Introduction | Philosophy | Art | Film | Contact | Links | Sitemap
 |
The real meaning of Punch & Judy (2009) More info |
| |
Maurice Cowling (2009) More info |
| |
Agamemnon by Aeschylus (2009) More info |
| |
Beowulf - Grendel (2008) More info |
|
New Left marxism and the Frankfurt school (2008) More info |
|
Methodology, Historiography, Hermeneutics and Revisionism (2007) More info |
|
Credo: a Nietzschean testament (2007) More info |
|
Bill Hopkins (2007) More info |
|
Robinson Jeffers (2007) More info |
|
Wyndham Lewis (2007) More info |
|
Against The Turner Prize (2006) More info |
|
British Painting (2006) More info |
|
Heidegger & Death - Totality's Time (2006) More info |
| |
Shakespeare & Elgar (2006) More info |
This speech illustrates the folkish origins of those who control this popular art form, Punch & Judy. They are known as the Professors. Their retinue of dolls dates from Porsini (sic) and was explicated by Collier and Cruikshank in the early eighteen hundreds. A full retinue of these hand-carved puppets take their turn to strut upon this imaginary stage. All of the following appear in our red-and-yellow booth: Punch, Judy, the Baby, Devil, Policeman, Pretty Polly, Hangman (Jack Ketch), Jim Crow, Joey the Clown, Scaramouch, Toby Dog, Hobby Horse, the Bottler, Beadle, Judge, Minister, Doctor, Crocodile/Dragon and Skeleton… Root-Toot-Toot. That’s the way to do it!
Professor Maurice Cowling was once described by an editorial in the Daily Telegraph as the Don of dons. He certainly intellectually ‘terrorised’ a generation of liberal students who came his way at Peterhouse College, Cambridge. His most famous academic work, The Diplomatic Response to Hitler, Anglo-German Relations (1933-1939) [Chicago University Press] was sold by Dr William Pierce’s National Alliance, for example. This talk was given by Jonathan Bowden to a group of students who are Nationalists and paleo-conservatives.
A fantastic, high quality rendition of 'Agamemnon' produced by the BBCollective. This first part, based upon Aeschylus's Oresteia, is performed entirely by Jonathan Bowden.
BEOWULF is an epic drama dating from the eighth century. It has to be considered a masterpiece of Old English and the first great work of our literature. In this version Jonathan Bowden utilises the tradition of the Skald - or semi-conscious poetic inspiration - in order to bring the work to life. He simultaneously inflects, translates, enunciates and interprets the narrative as it proceeds. Has our performer begun a Bardic quest of his own?
This lecture covers a wide panorama which deals with the extreme left in the 19th and 20th centuries. By dint of foregrounding T.W. Adorno's and Horkheimer's The Dialectic of Enlightenment, the speaker casts a critical eye over thinkers like Gramsci, Lenin, Plekhanov, Trotsky, Lowenthal, Marcuse, Gorz, Mach, Althusser, Lefebvre, Soboul, Hobsbawn, Cixous and mass-murderers such as Pol Pot.
In a highly academic discourse Mr Bowden ranges over interpretations of Cromwell's Irish expedition, the biographies of Antonia Fraser and Christopher Hill, together with distinctive versions of the American Civil War and the Boer War (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle versus Thomas Pakenham). He also examines the testament of a range of writers like Chomsky, Thion, Barnes, Maslow, Samning, Butz, Steiglitz, Rudolf, Graf, Devi, Walendy, Faurisson and Joachim Hoffmann's exegesis concerning Stalinist atrocity.
In this speech or oration Jonathan Bowden looks back on his political career and discusses the factors which have influenced him. He also draws attention to a current of thinking called authoritarian individualism or egoism a la Nietzsche, Barres, Stirner, Carlyle and Junger.
Bill Hopkins is one of the most important anti-humanist intellectuals of yesteryear. Born in Cardiff in 1928, he remains the author of one extraordinary novel, The Divine and the Decay (also known as The Leap), as well as the essay Ways Without a Precedent. Magisterially influential behind the scenes, his wingspan extends to outsider art, modernist criticism and elitist politics.
Robinson Jeffers died in 1962. An American poet, he proves to be the most radical pagan in verse to have composed in the last century. Outstripping D.H. Lawrence in works like Steelhead, Tamar, Roan Stallion and his version of Euripides’ Medea, Jeffers carries out a revolt against the modern world. Almost an intellectual terrorist – he remains unique.
Wyndham Lewis was the founder of vorticism in English modernist art. A revolutionary creator, Lewis fashioned a wide range of work in satire, abstraction, polemic, belletrism, autobiography and stylistic excess. Blinded by Cancer at the end of his life, one painting, The Siege of Barcelona, and a novel, The Apes of God, codify his range. A British encyclopaedist – only Picasso in painting and Celine in prose come close.
What's wrong with the Turner Prize? Ah, there hangs a tale for this or any other day. For who, on pain of being demonised as a reactionary by contemporary opinion, can object to such a circus? To be specific, are works such as a shark held in taxidermic thrall, a demi-monde's unmade bed, a pointillist version of Myra Hindley made from infantile thumbs, and a medley of semi-paedophile dolls, really deserving of a Tate house cup? A recipient of which receives £20,000+ on the one hand, and a dollop of tabloid notoriety, on the other. All of it in relation to Turner; yes, that's right, John Ruskin's moral exemplum, and the foremost British impressionist in nineteenth century England. Does it even really matter? The response has to be a resounding YES.
Whereas the Turner Prize's relative failure, superintended by Serota at Tate Britain and financed by Saatchi at County Hall, can be placed on a trident's three points. Does not Hermes stretch out from under the sea, grasping a thrice-spronged spear, in order to accompany a mage to his truth?
Listeners to this audio will have to be aware of a certain cinema verite quality. After all, the revolutionary French theorists called the 'Situationists' always believed that any background noise, echoes, concrete music, and general sound all contribute to the work’s impact.
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is widely considered one of the most original and important philosophers of the 20th Century. In this live recording - written and presented by Jonathan Bowden at an academic lecture in 2006 - Heidegger's philosophy is evaluated. Seen as the twentieth century's chief metaphysical objectivist, the lecturer examines Being and Time within Dun Scotus' trajectory. Heidegger emerges, in this analysis, as a leading essentialist or religious philosopher. His aim was to place man's ontology before death, to give life verity, and to unmask the Sphinx's riddle. Deep in the Black Forest, writing in his isolated chalet, Heidegger sought ultimate answers.
Let us suppose truth to be a woman, Friedrich Nietzsche quipped at the beginning of Beyond Good and Evil. Well, Heidegger dropped a different stone into this whirlpool. Attempting to go back to the pre-Socratics, or Sophists, he wished to authenticate 'Being'. Like Nietzsche, in his Letters, he saw threnody in a shepherd slaughtering. For him, after the purity of Aeschylus and Sophocles, western civilisation entered a state of decadence. Given this crisis, a revolutionary antidote became necessary.
In these two particular sound recordings - taken from the DVD Amor Patriae - Jonathan Bowden takes a timely and provocative look at 'politically incorrect' matters in works as diverse as Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, King Lear, Richard the Third, Timon of Athens, Henry V, The Taming of the Shrew and The Rape of Lucrece - not to mention related themes, imperially speaking, in Pomp and Circumstance, Cockaigne and The Dream of Gerontius.
Copyright © 2010 Jonathan Bowden