Fanged Noumena
Level 1, or world-space, is an anthropomorphically scaled, predominantly vision-configured, massively multi-slotted reality system that is obsolescing very rapidly. Garbage time is running out. Can what is playing you make it to Level 2? Fanged Noumena assembles for the first time the writings of Nick Land, variously described as 'rabid nihilism', 'Deleuzian Thatcherism', 'accelerationism', and 'cybergothic'. Wielding weaponised, machinically-recombined versions of Deleuze and Guattari, Reich and Freud, in the company of fellow 'werewolves' such as Nietzsche, Bataille, Artaud, Trakl and Cioran, to a cut-up soundtrack of Bladerunner, Terminator and Apocalypse Now, Land plotted a rigorously schizophrenic escape route out of academic philosophy, and declared all-out war on the Human Security System. Despite his 'disappearance', Land's output has been a crucial underground influence both on recent Speculative Realist thought, and on artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers invigorated by his uncompromising and abrasive philosophical vision. Beginning with Land's radical rereadings of Heidegger, Nietzsche and Kant, and ending with Professor Barker's cosmic theory of geo-trauma and neo-qabbalistic attempts to formulate a numerical anti-language, Fanged Noumena rescues from obscurity papers, talks and articles some of which have never previously appeared in print.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
11mentions
9people
2017–2026years
27% recommend64% neutral9% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Nietzsche is on the list, but Nick Land's Fanged Noumena is clearly missing. As Mark Fisher has written about Land's work:
"There was a great deal of cyber-theory around in the 1990s but none of it seemed to come from inside the machines – which is to say, outside us – in the way that Land's did." [0]
[0] https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/10459/1/...
- I've never seen that abbreviation and I don't like them but if you like, use it. Multiplicities!
I would say that you need Inventing the future, that while being limited in many things, is a necessary read.
Then proceed with Capitalist Realism and if you like it, Fanged Noumena.
- Gödel, Escher, Bach awakened my intellectual curiosity about formal systems and other autistic modes of beauty as a teenager. After "The Selfish Gene" it was the first book I bought and read on my own volition, so I have to credit it as a major influence.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs for showing that you can think rigorously and compose beautiful programs out of simple pieces.
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty for showing that it's possible to think and feel about politics while maintaining a profoundly ironic and groundless mind.
The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry for its beautiful view of civilization as materialized caring and of the inflicting of pain as metaphysically destructive.
Being-in-the-world by Dreyfus for introducing me to Heidegger and showing how continental philosophy inspired by Heidegger was a major force in the evolution of AI and how AI researchers tended to be influenced by rationalist philosophy in the vein of Descartes which leads to huge misunderstandings of the nature of being.
Dhammapada translated by Gil Fronsdal because it's a beautiful exposition of early Buddhist poetry and clearly shows the worldview of south east Asian Buddhism.
Debt by David Graeber for making me interested in money and credit systems from an anthropological point of view.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace for being hilarious and sad and buzzing with neurotic perceptive overeducated thought in a way that mirrored my own precocious self-consciousness and made me feel less "marooned in my own skull."
The Uses of Disorder by Richard Sennett for giving a defense of the anarchy of urban life that views conflict as necessary for growth.
After Virtue by Alisdair MacIntyre for showing the contemporary situation in thought and ethics as profoundly abnormal and difficult, being the aftermath of the Enlightenment project's failure to ground morality in objective reason, and pointing to virtue within traditions as the only way to live coherently.
The Teachings of Huang-bo for being a merciless and hilarious attack on sanctimonious and ritualistic Buddhism, displaying the role of sarcasm and wit in spirituality, and generally just shouting "wake up, lazy pretentious idiot" on every page.
Fanged Noumena by Nick Land for diving deeply into amphetaminic insanity thus accurately mirroring the schizophrenia of postmodern capitalism.
The letters of Van Gogh.
Phillip Lopate's personal essays.
Hyperobjects by Timothy Morton.
On the Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes.
- > I personally think Land is worth reading (critically)
I agree, perhaps... I think I got something out of slogging my way through Fanged Noumena (although I did throw in the towel near the end--there's an essay written entirely LiKe ThIs and I just bounced off of it, DNF).
If we are talking about accelerationism(s) instead of cybernetics, I much preferred Gruppo Di Nun's Revolutionary Demonology. It's at least written in a human register.
- Expected outcome. Nick Land and the CCRU have explored how capitalism operationalizes science fiction (distilled in the concept of Hyperstition). Viewed through this lens, prices encode "distributed SF narratives." [0]
[0] Nick Land (1995). No Future in Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007, Urbanomic, p. 396.
- I'm not sure what your comment is trying to convey. From my experience Meditations is basic and doesn't offer any substance. Popular Stoicism has a lot of legitimate criticism and is very often misused and glamorized in right-wing spaces. So the label "right-coded" seems appropriate.
All in all your comment caused some confusion. I know a handful of "extreme" left-wing, liberal arts people who are enamoured by "Fanged Noumena" whose author is the infamous nrx, 'hyper-racist' father of accelerationism Nick Land. So the politics don't seem to be the problem.
My gut instinct was that you have fallen for the meme/propaganda, as I have seen similar talking points being repeated on other sites. Maybe you can give me a more detailed explanations of what you're trying to get at.
Related
Becoming animal
5 recommend · 5
The Black Swan
263 recommend · 862
Unflattening
4 recommend · 9
The mind illuminated
79 recommend · 163
2011–2021
Philosophy Bites
4 recommend · 6
The Blank Slate
42 recommend · 100
The better angels of our nature
72 recommend · 195