Nick Land (1) (1962–)

Fascinating - still reading and will update this accordingly as I continue, but I see Land as a truly evil mirror to the core of the absurdist tradition. Through twisted logic (a banal sort well-explored by pundits, frankly), he sees the desert Camus describes and argues (or seems to argue; it's difficult to pin down any specific claim through his neologism) that the implications point toward authoritarianism and capitalism as meritorious systems for the adjudication of value in human show more lives.

I'm not a fan.

After further exploration, I've found that the core of Land's arguments in "Xenosystems" boil down, approximately, to the sort of (auto-)purportedly hyper-intellectual, emotionally detached abstract thought that ultimately rounds back on the human, and especially on the political, to reach conclusions in concert with the bigotry of the 21st century: the sort one might hear called "scientific racism" or "ethno-nationalism."

In the rare passage where he does not make slimy social prescriptions for how humanity ought to administrate itself, I find his work on absurdism and existential horror to be reasonable and beautifully expressed.

But - need I say it again? - I'm not a fan. show less

Land quite admirably follows the sort of style Bataille employs in his Summa Atheologica, blending philosophy, poetry, and despairing rants (although unfortunately Land is a much better prose writer than he is a poet (similarly to Bataille)). I quite enjoy his relating of Bataille to Kant, the former not shying away from the horror of noumena. Much of the metaphyics in this book is very similar to those of Deleuze, Klossowski, and Lyotard (although Land changes Deleuze's two-sided BwO into a show more bitter and somewhat depressing unidirectional one). So, these sections aren't blow-me-out-of-the-water original, but they are written really well. The feminist strains in here and the discussion of Nazism and politics are really great. show less

Land seems incapable of writing a non-strawmanned argument. And when he isn’t strawmanning his opponents, he proceeds to make the worst criticism you have read in your entire life.

Also, given the importance of Mencius Moldbug in the media as of late, I think it’s important to mention that he rejects Land’s work.

ok boomer