In his Nautilus article ‘The Universe Knows Right from Wrong’, Philipp Goff argues that panpsychism – the metaphysical thesis that the intrinsic properties of reality are properties of consciousness or ‘feels’ (or proto-phenomena, proto-feels) provides a metaphysical ground for objective truth about value. He argues that panpsychism affords an explanation for our ability to discern […]
Erotic Subtraction and Death Part I
I: Theoretical Preliminaries: Death, Subtraction and Posthuman Embodiment I want to consider the desire for death – the desire to die, to kill oneself, to be killed, etc. – as a mode in which the posthuman impulse to xenophilia (becoming/being other/becoming/being alien) achieves erotic expression and affective force. To forestall any misunderstanding, here, ‘death lust’ […]
Void Theory
Out of deference to the Forgetting, Open removes a hot expresso cup from Null’s mastectomied chest, spills it black over genitals mutilated as lilies. Null takes it silent, losing another version of himself. Open waits, always in these periods, for the silent holes of divinity to crack. She and Null have become experiments in deformation. […]
Don’t fear the Basilisk
As Yudkowsky notes (https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Roko’s_basilisk) The Basilisk faces a seemingly insuperable commitment problem. If the Basilisk comes into being somehow, then punishing simulations of those who impeded its emergence is a lavish waste of resources. So how can we be assured that the Basilisk will be irrationally committed to punishing us postposthumously? If we cannot be […]
Bodiless
(Reblogged from Identities Journal Lockdown series # 30) Can we afford us any longer? Bodies hurt too much. Their pleasures are less trauma than a geologic diarrhoea. It’s shameful a vaulting planetary economy still uses us – like discovering a cache of unused condoms under pristine sand. No wonder we dream disconnection, communism, or apocalypse; […]
Alexander Wilson on Nonhuman Aesthetics and Disconnection
Alexander Wilson’s paper ‘What Aesthetics Tells us About Posthumans’ (WA) provides a synopsis of a challenging account of aesthetics developed at greater length in his new book Aesthesis and Perceptronium (AP). This is nothing less than an aesthetics generalized beyond the human phenomenology cited in philosophies of aesthetic judgement. I’m currently working through AP, […]
Theory Fiction, Mad Black Deleuzeanism and the Posthuman Void
Currently on strike! but over at the OU I was moderating an MA forum on styles of philosophy, so decided to go for broke with a post on ‘Theory Fiction, Mad Black Deleuzeanism and the Posthuman Void’. God knows what my poor students will make of it, but sometimes you just have to go for […]
Puce Mary: The Red Desert
The Red Desert’ assembles in layers: loping bass alternates between octaves, raspy continuants top and bottom of the register, randomized clicks over a percussive loop; a susurrus of far off industry, or a cataract softened. A woman’s voice, calmly narrates the indices of her decline in barely accented Danish English: I find myself feeling like […]
On re-discovering the Analytic-Continental Divide
I’m currently in London following a three-day deep dive into continental philosophy at the Society of European Philosophy/Forum of European Philosophy Joint conference at Royal Holloway University in Egham (The text of my paper is available here). The quality of both panels and keynotes was extremely high, with some particularly impeccable scholarship on display. Adrian […]
Transgression as Erotic Technology
Over on Facebook my friend Chaim Mendel posted up a disarmingly good question about the relationship between desire and transgression which has been nagging me a lot recently: Why is the forbidden so erotic? what is it about transgression that is so central to the nature of desire? Transgression or perversion isn’t only an erotic […]
