** This is a longer version of paper I presented at the Unlearning Nihilism conference in London, June 23-26 2022, jointly organized by Royal Holloway’s Centre for Continental Philosophy and The New Centre for Research & Practice ** Let’s begin with a memorable scene from John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian (1982). Conan has been captured […]
Titane (2021)
Julia Ducournau’s Titane repeatedly bruises and shocks the viewer with the reversible relationship between sensuality, intimacy and untrammelled violence; a slippage concretized in the primped high-performance cars on whose streamlined bodies its central character, Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), writhes erotically at the motor show where she works as a dancer. While our digital devices, with their […]
The Creator Sun (feat. Iain Hamilton Grant)
This piece features samples from a recent lecture by Iain Hamilton Grant, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at UWE, which beautifully interlaces the Platonic analogy of the sun with the ideas of a powers ontology – ‘You cannot separate this power from the entity. Being is power’ – while taking his students on a virtual walking […]
Erotic Subtraction and Death
1. In her two-poem collection, Apostasy, Katy Mongeau narrates the desire to both kill and be killed within a world fruiting death in every leaf. The poetic subject is fractured because overwhelmed and broken by a lust that refracts it into nonhuman things: Me: convulsing, lust-fucking the mud, Sun, and consuming myself, dead rotten. Flower […]
Doom Metal Abstraction Lyric Sheet (Abstract Cruelty from Snuff Memories)
Dead Professor Oblivion wets his thin moustache.Orange jump-suits daub Rosa with an invitation of fish paste.The python’s tail undulates to Bukkake rhythmsas does the jungle girl/vore legend Her soused head dangles from the eyeless abomination.I watch all this in public seance.Glad to conform. after ghost porn deletionNarcissus hires surgeons to make him art pâtisserie.He is […]
The Death of Posthuman Life: a brief philosophical introduction to Snuff Memories
My first book, Posthuman Life: philosophy at the edge of the human, bequeathed several unresolved philosophical problems, above all the ethical impasse concisely expressed in Amy Ireland’s review of my new book, Snuff Memories: “The posthuman cannot be known before it is produced—so to know it, we must produce it.” Slightly less concisely, the decision […]
Enemy Industry20 Playlist
Here’s a playlist of music I created using Ableton Live 10 Suite and assorted virtual instruments (Native Instruments FM8 and Massive synths, Komplete as well as a probabilistic drum machine knocked up in the Max4Live Programming Environment). Styles range from electro metal/core to industrial/ambient noise.
Recent Publications
Since I’ve been prompted to update my university profile, I’ve decided to compile a list of (relatively) recent publications, dividing between straight academic output and experimental texts. Most entries come with links. A selective list of interviews is also included below. Academic Articles 2020. ‘Posthuman: Critical, Speculative, Biomorphic, in Mads Rosendhal Thomsen and Joseph Wamburg […]
Dark Panpsychism: Philip Goff and Pandemonism
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 […]
enemyindustry 