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Open letter to Damian Thompson on reading a bit of his wretched new book

Dear Damian

I was flipping through Counterknowledge: how we surrendered to conspiracy theories, quack medicine, bogus science and fake history in Waterstones, Trafalgar Square, earlier today, quickly but carefully and with a slight intention to buy, but since reading up on your oeuvre I’ve put off paying for it until I can pick up a used copy. I’d hate to encourage you.

I find it anything but astonishing that a person of faith takes the trouble to publish a book damning all but the big narratives of culture and science. This sort of thing happens all the time. And it’s anything but startling to see someone bandy the word ‘reason’ around and adduce science simply in an attempt to scatter the opposition and pre-emptively shut up those who don’t hold the same tenets of faith that they do, who don’t presume to start from Enlightenment reason — anything but — and who don’t base their knowledge on the last word in science.

It would be more interesting to take the argument to the opposition by examining the ideological ground on which they stand, if it’s apparent, and put aside for a book’s space the preconceptions borne of dualism, under which reason automatically, naturally and without prejudice cannot help but oppose wild unreason. If it seems to you that there are enough “What ifs” without you adding to their number, perhaps you’re missing the point of scientific inquiry. What if the straight median line of progress through reason running through the idea of God, slave-owning democracies, hierarchical meritocracies, the dispassionate science of economics, and all the rest of it, touches affective narrative waymarkers either sides of the line in its inexorable linearity, rather than existing simply as a forward-moving thing ever-present and immanent?

With science being, as you imply, a relentless ongoing process of inquiry with no knowledge gap untested, leaving only reason in its indisputable wake, and since history is just the one full, true story, leaving no one ignorant of its veracity, surely we are, as you contend, replete with precisely the positive knowledge we require. However, you don’t start from such a positive position. You argue that we should not tolerate counterknowledge and must destroy it because it is non-knowledge. In fact, you go further and suggest that counterknowledge is worse than ignorance because it purposefully seeks to negate knowledge’s true other. It is precisely the beyondness and independence of that anti-ignorance strategy that makes it so attractive to freethinkers and so dangerous from your point of view.

What could it be in counterknowledge that so unites sceptics and true believers?

Reason

And what of those dangerous people who benefit from the progression of true knowledge but insist on negating its reasonable provenance? I denounce your attempt to divide a world of thinking people into those who’ve failed to embrace reason/science and those who remain true to the one true story you narrate. Yours is a mean–spirited, ugly, divisive sort of discourse.

Although I’m with you in detesting the New Age and conspiracism knowledge markets, I can’t go that extra mile with you and label all unincorporated counterknowledge as moribund. Why? I’m not certain that all known counterfactuals — not to mention the unknown ones — have been disproved or illuminated by scientists or that one history, the true one you’re advancing in opposition to the ‘fake’ ones you mention — not even the history of science or the story of God — is capable of describing all the truth of human experience now and in the past.

Do I accept ‘reason’ and ‘Enlightenment’ as facts? No, because I’ve read widely. Do I accept that science is a dispassionate search for true facts, a thing apart? No, because fallible humans make it. Do I accept that history can be faked? Yes, because all stories are part fiction, even the true ones. Do I accept there is danger in people reconsidering history, science or culture in the light of their own experience? No, because that’s exactly how those things are made. Can I conceive of a turning point in human affairs at which ‘reason’ supported by faith-in-ritual — including faith in rituals of knowledge acquisition and transmission — triumphs over counteractive heterogeneity and productive, interactive experiential differences, whether reasonable? Yes, I’m afraid I can. And that is why I’m not supporting you by buying your book.

Thanks for doing me and the reading/thinking public the courtesy of being accessible to criticism. I wish more writers would do the same.

All the best

Neil Palmer

Feastofpalmer.com

Edit: I wrote this to post in the contact form linked to on http://www.damianthompson.net/. But the web form does not work, so I’ve posted it here. And I retract the last paragraph.

Posted by Neil on January 8, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Tags: Counterculture, Individualism, The Unexplained, hauntiquarianism
11 comments | Permalink

Doo-Wop Shambhala

Originally a B-side to “The Lonely One”, Sheriff and The Ravel’s “Shombalor” (1959, Vee-Jay Records, 306) is a massive slab of on-the-spot mic poetry, otherwise known as Doo-Wop. A different spelling of “Shombolar” was used on Songs The Cramps Taught Us, Volume One (2001). It’s possible that the song name printed on the original Vee-Jay record label was a mis-spelling of what the group called their tune: it certainly sounds like “shombolar” when they sing it. I’m sticking with The Cramps’ revisionist version of “Shombolar”.

I’m guessing that Sheriff and The Ravels were a black group, because that’s the Doo Wop demography if not its constituency, and I’d say they were from Chicago, because Vee-Jay was based there. But I don’t know for sure. They’ve a heavy, steady rockabilly sound — probably why The Cramps dug the disc — anchored on slap bass, rim-shot drums, treble guitar and, I think, a tinkle of piano in the background. Beyond the bass undertones, the vocals including the lead are mid-range and don’t venture into the outer space tones of, say, The Four Seasons’ Frankie Valli. The guitar intro, flamenco-ing octaves up and down in double-quick time, is worth the price of admission.

I first heard “Shombolar” on Songs The Cramps Taught Us, Volume One and it immediately jumped ahead of The Chips‘ “Rubber Biscuit” (1956, Josie Records, Josie 803) in my mind’s ear. “Shombolar”, like “Rubber Biscuit”, has running through it echoes of reform school marching rhymes (see the Wikipedia entry for The Chips). It’s “Go left, right, left, right” refrain and the lines, “I love left foot stomp and-a right foot drag, ‘n-a / Hey it’s good to march!” add a layer of reflexive sharpness to the song’s expression of culture and make the cultural link between Doo Wop and the criminal justice system even more explicit than The Chips’ rhythmic-linguistic allusions do. “Shombolar” is as much a prison song as Sam Cooke’s later and more famous tune, “Chain Gang” (1960, RCA Victor, 47-7783).

Either way of spelling/pronouncing “Shombalor” is similar enough to Shambhala, the mythopoeical predecessor to the fictional Shangri-la, to merit mention. Maybe there was a girl with an ebonic phonetic moniker involved. This usage may even be a popular memory trace of the 1930s and 40s fictional comic book and radio crime fighter, The Shadow, who was trained in mystical Shamballah. Even though The Shadow radio programme went off air in 1954, there is evidence that his influence persisted in rockin’ n’ rollin’ minds. Link Wray used The Shadow’s sinister moralising catchphrase, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” at the start of his instrumental “The Shadow Knows” (1964, Swan Records, S-4171). Or perhaps members of the vocal group came across Shambhala in contemporaneous references to the Dalai Lama’s escape from Tibet and into India on 31 March 1959, which was all over the news, and incorporated it as a motif in their new tune.

Check The Hound’s archive for “Shombolar”: hear this howlin’ rave and die! Alternatively, Songs the Cramps Taught Us, Volume One is still available from all good record shops. You can even get “Shombalor” legitimately for the first time outside of the vintage record racks, since it was reissued on the Vee-Jay Definitive Collection LP in August 2007. I imagine that the sleeve notes on the latter would provide a much needed supplement to this speculative post.

In an attempt to enhance your listening experience, I’ve transcribed the words as I hear them. I’d be happy to accept plausible suggestions for alterations.

“Shombolar”

Go left, right, left right
Go left, right, left right
Go left, right, left right
Go left, right, left right