Whitehead's Work Research Articles

‘Delicate ironies quite imperceptible on its surface’: Henry S. Whitehead's weird tales and American empire in the Caribbean

AbstractThis article mounts an initial exploratory engagement with the weird fiction of Henry S. Whitehead, framed by American imperial expansion into the Caribbean in the interwar years. It situates Whitehead and his work within the wider historical context and shows how Whitehead himself used and played with history as part of his fiction. The article considers the role of light in Whitehead's fiction and imperial projects, as well as the way that Whitehead's work, as horror fiction, both shapes and seeks to dispel notions of the Caribbean as a space of horror. As well as offering some initial conclusions, the article seeks to open further lines for future investigation.

Process and Aesthetics: An Outline of Whiteheadian Aesthetics and Beyond

Process and Aesthetics: An Outline of Whiteheadian Aesthetics and Beyond

Understanding Colson Whitehead: Revised and Expanded Edition by Derek Maus

Reviewed by: Understanding Colson Whitehead: Revised and Expanded Edition by Derek Maus Maria Bose MAUS, DEREK. Understanding Colson Whitehead: Revised and Expanded Edition. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2021. 172 pp. $59.00 hardcover; $14.99 e-book. "I think I just don't want to do the same thing over and over again," novelist Colson Whitehead muses in a 2013 interview. And that allows me to just challenge myself: can I do a book that has less plot? Can I learn the rules of a horror novel, and adapt it to my own concerns about the world? Can I do a coming of age novel that doesn't remind me of all the stuff I hate about coming of age novels? So I'm trying to keep it fresh for me. I'm just trying to not bore myself. And if I can do a detective novel, and if I can do a horror novel, then why do it again? (2) Derek Maus's Understanding Colson Whitehead opens with this anecdote and, by and large, takes it on trust. For Maus, 'understanding' Whitehead amounts to making sense of his intentional "flirt[ation] with genres and their conventions"—something Whitehead himself describes as "wearing genre drag" (1)—by finding ways to unify his extraordinarily diverse "subjects, settings, narrative voices and styles; his sweeping command of both popular culture and literary history; and his oft-stated resistance to overarching concepts" (8). Yet having acknowledged that resistance, as well as Whitehead's own leeriness of conceptual designation, Maus proposes two such concepts as consolidators of Whitehead's ranging formal enterprise: "historiographic metafiction," which he draws from Linda Hutcheon's influential theory of postmodern reflexivity, and "the postsoul aesthetic," which he borrows from Mark Anthony Neal's account of contemporary Black artists' disaffection for the authenticating cultural injunctions of their Civil Rights-era forbears. Doubling down on his 2014 thesis, Maus reasons that, although Whitehead's novels resist generic pigeonholing, their unities might yet be glimpsed through Hutcheon's and Neal's critical lenses, both of which "allow for (or possibly even demand) a great diversity of expression while still meaningfully clustering groups of authors and their works together according to common artistic and rhetorical techniques in the first instance and a particular generational zeitgeist in the second." Both, he adds, are also "critical discourses that are not so arcane as to require a highly specialized vocabulary—beyond the names of the terms themselves—or an advanced degree in literary analysis to understand." And while "[n]umerous scholars have applied one or the other of these approaches to individual works by Whitehead," he notes, "none have yet combined them, much less used that combination to consider Whitehead's entire output" (9). The chapters that follow offer lucid accounts of that output, examining The Intuitionist (Chapter 2), John Henry Days (Chapter 3), Apex Hides the Hurt (Chapter 4), The Colossus of New York, Sag Harbor, and Zone One (Chapter 5), and The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys (Chapter 6, new to the 2021 edition). But because they unfold as essays in the application of 'historiographic metafiction' and 'the postsoul aesthetic'—less as arguments about Whitehead's novels and nonfiction than as a single, sustained argument on behalf of the explanatory power of these concepts' conjuncture—Maus's own commitment to these concepts' critical purchase inadvertently undermines the 'great diversity of expression' he imagines this approach to Whitehead's work preserves. [End Page 319] What's lost, then, and somewhat curiously, in Maus's account of Whitehead's generic diversity is both a deep engagement with genre—with Whitehead's calibrated motivation of the terms and problematics through which each genre he chooses to 'wear in drag' mediates a distinct set of ideological transformations—and a historical attention to the contemporary conditions of production—and of literary production in particular—out of which Whitehead writes. To be sure, The Intuitionist's Lila-Mae is understandable as a figure for the meta-historiographer skeptical of "accepted cultural truths about race and gender" (37). But doesn't Whitehead also exploit the detective genre's literary traditions the better to address economic, juridical, and ideological shifts...

Philosophical Criteria in Whitehead and Rorty

AbstractRorty's aversion to metaphysics is well known, so the extent of his early work on Whitehead might come as a surprise. This article examines the young Rorty's critical assessment of Whitehead to show how it demonstrates the consequences of diverging metaphilosophical orientations. It argues that Rorty's insistence on judging Whitehead's work through an exclusively epistemological frame causes him to miss its more radical existential and epistemic implications. After examining how Rorty and Whitehead operate with different cost‐benefit analyses as to the risks and benefits of speculative philosophy, it suggests that closer attention to the fuller stakes of Whitehead's project shows that his metaphysics are not opposed to the “poeticized” culture that Rorty calls for, one where the distinction between making and finding is no longer metaphysically foundational.

Oral health interventions in Australian Aboriginal communities: a review of the literature.

Aboriginal Australians experience significant disparities in oral health with even poorer outcomes reported in rural and remote areas. The high rates of preventable dental disease in Aboriginal communities are a serious concern from a social standpoint and in terms of service provision and health care expenditure. In this review, primary research literature was comprehensively reviewed. Papers were selected if they reported designing or implementing an intervention or oral health programme specific to the needs of Aboriginal communities. Twenty-one publications fulfilled the inclusion criteria with 19 different interventions being described. Interventions were categorized using a classification adapted from the work of Whitehead (2002). The review identified interventions that aimed to reduce early childhood caries, increase services to remote communities, develop the role of Aboriginal health workers, improve oral health literacy, establish water fluoridation and provide periodontal therapy. Implementing successful oral health interventions in Aboriginal communities is a challenge that is compounded by the complex interplay between psychosocial and cultural determinants. Even interventions that follow a rigorous and consultative design have a high failure rate in Aboriginal communities if upstream determinants of health are not adequately understood and addressed.

Transitions to democracy: a comparative perspective

As demonstrated by current events in Tunisia and Egypt, oppressive regimes are rarely immune to their citizens' desire for democratic government. Of course, desire is always tempered by reality; therefore how democratic demands are made manifest is a critical source of study for both political scientists and foreign policy makers. What issues and consequences surround the fall of a government, what type of regime replaces it, and to what extent are these efforts successful? Kathryn Stoner and Michael McFaul have created an accessible book of fifteen case studies from around the world that will help students understand these complex issues. Their model builds upon Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead's classic work, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, using a rubric of four identifying factors that can be applied to each case study, making comparison relatively easy. Transitions to Democracy yields strong comparisons and insights. For instance, the study reveals that efforts led by the elite and involving the military are generally unsuccessful, whereas mass mobilization, civic groups, and new media have become significant factors in supporting and sustaining democratic actors. This collection of writings by scholars and practitioners is organized into three parts: successful transitions, incremental transitions, and failed transitions. Extensive primary research and a rubric that can be applied to burgeoning democracies offer readers valuable tools and information.

Evolution of salinity tolerance from transcriptome to physiological system

The relationship between microevolution and macroevolution is a topic of fundamental importance in evolutionary biology. The increasing accessibility of genomic tools is making the hunt for genes that underlie evolutionary divergence more tractable and, when combined with physiological approaches, provides exceptional power to elucidate the causal mechanisms of the relationship. In this issue of Molecular Ecology, Whitehead et al. (2013) employ this strategy to show that common physiological and genomic mechanisms lead to divergence in salinity tolerance across micro- and macroevolutionary timescales. They compare two killifish species from the genus Fundulus, F. majalis, which inhabits primarily marine and brackish environments and represents the ancestral state of the genus, and F. heteroclitus, which has derived an osmotic niche that expands into freshwater. Corresponding to the differences in osmotic niche, the species differ strikingly in how the structure of the ion-transporting epithelium and the transcriptome of the gills respond to osmotic challenge. These inter-specific differences were similar to but more pronounced than the differences associated with the more subtle intra-specific variation in osmotic niche within each species. It appears that a progression of the same functional adjustments first allowed expansion of the osmotic niche of F. heteroclitus into freshwater and then further expanded the niche of select F. heteroclitus populations towards more dilute freshwater environments. The work of Whitehead et al. therefore emphasizes how the mechanisms of adaptive divergence between populations can be expanded over time to produce the more complex differences that can exist between species.

Om livets kunst: en vitalistisk læsning af medicinsk humanisme

In a seminal and much-cited paper, Rita Charon has described narrative medicine - and, more broadly, the opening of medicine to education in the humanities - in terms of a mission to develop skills of empathy, reflection, professionalism and communication. In this paper I propose that Canguilhem's concept of vitalism and Alfred North Whitehead's concept of the 'art of life' provide a lens through which we can read the propositions of narrative medicine and medical humanities in the context of a much broader historico-scientific problematic, and connect them with a wider set of ethical and political implications. After setting out the relevant concepts by drawing on Canguilhem and Whitehead's work, in the latter part of the paper I explore the ethico-political question of how medicine might best serve the perfectibility of human beings, or the 'art of life'. I do this via a historical excursus, by revisiting a debate between Viktor Von Weizsäcker and Karl Jaspers on the merits and dangers of the 'introduction of the subject within medicine'. In their different historical context, Weizsäcker and Jaspers were able to articulate questions that remain relevant today, and that are implicit in the propositions of narrative medicine.

Burning Passions, Flammable Decade: Cinema, Avant-Garde, Self, and Society in <i>Fire in the Water</i> (1977)

Peter Whitehead's films create paradoxical and yet compelling interfaces between spheres that are typically seen as distinct and even incompatible. In trying to define the essence of his work, Nicole Berenz writes that The brilliant work of Peter Lorrimer Whitehead, full of an incomparable energy, pulverises the false barriers between formal research, documentary reportage, psychedelic cinema, cinema engage, pop cinema and auteur cinema. Whitehead's work accomplishes an exceptional synthesis, open to every different dimension of avant- garde cinema, tending towards perceptual explosion and euphoric fusion with phenomena.1 In this light, for instance, consider The Fall (1969), which is simultaneously a documentary on the United States in 1968, an (auto)fiction, a self- portrait, a critique of counterculture, a reflection on po liti cal activism, a document of various events and happenings, and, first and foremost, an avant- garde film. This crossover attitude is not confined to formal and generic experimentalism, but also interests other areas. Some of the intersecting spheres that I explore in this essay are the personal and public, documentary and avantgarde, and participation and critique. While these topics are relevant to most if not all of Whitehead's productions, Fire in the Water (1977) is an especially appealing case study, as it comments self- reflexively both on these areas in general and on Whitehead's own work specifically. Fire in the Water is composed of two distinct souls that embody two different characters. The opening titles are superimposed on images of John Martin's The Great Day of His Wrath (1851- 1853), followed by shots of boiling lava and by a caption of the Bertolt Brecht quote (from his poem, On Poor B. B.): Nothing shall remain of the great cities except the wind that passes through them. A filmmaker (Edouard Niermans), an obvious alter ego of the director, and his girlfriend (Nathalie Delon, then Whitehead's partner) drive to an isolated cottage in the Scottish highlands where he views footage (all taken from Whitehead's previous works), ostensibly for the purpose of editing a film, while she explores a nearby wood and stream, and experiences intense visions and states of spiritual and sensual communion with nature. The two narrative strands continue in parallel, until the filmmaker goes to look for his friend, who has not returned home, but does not find her. Neither is to be seen again; the film, which in its last section progressively loses its centre, its form,2 concludes with a series of shots of ice, water, and snow- covered earth, accompanied by Pink Floyd's The Great Gig in the Sky. In Whitehead's own recollections,3 Fire in the Water was initially written for Bianca Jagger; the project then had a different title, The Vision of Tiresias, and a subtitle, The Hooded Falcon. However, due to Bianca Jagger's busy schedule and to a lack of funds, Whitehead set it aside until he was offered money by the stepson of Sadruddin Aga Khan, Marc Sursoch, whom he had met at Oxford University. Whitehead suggested they a film with his friend, Nathalie Delon. Sursoch, who found the Tiresias project too esoteric and commercially unviable, suggested instead a film on the sixties. Although not entirely happy with the idea, Whitehead wrote an outline that merged his narrative with Sursoch's suggestion, and he set off for Scotland with Delon, a Steenbeck editing table, a camper van, and his pet raven (all were to feature in the film). Whitehead's project implied no dialogues; Sursoch, however, who was hoping to become a professional producer, or ga nized a sound track mix in Shepperton and facilitated the use of a Pink Floyd score, on condition of the superimposition of a narration that would make sense of the film. Whitehead objected, but Sursoch had already arranged for the film to be blown up to 35 mm and screened at Cannes Film Festival. Whitehead wrote an explanatory narration, which he spoke over the first few sequences, and also used the Pink Floyd song over the concluding section of the film, though he originally intended it to be only accompanied by the sound of the wind. …

The Technology of Myth: Peter Whitehead as Novelist

The Falconer In 1997 Iain Sinclair and Chris Petit made The Falconer, an experimental film that purported to be a documentary investigation into the lives and careers of Peter Whitehead. Quoting the Burroughsian maxim, Sinclair and Petit presented their work as a fictional in which nothing is true and everything is permitted. The project began as The Perimeter Fence, a semisequel to their earlier exploration of esoteric book dealing, The Cardinal and the Corpse (1992). This second film was to have been an examination of the post- sixties trajectories of a number of figures.1 However, upon encountering the details of Whitehead's own career- documentaries, the sixties, and falconry- what Mark Goodall has called a life of extraordinary, almost hallucinatory intensity, they shifted the focus of the film to alone.2 Although appears as a figure of fascination, the film functions less as a panegyric than as a demonstration of how Sinclair and Petit instrumentalize their subject. As Keith Griffiths, the film's producer, explains, The Falconer was not intended as a biopic per se but aimed to use the details of Whitehead's life, certain themes linked to his work, and the circumstances of the filming as a launchpad to synergize Sinclair and Petit's concerns: secret history, recording, psychogeography, surveillance and the countercultural afterlife.3 In practice, the construction of this sophisticated frame involved the critical interrogation of the idea of a Whitehead biography. Juxtaposing vox populi with real and presumed associates, alongside decontextualized archive footage and fragmentary interviews with himself, the film interrogates the historicist ideal active in the attempt to reconstruct the details of a single life. The suggestion is that within the context of the film, no biography will hold together due to a combination of archival excess, the limitations of the investigative methodologies applied, and the material capabilities of the audiovisual technology that underpins the project.4 From this perspective, The Falconer can specifically be seen as a productive development of ideas previously explored in Sinclair's White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987) and Petit's Robinson (1993). However, at a local level, the execution of this project does not so much explore or elaborate upon Whitehead's own work but instead reveals an unstable portrait in a series of frequently contradictory glimpses. Basic facts are presented- writer, filmmaker, and an interest in the esoteric- but within the waves of connections, links, and red herrings that the film develops, emerges as a spectral, flickering figure who exists in the absence of any stable reference point. To some degree, this repre sen ta tion was symptomatic of Whitehead's reception at the time of the film's release. Although best known as a filmmaker, he had by 1997 established himself as a cult novelist. His first novel Nora and ... appeared in 1990 and was followed by The Risen (1994) and Pulp Election (1996). In de pen dently produced and concerned with themes including psychoanalysis, Egyptology, and covert publishing, these texts found a receptive audience among the writers, editors, and readers associated with the premillennial cultural underground. Interviews appeared in magazines such as Entropy and Fringecore, while his writing was extracted and enthusiastically reviewed in The Edge, Estoterra, and Blood from Stones. Jonathan Davis distributed Whitehead's novels via his Midian mail order ser vice, which placed Whitehead's work alongside that of Alan Moore and Stuart Home, as well as the output of such apocalyptic publishers as Headpress, Savoy, and Creation. In 1996 the latter consolidated this link through the publication of Whitehead's transgressive photography collection Baby Doll. Writing in parallel to this exposure, Sinclair became one of Whitehead's most consistent interlocutors. …

Sex Spy: Sexuality and the Revolution in Peter Whitehead's Post-Sixties Works

Sex Spy:Sexuality and the Revolution in Peter Whitehead's Post-Sixties Works Mark Jones (bio) Peter Whitehead's films of the 1960s can be understood as charting the evolution in the decade's principal concerns, from pop to politics via psychedelia and style. Having first integrated the Beat generation's revolutionary impulses in Wholly Communion (UK, 1965)—the film of the International Poetry Incarnation at the Albert Hall—Whitehead's subsequent sixties work expounded on the significance for the late sixties of the various cultural imperatives of pop music, performance art, celebrity culture, swinging hedonism, and political protest. His "fly on the wall" documentary of The Rolling Stones' tour of Ireland in 1965, Charlie Is My Darling (UK, 1966), marked the increasing importance of the celebrity persona, and the film's immediate suppression similarly signified the commercial imperative to control the public image of the celebrity brand. Tonite Let's All Make Love in London (UK, 1967) explored the mélange of pop, pomp, stardom, clubbing, fashion, art, sex, and psychedelia that briefly made London one of the principal centers of Western culture. A year later, The Benefit of the Doubt (UK, 1968) addressed the war in Vietnam, editing together production and performance footage of Peter Brook's play US with expressions of opinion and scenes of street protest in London, but, like Brook's contemporaneous Tell Me Lies (UK, 1968), it seems curiously ineffectual; the historically significant action was clearly taking place elsewhere. For his next film, The Fall (UK, 1969), Whitehead followed the politics and decamped to New York, seeking a synthesis of action and observation in a revolutionary-charged environment where such a fusion might matter.1 The ultimate—perhaps inevitable—failure of the attempt to integrate the private, public, and mediated worlds is symbolized by the film's final shots of Whitehead as both editor and screen image, as he apparently [End Page 819] disappears into his own artifact. The Fall would be Whitehead's last documentary film. Whitehead's sixties films reflect his instincts as a documentary maker and cultural commentator in their remarkable inclusivity. Few other artists of the period could demonstrate in their work such a montage of key themes, images, events, and figures. Among British productions, perhaps only J. G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), similarly a collection of texts produced between 1966 and 1969, could lay claim to the range and recognizance of Whitehead's films. Like Whitehead's works, Ballard's short stories were produced and disseminated rapidly, reflecting the frenetic pace of cultural and political changes. And they are similarly and variously intense, affectless, affected, and eventually bleakly resigned. The last published of The Atrocity Exhibition pieces was "Tolerances of the Human Face," which features the first appearance of a sinister character called Vaughan, includes a documentary film crew, and ends with the main character watching their production: "At the conclusion of the film he would go out into the crowded streets. The noisy traffic mediated an exquisite and undying eroticism."2 Four years later, Vaughan was brought back by Ballard to orchestrate an exploration of the sexual potential of the automobile collision in his novel Crash (1973), signaling the distillation of perverse sexuality as perhaps the primary detrital outcome of the sociocultural revolution of the 1960s. Whitehead's works in the few years after The Fall would also be devoted to exploring the fallout of the sexual revolution. After an intensely productive few years in the late sixties, Whitehead's next film would not appear until 1973. Daddy (FR/UK, 1973) is a collaboration with artist Niki de Saint Phalle, and is Whitehead's first overtly dramatized film. After the apparent objectivity of Tonite Let's All Make Love in London and the intense involvement of The Fall, in Daddy, Whitehead seems to have handed over the experiential and expressive center of the film to his collaborator, relating de Saint Phalle's sexual psychodrama. Daddy does, indeed, seem on first inspection to be more de Saint Phalle's creation than Whitehead's: she is one of the lead actors; the film features several of her artworks and practices as key icons; and reportedly, according to de...

Seeing through Stone: Image Montage

Throughout the development of this volume, there has been mention, many times, especially by people stumbling on Peter Whitehead's work for the first time, about the variety it embodies-the extreme changes that seem to have occurred, in so many different disciplines But Whitehead has always insisted that he sees his life to be the pursuit of a single idea rather than many. In a November 2010 e-mail conversation, the editors suggested he might write something to explain this central recurring idea, which is not immediately obvious. He replied that he had tried hard to explain this entangled singularity in words but kept falling into a black hole while trying. He often pointed out that running around cities, the man filming with his movie camera was using the camera as an all-seeing eye . This just happens to be the occult meaning behind the Horus name and mythology in Ancient Egypt: the Udjat magic eye, the opening of the third eye, and so on. After only a few years of filming, he spent more than twenty years with his beloved falcons. I merely swapped one allseeing eye for another! ... An outsightlooking camera to an insight-seeing camera . Any suggestion to him of writing an autobiography gets the instant reply: It would have to be a graphic novel! Finally, he came up with this ...

I Dream Therefore I Am. I Doubt Therefore I Film, <i>Guardian</i>, 2002

The following is full, unedited text of an article by Peter Whitehead that appeared in Guardian on November 22, 2002. It was published on occasion of a series of screenings focused on Whitehead's work held at Other Cinema in London, called Peter Whitehead: The Complete Retrospective 1964- 1969. While operating as a useful introduction to Whitehead oeuvre for an audience circa 2002, it is at same time working in retrospective collaboration with Films and Filming interview from 1969. As echoing titles suggest, Whitehead is repeating, developing, and advancing ideas of earlier statement in this recent piece. April 1968. New York. The barricade was in place. Metal filing cabinets piled on top of university president's mahogany desk, to which heavy chairs were tied with rope, locking barricade against ornate oak doors. The first blow of axe split centre door panel, second gouged a hole big enough for a cop's hand to appear, wearing a white protective glove. It turned in air way Fonteyn's hand turned in air when she was Ondine, emerging for first time from water, way our hands turn when we dip them into a bath to test its temperature.1 The hand withdrew (during Civil War it would have been hacked off) and further savage blows of axe completed its work. Of liberation. The seven day student rebellion and occupation of Columbia university was about to be bust. I ran upstairs to top floor and took film out of my cine- camera, put it into a tin and sealed it with tape before dropping it from a window into bushes below, unseen by ranks of armed police waiting to free university from pagan forces of anarchy. Soon I was walking through splintered wooden doors with other students, to be arrested. Eagerly cops opened my camera (I had been warned) to expose incriminating film to light. No film. I collected it following day. A week later I was flying back to En gland with twenty hours of film which would later become The Fall, and be shown for first time at Edinburgh Festival, last film I would make about so- called Swinging Sixties; TIME magazine having given era its belittling name. Everyone knows joke (is it a joke?)- that if you can remember Sixties, you weren't there. So where does that place me? I can't remember really being there- enough- but I can assure myself, remind myself I was there simply by looking at my films. My camera was certainly there! So are my films the truth? More and more, inadvertently, they have inevitably become some kind of undeniable truth. But I was never fooled by French for lens: objectif. I know my films were made by someone hovering outside of events, not yet painfully aware that camera was not attaching him/me to outside world, but preventing it. The plight of man with camera making so- called documentary films, is always to be voyeur. Sixties devotees who watch my films- real thing man! -are mostly too young to have been there, they are a new type of audience for whom film has become truth, a new g-g- g-g- generation at college imbibing Media studies, convinced they can know, souls saturated with seminal music of times: pop music, era's soul, digitally enhanced but true to spirit of those epic times, they will say- who am I disagree with such a verdict on satanic mini- symphonies of Stones (still my favourites) born in heat of night of those stuttering, timeless times? So author of this clutch of documentary films is now an authority, as if at time I was heading out to capture history, my place in history (to make it sound worse) not just filming what seemed to be going on- seemed to concern me. You don't just go out and make films you want; they happen to you, fomented by a communal opportunism, people on make, careless offers of money, equally careless girls you can only pull by filming them. …

Peter Whitehead's Pottery

Peter Whitehead's Pottery Michael O'Brien (bio) A Lidded Bowl from Vumé ... In African villages, it is said that you make your best pots when you are slightly hungry. A small lidded bowl from Vumé,1 (see figure 12) a serving dish made for food, which Peter Whitehead had seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), was created by the English potter Michael Cardew at Vumé in Ghana. The dish fascinated Whitehead. He found himself compelled to go back to the museum again and again to confront it, to discover why it had begun to haunt him. The shape was ambiguous: in two parts. When separated, there were two separate bowls, each of which could be filled with food. The compulsion to return to this object of mystery, he had felt once, when as a student at Cambridge University he had seen a sculpture in the Fitzwilliam Museum, a head of Princess Meritaten of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, daughter of the Pharaoh Akhenaton and his wife Nefertiti. Staring at the Cardew lidded bowl, which was one pot, but also two, Whitehead sensed that if he were to become a serious potter, he would always be striving to re-create this pot—until the day he died. The number of coincidences between Whitehead and Cardew seems remarkable. Peter Whitehead was born in the slums of Liverpool and brought up in a one-parent family. He became head boy of a prestigious public school and won a scholarship to study physics at Cambridge. Cardew's two elder brothers were sent to Westminster School, but there was not enough money for Michael, so he was sent to the local grammar school, from which he won a scholarship to Oxford (almost unheard of in the 1920s) to study classics. These are the kinds of stories politicians and academics love to hear. At college, both Whitehead and Cardew discovered other things far more interesting than their studies, which they duly neglected. Both were threatened [End Page 944] with expulsion and realized that they had better make a token effort to mollify their long-suffering tutors to snatch a degree of sorts (instead of the first-class honors that had been smugly predicted for them). Forty years later, Whitehead's career had been as colorful as it had promised to be brilliant: from filming the Rolling Stones and student riots in America, to hunting falcons in the freezing wastes of Alaska (and being hunted in turn by the U.S. Army for doing so), to breeding them in Saudi Arabia. But perhaps the strangest part of the story is still to come. It is a story I tell here, even though it is one almost too improbable to command respect as a proper academic study. It tells of how Whitehead found in pottery the strength to put behind him the threat of death, when an emergency qua druple heart bypass operation after a massive heart attack failed and he became inoperable—how he coped, late in life, with the problems of trying to make serious pottery and developing exactly what he wanted in his newly chosen field. In describing what Whitehead has made and achieved in this quest to create pottery, we must return to the source of his energy, through the potters Michael Cardew and the great Japanese potter (and Whitehead's mentor) Shoji Hamada, back to the uninhibited work of peasant potters, to the basic values in the pottery made in traditional, unspoiled African villages. In some of these villages, potters today are making pottery as fine, aesthetically, as any ever made. Whitehead's work is equally original and distinctive, deriving much of its quality from inner considerations, a deliberate lack of concern for commerce. Yet given present Western attitudes, it is more than likely that what ever Whitehead makes, however unique, his work will be overlooked in the official circles of the world of ceramics. Whitehead had just finished his last novel, Girl on the Train, in 2000, when his bypass operation suddenly failed and he was rushed back to the hospital with life-threatening complications. After a prolonged, complicated angiography when he came close to having a...

<i>The Fall</i> Dossier: Extracts

Writing in the Guardian, Derek Malcolm once commented that was always the chronicler public events and the way they relate to private experience.1 Among the material that makes up Whitehead's archive, this intersection is particularly pronounced in the notebooks and diaries he has been collating since childhood. These extensive volumes document his day- to- day circumstances and personal relationships with remarkable candor. They also appear to have functioned as a space for the cultivation and development his literary and cinematic projects. Of these texts, some the most important are the writings he composed between 1967 and 1969- the period he spent Fall. Unusually for his diaries, Whitehead had each notebook typed as he filled one volume and began to write the next, and this material was also specifically ring fenced as Dossier, a title that appears throughout the text itself. Such preparation indicates that Whitehead had an eye to publication from the outset project. However, his intentions in this respect extended further than the desire to document a series behind the scenes anecdotes. As he described in a 1969 letter to Michael Kustow (who was arranging screenings at the Institute Contemporary Arts), the Dossier typescript represented a body raw notes that should ideally be turned into else. suggestion was that this something was to be significantly more than a making of account.2 A copy the original typescript in Whitehead's archive exhibits signs an initial attempt to act on this intention. text is interspersed with newspaper cuttings pertaining to Whitehead's work and the surrounding sociopo litical situation, while other passages are highlighted relating to his relationship with Alberta Tiburzi and his theorization the mass media. potential text that these markers point to looks beyond I made Fall and outlines a schizoid journal/novel/notebook that operates in parallel to the film. It charts and considers the emergence, intersection, and interplay three narratives: a compositional account Fall, a description the personal and psychological effects this creative pro cess, and Whitehead's increasingly self- conscious awareness his own portrayal in the various organs the late sixties media. Presented here is a selection extracts that are intended to give an indication the simultaneously introverted and extroverted nature the material. first set covers some the early planning and shooting stages the film, October 1- November 27, 1967. Dossier begins on September 20, 1967, with Whitehead's arrival in New York to attend the New York Film Festival. His films Tonite Let's All Make Love in London and Benefit the Doubt are playing as part the festival under the tile The London Scene. screening takes place on September 26 and is a critical success. Soon afterward, Whitehead is invited to make a documentary in the same spirit as these London films covering The New York Scene. He concludes his short trip and returns to En gland, facing the prospect working on an ambitious new film project. 10th October 1967 35,000 ftabove the Atlantic TWA Now is a good time to reflect!- suspended in space and time- returning from trip to New York, the new world, which can only be called a success, even a triumph. But so what? So curious to succeed with so much that I have already disowned. I'm a fraud and I know it. I've watched myself playing out the role for two weeks- and I can see and accept the reasons for it all. In some ways I think I'm doing the right thing: playing my cards right. It is obviously good to consolidate a success and bad to reject it. What is important is not to lose my own perspective- to be sure all the time that I know what I have done and how it compares to what I must do, and have a responsibility to do. …

Early Film Documents

This selection of early texts consists of proposals for Peter Whitehead's fi rst two short fi lms, The Theft (UK, 1963) and Parallels (UK, 1963)- here called Images. They were written as funding applications submitted to the British Film Institute's (BFI) Experimental Film Fund. In the event, the productions were cofunded by the Slade and Whitehead himself. The additional selections, One of the Last Fragments and Parallelism, represent writings composed in conjunction with the development of these fi lm projects. They demonstrate the wide range of Whitehead's intellectual infl uences and highlight his maintenance of a creative link with the literary arts that is possibly just as strong, if not more so, than his investment in the cinema. That Whitehead regarded literature and cinema as maintaining a productive intersection is highlighted by the line of analysis followed in New Formal Structures in the Cinema, an extract from a thesis proposal he composed at the Slade in 1963. In this instance, his ideas in relation to Alain Robbe- Grillet closely foreshadow his ideas of objectivity applied to Wholly Communion (UK, 1966). Taken as a whole, this section provides an insight into the emergence of Whitehead's work at the beginning of his fi lm career while also pointing to the primary lines of continuity that, once established, would be followed through a number of subsequent projects. The conception of time and space that appears in Notebook 11, for example, is one that Whitehead returned to in his most recent fi lm, Terrorism Considered as One of the Fine Arts (UK/AT, 2009). The Theft, Film Treatment, 1963 A 12 Minute Experimental Film, Black and White, 16 mm written photographed edited directed music composed and played by Peter Whitehead. Synopsis A young sculptor is at work. His sculpture unmistakably resembles the female form. He is in a state or emotional anxiety, being confused between his love for art and his love for a woman. To resolve the problem he decides to act. He has fallen in love with a poster painting that is hanging outside the Royal College of Art and decides to steal it- the painting is a collage of images, photographs, sculpture, drawings of animals, drawings of girls, words. . . . He takes the painting home and gloats over it. He notices that some of the images are stills from the fi lm Last Year at Marienbad.1 Unfortunately the theft is discovered and he is caught. The interrogator forces him to tell the truth; the motive for the theft of the worthless poster? A strong light is shone in his eyes and he thinks. As he thinks, he admits that he sees a series of mental images. However, the theft has become confused with the theft of a girl the previous summer, a chase by her ex- boyfriend, the Marienbad fi lm, the Albert Memorial with its animal sculptures, the Marienbad girl at the zoo, etc., etc. The more he tries to locate the truth in his own mind, the more his emotional involvement with these acts confuses the certainty of any of them. The interrogator pronounces him guilty and sentences the artist to life imprisonment. The fi nal image is the same as the fi rst- he is still working on his sculpture. Theory The fi lm is an attempt to build up a continuum of images unrelated in the normal time sense, but all related to the context of the stolen painting- the subject of the painting is the subject of the fi lm. The three powerful experiences, the theft of the painting, the theft of the girl and the Marienbad fi lm, become confused into one experience in the mind of the boy. The attempt to force an interpretation onto these events (by the interrogator) fails to resolve them, but makes them merge even more. The collage form which utilises the images of the stolen painting give the fi lm the unity that the boy's mind lacks- we see the random continuity of the images, but they are continuous in the context of the collage poster. …

<i>The Perception of Life</i> Documents

The Perception of Life Documents Peter Whitehead While studying at Cambridge University, Peter Whitehead worked in the Medical Research Council Unit at the university's Cavendish Laboratory. The following notes, written specially for this volume, outline this work and point to its influence upon his subsequent work, particularly The Perception of Life (1964) and his novel The Risen (1994). Whitehead's notes are followed by a short series of documents that pertain to Perception: an extract from a 1964 brochure produced by the Nuffield Foundation Unit for the History of Ideas that describes the film, and two reviews of the Nuffield project as a whole that appeared in the Guardian and the Times. In addition to Perception, three further Nuffield films were produced during 1964: The Perfection of Matter (UK, 1964) by June Goodfield and Don Levy, Goodfield's The Discovery of the Past (UK, 1964), and Levy's Time Is/A Question of Time (UK, 1964). Peter Whitehead's Notes on the Medical Research Council Unit 1. In my first year at Peter house, I studied physics, chemistry, and maths. 2. My tutor was Dr. John Kendrew, future Nobel Prize winner and director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Unit in the Cavendish Laboratory. I said I wanted to change my subjects at the end of this first year. I asked to do history and philosophy of science and physiology. He agreed, but suggested—as I also needed another subject—mineralogy and crystallography. Because his work was with X-ray crystallography, I might find it especially interesting. I could see him at work. Which I very soon did! [End Page 91] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Peter Whitehead's work at the Medical Research Council Unit, 1961. Perspex molecule: "We can only see SOME of the points where they overlap—as in moiré patterns." 3. Soon into the second year, having also discovered the mystery and magic of crystallography—especially rock slides and polarised light—he suggested I work part-time for him as an assistant in the MRC Unit. 4. As I was living in Cambridge with my wife Diane and daughter Tamsin, I was there all year-round, so I could work full-time during the long holidays. I needed the money. 5. I eventually became a "lab technician" and it was my job to work with the interface to the massive new computer they had, built especially for them—EDSAC 2. This was the largest and fastest in the United Kingdom (and famous for it) and had been used by all the microbiologists and X-ray specialists in the MRC, including Francis Crick, Max Perutz, Sydney Brenner, and of course John Kendrew. (All these people won Nobel Prizes for their work in this unit.)1 [End Page 92] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Mapping the molecule 6. They used a new technique—bombarding crystals of the various molecules—DNA, myoglobin, hemoglobin, etc.—with X-rays. These penetrated the lattices of the crystals and were refracted in the process; the resulting photographs of these interference patterns revealed the presence of atoms in these distinct, precise locations on the lattices, within the crystals. After lengthy analysis by the computer, a three-dimensional image of the whole molecule was created—and the number and positions of the various elements that made up the molecule became evident. They then created 3-D Perspex models of the various, very complex molecules. [End Page 93] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. "Multiple, interlocking structures" 7. My job, principally, was to analyse the photographic images. There were thousands created from each small crystal. This resulting circular image had black dots of varying intensity embedded in their own circles, in the pale white background of the inner space of the crystals. I had to "read" these and convert them to ticker tape (the same as used on Wall Street!), as this was the only way of inputting the data into the computer program that would then analyse them. It was intense, laborious work, but an extremely important part of the long process. [End Page 94] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure...

Other than Vérité: Sound and Moving Image in the Rock Music Documentaries of Peter Whitehead

When we think of music documentary and the emergence of rock in the 1960s, the classic fi lms of American cinema verite or direct cinema readily come to mind-What's Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. (Maysles brothers, US, 1964), Dont Look Back (D. A. Pennebaker, US, 1966), Monterey Pop (D. A. Pennebaker, US, 1968), Gimme Shelter (Maysles brothers, US, 1970), and Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh, US, 1970). These works have deservedly received great deal of critical attention. Unfortunately, their popularity suggests homogeneous approach to documentary during this era when, in fact, alternative practices fl ourished. Working coevally with Pennebaker, the Maysles brothers, and others, British fi lmmaker Peter Whitehead forged his own eclectic approach to documentary fi lms about pop u lar music. These groundbreaking works included documentaries on The Rolling Stones' 1965 tour of Ireland, The Beach Boys' 1966 visit to En gland, and early Pink Floyd in concert and in the studio. Because of legal obstacles that limited distribution, 1 Whitehead's fi lms are less well known than those of his American counterparts. However, viewers with sensibilities blunted by overexposure to the canon of direct cinema will discover in his fi lms refreshing take on the pop music scene of the de cade. Comparisons to fi lms such as Dont Look Back are expected,2 given the apparent similarities in subject and style. Yet, while sharing certain qualities with direct cinema, Whitehead's work remains profoundly dissimilar. This difference derives in part from the geo graph i cal distance between the United States and Britain, which allowed Whitehead to develop working practices unhampered by the obsessive polemics of the Americans. Because he drew inspiration from sources both selective and wide- ranging-from the Eu ro pe an art fi lm auteurs such as Bergman and Godard and from his training as newsreel cameraman- his diverse body of work refuses facile pigeonholing. Ultimately, Whitehead is bricoleur of cinema, determined to get the job done with the tools hand in the time allowed. I focus here on Whitehead's approach to audiovisual synchronization, for I believe this aspect clearly distinguishes his work from that of his American contemporaries and also illustrates his improvisatory manner of working. Four of Whitehead's music documentaries are addressed, each of which has its own mode of treating the relationship between moving images, speech, and music. I demonstrate that such diverse approaches preclude any adherence to the doctrine of verite. The Doctrine Although the practitioners of direct cinema did not conform to the caricature typically painted of them, it is nonetheless accurate to claim that they pursued naturalism as repre sen ta tional practice- especially as it pertained to audiovisual components.3 For Leacock, Pennebaker, Drew, Maysles, and company, portable sync sound represented the Holy Grail.4 To reject it apostasy. Yet sync sound sought after without critically examining its value. Why it so desirable? Perhaps perceptible disjunction between what we see and what we hear makes us wonder whether some tampering might have occurred in that gap. In other words, hiatus between sound and image presents an opportunity for the fi lmmaker to intervene. The power to capture reality unawares has persisted as an ideal, but as one seldom attained. We may imagine pure form of direct cinema, but the practice of fi lmmaking inevitably necessitates compromise.5 As Joe McElhaney observes, the Maysles brothers violated the codes of direct cinema at almost every turn.6 Nevertheless, these fi lmmakers continued to pledge themselves to a documentary cinema in which truth and reality are simply out there in the world, waiting to be captured on fi lm.7 Whitehead admits for time, he too was swept up little by that, but he soon realized that the notion of the objective documentary totally wrong and a total lie. …

Whitehead, Djuna Barnes, and Freud's <i>Dora</i>: Introduction to Two Treatments

Whitehead wrote two film treatments, Dora and Cassation, in 1978 or 1979, but they never went further than this preliminary stage. Nevertheless, they are interesting in and of themselves. think both projects could have yielded fascinating films, as they broach highly feminist subjects in which Whitehead locates personal themes- themes revealed directly in the choice of these motifs and indirectly through what was included or excluded from the original sources. The first, Dora, Sigmund Freud's notorious case, is famous, much discussed, analyzed, and reinterpreted topic that has been part of feminist discourse from the early 1970s to today;1 and the second, Cassation, is an esoteric 1929 story by little- known but cult figure- the literary beacon, Djuna Barnes. In both circumstances, there is relationship with young woman and an older, domineering mentor figure- woman in Cassation, man (Freud) in Dora. There is tension, sexual and authoritative, between the two. There is sex implied between parental figure and the young woman- in Dora's case, she becomes ill from the libidinous pressures of her father and his friends. In Cassation, the older woman possibly sleeps with the girl and wants to mother her with voracious, almost carnal closeness. In both, there is parting between the two that leaves uncertain exactly who has authority and of what that authority is actually composed. Themes of sexual domination and the subversion of that domination- of incest, control, and alienation- are evident in Whitehead's work. In the two treatments, he links these issues- and the Dora case and Cassation themselves- through Djuna Barnes's 1936 novel, Nightwood, especially through its lead character, Nora Flood. Whitehead has complex relationship with Barnes's writing. He tried to buy the rights for Nightwood from New Directions, as others had done and failed.2 He named his youn gest daughter Robin3 after the character of Robin Vote in Nightwood.4 He has likened himself to Dr. Matthew O'Connor, Nightwood's extreme character.5 He felt that his 1990 novel Nora and ... was the one he most loved- felt to be close to me, and the one heavily influenced, albeit tangentially, by Nightwood. NOT in style ... but it was NORA ... in Paris, May 1968 ... my love of Paris ...6 Whitehead's novel is set in Vienna, but for him the city evokes Nora Flood, Nightwood's protagonist, lover of Robin7 and friend of the doctor, who wanders through 1930s Paris. Somehow, Nora's life there reminds Whitehead of his life in the rioting Pa ri sian streets in 1968. To connect Nightwood's Nora to moment so important to Whitehead's politics suggests that he feels deep identification with the character. He sees his own Nora as shadowy reflection of a Nora Flood8 and feels very strongly about Barnes's work. I see my novel [Nora and ... ] as much more in the style of the Spillway short stories. Not NWood ... but still that other Djuna Barnes territory. think it is my serious and accomplished novel. Female sexuality, Paris 1968, the Warsaw Ghetto ... on the Warsaw Ghetto film. The young girl digging in the mud ... looking for food.9 Nightwood centers on Nora, an expatriate American living in Paris, whom Barnes depicts as strong archetypal figure of contradictory traits- intense, detached, thoughtful, unconscious, stalwart, fragile, worldly, and provincial.10 But when she becomes involved with beautiful, unfaithful, animalistic, unreachable woman, Robin Vote, who then leaves her, Nora is unable to function. The novel ends with catastrophic meeting between the estranged, star- crossed lovers, where both seem to psychologically disintegrate. Spillway and Other Stories, Barnes's 1920s collection, which includes Cassation, is written less baroquely than Nightwood, but follows similar themes of disconnection, passion, homosexuality, and disappearing Eu ro pe an grand or affected manner. Cassation11 is sketchy, short monologue spoken by nineteen- year- old Rus sian dancer to character, Madame (who is never explained and does not feel present), of her love for and departure from an enigmatic, temperamentvoll [temperamental, vivacious] and tall, kraftvoll [forceful] and thin,12 Italian woman in her forties. …

Resonances and Dissonances: On Reading Artson

Resonances and Dissonances:On Reading Artson Michael Marmur (bio) Artson Within the Immanent Frame There are many compliments to be paid to Brad Artson for his delineation of a Jewish Process Theology. He is bold, sensitive, articulate, remarkably well read in a variety of areas—including in aspects of physics and cosmology, which have not been the domain of rabbis for centuries. The best compliment I can pay him is to read him in the light of some of the most significant Jewish thinkers of recent times, and to offer some personal reflections. Both resonances and dissonances emerge from such readings. There is nothing new in the attempt to present Judaism through the prism of Process. As demonstrated in the 1996 collection Jewish Theology and Process Thought, Jewish thinkers have been engaging with the work of Whitehead, Hartshorne, Peirce, James, and others who have contributed to this approach.1 Artson is fully aware of this background and cites such thinkers as diverse as Hans Jonas and Harold Kushner, who have found the language of Process useful in the delineation of their own Jewish world-view. A becoming God, a God who is both less and more than omnipotent—such a God can be traced in the Jewish tradition, and may be a God in whom Jews of today can believe. Brad Artson's theology is situated squarely within what Charles Taylor has called "the immanent frame." In his magisterial study A Secular Age, Taylor describes the processes by which that faith, which was axiomatic and all-pervasive in 1500, has become impossible or unnecessary for many by 2000. The immanent frame comes into being as the [End Page 105] result of the complex yet discernible rise of individualism, the crumbling of earlier cosmic orders, the impact of Science and Reform, and many other factors. At a crucial juncture in his argument, Taylor makes a significant distinction: The immanent order can . . . slough off the transcendent, but it doesn't necessarily do so. What I have been describing as the immanent frame is common to all of us in the modern West. . . . Some of us want to live it as open to something beyond; some live it as closed.2 Artson inhabits the immanent order. His work appeals to our reason, even as it challenges the dominance of a certain understanding of the rule of Reason: the canons of rationality are to be respected, even as the bullets of rationalism are being dodged. However, in sharp distinction to the current celebrities of the God-as-Dangerous-Delusion school, he refuses to see this frame as closed off to the possibility of transcendence. As inhabitants of modernity's immanent frame we need to acknowledge that for most of us a God of reward and punishment, a God who wreaks stern judgment on innocents—such a God cannot be believed in and worshipped. A wholly powerful and knowing God will not stand, or we will not stand before such a God. A God who demands obedience beyond credulity and common sense and current thinking demands too much. Artson's claim is twofold: he argues that the immanent frame can indeed be spun open (to use Taylor's terminology). He goes to great lengths to demonstrate that the claim of the current brigade of God-slayers, according to which any acceptance of the scientific worldview leaves no space for any meaningful God concept, is wrongheaded. In parallel, he claims that Jewish tradition is open to a theological vocabulary more nuanced and complex than the standard nostrums and declarations of unswerving faith. Evil and the Limited God Brad Artson struggles sensitively with the phenomenon of evil in the world. His approach underscores the notion of a limited God, to be understood not as the source of our suffering but rather as a resource for coping, reframing, [End Page 106] and responding to it. Along with this re-casting of God's role in the drama of evil, human perspective is also called into question: what we experience as unmitigated evil may serve a necessary role in some greater dynamic. Rather than sulk in futile ratiocination, we can take on responsibility for world-mending. Theodicy is to...