Seminar: Postmodernity, Nihilism, Trans/Post-Humanism, Digitality/Singularity...

Seminar: Postmodernity, Nihilism, Trans/Post-Humanism, Philosophy of Horror, Digitality/Singularity, Speculative Realism, etc., hosted by Richard Pope

Reading assignment: "The Rebel," by Albert Camus, section titles: "Metaphysical Rebellion," "The Sons of Cain," "Absolute Negation," "A Man of Letters," and "The Dandies Rebellion." (Pages 23 - 55 in the PDF below.)

Free PDF: https://www.bibotu.com/books/2013b/Camus,%20Albert%20-%20The%20Rebel%20%281951%29.pdf

Secondary reading assignment: "The Myth of Sisyphus," by Albert Camus. I recommend reading this book alongside "The Rebel" because it'll provide a greater foundation for understanding Camus' philosophical project. Likely our discussion will reference this work, at times, to clarify or resolve issues we may have in understanding "The Rebel." However, our discussion will not focus directly on the "The Myth of Sisyphus."

Free PDF: http://dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilTexts/Camus/Myth%20of%20Sisyphus-.pdf

Please email [masked] if you're having trouble procuring a copy of the text.

Group Description:

Oh, Humanity. You wonderful, foolish, magnificent, pathetic tragicomic actor, part ape, part angel, artist strung out on her own genius …

What will become of you? Your technologies have become strange even to the hands of their makers. Your philosophers are drunk and delusional as they carelessly crack open the door of Truth’s inhospitable rooms. Your civilizations becomes unwieldy and Titanic, with many an unknown iceberg awaiting in the cold arctic waters of the void. Your very natures are in doubt just as much as they are under the constant duress of nootropic chemical evolutions, quantified re-imaginings, digital rituals, Einsteinian/Quantum-weirdness events …

Welcome to post-post-post-(ad nauseum)-modernity in the shadow of the singularity and within the light of infinity as we sickened, hairless apes manufacture and recycle our own apotheosis on a daily basis, with last week’s churn lying discarded in the trash bin next to Shakespeare, Cicero, and Heraclitus, along with the rest of post-capitalism’s manufactured obsolescence, vis-à-vis unending simulations and hyperrealities …

… and such a description could go on, and will go on, but proceeds from here rather with the companionship of others such as yourself, minds who wish to meet, discuss, rant about, and debate texts and ideas, dreams and musings, visions and psychedelia - falsities so beautiful that they sunder themselves into a million shards of glass and leave truth glittering within a pile of radiant transparencies - as we seek a better understanding of the unique times that we find ourselves thrown into, unwitting actors in a numberless act …

Readings will likely be between 20-50 pages per week, depending on the difficulty of the text and its “discussion potential.”

Upcoming readings / topics:
- Weird Studies Podcast on "Hyperstition"
https://www.weirdstudies.com/36
- "M Archive," by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
- Select readings from "Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today," by Leslie Marmon Silko
- The Open Work, Umberto Eco
https://monoskop.org/images/archive/6/6b/20171110081108%21Eco_Umberto_The_Open_Work.pdf
- "The Art of Cruelty," by Maggie Nelson
- "The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age," by Sadie Plant / "The Society of the Spectacle," by Guy Debord

Prior readings / topics:
- "Neo-Nihilism," by Peter Sjöstedt-H
- "The Last Messiah," by Peter Wessel Zapffe
- "The Xenotext," by Christian Bök
- "A Cyborg Manifesto," by Donna Haraway
- "Precession of Simulacra," Jean Baudrillard
- "Hyperobjects," Timothy Morton
- Readings from HP Lovecraft
- "On Alien Philosophy," R Scott Bakker
- "In The Dust of This Planet," Eugene Thacker