Nick Land, Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007
, Urbanomic, Sequence Press, 2011.“Fanged Noumena brings together the writings of Nick Land for the first time. During the 1990s Land's unique philosophical work, variously described as 'rabid nihilism', 'mad black deleuzianism' and 'cybergothic', developed perhaps the only rigorous and culturally-engaged escape route out of the malaise of 'continental philosophy' - a route which was implacably blocked by the academy. However, Land's work has continued to exert an influence, both through the British 'speculative realist' philosophers who studied with him, and through the many cultural producers - artists, musicians, filmmakers, bloggers - who have been invigorated by his uncompromising and abrasive philosophical vision.
Beginning with Land's early radical rereadings of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kant and Bataille, the volume then collects together the papers, talks and articles of the mid-90s - long the subject of rumour and vague legend (including some work which has never previously appeared in print) - in which Land developed his futuristic theory-fiction of cybercapitalism gone amok; and ends with his enigmatic later writings in which Ballardian fictions, poetics, cryptography, anthropology, grammatology and the occult are smeared into unrecognisable hybrids.
Fanged Noumena allows a dizzying perspective on the entire trajectory of this provocative and influential thinker's work, and will introduce his unique voice to a new generation of readers.”
“Land’s incisive assessment of the machinic reality of a schizo-capitalism currently in the process of penetrating and colonizing the innermost recesses of human subjectivity exposes the fatally anachronistic character of the metaphysical conception of human agency upon which ‘revolutionary’ thought continues to rely. The anachronistic character of left voluntarism is nowhere more apparent than in its resort to a negative theology of perpetually deferred ‘hope’, mordantly poring over its own reiterated depredation. Worse still is the complacent sanctimony of those ‘critical’ theorists who concede that the prospect of revolutionary transformation is not only unattainable but undesirable (given its dangerously ‘totalitarian’ propensities), but who remain content to pursue a career in critique, safely insulated from the risks of political praxis. The challenge of Land’s work cannot be circumvented by construing the moral dismay it (often deliberately) provokes as proof of its erroneous nature, or by exploiting the inadequacies in Land’s positive construction as an excuse to evade the corrosive critical implications of his thought. Nor can it be concluded that this alternative philosophical path cannot be further explored. […] Everything in Land’s work that falls outside the parameters of disciplinary knowledge can and will be effectively dismissed by those who police the latter. In Bataille’s incisive formulation, ‘the unknown […] is not distinguished from nothingness by anything that discourse can announce’. Like his fellows of the ‘inferior race’, what we retain of Land’s expeditions are diverse and scattered remnants, here constellated for the first time. These are also tools or weapons; arrows that deserve to be taken up again and sharpened further. The wound needs to be opened up once more, and if this volume infects a new generation, already enlivened by a new wave of thinkers who are partly engaging the re-emerging legacy of Nick Land’s work – it will have fulfilled its purpose.” - Ray Brassier and Robin Mackay
“The magnitude of Nick Land's influence upon contemporary experimental production is yet to be fully comprehended. Whilst Fanged Noumena goes some way to provide an aetiology of Land's philosophical virulence, those seeking a cure for the 'disease of the earth' are advised to look elsewhere ...” - Jake Chapman
“Land had the most brilliantly seductive and meteoric mind, endlessly imaginative and capable of adopting, inhabiting and discarding any philosophical position. With him - and rightly so - philosophy infected every area of life, and sheer vitality of life reverberated in his thinking.
I see Fanged Noumena as a kind of righteous revenge. Nick was dismissed by professional philosophers because they simply didn't want to think and preferred their turgid academic complacency. I always admired him for his unwavering desire to take thought to its absolute limit and then see how much harder one could push.” - Simon Critchley
These extraordinary texts, superheated compounds of severe abstraction and scabrous wit, testify to a uniquely penetrating intelligence, fusing transcendental philosophy, number theory, geophysics, biology, cryptography and occultism into startlingly cohesive but increasingly delirious theory-fictions.” - Ray Brassier
This is theory as cyberpunk fiction: Deleuze-Guattari's concept of capitalism as the virtual unnameable Thing that haunts all previous formations pulp-welded to the timebending of the Terminator films. Land's machinic theory-poetry parallelled the digital intensities of 90s jungle, techno and doomcore, anticipating 'impending human extinction becoming accessible as a dance-floor'.” - Mark Fisher (K-Punk)
“In the last half of the twentieth century, academics talked endlessly about the outside, but no-one went there. Land, by exemplary contrast, made experiments in the unknown unavoidable for a philosophy caught in the abstractive howl of post-political cybernetics. Fanged Noumena demonstrates how Land ruined a generation of intellectuals for merely academic philosophy, by opening a speculative singularity where the future used to be.” -
Iain Hamilton Grant
“British philosopher Nick Land has left a legacy. His character is mythological and his critical interpretations are legend. Since the early 90's his thoughts and critiques have been at the epicenter ( or even been the genesis ) of numerous directions of enquiry. A myriad of multi-media, artistic, linguistic, logical, literary criticism and blogospherical areas of research have all derived and swelled since his teachings as lecturer in Continental Philosophy at Warwick University in the 1990's and his co-founding of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit ( CCRU- co-founded with philosopher Sadie Plant at Birmingham University in 1995 ). His thoughts of 'rabid nihilism', 'mad black deleuzianism' and 'cybergothic' have spawned a multitude of modes of enquiry. The proliferating use of hyperstition as a tool in pursuit of dismantling standard models of social existence is one particularly prevalent effect of Lands philosophical and inspirational legacy - Reza Negarestani's occultist, post genre horror fictions and speculative theologix of Cyclonopedia being a recent example of a work derived, formed and inherently born out of the mode of the hyperstition praxis formats ( and the eponymous blog - Hyperstition that Land also contributed to ). Just reading the preface of Lands infamous critique/engagement/copulation/putrefaction of Bataille in 'The Thirst For Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism' ( Routledge Press 1992 ) the effect is violent, scary and profound. The level of emotion, the passion for the myriad of philosophies ( and their contextual exchanges ) is frightening and unique. When was the last time you put down a theory text feeling worried? When was the last time a theory text scarred you or made you sad? I can't think of anyone else. The only other book to effect such a response in myself recently was Eden Eden Eden by Pierre Guyotat - but thats fiction, and the fact that Lands impassioned engagement is focused on theories, established ( and/or erupting/hemorrhaging paradigms ) warrants all the more emotion and genuine interest, be it excitement, fear or elation - and thats just Lands unique delivery. The breadth of inspiration and the sheer volume of research areas and texts is phenomenal. Aqunias, Boltzmann, Hegel, Kant, Lukacs, Nietzsche, Marquis de Sade and Schopenhauer are just a few of the general reference Land draws on along with an almost encyclopedic referencing to Bataille's Oeuvres Completes that boarders on the religious - in that the connections and interpretations are engaged and impassioned to the nth degree. The experience is akin to an array of biblical epics - such is the breadth of emotional journeyings and weight of theoretical revelations.
Regarding just a few of the concepts brought forward, re-examined or re-integrated within the text it dawns on one just how influential Land has been. The penetration of fleeting analogies is vast and whole new modes of enquiry and axis for ontological explorations have emerged from the rabid flames of 'The Thirst For Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism'. Ontotheological and Logocentricist reassertions dance amongst a laughing cacophony of eroticist, morbid and transcendental polarities. If you were scarred by Bataille then dont read Land for the experience may enlighten enough to expose the putrid truth of ourselves life and death. This petrifying ( or putrefying! ) text holds so much at the epicenter of its ( panoramic ) rhizomatically aquired realms of research yet its so concentrated and potent. Lands other works that will all be included in Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007 ( to be published by Urbanomic in 2010 ) will no doubt have the same spectrum of revelations and potency of effect, for whilst a lot of these works have in existence since the 90s and their influence now fossilized in legend, the availability has been low with the texts scattered through small philosophical journals, blog posts and experimental webzine articals. Having a collection of such ( still ) vital texts is long overdue. I have no doubt that for Landians the consequence of having all texts in one place will further enlighten the rabid, mad or fatally sane ideological reproaches and contextual arguments. Another MetaStrata may emerge from this text. Lands Fanged Noumena are ominous - like rabid piranhas - or suspended maggots awaiting our putrefying minds and souls.” – Notes from the Vomitorium
Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation
: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism, Routledge, 1992.“An important literary and philosophical figure, Georges Bataille has had a significant influence on other French writers, such as Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard. The Thirst for Annihilation is the first book in English to respond to Bataille's writings. In no way, though, is Nick Land's book an attempt to appropriate Bataille's writings to a secular intelligibility or to compromise with the aridity of academic discourse - rather, it is written as a communion . Theoretical issues in philosophy, sociology, psychodynamics, politics and poetry are discussed, but only as stepping stones into the deep water of textual sacrifice where words pass over into the broken voice of death. Cultural modernity is diagnosed down to its Kantian bedrock with its transcendental philosophy of the object, but Bataille's writings cut violently across this tightly disciplined reading to reveal the strong underlying currents that bear us towards chaos and dissolution - the violent impulse to escape, the thirst for annihilation.”
