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 […]
Tag: Horror
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; […]
Interview in Wryd Signal
In August, fresh and staggering from the aftermath of Oxbow’s excellent London gig, I had a chat with the charming Sean Oscar at the Haringey nerve centre of the ever-wonderful Wyrd Signal podcast. Expect more Wyrd encounters in 2019
Hanover Talk: Biomorphic Horror
Philosophical posthumanisms oppose anthropocentrism – the presumption that reality must be thought about from a human perspective. But what remains of embodiment in post-anthropocentric thought? Should it retain a place for the body or the aesthetic as distinctive ways of encountering reality? If not, how can it adequately describe of our ‘posthuman predicament’ as bodies […]
1 – Doll Space
I thought you had had yourself whipped again by the Rigger. This time the arabesque of scars seamed over vesicles of doll parts in milky transport. You do not know what freedom would be, at the limit. Its questions are very strict. For now, you suppose there will be proprieties, symbolic alloys, isomorphs. There’s a […]
R M Francis – Hyperplastic Other
This is sweet. Michael Flora of Nada, an imprint for “subversive musics and sound works.” has informed me of this release: Hyperplastic Other by Seattle-based computer musician R.M. Francis. It’s influenced by an eponymous critter discussed in my paper “Dark Posthumanism: the weird template.“, among other places. It’s available as a high-quality download from bandcamp or in a […]
Bataille: The Object Catastrophe
“In the course of the ecstatic vision, at the limit of death on the cross and of the blindly lived lamma sabachtani, the object is finally unveiled as catastrophe in a chaos of light and shadow, neither as God nor as nothingness, but as the object that love, incapable of liberating itself except outside of […]
Thomas Ligotti: The Red Tower
Originally posted on Dr. Rinaldi's Horror Cabinet:
Perhaps it seems that I have said too much about the Red Tower, and perhaps it has sounded far too strange. Do not think that I am unaware of such things. But as I have noted throughout this document, I am only repeating what I have heard.…
Amygdalatropolis clickbait
My take: Yeager’s haphephobic protagonist /1404er/ has got over reality, family or the social and moved on – to a somewhat more tenable amnion of snuff porn, clickbait and casual online scapegoating. Amygdalatropolis inhabits our post-truth heterotopia like some virulent new literary life form, perfectly tooled for the death of worlds. And Scott Wilson: […]
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