/lit/ - Literature

>>14102801
Tell us about it and why you're hyped

>>14102887
>The historical continuity of spinal catastrophism, traced across multiform encounters between philosophy, psychology, biology, and geology.

>Drawing on cryptic intimations in the work of J. G. Ballard, Georges Bataille, William Burroughs, André Leroi-Gourhan, Elaine Morgan, and Friedrich Nietzsche, in the late twentieth century Daniel Barker formulated the axioms of spinal catastrophism: If human morphology, upright posture, and the possibility of language are the ramified accidents of natural history, then psychic ailments are ultimately afflictions of the spine, which itself is a scale model of biogenetic trauma, a portable map of the catastrophic events that shaped that atrocity exhibition of evolutionary traumata, the sick orthograde talking mammal.

>Tracing its provenance through the biological notions of phylogeny and “organic memory” that fueled early psychoanalysis, back into idealism, nature philosophy, and romanticism, and across multiform encounters between philosophy, psychology, biology, and geology, Thomas Moynihan reveals the historical continuity of spinal catastrophism. From psychoanalysis and myth to geology and neuroanatomy, from bioanalysis to chronopathy, from spinal colonies of proto-minds to the retroparasitism of the CNS, from “railway spine” to Elizabeth Taylor's lost gill-slits, this extravagantly comprehensive philosophical adventure uses the spinal cord as a guiding thread to rediscover forgotten pathways in modern thought. Moynihan demonstrates that, far from being an fanciful notion rendered obsolete by advances in biology, spinal catastrophism dramatizes fundamental philosophical problematics of time, identity, continuity, and the transcendental that remain central to any attempt to reconcile human experience with natural history.

How could you not be hyped

>>14102891
Is this a joke?
Serious question.

>>14102891
>far from being an fanciful notion rendered obsolete by advances in biology, spinal catastrophism dramatizes fundamental philosophical problematics of time, identity, continuity, and the transcendental that remain central to any attempt to reconcile human experience with natural history.
this is one of those sokal affair things isn't it

>>14102994
>>14103004
you guys are no fun, no fun at all

>>14102891
>Semiotex(te) tier pop phil bizarre hot takes that will never take off because you would have to literally be insane to believe their is any credence in them

>>14103025
Imagine this fella, writing this book, contorting his prose around these notions like the kyphotic spine which is his subject, trying to extend it through sclerotic cultural movements high and low, feeling the ecstasy of a Dr. Frankenstein biopsying his own body... Only to have the book land with a dull thwap, stillborn.

However, there is always the consolation of similarly grieving mothers: the immediate circle of PhD students, all geniuses, all suspended in mid-air by the ecstasy of their own genius, touched by the divine, destined to be looked back upon favourably by future generations... Or so they can tell one another at conferences.

>>14103309
But it still seems cooler than all the same old dreary incel-tier Christianity, existentialism, traditionalism, Evola / Guenon / Nofap mystic fart clouds, and “wash yer benis” self help idiocy that’s been clogging up this board lately.

>>14102891
This is just dungeons and dragons rpg magic systems for "men" that fancy themselves """intellectuals""" rather than gamers.

I'll end up reading it when it gets posted on libgen. I like this weird giallo philosophy, small, matte covers, grisly rocky thoughtshit that only phd students could come up with.

>>14102891
Shut the fuck up girardfag. Legit sick of your fucking spamming of dumb as shit texts from literally whos on twitter.

me

>>14102891
>Drawing on cryptic intimations in the work of J. G. Ballard, Georges Bataille, William Burroughs, André Leroi-Gourhan, Elaine Morgan, and Friedrich Nietzsche
Nah

>>14102891
Is this guy trying to do for back problems what Deleuze did to schizophrenia?

>>14104948
Leroi-Gourhan is cool

>>14102994
>>14102891
>>14103981

Imagine you’ve spent the better part of a decade skimming Wikipedia articles, watching “educational” YouTube videos, and arguing with people on message boards. You now have a tremendously broad but extremely shallow knowledge base that causes revulsion to everyone you speak with as you’re incapable of maintaining a serious discussion about any ONE topic without incessantly name dropping and trying to find parallels between disparate fields of study so that everyone who speaks to you is left simultaneously with the impression that you’re a huge fucking nerd and a massive brainlet. You’re prone to make completely flawed and moronic analogies like “if you think about it, cellular mitosis is a lot like the transcendent spiritualism of Parmenides through the lens of classical Freudian penis envy” or “Nietzsche was to modern evolutionary psychology what Bach was to game theory” until eventually you attract an army of similar brainlets on the internet who like you ironically so now you have to string together 200 pages of stream of consciousness tier loosely interconnected facts and observations so you can get a fat pay check. Also you’re jewish.

>>14102891
The absolute state of accfags

>>14102801
Misses the point.
If anything, we're living the apocalypse of the hand. By removing the flux of stimuli of our quadrupedal past, turning it into datum-morsels, we've both opened ourselves to the concept of nothing and closed ourselves into individuality. The hand is no doubt the first sign, in a semic sense, as its default stance is that of holding some emptiness. The hand is what grasped the apple of the tree of knowledge, but it had to be made bare before it could feel necessary to replace the grass and earth, long accustomed to, with something turned towards itself, towards its own presentation, that holds itself. Consciousness is remembrance, and in the lack of proper semiotic apparatus, remembrance is turned towards that which is most constant, or direct. We've gotten used to its lack of content and the feeling of our flesh is now what's most accessible to it. The hand points towards and constitutes the first step towards man's downfall towards desire, in opposition to his primitive ancestors' hunger for what is his, and seeks to make his own that which is not of himself, to hold once more.

>>14103720
Just as this book sneaks in numerous baseless assumptions:

>If human morphology/ upright posture/ and the possibility of language/ are the ramified accidents of natural history/ then psychic ailments are ultimately afflictions of the spine/ which itself is a scale model of biogenetic trauma/ a portable map of the catastrophic events that shaped that /atrocity exhibition of evolutionary traumata/ the sick orthograde talking mammal/

You're trying to conflate different trends on this board.

Yet, what happens if we start picking apart this long structure of presumptions piled upon presumption (and those aren't the only ones in the synopsis, just an unbroken chain of varying layers of discourse being assumed and used to justify further assumptions)? Anything divided by the slashes into its, to abuse the metaphor further, assumed vertebrae could be refuted, and without any one of them the integrity of the spine metaphor, just like a spine without vertebrae is no longer contiguous, is unable to support itself. A hell of a lot of the, to use one of your examples, 'incel Christianity' on this board has more rigour than that.

Accidentally pre ordered this when I was drunk and I doubt I'll end up reading it lol

>>14105495
This is legit more interesting than the hypothesis of the book in OP.

>>14103309
What is he arguing for? Dumb it down? Human intellectual development/history is analogous to the spine?

>>14103720
it isn't, its philosophy become fashion. when is the accel name generator getting made already? it's so easy. [thing I don't usually associate with philosophy] [crazy, eye-opening word that catches my attention-ism]

Land was a fire whose sparks are this corny cottage cheese industry of booga wooga interpretations of deleuze. very tiresome

>>14102801
Are you Thomas Moynahin, OP?

>>14106098
Something along the lines of we're all twisted biological accidents of evolution grown out of the permetutations of the Central Nervous System, which seems to be centered in the spine itself (incidentally, more living creatures don't have spines than do, so that's retarded), and much of our material impositions on dear mother nature take the shape of spines, perhaps unconsciously or merely symbolically or both (unclear in the synopsis). And all of this can be used to explain our ills.

Add in a smattering of gobbleygook from sci-fi books, as well: the 'atrocity exhibition' is from Ballard, the possibility of language being linked to biogenetic trauma has an echo of Burroughs' word virus.

There's certainly much more pseudery afoot but I can't be troubled with it, for I think the human body and mind are beautiful, I'm a happy-go-lucky sort who can see a set of traintracks and not consider it an outgrowth of mutant human physiology. I'm a simple fellow, after all, perhaps why all this is lost on me.

>>14106145
I am not, I just came across the book and was amused.