/lit/ - Literature

>>11362059
>It's a shame his early thought got so muddied with the whole Dark Enlightenment meme.

i mean, he is the author of those essays and probably the name that comes first to mind when you think about those two words (and which are, maybe, a little bit corny, but hey). i read the DE as a kind of a logical culmination of his earlier work, although there's a definite break in there between Young Nick/Old Nick.

the DE is interesting. it's obviously Dark in the sense of not being especially hopeful, but on the bright side, it's also Enlightenment, and Enlightenment > barbarism, bloat and horror. it's interesting to think also about what it is that makes him go there: is it a trace of Young Nick's disgust with capital uber alles, or is it Old Nick's disgust with transcendental miserabilists and people still carrying on left-wing resistance to what he by now perceives as being a cosmic-historical force? a secret alliance of both? Old Nick is an even more bitter version of Young Nick, who was already pretty bitter. Young Nick is still politically on the left, Old Nick obviously is not - but it's also the case that you can be anti-left without being completely pro-right. in any event, both Nicks are part of a pretty straightforward development arc. in a way kind of like baudrillard, who veers continually away from marx and towards nietzsche (and into his own brand of theory-fiction stuff as well).

i think the turning point for land was the bataille book. whatever 80s/90s-style critique of capitalism - or academic objectivity at all - he wanted to do got wiped out there. he voluntarily drowned in a sea of erotic sludge, became a bat and when he came out of that he was ready to do something completely different, with a whole new set of friends and allies. quite the adventure.

and then there's teleoplexy, which really does read like secret chapters of the phenomenology of spirit beamed back to earth from the SETI program or something. templexity is another concept of his that i haven't spent much time with, but only because i've been too lazy to pick up his book.

>Land is far more interesting to me from a descriptive standpoint than a prescriptive one.

share your thoughts, i'm always interested in this stuff.