To Dis or not to Dis? Disobedience and the Case of the Naughty in Relation to Law

This piece was ori­gin­ally writ­ten for and presen­ted at the Dis­obedi­ence Work­shop (20 – 21 May 2011) at the School of Law, Birk­beck College.

Since put­ting together my abstract a few months ago, there have been some alter­a­tions and addi­tions and ana­lo­gies that have influ­enced the writ­ing of this piece. I have been read­ing, and I have to say, not his entire opus, but some of the early writ­ings of the Amer­ican Beat nov­el­ist and poet, Wil­liam Bur­roughs. Whether I have liked it or not, he has mis­chiev­ously and some­what mys­ter­i­ously found his way into this paper, and whether he is applic­able or not we shall soon find out too. So the writ­ing has been kid­napped some­what, by Bur­roughs, lead­ing to a more sin­is­ter appre­ci­ation of dis­obedi­ence and law’s response.

Naugh­ti­ness

I have decided to focus on naugh­ti­ness, as a way of being, a rela­tion to, and product of, the pres­ence of law, or author­ity. ‘Naugh­ti­ness’, is assumed to be con­sidered a form of dis­obedi­ence, and even rep­res­ents the very ‘dis’ of dis­obedi­ence itself. ‘Dis’ means to set apart, to unravel, to decon­struct – ‘dis’secting. ‘dis’respecting’, ‘dis’sonance, ‘dis’ease, ‘dis’senting’, ‘dis’embodying, ‘dis’membering. In the form of naugh­ti­ness, it is the man­ner in which we are not obed­i­ent, the way in which author­ity enters daily life by our pro­act­ive denial of its pres­ence. It is a prac­tical and ver­nacu­lar form of res­ist­ance to law.

As one tries to write on naugh­ti­ness, the ques­tion that returns once and time again, is ‘what is naugh­ti­ness’? Defin­i­tions speak of mis­be­ha­viour, mis­do­ing, wrong­do­ing and ant­onyms of good­ness. When you are naughty, you are ‘up-​to-​no-​good’. In Italian, the trans­la­tion is ‘indis­cip­line’, the lack of obed­i­ence and dis­cip­line. In Span­ish, it is ‘trave­sura’, to tra­verse, to turn upside down. In French it is just plain bad con­duct. But is naughty really bad? It is undeni­ably a form of will­ful dis­obedi­ence. Fig­ures such as Mae West (1893 – 1980) made her career on ‘being naughty’, stat­ing: “I believe in cen­sor­ship. I made a for­tune out of it.” This is very much an adult naugh­ti­ness, one of tit­il­la­tion and mild sexual inde­cency, but more often than not, naugh­ti­ness also relates to chil­dren and their play­ful dis­obedi­ence. In the 14^th cen­tury, ‘naughti’ incurred being ‘needy’, or hav­ing noth­ing, or indic­at­ing a nought, or lack. The wicked­ness and moral wrong­ness is attested from then 1520s. From the 1630s, it takes on its more mis­chiev­ous form with which we are famil­iar with today.

Naugh­ti­ness appears through­out lit­er­at­ure through Shakespeare, the Bible, and even Monty Python. As we know from the film ‘The Life of Brian’: “He’s not the Mes­siah — he’s a very naughty boy.” And so he is not some­thing — he is cer­tainly not the Mes­siah, and that which makes him that nought (which is being told off by your mother in front of a great deal of people), is behav­ing incor­rectly in the eyes of someone else, or some form of author­ity. Within the Bible, naugh­ti­ness is wicked and evil and rep­res­ents sin­ful exist­ence and that from which one should seek redemp­tion: “Where­fore lay apart all filthi­ness and super­fluity of naugh­ti­ness, and receive with meek­ness the engraf­ted word, which is able to save your souls.” Shakespeare offers a dystopic vis­ion of naugh­ti­ness in ‘The Mer­chant of Venice’, as Por­tia sees a light in the dis­tance: “How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”

Bur­roughs

The evas­ive nature of pin­point­ing naugh­ti­ness is indic­at­ive of its func­tion and form as a way of being, and as a way of act­ing. It seems as though naugh­ti­ness comes from an indes­crib­able ‘nought’ (hint­ing to its ety­mo­logy), a space of com­prom­ise, or some­where in between. “Where does Bur­roughs fit into this?”, you might ask. I recently star­ted read­ing Bur­roughs, not in an aca­demic con­text, but one purely just to read. Hav­ing read only a seg­ment of his work, and that of his earlier tri­logy of works, ‘Queer’, ‘Junky’ and ‘Naked Lunch’, my know­ledge is not one of a Bur­roughs fan­atic. But it is enough to detect the rel­ev­ance of law, and the man­ner in which law relates to Bur­roughs’ writ­ing style, his exper­i­ences in life, and the way law is evaded, under­stood and util­ised in sym­bi­osis, through­out the snap­shot that I have read. To describe Bur­roughs as naughty, would seem wrong, but at the same time as law being present through­out, there are instances where Bur­roughs’ beha­viour acts in the same evas­ive, dif­fi­cult to describe way that attempt­ing to cat­egor­ise naugh­ti­ness acts too. Des­pite Bur­roughs’ seem­ing detach­ment from his world, you know that here is a man that tran­quil­ises him­self due to the heav­i­ness or over­whelm­ing­ness of his sur­round­ings, and his vul­ner­ab­il­ity and sens­it­iv­ity almost aches from the char­ac­ter Bill Lee, in Queer spe­cific­ally. This middle-​aged gay mis­nomer, who falls in love with Aller­ton, a younger, exper­i­mental char­ac­ter whom con­siders Lee as someone he wouldn’t wish cer­tain friends to know about. It is this aching that reaches out as an instance of the pres­ence of a norm, and its expect­a­tions, and the way in which Lee does not fit these soci­etal rules and anticipations.

Bur­roughs was gay, and a writer who, amongst other things, was riddled with the phys­ical effects of heroin and opi­ate addic­tion through­out the major­ity of his life. Des­pite that, he lived to the ripened age of 83, and died whilst still under­go­ing a course of meth­o­done. He seems to quite adeptly shoot just about any­thing into his veins, and clas­sify it in his lucid drawl with the clin­ical accur­acy of a labor­at­ory assist­ant. His raw, blank doc­u­ment­a­tions of his exper­i­ences, are hor­rific enough to per­suade any­one it would be a bad idea to do heroin, or ‘junk’ as he refers to it, describ­ing the addicts as iden­ti­fi­able by their smell of decom­pos­i­tion, their thick air of sup­pur­a­tion. His per­sonal life was thus sur­roun­ded by the law, in his terms, ‘agents’ and ‘pigeons’ (those selling heroin who were tip­ping off the police).

Not only that, but he acci­dent­ally shot his com­mon law wife dead whilst doing his Wil­liam Tell act at a party, aim­ing to shoot a glass off her head and the bul­let deflect­ing in the wrong dir­ec­tion. He got off charges of culp­able hom­icide with the help of an expens­ive law­yer, hired by the repu­ta­tion of his very wealthy fam­ily. Get­ting away with things was one of Bur­roughs’ skills, although he did get caught every now and then for drugs-​related offences. And so he was devi­ant in life, aswell as his writ­ing. The meld­ing of law and lit­er­at­ure is repro­duced clearly, the product and the pro­cess, as Bur­roughs’ life oper­ates in the same man­ner as that of which he speaks through his writ­ing. Bur­roughs in his writ­ing and his haunted self, seems to exem­plify a trick­ster char­ac­ter, a myth­o­lo­gical fig­ure that has appeared through­out the folk-​tales and story-​telling of many dis­par­ate cul­tures: The: “…Trick­ster is at one and the same time cre­ator and des­troyer, giver and neg­ator, he who dupes oth­ers and who is always duped him­self […] He pos­sesses no val­ues, moral or social, is at the mercy of his pas­sions and appet­ites, yet through his actions all val­ues come into being.” His pages depict a rare achromic starch­ness, that offer a lack as much as he gives. Bur­roughs as trick­ster is Bur­roughs using him­self as a siren for extreme life exper­i­ences, and the hon­esty of an account of life that exis­ted out­side of the mediocre. Bur­roughs as trick­ster, des­troyed and then cre­ated, claim­ing the death of his wife as that which, “… brought me in con­tact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and man­oeuvred me into a lifelong struggle, in which I have no choice except to write my way out.”

Thus Bur­roughs’ life was embroidered with law and res­ist­ing law. The legis­lat­ing of mor­als, and the res­ult­ant cre­ation of devi­ance weave in and out of his life nar­rat­ive, and that which he shares on the page. He writes on drugs that were becom­ing illegal, he writes on being homo­sexual, which became illegal, his books were con­demned and then adu­lated, he uses the law and gets off the murder of his wife, he tears apart the gram­mar of writ­ing in order to limit power of norm­ativ­ity. In the trial testi­mony of the pub­lic­a­tion of ‘Junky: the Defin­it­ive Text on Junk’, his agent, Alan Gins­berg, had to prove that the pub­lic­a­tion was actu­ally a book, and not junk in the unwanted product sense. And then his audi­ence show their naughtiness:

“… the gen­er­a­tion now react­ing so vis­cer­ally to Naked Lunch is the same gen­er­a­tion which only a few years ago was hand­ing sur­repti­tious cop­ies of it around with other such high school delights as clandes­tine beer or pot and photo-​copied por­no­graphic car­toons. Nat­ur­ally this has imposed on the book aroma which per­sists after it becomes sud­denly ‘legal’ and which determ­ines its mean­ing as newly pub­lic state­ment, not neces­sar­ily, how­ever, an aroma inher­ent to Naked Lunch itself.”

Bur­roughs’ life coin­cided with the world of nar­cotic pro­hib­i­tion, his fam­ily already affected by the stat­utory pro­vi­sion of the ‘Har­rison Nar­cot­ics Act’ of 1914, with the sui­cide of his morphine depend­ent uncle, Hor­ace Bur­roughs, after find­ing the crim­in­al­isa­tion of his con­di­tion too much. The act was draf­ted as a tax meas­ure to reg­u­late the mar­ket, but it soon was inter­preted as a law pro­hib­it­ing the sup­ply, and thus the illeg­ally gained, pos­ses­sion of opi­ates, coca, and help-​based smoke­ables. Bur­roughs doc­u­ments the state of Louisi­ana passing a law that crim­in­al­ised addic­tion, and with the decision of the Nar­cot­ics Bur­eau to incar­cer­ate addicts, Bur­roughs claimed the, “… real sig­ni­fic­ance of these scan­dal­ous laws is polit­ical.” He though law-​makers were gang­sters, where, “… eth­ics become fugit­ives, san­ity is branded mad­ness, and the artist’s only option is total res­ist­ance.” Even the paper­back industry was under scru­tiny of the law for pub­lish­ing works like those of Bur­roughs’. These laws per­col­ated through into his writ­ing, and there are some key con­cepts in rela­tion to his reac­tion to law that relates to naugh­ti­ness: those being con­trol, his ‘cut-​up’ tech­nique, and his descrip­tions of the ‘Interzone’.

As has been well-​documented, a cent­ral concept within his work has been ‘con­trol’, Bur­roughs being stated in Nathan Moore’s ‘Nova Law’, “… as one of the most fun­da­mental dia­gnosti­cians of the 20^th cen­tury [in] the role of power and bey­ond.” ‘Dis’, its ety­mo­logy and his­tory, is a pre­fix that is present within Bur­roughs’ work within many forms, but not one so obvi­ous as his writ­ing tech­nique. To dis­semble, to take apart, to ‘cut up’. The cut up tech­nique was a reac­tion to the omni­po­tence of con­trol, whether through nar­cot­ics laws or con­trol relat­ing to his sexu­al­ity. By cut­ting up, he diluted con­trol and dis­membered the rela­tions between words and images, pre­val­ent in his work from Naked Lunch onwards. Moore relays the prob­lem of con­trol as how to con­vince people to com­ply to norms — to cut up is to divert the pre­dict­ab­il­ity cre­ated by the norm. By cut­ting up, the gap between what hap­pens and should hap­pen, is revealed. Cut­ting up, diss­ing, exposes the effects of con­trol, and by free­ing the words, Bur­roughs pro­fanes. He is put­ting back that which had been taken away by law, as Agam­ben would agree: “… if ‘to con­sec­rate’ (sac­rare) was the term that indic­ated the removal of things from the sphere of human law, ‘to pro­fane’ meant, con­versely, to return them to the free use of men.”

Relat­ing this to naughty, Moore’s dis­cus­sion on con­trol and law’s pre­dict­ab­il­ity, indic­ate that which naugh­ti­ness seeks to sub­vert. By cut­ting up, one is tak­ing the law by sur­prise, and cre­ates moments of unfore­see­ab­il­ity. The repe­ti­tion of an act is not naughty, but the more one repeats, the more one becomes a law to one’s self, the more one oper­ates in a pre­dict­ive cast, and naugh­ti­ness trans­forms to another phe­nom­ena. As is evid­ent in this quote: “Once you begin being naughty, it is easier to go and on and on, and sooner or later some­thing dread­ful hap­pens.” Naugh­ti­ness does not allow for unsa­voury acts to hap­pen, because true naugh­ti­ness stops short of that unwanted incid­ent. Once some­thing dread­ful hap­pens, then naughty dis­ap­pears and another form of obed­i­ence to the act takes place. Naughty is not even obed­i­ent to itself, naugh­ti­ness is a law unto itself, it exists as a rela­tion, a way of being that allows sub­jects of law con­sciously detract the effects of law’s decisions and con­sequences. Naughty is a tac­tic as much as law is. Bur­roughs goes bey­ond naughty, in his life, but not in his writ­ing. He repeats his devi­ance time and again, gets caught, and kills his wife.

The Interzone is the point at which Bur­roughs’ describes break­ing from heroin, which sim­ul­tan­eously is at the point at which the drug deems itself most power­ful. It is a pre­cisely that, an interzone, the world between human will and its neg­a­tion: “… The point at which, in the absence of the drug, speech at all becomes pos­sible, but cor­rel­at­ively, the point at which the drive toward resumed addic­tion is at its strongest.” It is a move­ment in between two ways of being. This is where Bur­roughs resides when with­draw­ing from heroin, he is not within the world of norms, he is ‘The Invis­ible Man’: “’Pos­ses­sion’ they call it,”, writes Bur­roughs. “As if I was usu­ally there but sub­ject to goof now and again … Wrong! I am never here …”. He is nought, he is Not-​I, he is Not-​the-​Messiah.

Law’s Response

Bur­roughs’ exper­i­ences bring us back to law and the role of con­science within dis­obedi­ence and naugh­ti­ness: “The exper­i­ence of a sense of guilt for wrong-​doing is neces­sary for the devel­op­ment of self-​control. The guilt feel­ings will later serve as a warn­ing sig­nal which […] can [be] produce[d] […] [when] an impulse to repeat the naughty act comes over.” Law’s response to naugh­ti­ness is a state of con­fused per­missive­ness. To be naughty is not to be caught, to pacify and manip­u­late law, for naughty’s end. Bur­roughs’ hon­esty is his trade­mark, and this is what gets him either in trouble, with regards to his pub­lish­ers, or out of trouble, with regards to his savvy know­ledge of the sys­tem and his blank vacuum of tac­tical and legal manip­u­la­tion. On some levels, naugh­ti­ness oper­ates on a plat­eau of dis­hon­esty, but there is a con­scious and wil­ful objec­tion that allows for one’s con­science to cease from shift­ing from naughty to the next stage.

Is Naughty for­giv­able? Does it even require the bracket of abso­lu­tion? Of course Der­rida would say that the only thing that calls for par­don­ing is the unpar­don­able: “…for­give­ness for­gives only the unfor­giv­able. One can­not, or should not, for­give; there is only for­give­ness, if there is any, where there is the unfor­giv­able. That is to say that for­give­ness must announce itself as impossib­il­ity itself. It can only be pos­sible in doing the impossible.” In a pre­vi­ous paper, I argued that to be naughty implies the retreat of the law. But naugh­ti­ness is defined not by the absence of law, but by its very pres­ence, and the gap that lies in between preach­ing and prac­ti­cing, what ought and what is. It is law that for­gives naugh­ti­ness, like in the case of Bur­roughs and his expens­ive law­yer. Naugh­ti­ness is guilty, and the most unfor­give­able act because it is for­given by law. Naugh­ti­ness, is thus for­giv­able, because of the indi­vidual ask­ing to be for­given and their rela­tion to the law. Your sins always find you out – or, if you are naughty, you remain undetec­ted with only law itself keep­ing your secret. To be naughty depends on who you are, and who you are in rela­tion to law. Bur­roughs and the death of his wife — to be naughty is to be for­giv­able — in the instance of his wife, thus because he had a weighty repu­ta­tion, and his fam­ily, a weighty wallet.

Law responds by say­ing: “It’s alright, don’t do it again, now be gone with you”, in a jolly reb­uckle. The law says yes, because the law knows. There is a form of an auto-​immune tol­er­ance prac­ticed by law that allows the space for naugh­ti­ness. In the same sense, Bur­roughs under­stands that con­trol oper­ates para­dox­ic­ally: “…on the one hand, its tend­ency is toward abso­lute con­trol, while on the other, it requires the uncon­trolled as the point of its inter­ven­tion, caus­ing con­trol to vir­tu­al­ise the social field through con­stant ariations of the lat­ter.” In the same sense that cri­tiquing cre­ates altern­at­ive pas­sages, so too naugh­ti­ness, “… intro­duces a nov­elty that is external to law.”

Dis-​Ontology

To ask if dis­respect­ing is the same thing as dis­obedi­ence, is to high­light the evas­ive role of the nought. It may seem a gen­ial man­ner of res­ist­ance, but naughty has its dark­ness. Naugh­ti­ness, dis­respect­ing and dis­obedi­ence are dis-​ontologies, that rely on the exist­ence of rules against which to not exist, in turn. Bur­roughs disses left right and centre, but as soon as he is faced with law as tac­tic, remov­ing him­self from the con­sequences of acci­dent­ally shoot­ing his wife, he becomes naughty. He respects the exist­ence of law and his legal conun­drum, and uses the besuited bar­ris­ter to romance his way out.

Naugh­ti­ness’ evas­ive­ness is as evas­ive as this piece on dis­obedi­ence itself, it has a refusal of defin­i­tion and cogent form, but it is always defined by that which it is not. The gap between what hap­pens and should hap­pen, it infects neither, but acts as a sig­ni­fier of law’s exist­ence. Naughty is a law of the Not-​I (Naught-​I): it is an amor fati, the an-​archic affirm­a­tion of life. To be nought, noth­ing, to exist in rela­tion to some­thing else, in a stasis between ways of being, within the Interzone, is to exist as a dis-​ontology and a pro­fan­ing free­dom within bounds, the residue of some­thing most power­ful when it is Noch Nicht.

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