I came across this essay because I was morbidly curious about what happened with Rachel Haywire, who I came across in my Twitter feed when I was still on there and who made quite an impression on me as someone with grand pretensions and a complete lack of taste and intellect. That doesn't feel sufficient to justify my curiosity, but man is weak.
I think you nailed both the impulse behind transgression (assertion of the individual against its universal oppressor, society—which can however be imagined in a thousand different ways by the individual) and what makes it succeed or fail in an aesthetic sense, that is, whether or not it reveals something new about what it means to be human (as Rabelais does magnificently, and there are no doubt many good arguments for Sade here as well). But vulgar transgression is a powerful tool for non-artistic purposes in that it attracts attention, and does indeed liberate the individual—who is freer than the Sadean subject?—the volatility of whose bond with 'society' can then be exploited for particular ends. Also adolescents (and adults with adolescent minds) just eat that shit up.
Tara, this frames the issue better than any hot-take on shock art: transgression isn’t automatically depth—it only becomes art when it exposes the tension between private desire and the social order that contains it. The humanism of Rabelais works because it unmasks our shared mess without erasing it; Sade fails because his “freedom” depends on turning every other body into scenery. When transgression stops at spectacle, it isn’t courage, it’s market segmentation. What we need now isn’t louder provocation; it’s work that risks real intimacy—writing that lets two flawed consciousnesses meet without the buffer of branding or tribal applause. Anything less is just another micro-demographic hustle dressed up as revolt.
“To place society as merely some kind of bulwark against the individual is to forget that all parts of society, from laws to language, come from the imagination of human individuals.”
This is my favorite sentence of the essay. I get angry when someone describes a particular historical event or trend as “inevitable.” However likely something may be, it is not inevitable if it depends on the actions of human beings, with all our faults, stupidities, prejudices, arrogance, and vanity.
viva transgression! I really hope lefties like Joey and I can still write transgressive stuff that packs a punch and takes on societal ills thru its transgression! Will be writing on this soon.
So, has anyone listened to the lyrics of Kanye's "Heil Hitler"? He is not praising Hitler.
Having had his bank accounts frozen and being prohibited from seeing his kids, Kanye is saying the fascists have taken over. He is NOT praising them, he is dissing them. Frankly, at various times, I've said "Heil Hitler" in a similar vein.
Transgression against norms became difficult when all preexisting norms had been repudiated, some time early in this century. Like all revolutions, the winners turned into a bureaucracy and tried to enforce their new dogma. That invited new transgression against the new dogma, using some of the same tactics of provocation and excess that the current power-holders employed when they were still outsiders and rebels. The old taboos went away. The new taboos -- never say the N-Word, always use "Hitler" as a synonym for pure evil not a historical personage, and recoil from any Nazi imagery, pretend that words you don't like are actual violence -- practically begged for the full-scale Johnny Rotten treatment. Whether something has merit as art is, perhaps unfortunately, not strongly associated with whether it promotes, or seems to promote, whatever moral or theological program we prefer. Genius can make great art which is also corrupting or serves evil ends; mediocrity and banality are often used in the service of the wholesome and life-affirming, which is upsetting to many of us, but it is always that way. And of course good or great art can be ambiguous across other dimensions, like morality or social utility. Perhaps the biggest problem with all of this is that any functioning society has a lot of children, and a lot of unsophisticated people who cannot grasp nuances. These people have to be protected. This is felt as constricting by artists and people who have some esthetic education. But you should not bring a nine year old to the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, or a young mother of modest education, but a good and kind person, to something that can be viewed in part as pornographic but which has artistic merit, because she won't get it. This is a permanent problem that can only be mitigated but never solved. Keeping the transgression in some kind of Bohemia and allowing cross-border trade with the rest of society is one approach which is probably the best way to do it. Good post, many important ideas. Pardon a perhaps overly long response.
Thanks for taking on this subject. I need to read it again but I think the drive to understand this and where it fits in our human struggle is worth the time..at least some time.
I came across this essay because I was morbidly curious about what happened with Rachel Haywire, who I came across in my Twitter feed when I was still on there and who made quite an impression on me as someone with grand pretensions and a complete lack of taste and intellect. That doesn't feel sufficient to justify my curiosity, but man is weak.
I think you nailed both the impulse behind transgression (assertion of the individual against its universal oppressor, society—which can however be imagined in a thousand different ways by the individual) and what makes it succeed or fail in an aesthetic sense, that is, whether or not it reveals something new about what it means to be human (as Rabelais does magnificently, and there are no doubt many good arguments for Sade here as well). But vulgar transgression is a powerful tool for non-artistic purposes in that it attracts attention, and does indeed liberate the individual—who is freer than the Sadean subject?—the volatility of whose bond with 'society' can then be exploited for particular ends. Also adolescents (and adults with adolescent minds) just eat that shit up.
Tara, this frames the issue better than any hot-take on shock art: transgression isn’t automatically depth—it only becomes art when it exposes the tension between private desire and the social order that contains it. The humanism of Rabelais works because it unmasks our shared mess without erasing it; Sade fails because his “freedom” depends on turning every other body into scenery. When transgression stops at spectacle, it isn’t courage, it’s market segmentation. What we need now isn’t louder provocation; it’s work that risks real intimacy—writing that lets two flawed consciousnesses meet without the buffer of branding or tribal applause. Anything less is just another micro-demographic hustle dressed up as revolt.
“To place society as merely some kind of bulwark against the individual is to forget that all parts of society, from laws to language, come from the imagination of human individuals.”
This is my favorite sentence of the essay. I get angry when someone describes a particular historical event or trend as “inevitable.” However likely something may be, it is not inevitable if it depends on the actions of human beings, with all our faults, stupidities, prejudices, arrogance, and vanity.
viva transgression! I really hope lefties like Joey and I can still write transgressive stuff that packs a punch and takes on societal ills thru its transgression! Will be writing on this soon.
So, has anyone listened to the lyrics of Kanye's "Heil Hitler"? He is not praising Hitler.
Having had his bank accounts frozen and being prohibited from seeing his kids, Kanye is saying the fascists have taken over. He is NOT praising them, he is dissing them. Frankly, at various times, I've said "Heil Hitler" in a similar vein.
Blah blah blah, old course nobody listens to the lyrics. Born in the USA glaring example.
Transgression against norms became difficult when all preexisting norms had been repudiated, some time early in this century. Like all revolutions, the winners turned into a bureaucracy and tried to enforce their new dogma. That invited new transgression against the new dogma, using some of the same tactics of provocation and excess that the current power-holders employed when they were still outsiders and rebels. The old taboos went away. The new taboos -- never say the N-Word, always use "Hitler" as a synonym for pure evil not a historical personage, and recoil from any Nazi imagery, pretend that words you don't like are actual violence -- practically begged for the full-scale Johnny Rotten treatment. Whether something has merit as art is, perhaps unfortunately, not strongly associated with whether it promotes, or seems to promote, whatever moral or theological program we prefer. Genius can make great art which is also corrupting or serves evil ends; mediocrity and banality are often used in the service of the wholesome and life-affirming, which is upsetting to many of us, but it is always that way. And of course good or great art can be ambiguous across other dimensions, like morality or social utility. Perhaps the biggest problem with all of this is that any functioning society has a lot of children, and a lot of unsophisticated people who cannot grasp nuances. These people have to be protected. This is felt as constricting by artists and people who have some esthetic education. But you should not bring a nine year old to the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, or a young mother of modest education, but a good and kind person, to something that can be viewed in part as pornographic but which has artistic merit, because she won't get it. This is a permanent problem that can only be mitigated but never solved. Keeping the transgression in some kind of Bohemia and allowing cross-border trade with the rest of society is one approach which is probably the best way to do it. Good post, many important ideas. Pardon a perhaps overly long response.
Thanks for taking on this subject. I need to read it again but I think the drive to understand this and where it fits in our human struggle is worth the time..at least some time.