Tuesday, April 27, 2004
posted by Richard Seymour
Note: I have recently been joined at the Tomb by a quintet of extraordinarily talented writers. They may well decide to tell you something about themselves if you ask them. What follows is about me. It is specially prepared so that trolls can come to my site and refer to me as "Ballymena Boy" and make wise-ass comments about me being a student. Cheers.Name: Get stuffed.
Date of Birth: 28th October 1977.
City of Birth: Ballymena, Northern Ireland.
Education: High School (yes, they use the American appellation in Northern Ireland); Technical College; Greenwich University; Birkbeck College.
Favourite topics: Politics, history, philosophy, literature, cinema.
Favourite authors: Oscar Wilde; Ken Kesey; Christopher Fowler; Will Self; Stephen Fry; Gore Vidal; Philip Roth; Bret Easton Ellis; EM Forster; Joseph Heller; Salman Rushdie.
Favourite comedians: Bill Hicks; Woody Allen; Chris Morris; Chris Rock; Eddie Murphy; Lenny Bruce; Mort Sahl; Barry Humphries; Ben Elton (before he started fucking around with musicals).
Favourite theorists: Slavoj Zizek; Alain Badiou; Ernesto Laclau; Anthony Giddens (circa 1980s); Alex Callinicos; Terry Eagleton.
Favourite historians: Eric Hobsbawm; Christopher Hill; G R Elton (I know, but he's clear and argumentative and witty); Robin Blackburn; Fernand Braudel.
My Good Looks:
My story: I was raised in Northern Ireland by a pack of wolves - or "Protestants" as they called themselves. I excelled at school and was quickly sent out on field trip missions of reconciliation in which I would kill people of both sides of the ethnic divide. One thing I never got the hang of was direct physical violence, despite the best efforts of television, friends, relatives and parents. Boys would punch me on the face, and I'd apologise. Girls would punch me on the face, and I'd thank them. (So would my parents, come to that).
People started to worry that I might be gay. It was worse than that - I was a socialist. I had been conserving bitterness and envy, and had found my outlet when I began to imagine a world without the Conservative Party. I read Oscar Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and decided that I was vaguely for some kind of libertarian-anarcho-syndico-communism which I imagined would come from everyone learning to love one another, put down the guns, and hug. I was disgusting. Just as many homosexuals had fled Northern Ireland for London over the past few decades, I decided that only the capital could be a sufficient receptacle for my socialist outpourings. The love-and-peace aspect of it grew inflamed, suppurated, then finally died down. Following New Labour's electoral victory in 1997, I decided to extricate myself from the infamous "honeymoon". There were too many damned people between the sheets, and most of them were journos and disreputable celebs (Mick Hucknall, for Christ's sake!).
I began to read Tony Benn's books and interviews, and even made a half-hearted attempt to read Das Kapital. I got the message alright - "M-C-M". Why had I missed this obvious point before? Following a series of heated confrontations with SWP members on their street sales, I was roundly sold several copies of Socialist Worker and given a Review round the head for bad manners. I joined, and a world of dialectical this and class struggle that exploded into my lexicon. Since then I have mainly worked for a living and tried to do some reading on the side. I am now studying Politics, Philosophy and History at Birkbeck College, London. I am late for my lecture.
F.A.Q.:
Q: Why do you call yourself 'lenin'?
A: It was a toss-up between Trotsky and Lenin at the time. I just felt the need for a big bad name to make a splash in the ever-expanding Blogging Ocean. And, as Slavoj Zizek points out, Lenin is one of the last truly subversive signifiers. The Wall Street Journal can appreciate Marx, but Lenin still evokes a shiver or two. Therein lies the attraction.
Q: Are you single?
A: No, but I am highly susceptible to bribery.
Q: I ask because my mother -
A: Next question, please!
Q: If you're so smart, how come everything you write's so stoopid?
A: I had a bad upbringing.
Q: Yeah, how come everything you write's so fucking -
A: Ah, throw me a frickin bone here! Next question.
Q: Do you support the violent overthrow of the ruling class?
A: Is that a trick question? Give me a Kalashnikov and I'll go out and overthrow the bastards myself tonight! It'll be over before Coronation Street. (I'm kidding. Of course, the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class. I just wish they'd get a fucking move on).
Q: Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Socialist Workers' Party?
A: Have you no decency? Finally, sir, have you no decency? Well, I haven't - I joined the party in 1998. Read the 'life story' above.
Q: How much money do you make?
A: Depends how many punters I get. That's all, thank you. No more questions. I'm suddenly coming over all Mark Kimmitt...