The Lichenthrope

24 Favorite Recordings from 2011

2011-12-21T19:55:00.000-08:00

Well, I haven't been around much lately, have I? Things have been . . . hectic. To put it mildly. I'm preparing to move out of state next month, as well as trying to pull together a number of other projects (for instance, this new label), and this blog has suffered as a result. Perhaps soon I will be able to spend more time here, but I imagine it won't be until after the new year.

Until then, I'm killing some time with a year end "most-enjoyed" list. Because that's what you do in December, I've gathered. I won't promise it's the best of this year---just stuff I liked. Mostly metal. Ordered alphabetically, since I can't bring myself to valuate them hierarchically. No deep reflections, either, just artist then title. Enjoy.

Absu – Abzu
Aksumite – The Gleam of Wetted Lips
Antediluvian – Through the Cervix of Hawwah
Ash Borer – Ash Borer
Björk – Biophilia
Blut Aus Nord – 777 Sect(s)/The Desanctification
Bosse-De-Nage – II
Botanist – I: The Suicide Tree/II: A Rose from the Dead
De Magia Veterum – The Divine Antithesis
False – Untitled
Inquisition – Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm
Locrian – Dort Ist Der Weg
Mamaleek – Kurdaitcha
Mare Cognitum – The Sea Which Has Become Known
Mournful Congregation – The Book of Kings
Negative Plane – Stained Glass Revelations
Oskoreien – Oskoreien
Rob Funkhouser – Granular Momentum Exchange
Servile Sect – Trvth
Sutekh Hexen – Luciform
Terra Tenebrosa – The Tunnels
Trou Noir – Echoes in Black Holes
Void Meditation Cult – Sulfurous Prayers
Wolves in the Throne Room – Celestial Lineage

And that's pretty much it.

PEST Video Archives

2011-11-20T16:02:00.000-08:00

Here are the archived videos from the PEST Black Metal Theory Symposium held earlier today.

Part 1

Part 2 (talks resume about 6 minutes in)

PEST: Destroy Your Life For Satan!

2011-11-20T07:30:00.000-08:00

My video talk for PEST, the black metal theory symposium organized by Nicola Masciandaro, Michael O'Rourke, and Karin Sellberg. It has aired in Dublin by now, so here it is for general consumption.

EDIT

I've been asked a couple of times now about the songs used in my video. I don't know why I didn't post them to begin with, so here are the songs in order of appearance.

"The Immortal Plague," The Sea Which Has Become Known, Mare Cognitum, 2011.
"Mort Divine,"Spicelège, Belenos, 2002.
"I Am the Wrath of the Gods and the Desolation of the Earth," In the Constellation of the Black Widow, Anaal Nathrakh, 2009.
"The Suffering of Others," Fuck the Universe, Craft, 2005.
"Give Your Wrists," May the Curse Bind, Ghast, 2008.
"Shed This Skin," True Traitor, True Whore, Leviathan, 2011.
"Dunkelheit," Filosofem, Burzum, 1996.
"May Your Void Become as Deep as My Hate!" Telepathic with the Deceased, Xasthur, 2004.
"Drowned in Shadows," Díolaim, Beithíoch, 2007.
"Lifeless," Ravishing Grimness, Darkthrone, 1999.
"The Choir of the Dead," The Work Which Transforms God, Blut Aus Nord, 2003.
"Mahapralaya," Dhumavati, The Widow, 2011.

I'm kind of bemused that most of these are from post-2000 releases. Oh well!

END EDIT

And for fun, an outtake.

PEST Live Stream

2011-11-20T05:30:00.000-08:00

Not in Dublin? Watch the PEST live stream below, brought to you courtesy of Radical Matters.

Apologies

2011-11-18T23:08:00.000-08:00

Sorry for being scarce lately. There've been a number of small crises I've been dealing with, but things are more or less back to normal now, so I should be posting again soon. In the meantime, keep an eye on this space for my talk for PEST on Buddhism and black metal. I'll be posting it this Sunday the 20th after it has made its debut for those of you who would like to see it.

P.E.S.T. Abstracts

2011-10-19T17:42:00.000-07:00

Abstracts for the upcoming iteration of the Black Metal Theory Symposium to be held in Dublin this November have been posted HERE. Have a look, and let some blackness into your life.

Why is it . . .

2011-10-18T16:40:00.000-07:00

. . . that the only thing leftie radicals and conservatives seem to agree on is militarism? Shouldn't we avoid imitating the Right's violent subjugation of opposing views? Or is it ok because, um, we're right and they're wrong or something?

Widowed

2011-10-13T00:35:00.000-07:00

Probably not many of you will even know what I'm talking about, but I'm dissolving The Widow. It was an important project for me to take part in, as it helped me sort out some really emotionally and intellectually difficult bullshit. And I've found, after a couple months of ignoring it, I rather enjoy the music. I definitely feel good about it, and I'm glad I did it. However, my ideas have taken a hard left turn, and The Widow no longer seems like a good idiom for their expression. I still intend to create black metal, but in a different vein. We'll see how that works out.

Anyways, here's probably the best song from the EP, which is and always will be free on Bandcamp if you want it. Enjoy.

&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://thewidowcvlt.bandcamp.com/track/mahapralaya"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Mahapralaya by The Widow&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;

The Narcissist

2011-10-12T19:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Tim posted with some interesting thoughts on Zizek's speech at the OWS rally. Ignoring much of the context, I'd like to run with his discussion of narcissism a bit.

If I am ever known for anything, it seems that perhaps I will become known for making bizarre and/or unpopular pronouncements---e.g. "we could do with a bit more mysticism," "Man, fuck Hegel," etc.---so let me add another to the list:

We need more narcissism.

Now, before you all retire to your caves to masturbate while admiring your reflection, let me clarify a little bit.

Politics, so far as I can tell, is generally premised upon dialectical posturing of some kind. Whether it is in the 'debates' and elections of the US government or the class war framing of Marxism and some anarchisms. Revolutionary, as opposed to reformist, politics are typically the most blatant. Nonetheless, the structure is invariably antagonistic.

Most of these political processes avowedly seek peace, coexistence, etc. as their ultimate goal. So, we have the War on Terrorism to bring democracy, or an uprising against the bourgeoisie to seize the means of production. Supposedly, in each case, there is some final violence that will end all violence. A new social order will emerge phoenix-like from the ashes of the old.

I find this sort of reasoning bewildering. How, exactly, might violence end violence? The shocker that many people are unwilling or unable to face is that it cannot. We perpetuate violence as a reasonable response to objectionable orderings so long as we lack the courage to step out of the cycle. Only by producing and expanding a gap in that cycle will a meaningful peace exist, free of antagonism and violence.

Enter the narcissist.

Tim notes that a certain kind of narcissism is necessary for functioning on a "healthy human being level." Kindness begins with yourself. Allowing yourself this kindness is not in and of itself pathological. In fact, it is a necessary step towards developing a deep, selfless compassion for others. These are fairly traditional instructions for generating compassion as part of the Mahayana Buddhist path. First, start by generate compassion for yourself, perhaps by giving yourself a ball, as Tim describes some Tibetan monks are taught to do. Then, extend your compassion to those close to you, people you care for, such as friends and family. Continue widening your embrace until it includes all beings. (Buddhists might take a shortcut on this route if they are able to genuinely recognize the emptiness of the self and the nondual nature of reality, such that a thoroughgoing compassion for oneself already embraces all others.)

Through compassion comes a true quality of fearlessness. After all, you do not fear what you love.

Because it arises from compassion, this fearlessness is not anything like what we typically give that label. Often, it is bestowed on the sort of assurance that follows physical strength and prowess with weapons, or else it is really defiance. This sort of fearlessness is actually quite weak, and should simply be called fear. It arises from a despairing recognition of powerlessness. It seeks to reassert control. Thus, fear is an expression of ego, and it is the truly pathological narcissism that we decry as disordered.

Violence is an expression of fear. The fearful one is grasping at straws, desperately seeking to reassert control, the control of the ego, in a situation where it is powerless. It reasons, "If I can only destroy the power of the one I find threatening, then I will be strong. Then I will have power." It is a hysterical reaction, in evidence just as strongly in revolutionary violence against a threatening state as it is in police violence against nonviolent protesters the state (or banks and corporations) views as threatening. Despite much protestation, violence never differs in kind, and it is always an act of weakness.

Softness is great and strength is shit.

You do not fear what you love. You do not harm what you fearlessly love. Compassion, starting from the mustard seed of narcissism, opens a gap in the cycle of violence. As the gap widens, the cycle loses momentum, and we eventually find ourselves suspended in space. Once we are spacious and open, we will find that any further problems are like waves in the sea---they arise and dissipate without disturbing the depths.

We need this. In order to effect lasting social change, our resistance must be built on a foundation of compassion, otherwise it will simply continue the pattern of idealistic uprisings degenrating into rotten realities. If we are willing, and careful not to mistake the method for the goal, a healthy sense of narcissism can be a skillful means to get us there.

Woodard and Ligotti Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-08T07:03:00.000-07:00

Ben Woodard makes the connection here, with particular reference to Ligotti's short "The Red Tower."

Like Ben, I'm not really a strong political thinker, but I wanted to comment and explain a little bit as he alludes somewhat obliquely to some features of the story that I think are really salient. The connection he's made here is disturbing in just the right way. So, uh, SPOILERS, if you haven't already read it.

In summary, the Red Tower is a factory, which is really no more than a building at the time the narration takes place. It was once staffed with workers who made its products, but one day they, and apparently all the machinery, were eliminated. Somehow production continued underground, by which the factory produced increasingly grotesque novelty items. This too eventually stalled. However, rumor whispered of yet another underground level, a place where another sort of product was tilled in a graveyard-like setting. Still, no hint of laborers.

As Ben notes, this is startlingly suggestive of the way Wall Street works. The third and final level, in particular, is especially resonant. No one is really doing the work, it is just an algorithm, and no one really sees the products or even where they are produced, because they are equally evanescent, insubstantial, merely electronic signals shooting back and forth from one server to the next. And no one but the Red Tower itself profits from this activity.

Ben mentions that the zombie metaphor for production doesn't quite fit. I wonder, though, if it is the zombie apocalypse that will end up saving us...

A Diamond Vehicle

2011-09-22T22:40:00.000-07:00

I used to think of nihilism as a pretty cool philosophy. Then, the United States became its poster child, and I began to wonder what the hell had been wrong with me.

When I posted my definition of violence last week, I was still hopeful that Troy Davis would not be executed. His ducks toed the line perfectly, and the case's tapestry had been unwoven in time for a new dawn to shine on his continued life. But Odysseus never returned home. You know the rest.

This is a paradigm, the exemplar and its example, of the problems with death as a penalty. Violence dismantles potential and enervates, and no violence does this so starkly as murder. The victim has plateaued and will go no higher. The institution acting on behalf of all wounds all. We all suffer. A light is lost, and there are now-dim paths we can no longer travel.

Meanwhile, nihilism navel-gazes at the zenith of the plateau, godlike in its naive disdain. You see, nihilism isn't concerned with nothingness or emptiness, but with skipping across the surface of the ocean like a thin, smooth stone. It papers over holes. No, the frightful thing about nihilism is not its much-maligned romance with nothing, but rather it is nihilism's focus on the surface---the frozen frames of film which produce only the illusion of continuous motion---the reduction to appearance---as all there is that should worry us. Nihilism's true folly is an obsession with stasis. Allowing neither acts of nor possibilities for creativity, as dialectical opposition par excellence, nihilism is violence enthroned in a frigid wasteland.

Emptiness is not stasis, and it is not opposed to being. Rather, emptiness is the creative force which is expressed in appearances---in both nirvana and samsara. It is unified, not fragmented in an endless confused display of opposition. Distinct, but not opposed. Indeed, it is the ultimate coexistence. It is the ecological thought.

As such, we must all recognize the truth: I am Troy Davis. Tat tvam asi. Perhaps acknowledging this is mysticism, but it is no flowery figure of speech, neither is it simply a dusty religious maxim. And, in any case, we could use a great deal more mysticism. I am Troy Davis, and so are you. We are all coexistent, interconnected. Violence done to any is violence done to all. You died last night, and so did I. Emptiness was covered over, if only partially, obscuring our collective view of reality and inhibiting our collective power to be.

When we recognize this truth, that each of us is Troy Davis, that each of us is every victim of violence, then all paths will be reopened through an outpouring of compassion. Creativity can be reenergized. We have work to do, however. We philosophers---indeed, all so-called intellectuals---must take our place at the forge. Philosophy must become the diamond implement of emptiness, creating the conditions for the recognition of coexistence. Philosophy must shape itself as the luminous vehicle of compassion. And in all cases, it must cut through the confused veil of violence.

Om Mani Peme Hung

2011-09-21T20:04:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry we failed you. May you be blessed.

Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore: Towards a Definition of Violence

2011-09-12T21:03:00.000-07:00

In the comments on a previous post, a commentor asked whether I had any thoughts on a definition of violence that is thorough, yet avoids the pitfalls of overgeneralization I mentioned in the body of that post. I must confess that my mind went blank upon reading the comment! So I set it aside for a few days while I tried to think of an impressive way of admitting that I had no idea how to answer. Luckily for me, an idea came to me Friday night, just after meditating. Apparently, I think best when I stop thinking. And to give credit where credit is due, this idea is inspired by a subsequent commentor, who mentions a need to attend to the relationship between power and force.

Roughly, the definition is as follows:

Violence is the vertical actualization of a power as harm.

This is rather compact, so some explanation of is in order.

Power, or dynamis, as understood by Aristotle, is the capacity or potential to act. It is internal to the essence or ousia of a thing. As such, it is relatively static. When I say 'actualization,' I am referring to the activity, called energeia by Aristotle and later Greek thinkers, which arises from one or several powers. This has been characterized variously as a modality of being, as existence, etc. The particulars aren't particularly important here, as I intend for these two components to be relatively straightforward and readily adoptable by those who don't share my somewhat, uh, eccentric developments of these concepts.

Harm and verticality form the crux of this definition. Harm is a particular kind of activity which is defined by the conjunction of force and the vertical. It is not necessarily physical, but can also be mental, emotional, situational, etc. So what are force and the vertical? Force is a kind of activity. Specifically, it is an activity that influences a change in other activities and powers. This is not always harmful, of course. In fact, force is often productive of new activities and powers. Think, for instance, of force's application in fabricating a metal instrument, such as a trumpet, the existence of which enabled Miles Davis to perform Bitches Brew. Such music wouldn't exist without force.

No, it is only force applied vertically that is harmful. I do not mean vertical here in terms of some literal up-down/above-below spatial axis. Rather, the vertical is a hierarchical relationship which opposes itself to the anarchic coexistence of the horizontal. Indeed, the vertical is dialectical opposition[1], which precludes the intermeshed coexistence of distinct entities. Thus, a vertical system must orient itself towards ordering its terms in a ray descending from an apex, as monads gather in obedience to a dominant monad (perhaps in order to write the Monadology?).

Horizontal coexistence is the condition of creativity, under which forces produce further powers and activities. Harm (i.e. vertical force) retards and dissipates energies that are already active, and renders powers impotent, thereby foreclosing creativity.

This all seems rather esoteric, so let's have a look at two examples---one that fulfills this definition, and one that does not. First some obvious violence. Murder involves a straightforward ending of life by some actor. This actor actualizes a power, which in turn influences changes in the powers and activities of the victim. In this case, all of the victim's powers and activities aside from a certain bare physical existence are more or less vaporized. Because the victim's unity (i.e. self-coexistence), powers, and activities are disrupted, the force is vertical. The murderer has asserted himself over the victim in a hierarchical relationship.

For the second example, let's look oppositional discourse in academia. While this can sometimes involve threats, put-downs, sexism, racism, ageism, etc., I assume we all believe these are not necessary features of academic discourse. By oppositional discourse, then, I mean the system of putting distinct theories, scholarship, etc. into contest and arguing for and against each. In its simplest form, this could be as simple as arguing which of two readings of Dante's inscription over the gates of Hell in Inferno III is the better. Now, how does this fit into the above definition of violence? Clearly, there is force involved, as distinct scholarly activities come into contact and cause each other to change. These forces, however, are creative. At least in theory, the interaction of distinct theories takes place in order to fuel further inquiry. It is supposed to create possibilities for scholarship, wherein multiple lineages of thought coexist and challenge each other to attain greater insights. The forces at play here are horizontal, not vertical. When they do become vertical, this is a perversion of the very principle that makes ongoing research possible.

So, anyways, that's a start. I'm sure it's missing something.

_______________
[1] Using the term 'dialectical opposition' may seem strange in light of the fact that I was recently arguing against a view that would allow the so-called 'oppositional discourse' of academia to count as violence. I mean something rather specific here. Dialectical opposition is the notion that real distinctions are in principle utter chasms between terms, and it typically wreaks the most havoc in metaphysics. The formula used to combat it is "distinct, but not opposed," which is a simpler way of saying that there can in fact be real distinctions in entities without disturbing their ontological unity. These distinctions typically would have been classified as distinctions of the mind---which is to say, mistaken, hallucinatory, not actually distinct---for someone like Suarez. Perhaps I will have a more complete discussion of this some other time.

"Forgive me for pointing this out..."

2011-09-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

With respect to His Holiness, I have to agree with Paul on this one:

In a December 2008 interview with Prospect Magazine, McCartney mentioned that he tried to convince the Dalai Lama to become a vegetarian. In a letter to the Dalai Lama, McCartney took issue with Buddhism and meat-eating being considered compatible, saying, "Forgive me for pointing this out, but if you eat animals then there is some suffering somewhere along the line." The Dalai Lama replied to McCartney by saying his doctors advised him to eat meat for health reasons. In the interview McCartney said, "I wrote back saying they were wrong."

Many Buddhist teachers I've read mention that we ought to consider other creatures as having been our loving fathers or mothers or children in previous lifetimes, as well as that certain professions that involve harming animals (such as butchers) should expect a heavy karma burden. Furthermore, compassion and ahimsa are principles aimed at the elimination of suffering for all beings. It seems perfectly reasonable, then, to think that Buddhists ought to practice veganism or at least vegetarianism as the natural expression of their religion. I hope His Holiness has a change of heart.

Doing Violence, Metaphorical and Actual

2011-09-03T21:23:00.000-07:00

About one week ago, Tim posted asking for thoughts on nonviolence, and specifically on why, as a commenter has put it, nonviolence "is in a 'ghetto' in the academy." I responded with the following:

I couldn't tell you exactly why this is, or point to any literature discussing it. However, I have experienced pretty sharply the 'ghetto' of nonviolence, even in places where it seems like it should be welcome (for instance, among vegan critical animal theorists).

My impression is that it is largely an assumed attitude. When I asked about it, all the replies I received were more or less some variation of the following:
1) "Nonviolence doesn't work."
2) "Nonviolence is stupid."
3) "Violence is unavoidable."
I will not hesitate to add that none of these positions were well supported, and they were typically formulated in an abusive manner.

The best reasoning I have heard is along the lines of the first position. It stated that nonviolence does not work because it serves the interests of the ruling classes. I presume this would be because it is assumed that nonviolence fails to disturb hegemonic relations in a meaningful way, but this wasn't stated explicitly. (Truly, this is a generous reading of what was said to me. In reality, it went something more like: "Nonviolence? You're making things worse, you useless bourgeoisie fuck!" No, really.) The question, then, is obviously: why think nonviolence necessarily fails to disturb hegemony? Aren't there obvious examples where it did? If the advocate for violence thinks these examples failed to disturb hegemony, I believe the burden of proof is on them to show how, since we would be discussing relatively noncontroversial examples of successful nonviolence.

The third position is just sad, of course. Often, the people who went this route would admit that nonviolence is perhaps ideal, but that it is impossible. One such person couched this as a Spinozist ethical position---"Do what works"---as though this would proscriptively require the killing of some government official if that one death could avert some other tragedy or social ill.

All of these viewpoints seem to hold in common an impoverished conception of compassion as a vehicle for social and political change. This is confusing, since compassion seems to be a positive and fruit-bearing approach, whereas violence as a revolutionary force must always be reactionary, or at least retributive. Lex talionis does not strike most people as an effective ethical principle, so why found a politics on such slippery sands?

Summary: Nonviolence is awesome.

If you haven't guessed by now, nonviolence is pretty near and dear to my heart. I consider myself a pacifist, and I go so far in my attempts not to harm other sentient beings as to cover drinks so that flies won't drown in them. (Yes, I am that guy.) As indicated above, I am not at all impressed with the current tendency to favor violence with little to no explanation or argument, and I find it disturbing that it has become an assumed condition of nearly all activity.

Since posting my comment, for instance, other commenters have considered the possibility that the oppositional discourse to which academia is so beholden might itself be a sort of violence. I think this is rather wrong, and I can only wonder at the airily insubstantial things we now label as violence. Many of these things, such as oppositional discourse, can only be called violence in a metaphorical sense.

Along the lines of Tim's "if Nature is everything, it isn't a useful concept," we must recognize that as violence is used as a metaphor to describe more and more disparate things, it becomes less and less meaningful. Suddenly, we find ourselves in a place where torturing and killing other animals is described in the same way as oppositional discourse---and if one isn't wrong, it's hard to see how the other is. Violence no longer describes inflicted suffering, and instead it is another word for difference. Suddenly, any entity's bare existence is violence against that of all others because it is a dissonance, a usurping not-that encroaching upon another's being. How does this help us describe ontic, ethical, or political situations? Frankly, it doesn't. It renders all existence an absurd and grotesque massacre, as at the end of Hamlet, of which the only survivors are the prophets of the all-subsuming violence of being.

The solution here, of course, is not to say that there is no such thing as violence, nor is it to advocate for some sort of moral neutrality of violence. Rather, we must rehabilitate the concept of violence, making careful distinctions about what violence---and indeed, what nonviolence---is and is not. Advocates of nonviolence, in particular, ought to be especially concerned with this, as it relates to whether certain direct action techniques (for instance, property destruction and monkeywrenching) are indeed violent acts as the media and ruling classes aver. It is only through a thorough investigation of the concept that we can launch an effective critique and lay the foundation for a positive account of nonviolence. Capitulating to obfuscation and metaphor-bandying will get us nowhere.

23rd Annual Beg-fest

2011-09-01T00:04:00.000-07:00

Source

Well, it's that time of year again. Death approaches, and I am commemorating the completion of another step.

For the third year running, I am celebrating by posting a wish list of books. 23 books for 23 years. This feels strange each time, because I'm always afraid there is a bit of egocentrism or narcissism involved. Why would people who don't know me buy me books? It feels as though I am burdening others or overstepping some boundary, as though I am being a bit presumptuous.

So, let me explain. I am young, have a family, and research independently of any institution. This means that I am relatively poor, cannot spend money with abandon, and do not have access to a university library. Books are a necessary resource for academic research, so it is obviously difficult to pursue any kind of scholarship without steady access to books. It is my hope that the kindness of a few friends and strangers may enable me to continue with this pursuit.

Thanks to those of you who are willing and able to support me in this way. If you can't or don't wish to, no worries!

Without further ado:

THE 23RD ANNUAL BEG-FEST LIST

Insomnia

2011-08-24T00:52:00.000-07:00

Listening to the incredible Esa-Pekka Salonen's Insomnia. Seems appropriate give that it's nearly 1 am here. I can't seem to find a the audio anywhere to link here, so I'll just post the relevant composition page from his website. It's a great piece of music. And it sounds the way my unconscious looks right now. As he says:

From early in the composition process, I realised that this music was somehow about the night (an early working title was Nox), but not in an idyllic, nocturnal way. I was more drawn towards the demonic, ‘dark’ aspects of the night: the kind of persistent, compulsive thoughts that run through our mind when lying hopelessly awake in the early hours.

Plus, the disc I have with a recording of this also contains two companion pieces entitled Mécanisme and Organisme, which is just kind of cool in a Deleuzo-Guattarian way. Definitely check it out if you have the opportunity.

An aside: I thought to listen to this because I had earlier been listening to a rather different form of machine music---Merzbow's Variations For Electric Fan, which was recorded in September 1988. The fact that such noise energy was in the air at the time of my birth seems almost explanatory.

Abstract: Destroy Your Life For Satan!

2011-08-21T23:56:00.000-07:00

[Below is the abstract for the presentation I am preparing for PEST. Enjoy.]

“Destroy Your Life For Satan”[1]:

A Buddhist Exploration of Black Metal Toward the Establishment of Necroyana

The American Nihilist Underground Society (ANUS) once published a piece sketching the apparent affinity between death metal and Buddhism.[2] The article recounts the story of a man who, focusing all of his attention on death, learns the Buddha’s open secret. “Only death is real.” Total awareness of death brings death metal into a space where it may begin to realize the Buddhist path to enlightenment; it is, after all, what set young Siddhartha on his path to become the Buddha. Simply recognizing death is only the beginning, however. Without a liberatory practice, death metal stalls and binds itself more deeply to illusion. Looking is not enough. One must “taste and see.”[3]

Where its forbears have only gazed, black metal insists on going. It relies on active dissolution, as evidenced in common lyrical themes, production values, and even on-stage mutilation. In Tibetan Buddhism, as well, many practices—for instance, the phowa, or transference of consciousness—involve enacting a dissolution of the body, a grinding down into is constituent elements, as well as a dissolution of the mind. These overlapping methods demonstrate that black metal is a practice of death, just as Buddhism essentially consists of the practice of death in meditation. Thus, it is also a meditative practice.

Practicing death, like all meditative practices, is a liberatory process. It frees its practitioners from the illusion of life--which is to say, it unearths and makes present the truth that we are always already dying and rotting away. Therefore, black metal is akin to the yanas of Buddhist practice, a vehicle for the realization of enlightenment. It is necroyana, the vehicle of death itself, a body of practices against the body. A “massive conspiracy against all life.”[4] Not a diamond, but a femur pestle. A rope portal to the actualization of the empty essence of mind.

________________________
[1] “Destroy Your Life For Satan,” Mütiilation, 2001.
[2] “Buddhism and Death Metal.” http://www.anus.com/metal/about/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=77. Accessed 8/20/2011.
[3] Psalm 34:8.
[4] “Massive Conspiracy Against All Life,” Leviathan, 2008.

Merzbuddha

2011-08-18T23:38:00.000-07:00

Nothing particularly significant about this, but Merzbow's Merzbuddha is probably one of my favorite noise albums. I find rhythmic noise to be very soothing. Anyways, enjoy the first two mantras below.

Buddha Objects?

2011-08-17T16:24:00.000-07:00

Shortly after publishing my previous post, a little anecdote popped into my head.

A feature of Buddhist psychology is the claim that the deluded mind of the ego is not continuous, that its thoughts are not a stream but a series of quickly passing frames, as in a film strip. The point of meditation practice is to disrupt this series, to widen the gaps between each intervening mind-act.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, it seems on its face to suggest that perhaps the way we perceive the world, as though it is made up of discreet entities, is an illusion. It suggests that objectification is possibly imposed by the ego. What we think of as objects would then be a result of grasping, which is the ego's drive to reinforce its existence through the creation of a subject-object (or, frankly, object-object, since a subject is just another object) binary.

But this is just an anecdote, which doesn't really prove anything unless you are already a Buddhist and my interpretation is a good one.

An ancient sculpture of Umadbro, the Buddha of Trolling

Morton will probably wipe the floor with me on this, though.

Being and Becoming

2011-08-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

Ben Woodard posts on the ongoing disagreement between OOO and process philosophies. It's a good overview of the current state of the debate, which spans all the way back to Platonic philosophy, if not earlier (and that's just in "the West").

I agree with Ben on a number of things. For instance, it's easy to poke fun at a bunch of hippies hanging around with their lava lamps. I mean, really, who still has a lava lamp? This characterization of becoming has a lot of rhetorical force that neatly summarizes the weaknesses of process philosophies: you get an image of burnt-out, hazy stoners listening to Grateful Dead bootlegs with bean burrito innards smeared across their fluorescent tie-dyed shirts. Processes are so groovy, man. I mean, dude, you just gotta go with the flow. No, objects seem much more rigorous. They are clean-cut, suit-clad business professionals.

Why am I harping on this tangent? Obviously, no one in the OOO camp has gone so far in saying anything like this. It typically stops at 'lava lamp.' I would like to suggest, however, that the use of this term is somewhat indicative of a lack of engagement with the real claims and possibilities of process philosophy. That is, the rejection is vicarious, aesthetic.

No, I'm not trolling. No, seriously.

Now, if anybody is actually reading my unimportant blog, I'm sure this will incite some philoso-rage. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the criticism of process philosophies that is most often touted by Object-Oriented Folks (OOF?) is Graham Harman's discussion of overmining and undermining. To be a bit crude, what does this amount to but a criticism that process philosophies are not OOP/O? Sure, ok, we don't focus mainly on objects, they aren't the focal point of our systems, blah blah blah. This is merely descriptive. Any argumentative force it has is rhetorical. Unless one is easily frightened by displays of bright light, I doubt this vein of criticism will convince anyone who has not already assumed the object-oriented position.

I don't really have anything else to add at this point. Definitely check out Ben's post if you haven't already.

PEST

2011-08-15T17:28:00.000-07:00

Two related announcements.

First, the latest iteration of the Black Metal Theory Symposium has been officially announced! We can all thank Michael O'Rourke, Karin Sellberg, and Nicola Masciandaro for working tirelessly on this to make our world a little blacker.

Second, although I am not in a financial position to participate in the flesh, those of you who are fans of my Buddhist black metal angle should be glad to know that I will be presenting on black metal as the practice of death via a combination of prepared video and Skype. Assuming the organizers have no problem with this, I will try to make my video available here once the event has taken place.

Please see the magnificent symposium rationale below. Visual darkness is courtesy of Vincent Como.

PEST – Black Metal Theory Symposium

Organized by Nicola Masciandaro, Michael O’Rourke and Karin Sellberg in collaboration with

Invictus Productions and Into the Void Records

Date: Sunday 20 November 2011, 14.00-Close

Location: The Pint Bar, Eden Quay, Dublin, Ireland

P.E.S.T. (Philial Epidemic Strategy Tryst)

… affirmation (acting as companion) of a non-survival-supporting life whose tentacles crack death open merely as a collective perversion, a philia, which progressively disterminalizes as the end of all becomings or the terminus ad quem of becomings; and is transmuted to a collapsing expanse exhumed, deflowered and scavenged by life (non-survivalist life: unlife), its netting, mazing and bonding philia: a space of becomings, so contagious and epidemic, which as Nick Land puts it, is a “Pest”, a “meltdown plague ... Death as a terminal expanse of coldness and a part of desiring-machine is messed up through the pestilential and wasteful (exorbitant) bonds of epidemic life (philia) which frantically composes new strategies of 'openness to everything' – by means of its ungrounding strategies, bonds of philia and affirmation – not merely openness as the plane of being open but rather being lacerated, cracked, butchered and laid open ... then, sewing and scavenging what have been opened through the bonds of philia and the interphyletic labyrinths of life through which becoming runs as a vermiculating, mazing machine or an engineer of labyrinthine inter-dimensionalities.

– Reza Negarestani “Death as a Perversion: Openness and Germinal Death”

Christ on the cross appeared to me ... then summoned me to place my mouth to the wound in his side. It seemed to me that I saw and drank the blood, which was freshly flowing from his side … At times it seems to my soul that it enters into Christ’s side, and this is a source of great joy and delight.

[W]e washed the feet of the women and the hands of the men, and especially those of one of the lepers which were festering and in an advanced stage of decomposition. Then we drank the very water with which we had washed him. And the drink was so sweet that, all the way home, we tasted its sweetness and it was as if we had received Holy Communion.

– Angela of Foligno, Memorial

To be this much in love is to be sick (and I love to be sick).

– Georges Bataille, The Impossible

Pest: any deadly epidemic disease; plague (now rare); anything destructive; any insect, fungus, etc that destroys cultivated plants; a troublesome person or thing. Pestilent: deadly; producing pestilence; hurtful to health and life; pernicious; mischievous, vexatious [Fr peste and pestilence, from L pestis, pestilential, related to perdo, to destroy, ruin, lose; cf. perditus, lost, ruined by love].

Black Metal and Theory meet in a place of mutual pestering, a dark star-crossed extra-section of their individual para-sites, a rendezvous for conspiratorial communication; unnatural and extra-natural participation. The pestilential bonding of the equally sick pair exposes and releases to the air an epidemic of openness, “not merely openness as the plane of being open but rather being lacerated, cracked, butchered and laid open” (Negarestani). Black Metal and Theory have proven to be mutually antagonistic, vexatious, and their conjoining has occasioned much annoyance on both sides: from fans of Black Metal and from ivory tower theorists. Black Metal Theory is a pest and Black Metal theorists are mischievous pesterers. It is little wonder, then, that Black Metal theory is para-academic, simultaneously beside, outside and inside the academy: “Meeting, communicating or touching the true pestilential bonds of Empedocles' philia or the contagious plateau of interphylum or epidemic openness, the resistance, any isolationist struggle, uncommunicative reaction or opposition to, remains unchanged (unmutated) becomes impossible (but appreciated as a strategy intensifying the mess, the waste of the process and engineering the exorbitant). Through the expanse of philia, everything should participate and participation has no end, nor beginning, nor horizon, nor a certain objective of participation. Infested by the epidemic (contagious and wasteful) bonds of philia, openness is triggered on all levels of its communicative lines but more on the plane of ‘being opened’ than ‘being open’ or ‘being open to’” (Negarestani, “Death as a Perversion”). Black Metal Theory perverts, infests, and invents strategies for philial deviation, cross-breeding philosophy with the love of black metal, mating orcs and elves.

Pester: to infest (archaic); annoy persistently. [Apparently from Ofr empestrer (FR empêtrer), to entangle, from L in in, and LL pāstōrium a foot-shackle, from L pāstus, pa p of pāscere to feed]

The space or plane where Black Metal and Theory feed upon each other and are shackled together is one of mutual pestering, a cascade of parasitisms where it is impossible to tell which is guest and which is host, to discern what is living and what is dead, what is natural and what is not.A philial epidemic strategy for the two-fold event of infestation necessitates a “pact with putrefaction”, the “moment of nucleation with nigredo” (Negarestani). Nothing beats the supreme intimacy of inter-laceration and mutual rot. It is the only way of being anywhere: “Infinite universe as silent as death / In this coffin I lay to rest” (Inquisition, “Astral Path to Supreme Majesties,” Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm).

Pestle: an instrument for pounding or grinding.

To find strategies, or schizotrategies, which would allow for the contagious tryst between Black Metal and theory, one needs to pound reason, to grind out a pestilential rationalism. “Intelligibility is the epiphenomenon of a necrophilic intimacy ... reason reanimates the dead rather than bestowing life upon it ... intelligibility is the reanimation of the dead according to an external agency. Reason grounds the universe not only on a necrophilic intimacy but also in conformity with an undead machine imbued with the chemistry of putrefaction and nigredo” (Negarestani). One strategy for grounding the mathesis of decay is the Etruscan torture ritual where a living man or woman was tied to a rotting corpse, “shackled to their rotting double” and “left to decay.” What the Etruscan practice demonstrates is that the decay which is normally associated with the outside is always already internal to the body, to the flesh. The binding of the putrefying corpse and the living body is a strategy for necrophilic intimacy. This necroeroticism also reveals that the living are always already-dead and that the dead are always-already reanimatable. Black Metal, which is often “characterized among its followers and opponents by its ambivalent relationship with death and decay to such an extent that it is often said that the only protagonists in Black Metal are festering corpses” (Negarestani and Masciandaro “Black Metal Commentary”), is in an ambivalently necromantic relationship, a philial relationship between the living and the dead. The strategic philial tryst between the immoderate commentator, “the one who loves thinking” and “the loved one (black metal)” (Nicola Masciandaro, “Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralaya”) is necrological, an erotic rotting open of the object that exceeds the correlational parameters of exegesis and interpretation. “It is the ambivalent relationship of Black Metal with death that gives rise to the most criticized aspect of Black Metal, namely, necromanticism. As a part of vitalistic investment in death, necromanticism involves a liberalist or hedonistic openness toward death in the form of a simultaneously econonomical and libidinal synthesis between desire and death ... Black Metal can also be approached from a more twisted and colder intimacy with death, an impersonal realm where the already-dead finds its voice in the living” (Masciandaro and Negarestani). This twisted nest of relations is an inescapable yet reversible catena, a black chain of being or necrophilic link of perverse (non)relations: “Love (philia) in all its forms entangles openness with closure, and ultimately closure with the radical exteriority of the outside” (Reza Negarestani, Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials).

Parasite: an organism that lives in or on another living organism and derives subsistence from it without rendering it any service in return.

Black Metal and Theory are parasites and sites of para-kinesis: para-sites. For Michel Serres parasitism is a nest of relations in a chain of feeding on, a perpetual or persistent movement where the host and guest make a good meal for the other. Serres’ parasitic relation reverses the usual notion of semiconduction, a unidirectional arrow where one thing feeds on another and gives nothing in return. It is a multi-vorous, vociferous exchange: a reciprocal interference. Parasitism produces disharmony; it engineers noise in the system. Black Metal Theory as Philial Epidemic Strategy Tryst (P.E.S.T.) creates such a site for parasitic static, interference, black noise.

This Black Metal Theory Symposium invites speculations, commentaries, reflections, archivizations, reconceptualizations and interventions on pestilence, decay, plague, decomposition, putrefaction, rot, corpses, infestation, consumption, perversion, cannibalism, necrophilia, flesh, feeding, worms, insects, rats, rationalism, plants, ecology, swarms, maggots, fever, vampirism, waste ... among other things. “Let’s gather our contagious diseases and make love” (Negarestani, Cyclonopedia).

Keynote Speaker:

Reza Negarestani

Live Acts:

Eternal Helcaraxe

Wound Upon Wound

Confirmed Participants:

Paul Ennis

Diarmuid Hester

Jan Los
Nicola Masciandaro

Michael O’ Rourke
Zachary Price
Karin Sellberg
Steven Shakespeare
Aspasia Stephanou

Scott Wilson
Ben Woodard

Confirmed Artists:

Vincent Como

On Taking Black Metal Seriously

2011-08-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

"Trolololololoooool!"

On my previous post, a reader wrote the following:

im not sure why anyone takes Burzum seriously when the guy posts stuff like this (and has for years). if the music is going to "stand alone" for black metal theory, shouldnt his thoughts be involved also?: - http://www.burzum.org/eng/library/war_in_europe01.shtml

This sort of question seems to come up a lot, so I felt it would be beneficial to share my answer with those who might not read the comments on an individual post. Here is my response:

I'm not sure I understand where this comment is coming from. I mean, first of all, I barely mentioned Burzum in this post. It was in passing, to, just acknowledging what I am commenting on for Glossator. It was basically a name drop.

Even so, I find your comment to be loaded with carelessness. Do we only take seriously those artists and intellectuals we agree with? I don't. I take Heidegger seriously, the unrepentant Nazi bastard, because he has made an unavoidable impact on European philosophy. I take the Tea Party seriously because they are a very real threat to everyone living in the United States, and perhaps even the world. No, taking seriously does not and should not imply agreement. Taking seriously is simply the act of recognizing something's impact or potential impact, as well as addressing it in terms of this seriousness.

Another bit of confusion: on the one hand you seem to think 'the music is going to "stand alone" for black metal theory' but you also seem to think, and this is contradictory, the artists' 'thoughts [should] be involved also.' Rather than trying to parse this, I can only give my opinion on the matter. No, music should not 'stand alone,' whatever that might mean. I haven't said anything remotely like that since I was in high school. So, yes, the artists' thoughts and intentions, among a host of other environmental and historical factors, should be considered. I certainly don't want my music to be evaluated apart from its place in a wider artistic statement, possibly with reference to certain pertinent biographical details. At the moment, I can't think of anyone involved with black metal theory who has said or done otherwise. Many of us are taking seriously the political implications of black metal, among other things 'outside of the music' (again, whatever that might mean).

In short, I don't have a clue why you posted this here.

Mütiilation and the Teachings of Death

2011-08-12T22:13:00.000-07:00

I am working on a commentary for Glossator's black metal issue, focusing on (surprise!) Burzum's Dunkelheit and Mütiilation's Cosmic Seeds of Anger & Dementia. My piece places separate commentaries on each song alongside each other before smashing them together in a spectacular swirl of textual feedback. Without giving too much away, there is a fragment of the Mütiilation tune that I'd like to share here.

Now, without really meaning to relate it to this commentary, I have been reading Eknath Easwaran's translation of the Upanishads. It's a very nice translation, quite pleasurable to read, although I get the sense from his introductions that he is a little too 'perennial philosophy' for my tastes. I don't know how this infects his translations, if at all.

Anyways, I came to the Katha Upanishad, wherein the King of Death, Yama, instructs a young spiritual aspirant named Nachiketa. In the second part of the dialogue, Yama says:

And beyond is Brahman, omnipresent,
Attributeless. (2.3.8)

Here we have the statement that the absolute, the ground of all being, is: 1) omnipresent and 2) attributeless. These two descriptors appear to be opposite. Omnipresence, being present everywhere, in everything, means that there is no space where Brahman is not. This seems to require a certain identification of all with Brahman. On the other hand, if Brahman is without attribute, it cannot be anything.

Bizarrely, this reminded me of my Mütiilation commentary. Meyhna'ch utters two similar lines in the course of the song. First, "All is nothing." Then, a few lines later, "Nothing is all." Thinking of these lines at this point in the Katha Upanishad seemed to provide me with some mutual clarification.

These two very different texts are operating with the same logic wherein opposites become equals in that they form a coemergent binary. They arise together, dependent on each other for their very existence. Because of this coemergence, they are identified as a single ground. Brahman is everything, Brahman is nothing; all is nothing, nothing is all. I found the Schellingian character of this movement striking. The Buddha would later take this Upanishadic binary and, in true Schellingian fashion, posit an unground of absolute indifference from which difference and the binary emerges as the realm of samsara.

I think the Buddha would have been impressed with Meyhna'ch's insight into this matter.

All is nothing
Transformation
Illumination
Over the vast night of times
Negation of my life
In the black void of satan, the mighty revelator of matiere and time
.....................
Nothing is all

2011-08-10T00:08:00.000-07:00

It seems that, unsurprisingly, my blogging activity has ceased. I get very excited about blogging, then it fades from focus and . . . it's gone. Recently, I've said that the problem I have is an overly-high opinion of myself, which causes me to feel a need to impress people. Much of the time, though, I don't feel I can impress, so I do nothing.

On the other hand, I also often feel like I'm a worthless shit with nothing interesting to say. It's like I'm drowning in tar. Incredible arrogance and nihilistic self-loathing. Go figure.

The plan at this point is to approach blogging slightly differently to the way I have thus far. At least, mentally. My intention is to let all my grandiose pretensions to scholarly wizardry dissolve into the abyss. In their place I will simply be. Whatever moves me, here it will go. This sounds simple enough, but I have long been extremely uncomfortable with myself, so this will be a bit of an exercise in making friends with myself. In a way, this is simply what I said I would do when I started this iteration of my blog. But here I rededicate myself to it. Let's see if it lasts...

Helvete: With Head Downwards

2011-04-21T14:45:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to announce a new CFP for Helvete's Winter 2013 issue entitled "With Head Downwards: Inversion in Black Metal" and edited by Nicola Masciandaro and Steven Shakespeare! Find the CFP here (PDF).

Solve et Coagula: The Textual Work of Nature

2011-04-06T10:13:00.000-07:00

The following is my proposal for The Mystical Text volume of Glossator, which I'm posting here in case anyone's curious what I'm getting up to these days.

“Moreover, all poets sing, and philosophers do not deny, that by verses many wonderful things may be done . . .”
- De occulta philosophia, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

“It was made an instrument for renewing all beings by dissolving them; and, like the good farmer of life, for offering to bring them, once dissolved, renewal through transformation.”
- Corpus Hermeticum

“Thus the world was framed.”
- Tabula Smaragdina

Mysticism and occultism enjoy a complicated relationship. It seems that at different times, and at the practitioner’s convenience, each is in turn subsumed under the other, while in still other circumstances the two are held apart vociferously. Strangely, both absorption and separation hold in common the implication that mysticism and occultism differ in nature. I would suggest, however, that mysticism and occultism denote the same kind of movement and differ only in degree or directionality. On this gloss, mysticism describes a limiting move inward, while occultism describes a creative outward growth. That is, mysticism and occultism are the relative ends of a spectrum. Their precise point of divergence is ambiguous. As a result, they do not and cannot function in distinction, but are mutually (self-)conditioning, working in tandem to conceive endless possibilities. Any mystical text is therefore also occult, and vice versa, though the degree to which the alternative motions are manifest varies. Texts in the Hermetic tradition, for instance the Corpus Hermeticum, are well-balanced in this regard, displaying both mystical and occult properties in equal measure.

This confluence of mystical and occult motions in text raises numerous difficulties. What is subjected to these textual motions? The text itself? The “outside world”? Are text and world codeterminative parallel to Neoplatonism’s microcosm and macrocosm? My piece for this volume will depart from this questioning to examine how the world is dissolved and transformed both within text and by text, thereby taking text as alchemical practitioner and matter--which is to say, as Nature. Formally, the piece will intersperse a fragmented essay on (the) matter with an exegetical commentary of lines 7 through 10 of the Tabula Smaragdina. Along the way, I will enrich the commentary by considering the conception of prophecy in Schelling’s Freiheitschrift, the magical capacity of words and linguistic capacity of magic in Agrippa, Pseudo-Dionysius’s word-sculpture, Laozi’s mystical cosmogony, and Maximus the Confessor’s doctrine of the logoi. The resulting text’s work will consist of the dissolution of these and other disparate elements and their cosmic-textual transformation, as Poimandres explains to Hermes in the Corpus Hermeticum:

People call transformation death, because the body is dissolved, but in fact life withdraws into the unmanifest. [. . .] Each day a part of the cosmos withdraws into the unmanifest, but the cosmos is never dissolved. This is what happens to the cosmos, these are its cycles and its mysteries. The cycles are a continual rotation and the mystery is the renewal. The cosmos assumes all forms, it does not hold constant the forms that are within it but it changes them within itself.

You Were Talking About a Black Metal Theory; What the Fuck is That!!!

2011-04-04T20:28:00.000-07:00

Dodsferd wants to know: what the fuck is black metal theory?

Having started a journal dedicated to black metal theory, I am one of a fortunate few who are blessed with the apparent responsibility of defending the enterprise from any and all attacks. Why do we exist? Indeed, why should we be allowed to exist? Black metal fans and academics unite in questioning. Black metal is strictly against academic analysis, the former says, while the latter objects that black metal is too stupid to be bothered with. Both wonder how black metal theory can be practiced in good faith. Surely there must be smirking and nudging of elbows, some exchange of knowing looks, wherever the words 'black metal theory' are uttered. I would like to take a moment, therefore, to describe what it is I think we are doing, and in the process to give a little theodicy for this dark god we have fashioned.

An oft-quoted comment from a Decibel reader claims that black metal 'has nothing to do with being intellectual and everything to do with not wanting to try and break every little thing apart.' This is factually untrue in two regards. First of all, several of the artists in the early Norwegian scene were and still are quite intellectually-inclined, and have stated various philosophical and sociological motivations for their art. Varg Vikernes is the best-known of these because of his incorrigible racism, but I think Fenriz and the folks from Enslaved are also good examples of thoughtful and articulate black metal artists. Second of all, what is black metal about if it is not about trying to break every little thing apart? Black metal has a unique aesthetic and conceptual dedication to decay, to decomposition and feral scraping. This dedication strongly mirrors the analytic mode of theory, and it is the primary inroad to the conjunction of black metal and theory. It is part of what is meant by the admittedly-poetic formulation 'mutual blackening.'

This also begins to explain why we restrict ourselves to black metal rather than embracing metal in general. Black metal is undeniably saturnine---it is dark, morose, and, most importantly, contemplative. Saturn, that great mystic, is the sphere wherein Dante finds the great contemplative masters, and it is here that black metal is seated in our perverse cosmology. Although for Dante Saturn is the embodiment of temperance, black metal is ravenously and self-destructively contemplative. It reaches away from the mean in either direction, past speculative excess and unknowing privation---at once scholasticism- and mysticism-gone-mad. Black metal theory harnesses and rides along with these opposite impulses, guiding them onward like the horse-drawn chariots of Phaedrus.

Stepping beyond the accepted mean, however, leads to ethical quandaries. Black metal seems to be haunted by specters of racism and violence, which many believe are central to its character. Assuming racism and violence are characteristic of black metal---and, in my opinion, they aren't---we must ask ourselves whether we ought to study it. How would such a thing be permissible? This is much the same question that we ask about Heidegger in light of his unrepentant Nazism. I do not wish to sweep away racism, violence, Nazism, or any other such ill, all of which I take extremely seriously, I feel we must recognize that oftentimes there is much of value alongside what we find objectionable. We don't (well, most of us don't) reject the useful contents of Heidegger's philosophy on the basis of his Nazism, so I feel we ought not to reject the contributions of black metal on the basis of its, or its purveyors', faults.

What, then, is the contribution of black metal? What does theory stand to gain by being put into conjunction with black metal? These are the very questions we are answering by participating in black metal theory. It is an experimental enterprise, the results of which cannot be definitively known in advance. Dear reader, you must be willing to take a leap with us into the abyss---you must 'taste and see.'

Sexual Harassment in the Academy

2011-03-30T17:15:00.000-07:00

A call to action and some thoughts on what to do from the New APPS Blog. More at Inside Higher Ed, as well.

I cannot add much. This is a big deal, and it is absolutely shameful that no tangible action has taken place to remedy the problem of sexual harassment. I am very, very glad to see the issue taken up.

SEE YOU IN HELVETE

2011-03-03T11:01:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've posted here. I've been working on getting a project launched, but now that it is up and running, I should be able to coast for a little bit. What have I been working on, you ask?

Helvete is a new journal of black metal theory! Check out our website for all of the details and the first CFP. (N.B. The CFP has been updated with a new publication schedule.)

Normal activity should resume soon.

Further Notes Towards OOO Politics

2011-02-07T23:36:00.000-08:00

Over at his blog, Timothy Morton has kindly responded to my pestering for his take on an OOO politics.

I sympathize with his initial hesitation, supported by Harman, to wed OOO to any particular politics. Fecundity is a very good measure of a position's value---and perhaps a good indication of whether it will endure the ages---and so being able to spawn or at least suitably adopt a number of complimentary positions seems like a virtue. On the other hand, I am something of a system builder (I know, how uncool am I?), so my proclivity is to build a monster that will walk and talk and confront its creator on a ship in the icy seas of the arctic. I think my theoretical justification for this is more or less aped from Spinoza. As Anthony Paul Smith once put it to me, "Do what works."---or, understand and act in accordance with the nature of reality such that you increase your ability to act. This understanding of the nature of reality is articulated by fundamental ontology. Fundamental ontology is then applied in the realms of ethics and politics, etc. Understandably, then, I have been interested to see how each of the OOOntologists would apply OOO as politics.

Morton applies OOO as anarchism, reasoning that the radical withdrawnness of objects precludes the existence of any top or bottom object. And where there is no head or foot, there is no arche---all objects are equal in their singularity. Personally, I think this is a good application of OOO, and not simply because I agree with anarchism (as we've established, I'm uncool). When I was initially encountering Object-Oriented Philosophy (and Speculative Realism more generally) three-ish years ago, I initially couldn't distinguish OOO from Leibniz. (When I finally saw that Harman confesses a great fondness for and affinity to Leibniz, I was immensely relieved that my mistake was not quite so egregious.) Many elements between the two are similar: in terms of units, Leibniz's monads roughly (roughly!) correspond to OOO's objects; monads are "windowless" and therefore opaque to other monads, which sounds an awful lot like withdrawnness; etc. The first dissimilarity that stuck out to me was the difference in organizing principles. For Leibniz, objects such as tables, humans, etc., are organized of numerous monads acting in 'obedience' to a dominant, or head, monad. OOO, on the other hand, lacks any notion of a dominant object, instead viewing conglomerations of objects as self-organizing and headless. This is, in my opinion, extremely suggestive of anarchism.

This has been a load of 'amphigorious, stultiloquential fiddle-faddle' just to say: I support Morton's choice of politics.

"Weird ambition . . ."

2011-02-07T22:50:00.000-08:00

I really must direct you to this quotation regarding leftist one-upsmanship, which also reminded me a little bit of why I can't quite stomach Zizek or Zerzan ("The Left isn't radical enough! Here, the solution is this ridiculous, perhaps slightly racist, bit of mental gymnastics!") .

Material Ideas in a Material World

2011-02-03T20:56:00.000-08:00

My introduction to philosophy was relatively unsexy. I didn't read Nietzsche or Sartre first, but Plato. Not one of the sexy dialogues, like Symposium or Timaeus, either---I read Laches. That's right, Laches. (Cliff Notes: "What is manliness, Socrates?" ... "After much deliberation, we have no idea." Exeunt.) Whether due to insanity or masochism, I really enjoyed the experience and began reading whatever I could find calling itself philosophy. This didn't turn out so well in some cases (the amateur was led astray by his local B&N philosophy section, which to this day is approximately 25% Ayn Rand). However, even after several years of independent and tutored experience, I find myself endlessly embattled with the Platonic corpus. All roads lead to Athens, I guess.

Rereading my Anti-Traditionalism post reminded me, yet again, of Plato, and of his theory of Ideas, in particular. At the end of that post, I wrote:

Breaking free from a genre must be measured diachronically, which means it can only be judged in retrospect. Much like a new species can only be discerned in hindsight, we can only recognize a new genre as viable once its emergence has passed. Often, this requires a band to have "offspring" otherwise it does not have the fecundity of a genre---just as a mule cannot produce more of its kind, it is infertile, and so is not a new species but a one-off hybridization of horse and donkey. The offspring, in turn, testify to the existence of the genre by their inclusion in it as well as by their common source in the parent band.

The skeleton of this idea first appeared to me several months ago, when I was reading Agamben's The Signature of All Things in conjunction with Morton's The Ecological Thought. It seemed to me at that time that the problem of universals was the greatest threat to any monist metaphysics. The materialism to which I wished to ascribe certainly couldn't countenance a two-worlds theory like Plato's Ideas, and, frankly, nominalism is just lame and anthropocentric. ("Those are all 'red' because I call them all 'red'!" Uh huh, right.) Morton's book reminded me that species as idealized types don't really exist.[1] At least, there's no point at which a dog suddenly and recognizably turns into a monkey.[2] Species exist on a spectrum, on which it is only possible to identify species in retrospect. The conditions of this recognition are similar to those I mentioned while discussing the emergence of genres in Anti-Tradition.

Both genres and species are universals, as traditionally understood. For Plato, this would roughly mean that a given species or genre partakes of an eternal and intelligible Idea (e.g. the Idea of Monkey) to which it more or less conforms. However, as I mentioned, a monist would likely not accept that a purely intelligible Idea could exist, as it would contradict her single-story ontology. The solution that presented itself to me was suggested by the first chapter of Agamben's The Signature of All Things, in which he discusses paradigms.

The paradigm, says Agamben, "refers not to the cognitive relation between subject and object"---and therefore is not epistemological or nominalist in nature---"but to being. There is, then, a paradigmatic ontology."[3] He defines the paradigm in six theses:

1. A paradigm is a form of knowledge that is neither inductive nor deductive but analogical. It moves from singularity to singularity.
2. By neutralizing the dichotomy between the general and the particular, it replaces a dichotomous logic with a bipolar analogical model.
3. The paradigmatic case becomes such by suspending and, at the same time, exposing its belonging to the group, so that it is never possible to separate its exemplarity from its singularity.
4. The paradigmatic group is never presupposed by the paradigms; rather it is immanent in them.
5. In the paradigm, there is no origin or archē; every phenomenon is the origin, every image archaic.
6. The historicity of the paradigm lies neither in diachrony nor in synchrony but in a crossing of the two.[4]

The paradigm, then, is both example and exemplar, ideal and instantiation, and all members of the group perform this function. While in Platonism the universal precedes the individual, this paradigmatic ontology suggests that the universal emerges concomitantly with the individual. In fact, the individual is the universal.

Materialists and monists should easily see how these pieces will fit together. Agamben allows us to turn Platonism on its head and collapse it into the dirt, leaving a system of universals that is neither eternal nor immaterial. Most importantly, it is a system within which the universal and the individual are balanced; neither is less real nor less perfect than the other. They emerge together from the fecund womb of flowing matter and decay together in its depths---never aspiring to an empyrean sphere beyond that firmament.

[1] I say it was Morton's The Ecological Thought that reminded me of this, but I find myself questioning whether he even discussed this. I can't remember. Reading too many books in too short a time has led me to jumble many of them together. Let's just say that if I'm making up some ridiculous crap, it's completely my invention. If not, then it was probably in his book.
[2] If you really must know why I chose this rather far-fetched example, watch this video starting at about 2:20.
[3] Agamben, Giorgio. "What Is a Paradigm?" in The Signature of All Things: On Method. Trans. D'Isanto and Attell. New York: Zone Books, 2009. Pg. 32.
[4] Ibid., Pg. 31.

Object-Oriented Quotations

2011-01-30T10:30:00.000-08:00

Here I inaugurate a series of posts in which I chronicle some of the more amusing sayings emerging from the Object-Oriented camp. I promise, oh OOOers, it is meant as gentle and conspiratorial ribbing, not as mockery.

Our first entry comes courtesy of Graham Harman, great father of all objects:

How on earth can this news possibly be “disenchanting”, without invoking naive geo-centric theocrats and demanding that their buttocks be walloped with a slapstick?

For context.

Anti-Traditionalism

2011-01-27T14:48:00.000-08:00

This is a post from the present blog's previous incarnation (hence references to readers[!] and a previous post). I kind of like it, though, and it is more or less an accurate statement of my sentiments on the matter. Without further ado:

A reader (wow, I already have readers!) sent in the following questions in response to my previous post. I think the questions voice a reasonable concern about my apparent anti-traditionalism, so I am posting the questions and my answer below.

She wrote:

You seem to like it when artists stretch the boundaries of their chosen artistic niche a little bit, but what are some examples of artists who go too far or do it poorly? What if the general aesthetic of an album is near-perfect but it's no longer classifiable within the band's genre?

Yes, I do have a bit of a penchant for progressive and experimental tendencies. In general, I think such stretching is necessary for art to move forward. Sure, a band can get really, really good at one little trick, but what is that worth? If music is art and not simply entertainment, I would think such honed perfection cannot come but at the expense of expressive originality. There is some obvious risk to this since experiments do not always go as planned, neither do they always uphold the guiding hypothesis. I'm not sure I can come up with particularly good examples of mediocre or bad experimentation right off the top of my head---maybe Lacuna Coil's most recent album, or Dimmu Borgir's over-synthesized attempts at symphonic black metal (compare, for a better example of the genre, Emperor's final opus, Prometheus).

Yes. Oh, yes.

Now, the point of experimentation and progression is to create something new, or at least new-ish. If a band manages to make a radical break from their parent genre so that their music is no longer classifiable as that genre, good for them! However, it doesn't necessarily count against a band if they don't manage this, or even if they don't really experiment, so long as their music is not stale or stagnant. To a certain extent, this requires a musical genealogy, so that the music in question is judged in accordance with its evolutionary place (diachronic criticism), but it also requires horizontal comparison with its contemporaries (synchronic criticism).

Breaking free from a genre must be measured diachronically, which means it can only be judged in retrospect. Much like a new species can only be discerned in hindsight, we can only recognize a new genre as viable once its emergence has passed. Often, this requires a band to have "offspring" otherwise it does not have the fecundity of a genre---just as a mule cannot produce more of its kind, it is infertile, and so is not a new species but a one-off hybridization of horse and donkey. The offspring, in turn, testify to the existence of the genre by their inclusion in it as well as by their common source in the parent band. Without meeting these conditions as a bare minimum, it is impossible to say a band has begun a new genre, and so it must be judged on the basis of the existing genres it melds.

Sprouting up elsewhere...

2011-01-27T14:34:00.000-08:00

This is a reincarnation of an aborted blog project geared towards giving music reviews. Initially, I was very excited about that project, but it stalled because I had started it at an inopportune moment in my life. It didn't help that I find it difficult to work within too-narrow constraints. This time around, I would like to try taking Graham's advice to simply write about whatever sincerely interests me. I will say what I mean as directly as possible, which will be quite a contrast to my experiment in fragmentary mythopoetic philosophizing. So, be prepared for music, philosophy, art, literature, and, yes, breakfast---or whatever else catches my attention at the moment.