Günther Anders’ philosophy of technology (as developed most fully in his two-volume monograph Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen [The Obsolescence of the Human] [1956, 1980]) has yet to be translated in full, but it’s nevertheless a productive exercise to read its title against Anders’ own intentions – that is to say, the obsolescence of the human… Continue Reading The left hand of all creation (5): Postface on chirality
The left hand of all creation (4): An informal algorithm for repurposing worlds
Faced with an object world, on the standard assumption (i.e., that objects are passive or self-contained), the only option a subject has available is trying to direct and manipulate the objects composing that world. Objects have nothing much to contribute, except the details and difficulty of their pliability. Effectively, on this view, objects are virtually… Continue Reading The left hand of all creation (4): An informal algorithm for repurposing worlds
The left hand of all creation (3): Excursus on creative destruction (Spielrein, Schumpeter, Boyd, Land)
Obviously, a concept like creative destruction has an extensive genealogy. In Western philosophy, at least, you can trace variations of the idea back to Greek pre-Socratics like Anaximander and Heraclitus. While the specific locution “creative destruction” is often attributed to Joseph Schumpeter (who probably pulls the term from either Karl Marx or Werner Sombart), the… Continue Reading The left hand of all creation (3): Excursus on creative destruction (Spielrein, Schumpeter, Boyd, Land)
The left hand of all creation (2): Freeing up the objects for use
While including our ordinary understanding of objects (as real objects, out there in external reality), the conceptual vocabulary of psychoanalysis helps us register objects rather more expansively than the ordinary conception of objects alone. For psychoanalysis, objects are not just mere bundles of features or properties occupying space or time, numerically distinct from our own… Continue Reading The left hand of all creation (2): Freeing up the objects for use
The left hand of all creation (1): The sinister pathway of the object
Objects act. But what is an object? The concept has a long and varied career. As a word, it comes from the Latin noun obiectum, referring generically to a tangible thing that’s perceptible by the mind or the senses, to “something that occurs in front of,” or, more abstractly, to “that which is placed before”… Continue Reading The left hand of all creation (1): The sinister pathway of the object
On causal strangeways
Think of it like this. A causal strangeway describes the crooked or disjointed path by means of which causal effects spiral outward tumultuously from their plural points of origin, traversing ontological modes and orders without regard to adequation or proportion. Examples are endless. Seriously attempt to backtrace almost anything at all, and you’ll rapidly find… Continue Reading On causal strangeways
Ligotti ephemera: “Envoi” from Teatro Grottesco (Durtro Press, 2006)
This is a poem Ligotti published in the original 2006 edition of Teatro Grottesco, published by David Tibet‘s Durtro Press, which is now defunct. It does not appear in in the 2008/2010 edition of the same collection by Virgin Books, nor does it appear in his Death Poems (Bad Moon Press, 2013). “Envoi” Nothing is… Continue Reading Ligotti ephemera: “Envoi” from Teatro Grottesco (Durtro Press, 2006)
The agora and the archipelago
“Everything in the world is, as we see it now, rule, order and form; but anarchy still lies in the ground, as if it could break through once again, and nowhere does it appear as if order and form were what is original but rather as if initial anarchy had been brought to order.” –… Continue Reading The agora and the archipelago
Notes on ecopessimism (2): morbid opportunism
(A slightly different version of this post was presented at the 2019 Western Political Science Association conference “The Politics of Climate Change,” on the panel “The Status of Nature in the Anthropocene.”) My central claim has two parts. First: ecopessimism is being misunderstood, even by the still relatively few thinkers and writers who we could… Continue Reading Notes on ecopessimism (2): morbid opportunism
Notes on ecopessimism (1): decathexis as a mode of futural projection
(A slightly different version of this post was presented at the 2017 Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts conference “Out of Time,” on the panel “Collective Manifestations: Thinking Futures beyond the Dark Mountain.”) A preliminary clarification: climate change isn’t the problem. Instead, climate change is a symptom of a much deeper problem called the… Continue Reading Notes on ecopessimism (1): decathexis as a mode of futural projection