#17: "degeneracy"
An old and loathsome word rears it ugly head again.
I defend the right of people to be basic. Last year, during a late spring lockdown walk home, I noticed someone on my road had a ‘Good vibes only’ mini-cinema title display in their living room window. Good for them! I thought; lord knows we need a bit of positivity at the moment.
But I also, and this is crucial, believe that a key part of a liberal democracy is letting people be outsiders, and weird. It’s why I was concerned at the level of heat writer and academic Sophie Lewis got for live tweeting her thoughts about Netflix documentary I have not watched My Octopus Teacher. I don’t know much about it, but it sounds like a classic ‘human has intense connection with animal’ doc. I believe Lewis described the dynamic between the pair using the term ‘eros’ and all hell broke loose.
Lewis is the author of Full Surrogacy Now, a book that focuses on family abolition and the idea that childrearing should be a community enterprise, rather than just the realm of parents. I haven’t read it, though it is somewhere here in my plague bedroom. I fear it will be a little too obscure for me in places. That is fine. The Octopus Teacher thread also had some long words and phrases that felt a little much; apparently Lewis had had some weed whilst watching the show. But what worried me was the response both from Elizabeth Bruenig, American ‘normie leftist’ columnist (or ‘tradcath’ Traditional Catholic, depending on your inclination) and the vitriol of her followers.
Liz Bruenig married and had children relatively young for someone who occupies an East Coast journalism circle. I can imagine she must face judgment for her choices; sometimes it’s difficult to explain I am number five of six children. But the key thing here is choice: Bruenig is conspicuously quiet on the topic of reproductive justice and autonomy, which makes her article on motherhood from this year feel pointed in its limited scope. Ordinarily I would think it fine for people to write from their own experience, but something here feels sticky. And here I come onto that word.
People in the replies to Bruenig’s snark over Lewis’ commentary used a phrase that sent a cold shiver to the middle of me. “Degenerate” they said. Where had they picked up this word? When I picture that term, I think of Nazi Germany, and the assault on art, culture and intellectualism that sat outside the acceptable realms. The penalty for producing ‘degenerate’ art or thought could be high.
We are in a culture war, and it’s not one that can be fought off by typing ‘THEATRE THEATRE THEATRE THEATRE’ in the replies to a tweet from then-Secretary for the Department of Digital, Media, Culture and Sport, Oliver Dowden. It’s bigger than that and it’s been present since at least 2017, where, during a job interview for a position working in live art (more commonly understood as ‘performance art’), I acknowledged that one of the biggest challenges in my role would be defending the output and expression of artists working in the form. Just recently, Tribune Editor Ronan Burtenshaw made a joke about ‘Tarquins’ doing performance art making life difficult for ordinary Glaswegians during COP26. These art forms can be sticky and weird and gross; their proximity to queerness is important.
When I saw the d-word on those comments, I wanted to toss the matter aside. It’s only Twitter, after all, and I’ve been keen to try and make sure this month’s entries aren’t particularly ‘online.’ But radicalisation takes place online and the use of this term is striking and worrying. It made me think of the cry at the hearing denouncing Robert Mapplethorpe’s explicit, and explicitly gay art, during the moral panic surrounding The NEA Four: “Look at the pictures!” which is structurally similar to ‘Ban this sick filth.’
The topic of family abolition, or family ambivalence is particularly important at Christmastime. Last weekend, at a friend’s birthday, a friend spoke about how growing up outside of the city made you hate living in them as an adult. The noise, the dirt, the amount of people, the danger. I get it. But I’ve since thought about how the best place for someone to grow up with a shit family in this country probably is the city: how do we account for the breakdown of the nuclear unit in smaller communities in as individualist a society as contemporary Britain. It’s unpleasant to think about how some children are born into homes that will not support or provide for them in the ways we might like; it might be disturbing and alarming to consider alternative lifestyles and configurations, but I think we have to consider it.
Within progressive and leftist circles, I think there currently exists a need to prove oneself to be ‘regular’ and not off-putting to the average person. The 2019 general election defeat hangs heavy in the conscience and memory of many. But a broad coalition has to include the weirdos and the odd - and we have to be vigilant to the sceptre of ‘improper’ intellectual and cultural ideas. It can lead us to a very dangerous path.