Episode 36: On Hyperstition

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2018

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hyperstition is a key concept in the philosophy of Nick Land. It refers to fictions which, given enough time and libidinal investment, become realities. JF and Phil explore the notion using one of those optometric apparatuses with multiple lenses -- deleuzian, magical, mythological, political, ethical, etc. The goal isn't to understand how fictions participate in reality (that'll have to wait for another episode), but to ponder what this implies for a sapient species. The conversation weaves together such varied topics as Twin Peaks: The Return, Internet meme magic (Trump as tulpa!), Deleuze and Guattari's metaphysics, occult experiments in spirit creation, the Brothers Grimm, and the phantasmic overtones of The Communist Manifesto. In the end we can only say, "What a load of bullsh*t!" Header Image: Still from the 1920 German Expressionist film The Golem: How He Came in the World, by Paul Wegener. REFERENCES JF's notes on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the refrain Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus David Lynch (director), Twin Peaks: The Return Phil Ford, "Garmonbozia" (work in progress, unpublished) Delphi Carstens, "Hyperstition" Delphi Carstens, "Hyperstition: An Introduction" (2009 interview with Nick Land) Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene CCRU Archives The occult concept of the egregore William Irwin Thompson, Imaginary Landscape: Making Worlds of Myth and Science Martin Heidegger, Being and Time Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford, The Blood of the Saints A. T. L. Carver, "The Truth About Pepe the Frog and the Cult of Kek" Paul Spencer, "Trump's Occult Online Supporters Believer 'Meme Magic' Got Him Elected" Colm A. Kelleher, The Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy Sun Ra, Space is the Place Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Specter Vision Radio.
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an art and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martell.
0:21.8	For more episodes and to support the podcast, go to Weird Studies.com. Why don't we start by you telling me a little bit about how the class went, and that'll get us into the topic.
0:54.6	Very briefly, JF was going to come to guest teaching my class, and then for reasons beyond our
1:00.3	control, he couldn't.
1:01.5	Right.
1:02.4	It went fine, except, you know, I got to say, it was the last class, and everybody's burned out.
1:10.2	Right.
1:10.5	You know, I spend a lot of time talking about de-territorialization.
1:15.6	Territorialization, de-territorialization is very important to that particular chapter on the refrain,
1:20.1	but it's just important to DeLis and Gattari in general.
1:23.3	You know, there's a kind of popular appropriation of De Lis and Guattari in academia.
1:30.3	Like, Deliz and Gotari are among the most name-checked of theorists,
1:36.2	and very often in ways that would probably have them spinning in their grave.
1:41.2	I mean, like very univocal interpretations of concepts that are not
1:47.1	intended to be univocal. Right. People wanting to nail down these concepts into neat definitions
1:53.1	that then can be instrumentalized in fairly straightforward ways, which seems to me to be somehow
1:59.2	at odds with the spirit of Deizant Gutari's book.
2:03.5	That's an example of re-territorialization right there.
2:06.1	Exactly.
2:07.2	And kind of ironically, one way that this happens in the kind of paint-by-numbers, theoretical academia,
2:15.4	de-territorialization is always good and territorialization is always bad.
	...

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