Guillermo Samperio’s “Borges, Escher, Lovecraft” (2006)

(“Borges, Escher, Lovecraft” was written by the Mexican writer Guillermo Samperio and originally published in the now defunct Metapolítica [10:47 (2006): 62-63]. You can read a brief history of Metapolítica in Mónica Cruz’s 2004 review article “Metapolítica: un ejemplo a seguir.” Metapolítica, a different periodical than Metapolítica.news, was started by a group of political scientists… Continue Reading Guillermo Samperio’s “Borges, Escher, Lovecraft” (2006)

Existentially weighted time decay: speculative fragmentation and political immunology

(This is the text of a presentation given at Wyrd Patchworks 5, a digitally mediated lecture series and round-table based in Prague, Czech Republic on November 28, 2020. #WyrdPatchwork is an ongoing series of events organized and moderated by Diffractions Collective. Thanks to Dustin Breitling for the invitation. The same text is also hosted on… Continue Reading Existentially weighted time decay: speculative fragmentation and political immunology

Intelligence is always animal intelligence: on Eugene Linden’s Deep Past (2019)

The basic idea informing the plot of Eugene Linden’s paleontological thriller Deep Past (2019) is neatly summarized in this snatch of dialogue: “Ten thousand years ago humans were just as intelligent as we are today, but our material culture was almost non-existent. Evolution produced human intelligence in the blink of an eye; our material culture… Continue Reading Intelligence is always animal intelligence: on Eugene Linden’s Deep Past (2019)

Toward an American psychogeography (3): Zothique and the Zodiac Killer

Jean Baudrillard, in his philosophical travelogue America (1986), writes that “America ducks the question of origins; it cultivates no origin or mythical authenticity; it has no past and no founding truth. Having known no primitive accumulation of time, it lives in a perpetual present.” But we have only to turn to an American psychogeography to… Continue Reading Toward an American psychogeography (3): Zothique and the Zodiac Killer

Toward an American psychogeography (2): displacing Exham Priory

Necessarily, any American psychogeography will form a webwork of displacements. In such a psychogeography, there are displacements on top of displacements on top of displacements. This is because the formal structure of displacement is necessarily recursive. A structure is recursive when the shape of the whole structure recurs in the shape of its parts (e.g.,… Continue Reading Toward an American psychogeography (2): displacing Exham Priory

On the concept of pre-extinction

Typically, we think of extinction in terms of the death of the last individual member of the species facing extinction. A species goes extinct when there aren’t any more organisms belonging to it still walking around. What comes to mind is a short fragment by Jorge Luis Borges, “The Witness” (1967). In the fragment, Borges… Continue Reading On the concept of pre-extinction

Robert Aickman’s strange stories (1): “Meeting Mr. Millar”

Robert Aickman’s “strange stories” are epistemological in nature. Consistently, each story portrays an increasingly baffling series of events. The events rarely culminate in some horrifying revelation (comprehensible or otherwise). Instead, they end with the obstruction of all possible access to that which has occurred, why the events in question have taken place, and the general… Continue Reading Robert Aickman’s strange stories (1): “Meeting Mr. Millar”

The left hand of all creation: how to repurpose whole worlds

“The world is an asymmetrical place full of asymmetrical beings.” – Frank Close In the following series of interrelated posts, I sketch out in preliminary fashion the theoretical framework of an ontological program of strong redescription. Redescription refers to one mode of interacting with, repurposing, and using the various objects that constitute our world. One… Continue Reading The left hand of all creation: how to repurpose whole worlds