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Nick Land
English philosopher (born 1962) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Nick Land (born 14 March 1962) is an English philosopher best known for popularising the ideology of accelerationism.[2] His work has been tied to the development of speculative realism,[3][4] and departs from the formal conventions of academic writing, incorporating unorthodox and esoteric influences.[5] Much of his writing was anthologized in the 2011 collection Fanged Noumena.
In the 1990s, Land was closely affiliated with the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), a "theory-fiction" collective co-founded by Land and cyberfeminist philosopher Sadie Plant at the University of Warwick.[6][7] During this era, Land drew inspiration from post-structuralist theory and leftist thinkers like Bataille, Marx, and Deleuze & Guattari as well as science fiction, rave culture, and the occult.[8] He also coined the term hyperstition to refer to memetic ideas which bring about their own reality.
Land resigned from Warwick in 1998. Following a period of amphetamine abuse, he suffered a breakdown in the early 2000s and disappeared from public view.[9] Later, he moved to China and re-emerged as a figure on the political right, becoming a foundational thinker in the reactionary movement known as the Dark Enlightenment. His related writings have explored anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic ideas.
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Biography
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Land obtained a PhD in 1987 in the University of Essex under David Farrell Krell, with a thesis on Heidegger's 1953 essay Die Sprache im Gedicht, which is about Georg Trakl's work.[10] He began as a lecturer in continental philosophy at the University of Warwick from 1987 until his resignation in 1998.[5] In 1992, he published The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism.[11] Land published an abundance of shorter texts, many in the 1990s during his time with the CCRU.[6] The majority of these articles were compiled in the retrospective collection Fanged Noumena, published in 2011.
At Warwick, Land and Sadie Plant co-founded the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), an interdisciplinary research group described by philosopher Graham Harman as "a diverse group of thinkers who experimented in conceptual production by welding together a wide variety of sources: futurism, technoscience, philosophy, mysticism, numerology, complexity theory, and science fiction, among others".[12] During his time at Warwick, Land participated in Virtual Futures, a series of cyber-culture conferences. Virtual Futures 96 was advertised as "an anti-disciplinary event" and "a conference in the post-humanities". One session involved Nick Land "lying on the ground, croaking into a mic", recalls Robin Mackay, while Mackay played jungle records in the background."[13] He was also the thesis advisor of some PhD students.[14] Following his resignation, the CCRU continued meeting under his leadership. In the early 2000s, Land suffered a breakdown after a period of "fanatical" amphetamine abuse, disappearing from the public.[13]
Land taught at the New Centre for Research & Practice until March 2017, when the Centre ended its relationship with him "following several tweets by Land this year in which he espoused intolerant opinions about Muslims and immigrants".[15][better source needed]
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Concepts
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Early work
Land's work has been influential to the political philosophy of accelerationism. Land views capitalism as the driver of modernity and deterritorialization, advocating its use to dissolve existing social systems and reach a technological singularity.[2][17][18][19] Along with the other members of CCRU, Land wove together ideas from the occult, cybernetics, science fiction, and poststructuralist philosophy to try to describe the phenomena of technocapitalist acceleration.[2]
Land coined the term hyperstition, a portmanteau of superstition and hyper, to describe something which "is equipoised between fiction and technology". According to Land, hyperstitions are ideas that, by their very existence as ideas, bring about their own reality.[20][21]
Later work
Land has contributed to the Dark Enlightenment (also known as the neo-reactionary movement and abbreviated NRx), which opposes egalitarianism and democracy. According to reporter Dylan Matthews, Land believes democracy restricts accountability and freedom.[22] His Dark Enlightenment work also contributes to his accelerationism; he views democratic and egalitarian policies as only slowing down acceleration and the technocapital singularity. Thus, he prefers capitalist monarchies to pursue long-term technological progress, while he considers democracy to only focus on short-term public interests.[18][23] Shuja Haider notes, "His sequence of essays setting out its principles have become the foundation of the NRx canon."[21]
His writing has also discussed themes of scientific racism and eugenics, or what he has called "hyper-racism".[24][25][26][27] Since late 2016, he has increasingly been recognised as an inspiration for the alt-right.[28] Land disputes that NRx is a movement, and defines the alt-right as distinct from the NRx.[29]
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Reception and influence
Mark Fisher, a British cultural theorist and student of Land's, argued in 2011 that Land's greatest impact so far had been on music and art rather than on philosophy. The musician Kode9, the artist Jake Chapman, and others studied with or were influenced by Land, with Chapman highlighting Land's "technilism".[6] Fisher underscores in particular how Land's personality during the 1990s could catalyze changes in those engaging with his work through what Kodwo Eshun describes as a manner "immediately open, egalitarian, and absolutely unaffected by academic protocol" which could dramatise "theory as a geopolitico-historical epic".[6] Fisher has also written that "Land was our Nietzsche" in baiting progressive tendencies, mixing the reactionary and futuristic, and his writing style. He also praised Land's attacks on left-wing academia while taking issue with his interpretation of Deleuze and Guattari's views on capitalism.[30]
Nihilist philosopher Ray Brassier, also formerly from the University of Warwick, stated in 2017 that "Nick Land has gone from arguing 'Politics is dead', 20 years ago, to this completely old-fashioned, standard reactionary stuff."[31]
Books
- Heidegger's 'Die Sprache im Gedicht' and the Cultivation of the Grapheme Archived 31 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine (PhD Thesis, University of Essex, 1987).
- The Thirst For Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (An Essay in Atheistic Religion) (London and New York: Routledge, 1992).
- Machinic Postmodernism: Complexity, Technics and Regulation (with Keith Ansell-Pearson & Joseph A. McCahery) (SAGE Publications, 1996).[failed verification]
- The Shanghai World Expo Guide 2010 (China Intercontinental Press, 2010).
- Shanghai Basics (China Intercontinental Press, 2010).
- Land, Nick (2011). Mackay, Robin; Brassier, Ray (eds.). Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007. London: Urbanomic. ISBN 978-0955308789.
- Calendric Dominion (Urbanatomy Electronic, 2013).
- Suspended Animation (Urbanatomy Electronic, 2013).
- Fission (Urbanomic, 2014).
- Templexity: Disordered Loops through Shanghai Time (Urbanatomy Electronic, 2014).
- Phyl-Undhu: Abstract Horror, Exterminator (Time Spiral Press, 2014).
- Shanghai Times (Urbanatomy Electronic, 2014) ASIN B00IGKZPBA.
- Dragon Tales: Glimpses of Chinese Culture (Urbanatomy Electronic, 2014) ASIN B00JNDHBGQ.
- Xinjiang Horizons (Urbanatomy Electronic, 2014) ASIN B00JNDHDVY.
- Chasm (Time Spiral Press, 2015) ASIN B019HBZ2Q4.
- The Dark Enlightenment (Imperium Press, 2022) ISBN 978-1922602688.
- Xenosystems (Passage Publishing, 2024) ASIN B0D8MNTVHY
- Urban Future (Noumena Institute, 2025) ISBN 978-1922602688.
- Outsideness: 2013–2023 (Noumena Institute, 2025) ISBN 978-0646712703.
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References
External links
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