Apologies (really, I’m saying sorry? For what?!) for not posting much recently. It’s not that I’ve had nothing to say…just not much to say in public right now. Lots of writing getting done, so watch this space (if you like watching space.)

Anyways, something I’ve been pondering the last couple of days: the importance of transgression in ‘salvation’ narratives. By these, I mean stories that have a basic arc of saving something or some group from some evil or monster.

For various reasons I’ve been spending a fair bit of time thinking through the Harry Potter books recently – a series which I’ll defend against anyone in terms of their thematic seriousness and literary merit – and what is interesting is that this pattern is very much on show here. As I expressed in a recent tweet:

One thing we can be sure of: if there is a ‘forbidden forest,’ our hero will be bidden to enter it.

If you know the stories at all (yes, I know the films are crap) you’ll know that in every book Harry ends up breaking either school rules or ‘Wizarding Law’  - but does so not as a rebel, but as a ‘saviour.’ He is ‘the orthodox heretic.’

As the series continues we see that ‘the law’ turns more and more heavily against him and, by labelling him a serial transgressor, the community ostracise him to a pretty horrific extent. He is cast out of the school, a price is put on his head, and is turned into a figure of hatred by those in charge.

We can see how this turns out: our hero’s transgressions turn out to be the very thing that redeems the law and those who make it. Sometimes the law needs to be broken, in order that it may be remade properly.

The parallels with Christian theology should be fairly easily worked through; my current interest is more with how this plays out with the work on historic piracy that I’m writing, and how this impacts the current ‘Occupy’ movements.

I picked up an old copy of a 1970 ‘Ladybird’ book on piracy recently, which has this brilliant introduction:

In those days a man might legally be seized in the street by a ‘press-gang’ and compelled to serve for years as a sailor in a ship of the King’s Navy, often without his wife or family knowing what had happened to him. Sailors were badly fed and brutally punished, and sometimes they mutinied, murdered their hated officers and became pirates in well-armed ships. Pirates […] were mainly scoundrels and a menace to all honest folk.

This is the classic tension: the law has been broken, so these people must be branded a menace, and yet we can see why the law needs breaking and reforming.

The problem comes with the line at which orthodox heresy becomes violent transgression. Were the murders of their brutal Captains by pirates excusable? How much leeway should we give them for their historical context?

These are all questions I’ll be working through in the book… and looking at how this arc of redemptive transgression works out… Hope you’re still looking forward to it.

The answer is that they did, although it is not clear the extent to which women did turn pirate. The reason for this is that the women who were captured as pirates were dressed up as men, and it was only on further examination that they were identified as women – and excused the gallows as they were both pregnant. So it may well have been that there were more women who were pirates who simply never got caught. Certainly, the evidence suggests that there were more women involved in the Royal Navy of the 18th century than had been previous thought – working mostly as cooks or laundresses, but also as sailors.

The two most notorious female pirates were Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Bonny was the daughter of a rich merchant who left her inheritance and comfortable position for a life of adventure, while Mary Read ended up a sailor because of her mother’s impoverished background. Interestingly, both of them were disguised as boys from a young age to cover up scandals, and it seems that they took to their boyish attire for life.

Their lives as pirates though were marked by terrific courage, which was the real currency that pirates traded in. Pirate codes on many ships banned women from being on board, mostly because they thought that they might cause disturbance (although punishments for harassment of women captured were severe) but the fact that Bonny and Read fought for many years goes to show that they evidently won over the deep respect of their fellow crew-members. Indeed, both were commonly part of the initial boarding party sent onto captured ships – a job reserved for only the bravest and most experienced pirates.

The impact that these two had is difficult to gauge accurately, but there is evidence that ripples of influence can be detected throughout Europe in emancipatory struggles in the 18th and 19th centuries. What is more clear is that these women had a profound effect on those they served with, who treated them as equals and were prepared to go to their deaths for them. In this sense we might say that Bonny and Read had pirated the pirates: subverted the norms even of the emerging piratic society through their cunning and courage, and this contributed to the expansion of the culture of inclusion that embraced different religions, ethnicities, disabilities – and genders.

The work on piracy continues apace. One of the things I’ve been thinking about is the pirate emblem ‘The Jolly Roger.’ This skull and crossed bones, or swords, was hoisted by pirates as they approached vessels they were about to attack, as a sort of early warning / threat system. Crews who had turned mutinously on their captains would also hastily stitch together a Jolly Roger and raise it as a sign that they had ‘gone pirate.’ But what does this flag actually mean?

The skull and crossed bones was the symbol that was recorded in the ship’s log if a member of the crew died. As life aboard these ocean-going ships was horribly tough, this was not an uncommon occurrence. Traditionally then, the raising of the Jolly Roger has been taken as a way of driving fear into those the pirates were attacking – a fear that came from the message ‘we are going to kill you.’ In other words, pirates were warning those they attacked that they would bring death upon any who resisted.

But I believe there’s another way of looking at this flag. Pirates were, as the title of Marcus Rediker’s excellent book goes, Villains of All Nations. Almost all of them had turned pirate having been on naval or merchant vessels and rebelled. The fact that they did was unsurprising, as conditions were shockingly bad:

Sailors suffered cramped claustrophobic quarters, “food” that was often as rotten as it was meager, and more. They experienced as a matter of course devastating disease, disabling accidents, shipwreck and premature death. They faced discipline from their officers  that was brutal at best and often murderous. They got small reward for their death-defying labours, for wages were low and fraud in payment frequent. – Villains of All Nations p 43

They were “caught in a machine from which there was no escape, bar desertion, incapacitation, or death.” Sailors in the Royal Navies were the scum of the earth. To the officers who abused them – and often killed them – sailors were nothing.

So the approach of a pirate vessel flying the Jolly Roger was terrifying in another more radical way too. The skull and crossed bones does not mean ‘we are bringing you death’; rather it announces ‘we are the dead.’ We, the shat-on, the abused, the flogged, the ones you treated as less than human, have escaped your power, have slipped away from the identity you foisted onto us. We, the ones who you took for dead, are returning as the dead – and thus totally free of all fear, totally free of all human labels or classifications or ranks.

This is far more terrifying. The fear of death is only surpassed by one thing: the fear that those you have killed off, live on and will return to haunt you. This is what pirates did as they boarded other vessels. The Quartermaster would assemble the seamen of the captured vessel and ask among them ‘who will serve under the death’s head and black colours?’ Who, in other words, will be prepared to become as dead to the world of the Empire, of the King and Queen, of England and its rich merchants and iron-clad class system, and live on as pirate?

It’s here that we see an interesting parallel with Christianity emerging. Christians have traditionally worn crosses – a symbol of death. This isn’t worn to inspire fear (one hopes) – which is odd, given that the wearer is carrying around a symbol of torture. Rather, it is worn to signify personal death: the wearer has rejected all the identities that the world shoves upon us: Jew, Greek, Slave, Free, Male, Female – and has thus become terrifyingly free, unfettered by the norms which are meant to keep people in their place.

Pirates – and Christians – thus gather under an emblem of death not in order to inspire fear of death, or to create anarchy, but as a sign that they have died to the world, to the identities that the world pushed onto them. We might say that pirates did not raise the Jolly Roger as a symbol of violence, but rather as a declaration that no more violence could be done to them. They were dead, and yet lived still – and thus the Empire should tremble in fear, for the powerless slaves it had thought subsumed and controlled, were free and living without fear of the law.

Thought it would be good to catch people up a little on what I’ve been working on the last couple of weeks. As you’ll know if you’ve read here for any time, one of my areas of interest is around pirates and piracy. I posted a series entitled ‘A Plea for Christian Piracy’ some time ago which you can get to here (start at first post, obviously). That prompted quite a bit of discussion on various sites, which I rounded up into some links here.

Having taken the discussion about pirates a little further in the publication of Other (US version here) I felt as though I had probably done enough. However, things never quite work out that way, and a series of insights I’ve had recently a) through some psychotherapy and b) in conversations with Pete and others have led me to want to write a more comprehensive work on the place of pirates within our culture.

The basic thesis will be this: pirates emerge wherever cultures have become ‘blocked.’ This applies to the traditional idea of sea-faring pirates, who, as I’ve explored a little in Other, arose as a rebellion against the merchants and princes who enslaved them. They were victims of a blocked economic order, and their rebellion was an essential act of unblocking which eventually gave rise to a more equitable system.

Moreover, I’ll want to argue that this piratical act was part of the founding principle of America – called by some ‘the first pirate nation – and that this principle has been sadly lost. By exploring the phenomenal rise in media piracy I’ll examine how this has again occurred because of a blockage, and that tighter and tighter copyright laws and digital rights will do nothing to solve the problem. Indeed, if America is to regain something about the dream it seems to have lost, a return to piracy should be welcomed.

Finally though, my interest is in why pirates have remained so fascinating for children and parents alike. And, using some stuff from Star Wars and The Godfather, as well as some ‘dark inversions’ of parables, what the last part of the book will explore is the way that pirates gift us a way of unblocking the often difficult move from childhood to adulthood, and, by linking this to an atheistic view of the Christ event, we can see the pirate figure of Christ performing a radical act of theological unblocking too.

I currently don’t have a publisher for this as yet, but am talking to people about what I might do with it… which could end up a work of piracy in itself. But if you’re interested and would like to see it completed, then bombard me with encouragement and I’ll get off my ass to finish it. I mean, it’s only going to save the US from economic doldrums and the Western Church from certain death Can I get an ARRRRRR from you, you lubbers?!

With Other now out in the US and having been at Wild Goose and met a bunch of new people, I’ve been asked a fair bit ‘what are you working on now?’ Life is fairly complex to be honest, but here’s some of the things I’m working on at the moment:

Firstly, I’m working fairly intensively on a new novel. It’s set in Jaywick, a tiny sea-side resort on the coast of Essex which was recently rated the most deprived area in the UK. This has some personal connection as my great-grandfather bought the land in the 1920′s and created the village, initially as a bunch of beach-huts for holidays for people from the East End of London. It was wildly successful, but with the 2nd world war and other factors, it has fallen on very hard times. So the novel is, if you’ve read it, a bit of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, set in Essex, and will draw in issues of contemporary poverty and dislocation, as well as a good dose of the British sea-side frontier spirit. My first novel – which tracks the breakdown and recovery of an English teacher in a tough London comprehensive – is currently with a big UK publisher, who I know like it… but that’s a long way from ‘yes!’ Fingers crossed.

In terms of my work in education, I’m consulting with the BBC at the moment on a new programme involving Mathematics in nature and culture which will be out in the Autumn. Can’t say much more about that right now, but looks great. I’m also exploring a lot to do with ‘mindfulness’ in the classroom, thinking about how to help kids to concentrate better in a fractured and distracting digital world. Lots of neuroscience, bit of meditation techniques etc.

And in my other writing, I’m researching a new book which will concentrate on ‘the commons.’ I’m convinced that we have something to learn from the twin failures of Communism and Christianity. The church has never properly taken on board people’s alienation from their labour, which Marx got so right, and Marx never understood alienation from ‘the Other’. What is common to both is, ironically, a core idea of a ‘commons’, which we need to reinvigorate – linking this to Zizek’s work on the radical early church community, and the terrible erosion of the commons that capitalism/protestantism has brought.

Linking with this, I’m also working hard on expanding the piracy thesis, and linking this with a dark inversion of the prodigal son story, which draws in some thoughts about why we so often see ‘big’ ministries fail so spectacularly. I’m not sure what to do with this yet, as it’s something I want to get out there, but it feels too long for a blog post… and what magazines are truly interested in something that draws in psychoanalysis, theology, philosophy, films, pirates and everything else? May be I need to start a magazine

So… busy times, complex times. Need about 50 more hours each day, or a very rich patron. But hopefully will all come good. Thanks for messages of support of the field I’m ploughing… Encouragement is so welcome!

I got back from Wild Goose early yesterday morning and had to travel immediately to work to teach. So just about emerging from a jet-lagged coma and appreciating what a good time, and a good thing, Wild Goose was.

The dream of having an ‘American Greenbelt’ seemed – to talk to lots of US people – an impossible one at times, but it really did happen. There was a great spirit to the event, and though it was small, it had all of the right ingredients to grow properly in the right directions.

It was especially nice for me to hook up with people from the US who are familiar with my work, and to hear about people’s enthusiasm for ‘Other’ and my posts here – thank you, encouragement is so good!

I hope people continue to enjoy the US edition of ‘Other’ which came out recently. Do get a review onto Amazon if you have time. I’d love to spend more time in the US pushing the book and speaking about it, but it’s down to you guys now, so thanks in anticipation to anyone who’s spread the word. I’ll post the audio of my talk as soon as I get time.

I do hope to be back over sometime soon, and have talked about doing a ‘pirates and pyrotheology’ tour with Pete Rollins. But we’ll see. Was great to hook up with so many people – and here’s to Wild Goose 2012.

Firstly, the series of posts I did on ‘A Plea for Christian Piracy’ can be found here. Start at Pirates [1] and work on…

Secondly, some a round up of some of the other posts (from Pete Rollins, Richard Sudworth etc.) that that generated can be found here… Plus a little thought on the crucifix and the skull and crossed bones here.

Finally, here’s a longer article I wrote – a version of which appeared in Third Way magazine – In Defence of Pirates, which I hope will be helpful. All of this is thinking I’ve done which is condensed into the section on piracy in ‘Other’, which I hope people will go read and respond to too… I’m convinced that the pirate/heretic/cultural transfer and TAZ idea is one that is rich for our times:

This, then, is the lesson that pirates hold for us as people of faith. Was not the incarnation the penetration of our culture, a rupture that we experienced as heresy, a challenge to our economics and ethics that we resisted and fought back? Was not Jesus arrested and tortured and strung up for all to see like those 17th Century lovers of liberty, chained to gillets by the Thames? Did he not also demand that ‘no Man has the Power of the Liberty of another; and while those who profess a more enlightened Knowledge of the Deity […] prov’d that their Religion was no more than a Grimace’?

Financially, spiritually, culturally, theologically… the time for some good piracy is upon us. Avast, ye lubbers…

Having been reading a little of 2 Corinthians, I couldn’t help seeing something of the Pirate code in Paul’s words in chapter 6:

‘through glory and dishonour, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as imposters; known yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, but possessing everything… beaten stoned and shipwrecked.’

And who other than Pirates and Christians decorate their vessels with visions of death? The cross and the skull and crossed bones… In death, there is some strange freedom, some new liberty from those who pursue us and will have us killed.

We began this series with a question – why is it that we are happy to allow our children to go to pirate parties, and involve themselves in all sorts of pirate-related nonsense, when these are basically no more than violent thieves? We don’t put on GBH or Aggravated Robbery parties.

We have seen since that pirates function as shadows of ‘blocked’ societies: that they emerge from the detritus of capitalism or imperial Christianity. Initially seen as heretics, their activities actually hold within them the key for unblocking that society, and thus for retentive orthodoxy to be reinvigorated and liberated – to emerge from the shadows.

So, to complete the circle: why is it that children are fascinated by pirates – and, connectedly, why are we as parents so happy for them to engage in piracy? I believe it is because every parent knows that one day their child will have to make their own way. Every parent knows that for a child to individuate they must, in some faithful way, rebel and commit heresy. Pirates offer our children a taste of this journey, and thus carry with them a hope that heresy will change both parent and child, and that liberty will result.

Perhaps the best example of this process is in the story of Peter Pan. Ostensibly about ‘the boy who never grew up,’ it is really about Wendy, ‘the girl who realised that she had to grow up.’ Peter Pan comes to Wendy and her siblings, and they fly off away from home into the night. On arriving at Pan’s home, Wendy immediately takes on the role of mother figure.

But Peter Pan is really just a vehicle, a way of getting Wendy into a situation in which she realises the role that she has to grow into. And who is it who really disturbs the system and forces her to see that she must return to London and stop being a child? Captain Hook and his pirates. Moreover, it is a crocodile with a ticking clock in its tummy – what more obvious symbol could Barrie have come up with for her bodyclock? – that drives the action forward too.

Wendy does return to London, but Pan and the ‘lost’ boys will not stay with her and become adults. In a later edition to the play, Barrie inserted an epilogue that showed that Pan came back to take Wendy’s daughter away, and had also taken her mother too. The cycle will go on for ever: children must leave their parents, commit the heresy of abandoning them, and go with Pan to be taken by pirates… But in this heresy they begin to see that they too must return home and become the new orthodoxy. It is the cycle of life, and without pirates, it would be neutered.

So, finally, where does that leave us with our modern-day pirates? What does that suggest about our attitudes towards Somali pirates or the DVD rippers? Put simply, it suggests that we should reflect on our own society that has spawned them, and try to see where it is we are ‘blocked.’ For their heresies are simply natural reactions, designed to challenge our dying orthodoxy, and reinvigorate it with new life. Where there are pirates, there are shadows to be examined.

Thanks for travelling.