The Politics and Philosophy of Wyndham Lewis's Representations of the Body Trevor Lovelock Brent Department of English and Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths College, University of London Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, October 2005 ACADEMIC REGISTR *: -ýOOM26 N ER ?T' 0F LO1"P SE GOLDSMITHS -{VJ1! 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 -: 8701908642 Abstract The Politics and Philosophy of Wyndham Lewis's Representations of the Body examines the significance of representations of the body in the written work, both theoretical and fictional, of Wyndham Lewis. The central question of the thesis is: how does the body function as a ground for identity in Lewis's work? This question is addressed by looking at five thematic areas of Lewis's work, each of which forms the basis of a chapter: reality, mind-body dualism, gender, race, and the crowd- The work of Slavoj Zizek is used to argue that Lewis's theoretical work is characterised by an antipathy towards `the passion for the Real' and a desire to maintain a belief-sustained sense of `reality'. As a result, the body has an ambivalent status: it is both an emblem of the `reality' of the personality and a threat to it, representing its unavoidable `thingness', its `Real', as it were. This ambivalence is best expressed in Lewis's fiction, where the weaknesses and inconsistencies of his theories are dramatised and exposed. Lewis's ambivalence towards the body results in a split between his theory and his rhetoric, a split that is particularly noticeable in his work on gender and race, in which initially racist and sexist language is undercut by his theoretical discomfort with the biological grounds of such rhetoric. This ambivalence characterises Lewis's often controversial politics, which cannot be understood without it being taken into account. The thesis concludes that Wyndham Lewis had a fundamentally ambivalent attitude toward the body: it fails to provide a solid ground for identity, and yet it refuses to melt completely into air. This persistence of the body makes it a crucial sticking point, and Lewis produces compelling and contradictory images of it which attest to its implacable significance in his work. 2 Contents Abbreviations 4 Introduction 7 Chapter One: Reality 20 Chapter Two: Mind-Body . 70 Chapter Three: Gender 113 Chapter Four: Race . 162 Chapter Five: The Crowd . 212 Conclusion 256 Bibliography . 268 Acknowledgements 292 3 Abbreviations The following abbreviations for works by Wyndham Lewis are used in this thesis: ABR The Art of Being Ruled, ed. Reed Way Dasenbrock, (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1989). ACM America and Cosmic Man, (London & Brussels: Nicholson & Watson, 1948). AG The Apes of God, (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1981). `Artist' `The Artist as Crowd', in Creatures of Habit and Creatures of Change: Essays on Art, Literature and Society 1914-1956, ed. Paul Edwards, (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1989). `Baby' `The War Baby', in Unlucky For Pringle: Unpublished and Other Stories, eds. C. J. Fox & Robert T. Chapman, (London: Vision Press, 1973) BB Blasting and Bombardiering, (London: Calder and Boyars, 1967). C The Childermass, (London & New York: Calder Publications & Riverrun Press, 2000). `Code' `The Code of a Herdsman', in The Essential Wyndham Lewis, ed. Julian Symons, (London: Vintage, 1991). `Crowd' `The Crowd Master', in Blast, No. 2, (Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1981). ES Enemy of the Stars in Collected Poems and Plays, ed. Alan Munton, (Manchester: Carcanet, 1979). 4 Abbreviations `Essay' `Essay on the Objective of Plastic Art in Our Time', in Wyndham Lewis on Art: Collected Writings 1913- 1956, ed. Walter Michel & C. J. Fox, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1969). `Foxes' `The Foxes' Case', in Creatures of Habit and Creatures of Change: Essays on Art, Literature and Society 1914-1956, ed. Paul Edwards, (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1989). H Hitler, (London: Chatto and Windus, 1931). HC The Hitler Cult, (London: Dent, 1939). IL Imaginary Letters, (Glasgow: Wyndham Lewis Society, 1977). LF The Lion and the Fox: The Role of the Hero in the Plays of Shakespeare, (London: G. Richards, 1927). `Meaning' `The Meaning of the Wild Body', in The Complete Wild Body, ed. Bernard Lafourcade, (Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1982). MWA Men Without Art, ed. Seamus Cooney, (Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1987). P Paleface: The Philosophy of the `Melting-Pot', (London: Chatto & Windus, 1929). `Politics' `The Politics of Artistic Expression', in Creatures of Habit and Creatures of Change: Essays on Art, Literature and Society 1914-1956, ed. Paul Edwards, (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1989). `Religions' `Inferior Religions', in The Complete Wild Body, ed. Bernard Lafourcade, (Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1982). RL The Revenge for Love, ed. Reed Way Dasenbrook, (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1991). `Spring-Mate' `Cantleman's Spring-Mate', in Unlucky For Pringle: Unpublished and Other Stories, eds. C. J. Fox & Robert T. Chapman, (London: Vision Press, 1973) 5 Abbreviations T Tarr: The 1918 Version, ed. Paul O'Keeffe, (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1996). TWM Time and Western Man, ed. Paul Edwards, (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1993). 6 Introduction In this thesis I am going to explore the politics and philosophy of Wyndham Lewis's representations of the body. I will focus my research on Lewis's written work, not because there is nothing to be said about his pictorial representations of the body, but because there is too much, and to try and say it all here would be to stretch my thesis too wide and to spread my analysis too thin. I will look mainly at the work Lewis produced between the two World Wars: his major theoretical work Time and Western Man (1927), parts of which are examined in detail in Chapter One and the Conclusion, forms the historical and conceptual centre of the material considered. I will consider both his fictional and non-fictional work, not only because Lewis produced valuable work in both genres, but also because he often treats similar themes in them, sometimes in significantly divergent ways. My concern is not simply to map out the varying ways in which Lewis body represented the - the intricate verbal mechanics of the defamiliarisation and grotesque detail he specialised in and deployed to but body for him it great effect - to consider what the meant and the role played in his political and philosophical, as well as his imaginative, vision. I do not believe that these three spheres - the political, the philosophical, be be the imaginative - can easily separated, if they can separated at all; but neither do I believe that they can be simply amalgamated and treated as interchangeable and exactly equivalent. To give perhaps the most obvious example, the wrongness of Lewis's politics in the 193os cannot be theorised away by sophisticated reference to his aesthetics, but the tangible achievements of his artistic work cannot be simply nullified by horrified mention of his support for Hitler. My interest in the political, philosophical, and imaginative aspects of Lewis work crystallises around questions of the body, its representations, 7 Introduction and its significance. From the first reading of Lewis it is clear that the body is of great importance to him, that it is something which excites his imagination and which is focussed on with great intensity. However, it is not at all clear exactly what its significance is, and it raises many intriguing questions. Does Lewis represent the body as obdurately solid, or as something more malleable and fluid? Does Lewis see the body as a uniform and universal aspect of human existence, or as differentiated into various types? Does Lewis perceive the body as dangerous threat or as a reassuring support? Can the body be a ground for mind or is it always its enemy? Does Lewis indeed see any fundamental difference between body and mind? Does Lewis see the body functioning as a tool of modernity, or as an object that resists it? Does the body possess a greater or a lesser degree of reality than other objects in the world? There are many such questions raised by Lewis's representations of the body, but the central question my thesis attempts to answer is: how does the human body function as a ground for identity in Lewis's work? I will consider this question with reference to five main themes, devoting a chapter to each of them. My first chapter will look at Lewis's treatment of reality both in his theoretical work, represented here by Time and Western Man, and in his fiction, in particular the novels The Childermass (1928) and The Revenge for Love (1937). I will examine the notions of belief and reality that Lewis develops in Time and Western Man using the concept of `the passion for the Real' developed by the Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, and argue that Lewis's opposition to such a `passion' is a defining feature of his work, and one which puts him at odds with much modernist thinking. Using Lewis's own ideas as well as Zizek's theory, I will analyse the way in which reality and `the Real' operate in Lewis's fiction, with particular focus on his representations of the body, and argue that his fiction exposes and dramatises inconsistencies and flaws in his theory. In particular, I will argue that in the fiction the absolute repression of `the Real' advocated in Time and Western Man is shown to be a quixotic and unachievable task, and that the representation of the body plays a key role in this realisation. 8 Introduction The question of the reality or otherwise of the body is one which has significant implication for the question of grounding, and the way in which Lewis's characters struggle with the alternatives of an unreal and vapid groundlessness, and an inescapable grounding in ultra-real physical materiality is one which is reflected in his work as a whole.