich Engels）在《英國工人階級狀況》（The Condition of the Working Class in England）就詳細的描述了19th英國工人的生活。

工業革命的機械之後，雖然帶來了經濟的繁榮，但卻也造成底層人民的悲劇。在成本考量下，工廠大量的雇用童工、女工，因此排擠了許多成年男性的工作。由於缺乏必要的安全設備、加上長時間不自然出力，許多幼童因此發展成畸形者，或是因為意外成為殘廢者。

在工時上，工人一天必須工作12小時，延長到24~36小時也非常常見。由於長期間的過勞，加上工作環境惡劣，大部分的工人在30-40歲左右就會衰老並失去工作能力，以煤礦業來說， 一半的工人則會死於肺結核 。

在電影《大亨小傳》中可以看到資本主義的奢華糜爛和工人階級的窮困是如何差距巨大

"資產階級的貪婪還造成了一大串疾病：婦女不能生育，孩子畸形發育，男人虛弱無力，四肢殘缺不全，整代整代的人都被毀滅了。"

在現代資本社會，國家設置了各種法令禁止童工、工時保障、工作環境。但在「萬惡的資本主義時代」，完全沒有法令可以保障工人，而是放任資本主義對無產階級的剝削。

"社會知道這種狀況對工人的健康和生命是怎樣有害，可是一點也不設法來改善。社會知道它所建立的製度會引起怎樣的後果，因而它的行為不單純是殺人，而且是謀殺" --《英國工人階級狀況》

因此從這些文本中，我們可以看到當時的工人的處境相當的悲慘。所以我們現在會覺得馬克思很蠢，某種程度是因為已經 站在修正過的資本主義社會的立場上 。但如果你是馬克思時代的工人，馬克思主義就是一盞明燈。

2.人類的工具化

資本主義帶來的另一個問題，是人類的「工具化」。為了讓效率極大化。亞當・斯密（Adam Smith）《國富論》（The Wealth of Nations）當中有一個經典例子

"一個人要想要做出縫衣針，需要經過18個程序，一個工人可能一天都做不出20根。但是在工業化後，透過分工合作，只要一個人一天平均就可以做出4800根針來。"--《國富論》

但在效率提高時，人類也失去自己的本質。

2017年，有 一篇文章 讓我印象深刻，該文是紐約大學學生Dejian Zeng，在暑假時於上海的 iPhone 生產廠做了 6 周的生產線工人分享。

該篇文章開篇提到：

想像一下，每天早上 7 點半上班， 然後連續工作 12 個小時，而你的唯一工作就是將一顆螺絲釘插入一部智慧手機的後蓋中，然後不斷重複這個過程。

記者問：這項工作是否枯燥得令人發瘋？
Dejian Zeng：前兩天還能集中精力，因為你一開始可能跟不上裝配生產線的速度。你的行動必須非常迅速，否則就跟不上生產線的速度。因此你必須非常專注。這會讓你非常疲憊，但是也會讓你集中精力。你沒有時間想事情，必須越來越快。

過一段時間，你就會越來越熟悉工作，最後我閉著眼睛都能把這顆螺絲釘裝好。然後你在很多時候就無事可做了。很多人就會感覺很苦惱，因為在和碩生產廠裡，任何電子設備都不允許帶進去。

--《美國大學生臥底 iPhone 工廠揭秘一線工人生活現狀》

馬克思認為： 理想的勞動，是將自己的想法實現的一個過程。在過去，工作雖然也非常辛苦，但至少是一種「自我實現」。對於一個鞋匠來說，他腦中有一些對於鞋子的想法，他就可以透過自己手藝將腦中的想法進行實現。但在工廠中，工人和他的產品、生產行為是 「疏離的」 （Entausserung，最常見的翻譯為「異化」）。工人的產品並不屬於工人的創造，工人就只是生產產品的工具。

在生產線上的工人，根本不可能有所謂的自我實現或是創意發揮。如果有一個工人想要發揮創意，其的代價就是整體生產線的效率降低。

亨利・福特（Henry Ford）「我雇用的明明是兩隻手，怎麼來了一個人？」

工廠、設備的產生原本為了讓人更幸福，殊不知，人類卻淪為工廠與設備的奴隸。

3.資本主義對意識形態的控制

資本主義不但在勞力上壓榨工人，在精神上也控制著工人的思想。

馬克思主義哲學家阿圖塞(Louis Althusser)在《意識形態和意識形態的國家機器》（Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses），就認為，國家有兩種系統，在幫助資本主義的運行：

1. 壓制型的國家機器：像是警察、監獄、軍隊

2. 意識形態的國家機器：像是媒體、教育

其中 意識形態的國家機器，幫資本主義創造了很多的「好用工具」。

何謂意識形態？許多人覺得意識形態就是「特定的政治立場」或是「壞的偏見」，但其實意識形態（ideology）的意思單純是「 個人對於自己與所處環境的想像關係 」。不管這個「想像」是否是正確還是誇張，都可以算是一種意識形態。

EX:，相信台灣是個安全的社會、相信台灣人很友善、相信自己應該在社會中成為有貢獻的人....這些都可以稱為意識形態。

小說1984中的世界就是一個意識形態控制的社會

聽起來很聳人聽聞，國家怎麼會是為了資本主義在服務？但探究現代教育的起源， 確實就是源自工業革命時代，批量生產普通技能工人的方法。

工業革命之後，純粹的勞力工人，已經沒有能力幫助資產階級操作機器的。操作機器的需要一些知識，因此平民教育在英國開始普及（剛開始的時候都是星期天上課，因此那些學校也被稱為「星期天學校」）

教育、媒體都是為資本主義服務，塑造一種「成為好工人，成為社會螺絲釘的」的意識形態。--我認為這點到現在也並未改變。
現在，勞動階級的比例確實下降，但是意識形態的控制卻沒有消失。

雖然現代教育開始鼓勵學生找到自己的理想人生、志業，但整個教育、媒體、文化的環境，其實長年都就灌輸學生「未來必須成為社會的螺絲釘」、「有好工作才是理想人生」、「要不停向上，否則就會輸給別人」....的意識形態。

為什麼國家是為資本主義服務？馬克思會說-- 這是歷史發展必然的結果。

這就要說到馬克思另一個有名的思想，是歷史唯物主義（Historical Materialism）

歷史唯物主義認為「人類生產的方式（也就是經濟因素），是一切社會組織的基礎」

一個社會的結構，基本可以分為

1.社會基礎：指一個社會經濟的生產方式（像是農耕、工業...等）

2.上層建築：指社會文化（包含了管理方式、道德、法律、藝術、宗教、哲學...等意識形態）

歷史唯物論認為--社會文化一定會受到經濟影響。

舉例來說，文藝復興的藝術家、文學家，多是由貴族資助。因此文藝復興的藝術文化發展，必然受制於當時的最大經濟體--「貴族」。比如說，如果貴族想要畫家畫天使和上帝，那藝術家就只能幫忙畫天使和上帝。

以現在來說，文學和藝術雖然不由單一貴族所資助，但是什麼人會去購買這些意識形態的內容？當然還是中產階級的普羅大眾，而非一些社會的底層工作者。

簡單來說，誰愈有錢，誰就愈能控制了社會的上層建築--也就是意識形態。並且透過這種意識型態，讓底層的階層為自己服務，並且加劇其中的循環。

4.階級的不平等

資本主義的另一個問題是--如此的極端貧富差距是難以跨越的。

「不平等」是無法避免的，世界上到處都有不平等。 然而「不平等」不等於「階級的不平等」。一個熟練的工人，雖然比一個新進來的工人多了許多薪資，但這並不會讓他們成為不同階級的人。

"所謂的「階級不平等」是指以「經濟生活結構為根基的不平等」而這樣的經濟結構，會被當時期的社會制度和法律來永遠維持和強調。"

--《馬克思主義入門》

《馬克思主義入門》舉了一個例子：在比利時，如果想當資本家，一個200人的小工廠會需要你投資1億法郎，而一個工人的年收是20萬法郎。這意味著，如果一個工人不吃不喝50年， 他永遠不可能靠在工廠勞動薪資所賺來的錢，成為一個資本階級 。

前面敘述了資本社多麽的糟糕，但真正的馬克思的無產階級社會是怎樣？

從「由少數人控制」到「去中心化」社會

回顧資本社會的缺陷，其中一個缺點，就是--資本階級對社會中心化意識形態控制。

馬克思主義認為， 資本主義國家的「法律」、「權力」都是形式上的 ，雖然人人都有權辦報紙，但是只有有錢人辦得起報紙。人人都有權製作電視節目，但只有有錢人辦得起電視節目。因此只有資本家有能力有能力透過媒體，控制投票人的意識形態，決定政策走向。以法律來說，在一般情況下，法律對無產階級跟資本家看似是公平的，但是一但無產階級有想要推翻資本主義的意圖，馬上就會被軍隊、警察鎮壓。

因此無產階級社會要做的第一件事情就是 去中心化 ，內容包括

由工人組織「工人代表會」，全體人民自由而公平的選舉權，包含立即撤換任何官員的權利

公民自主自管教育、文化、衛生、郵政

印刷廠、電視台、會議廳都是公共財，任何人都有機會發表思想

廢除中心的國家常備軍（廢除軍隊和警察）以民兵代替，讓全體無產階級等以武裝，避免少數人利用常備軍壓迫無產階級

不壓制任何的科學、哲學、宗教、文化、藝術。

高等教育普遍化

官員薪資不得高於技術工人

透過去中心化的方式，避免無產階級受到少數人的意識形態控制

不再把「人」當作工具

資本社會的另一個缺陷，就是 - - 工人的異化。不是機器服務人，而是人類服務機器。

馬克思主義認為：人類的勞動會異化（疏離），是因為資本主義「過度的追逐利潤」。在資本主義下， 勞工的工作產出，早就遠大於社會的總體需要 。資本家透過榨勞工生產多出來的剩餘價值的方式，不段的累積資本，繼續雇用更多工人，然後繼續產出更多遠遠超越社會基本需求的產品。而為了產出更多的效率，工人被分配到許多重複、瑣碎的工作，導致他們與自己的勞動行為疏離。

因此無產階級社會，在經濟上要做的就 是禁止這種多餘的利潤追求。

・實行計劃經濟 ：避免任何生產浪費，生產足以生存的產品，使人們從重複勞動解脫

提供免費食物、衣服、教育：讓人得以不需要為基本需求煩惱，可以進行自我實現。

縮短工時：讓勞工有時間去做自己想做的事情、自我實現，而不是永遠在滿足資本家的利潤追求

很多人對於計劃經濟有個誤解，認為馬克思主義反對分工，並且想要「把人人變得一樣」，然而馬克思主義者不接受那種論點：

有人生來就（善於）統治，有人生來就（習慣）被統治。（然而） 誰都不是由於本性決定一生都要當礦工，當磨坊工或者公交車售票員。人人都有從事若干不同種類活動的願望。你只要看看工人在空閒時候幹些什麼就明白這點了。

社會主義社會裡每一個公民都有相當高的技術水平和智慧水平，這就讓他們在一生中可以著手許多不同的工作，而統統對社會有用。 職業選擇不再是那些不以他們的願望為依歸的物質力量或物質條件所強迫他們接受的；而要按照他們自己的需要，按照他們自己的個人發展來決定
--《馬克思主義入門》

馬克思並不反對分工，他認為每個人都有自己想做的事、擅長的技能。他反對的是，讓勞工為了資本家的永無止盡的利潤追求，進行那種毫無人性、重複性的分工。（注意：是停止「過度」追求利潤，而不是不能追求利潤）

如同前面所說的，馬克思認為：理想的勞動，是將自己的想法實現的一個過程。

人在滿足基本需求後，應該開始能過上他想要的人生、進行自我實現。而不是繼續永無止境的勞動、勞動，追逐更多的利潤。

歷史上有很多共產社會失敗的例子，讓很多人已經覺得馬克思思想早已是過時的理論。

但有意思的是，當我讀完這本書，我有一種特別的感覺。我總覺得馬克思的理想社會好像正在悄悄實現。

1.馬克思的可能實現(1)：網路世代的去中心化

前面提到無產階級社會一個重要的特色就是 去中心化

比如為了意識形態被少數人控制，無產階級社會會「讓印刷廠、電視台、會議廳都開放為公共財，讓任何人都有機會發表思想。」仔細想想，這不就是現代互聯網時代的核心特色嗎？過去傳統媒體掌握了單一思想，成為意識形態的操縱者。

但在網路世代，所有人都可以在網路上發表言論、觀點，創造自己的意識形態。

1.馬克思的可能實現(2)：無條件基本收入

無產階級社另一個重要的特色，就是「幫助個人自我實現」，因此「會提供免費食物、衣服、教育」， 讓工人不必為了生計發愁，得以在多餘時間，去做他們想要的工作與活動。

這個概念其實跟最近很紅的「無條件基本收入」（unconditional basic income）

指沒有任何條件限制，且不做資格審查，每個成員（該國的國民、某地區的居民，或某團體組織的成員）皆可領取由政府或團體組織定期發給全體成員一定金額的金錢，以滿足人民的基本生活條件。--wiki

在自動化機器、人工智能未來，這種理想的生活方式開始變得有可能。在未來，大部生產製造等需要重複勞都可以交給機器，而人類可以去做那些需要人類創造的工作

做你想做的事

馬克思在《德意志意識形態》（1845）中提到

在共產主義社會，沒有人會擁有排他性的專業活動領域，任何一個人都能夠在他所嚮往的學科分類中有所成就。社會管理著一般性的生產，因而我能夠在今天做一件事，到了明天去做另一件事； 只要有這個打算，我能在早晨打獵，在中午釣魚，在晚上飼養家畜，吃完晚飯則去做時評。

馬克思說，在共產主義社會裡， 每個人能夠做任何他想做的事情

我能在早晨打獵，在中午釣魚，在晚上飼養家畜，吃完晚飯則去做時評。

其實，這也有點像是我們現在的生活。

早上上班或上學，無聊就上網留言做時事評論，空閒時看看劇、看影片、運動，晚上回去喂寵物，然後假日出去玩。這樣的生活，對於馬克思時代的無產階級是難以想像的。不要講實事評論了，在資本主義下，19-20th的勞工每日工作12小時，連休閒的時間都沒有。

回到最初的兩點，我認為：

我們會覺得馬克思的點子很爛，有可能是因為我們都不曾經驗過最殘酷的資本主義

資本主義的內涵隨著時代一直再改變 ，而馬克思批評的是工業革命後那「萬惡的資本主義」。如果我們能回到19、20th的歐洲，親自體驗無產階級如何的被資本家剝削，過著殘無人道的生活，那其實會很容易理解為什麼共產主義在當時會開始流行起來。

我們很幸運的活在「相對」較好資本主義時代，但至所以會有現在相對好的勞動條件（工時限制、勞工保障...），都是長期抗爭的結果--「一個理想的社會，都是不停修正的結果。」

2.我們覺得馬克思主義是烏托邦，但 理想馬克思社會可能正在悄悄實現

在意識形態方面，在網路的出現後，思想不再被少數人控制。多元的意見能被廣泛聽見，一個獨裁的中心化統治變得困難。而勞動異化，對於「全民無條件基本收入」的探討以及機器人的普及，人們開始能有機會不必生技工作，去追求自己想要的生活。「一個去中心化、解放重複勞動的社會悄悄發生？」

會寫這篇文章：

1.想壓榨一下課堂研究的剩餘價值（咦，真是過度追求利潤的資本家心態嗎？）

2. 我覺得很多對馬克思的批判，是出自於對馬克思主義的錯誤理解

馬克思主義本身反對所謂的意識形態(idelolgy)，但現在卻是意識形態的受害者（真實有點可憐XDD）。不可否認的是，歷史上的共產主義造成了許多浩劫與悲劇（雖然很多不是真正的共產社會，而是披著共產的獨裁主義社會）但在不了解脈絡的情況下，輕率的把某段歷史、思想和它的追隨者想的很笨，這種行為本身並沒有比較高明。

有興趣的人可以去找 Ernest Mandel《馬克思主義入門》（博客來連結） 來看看，這本不輕鬆但也不難的，真的對馬克思有興趣再買就好

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本篇為讀Ernest Mandel《馬克思主義入門》的筆記心得 馬克思主義（Marxismus）在歷史上曾經風靡一時，但在現代社會，馬克思的無產主義社會，似乎時常會被視為獨裁、暴政、天真....的代表詞彙。有個朋友知道我正在讀這本書時，緊張的跟我說「欸！你要小心，我朋友讀過馬克思後，就變得怪怪的。」（啊？原來馬克思主義還是一種邪教？） 但在讀完 《馬克思主義入門》 ...

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