Undercurrent: Remarkable posts at Undercurrent.
(a) Adventures in Solipsism: A long and intentionally inconclusive post on various subjects among which I can point to Hollow Earth theories and related hyperstitions.
This post intrigued me to write some irrelevant comments and mix them with a piece I was writing on Doom 3. Has anyone played Doom3?
(b) Undercurrent has started an excellent project on his blog and it is translating Michel Houellebecq’s work on H.P. Lovecraft (Contre le monde, contre la vie: Against the world, against life). I’ve already read a part of this long essay in Farsi, a friend of mine translated a part of it along with Gabrielle Wittkop’s controversial novel Le nécrophile and 50-60 pages of Pierre Guyotat’s tour de force Eden Eden Eden (which was better than the English translation), of course these translations were not supposed to be published in Iran. I read Lovecraft very late; well, because the monstrosities in his stories have been always too inspiring for Hollywood superpowers. Finally some essays on Lovecraft (including Houellebecq’s essay) and Nick’s intriguing and as always exciting comments on Lovecraft overcame my resistance.
As Undercurrent mentions, what Houellebecq suggests is some kind of nihilism on/of life. I think like many writers with similar trends, Houellebecq has mistaken the process of survival or live-ing (libban, liffan: leaving life) or what we generally call life with Life as a germinal space in which survival should be appropriated as a fluxional and at the same time grounding process to simultaneously feed on Life and simply endure or survive from its unlife (a process of appropriating based on an economical openness towards life). The unlife of life as a radical abyss of openness is external to survival economy. Therefore, all communications of survival process or live-ing to Life are confined within the sphere of affordance and capacity since survival cannot digest radical openness unless through appropriation or filtering processes, it can only transform openness to affordance, the process from which it guarantees its survival, and eventually death. The communication of survival economy (again, what commonly believed as life) with Life should essentially be channeled through capacity which is the foundation of survivalism (the so-called pro-life). The functioning of capacity or boundary as horizon does not narrate the closure of Survival Economy, on the contrary it depicts the economical openness of boundary: boundary (horismos) starts from the edge to the outside not to communicate with the outside but to accommodate it. In the same way, pro-life is actually a pro-survival position, a pacified and passive position to conservatively interact with the (Un)life itself. Anti-Life, predictably, falls in the same trap; it becomes an agent of survival economy and economical openness as soon as it mistakes live-ing with Life. I’ll discuss all this soon in a long essay on Sorcery and Necromancy.
The other issue, I think Houellebecq’s view on Lovecraft’s racism (it is too visible to be ignored) is arguable. I have discussed it in the fully updated version of A Good Meal which will be posted here before I make it online again or publish it in an anthology.
Undercurrent also talks about the necromantic invocations of the Old Ones when he speaks about the consequence of Lovecraftian cosmic nihilism; this will be also discussed in the essay about Necromancy and Sorcery. Does necromantic call is the consequence of this cosmic nihilism or it is an entirely different undercurrent which is too complex to be demarcated as sorcery and narrated through the dynamism of lines of flight? (Will be discussed in the essay)
Anyway, many thanks for this great project … I know that free translations always need encouragements (let aside donations) so I ask other bloggers to encourage Robin Undercurrent. The process of translating must be exhausting so only warm encouragements can fuel the translator.
(c) A very funny post on Norwejian Ommellete and D&G