A very interesting book. The back cover copy makes it sound like it's science fiction, and Jess Martin's review (on this site) makes it sound like some generic mysticism. One of the endorsements in the book describes it as "an uncategorizable hybrid of philosophical fiction, heretical theology, aberrant demonology and renegade archaeology." That is a bit sloppy, because the book is only philosophical fiction in the sense that it is invented, à la Borges or Lem. And heresy isn't its point. "Cyclonopdia" is an imaginary philosophic treatise about a fictional authority on the Middle East, supposedly discovered by a woman in a hotel room.

The author, Negarestani, has been reading a lot of Deleuze and Guattari, and also a wide range of political theory ("Empire" has a similar rhetoric in places). Many chapters could almost be presented at philosophy conferences; there are analyses of oil, machinery, war, camouflage, and other subjects that are in line with some eccentric Deleuzian readings that have long been acceptable in academic contexts. The fictional part comes partly in the book's claim that "the Middle East [is] a sentient and living entity... in a very literal sense of the word," but more in the book's many poetic analyses of its leading concepts--analyses that draw on Deleuze but also on popular culture, from H.P. Lovecraft to John Carpenter's "The Thing." (And again, that's commensurate with contemporary Deleuzian and cultural studies.)

The best passages of the book are imaginative analyses of particular concepts. There is a spectacular long footnote explaining the concept of the "inorganic demon," ranging from "The Exorcist" to "Doom III." (p. 223 ff) There is a very good page on the survival of pre-Islamic ways of writing "Allah." (p. 173). There is an excellent poetic analysis, reminiscent in its way of Bachelard's ruminations on elements, but also of Lautréamont, on the subject of the Babylonian demons Enkidu and Puzuzu (the latter familiar from "The Exorcist"). (p. 113 ff) That analysis includes a description of "Rammalie," "an Arabic word for communication with other worlds and aeons through patterns on pebbles and desert sand."

The book has a glossary, with well-developed theoretical concepts. In that regard it resembles Latour's book on nature, or Rancière's book on politics. Negarestani has invented, and defined, an entire vocabulary for interpreting the socio-political, historical, and psychological state of the Middle East: Double Numbering, hypercamouflage, polytics, heresy-engineering, Druj literature, Tellurian blasphemy, schizotrategy... they could all be used in discussions outside the book.

The book's weaknesses have to do with Negarestani's shortcomings as a fiction writer, and also her shortcomings as a theoretician. The former become apparent when the reader moves from the brief introduction, which tells the story of the discovery of the manuscript, into the manuscript itself: at that point it is clear that the introduction is poorly, incompletely imagined fiction (it consists of very brief vignettes). Before the reader makes the transition to the body of the book, it appears that the fragmented descriptions in the introduction are a deliberate strategy; but there are no other fictional strategies in the book. The latter weakness, concerning theory, becomes apparent whenever the writing is too close to its models in Deleuze and Guattari. In those passages, the text can read like an unintentional parody of Deleuze or other poststructuralist theorists, the kind of parody written intentionally by disaffected graduate students. An analysis of the semiotics of the rat (p. 229) is an example: it has a kind of grim humor, but it is humorless about the fact that it is a pastiche of any number of such analyses in authors as diverse as Barthes and Serres. In other passages, neologisms proliferate in the way that used to be called "Derridadrivel," for instance in this chapter opening: "In the mid-eighties, before succumbing to his petromantic nympholepsy..." (p. 195). There are also passages that read like unintentional pastiches of popular film and novels, as in this chapter opening: "By the time Colonel West turned into a renegade and deserted Delta Force's Special Tactics and Rescue Squad..." (p. 129). This is knowing, but not in control of the fact that as it continues it begins to appear inadvertent or unreflective about its sources.

These two weaknesses -- regarding fiction and theory -- are both very common, but usually they are found in different kinds of writing: the first occurs in novels everywhere, and the second in academic philosophy. It is extremely unusual to have them together in one book, written by a person with an understanding of Middle Eastern languages, history, and archaeology. I read the book at first as an attempt at academic fiction (as in Borges), but again as an attempt to seriously theorize the Middle East, and especially the meanings of oil. In that respect, the book is spectacular. ( )