Following our chat about the works of Mark Fisher in episode #1 of his new Hermitix podcast, Meta-Nomad is back with a sprawling conversation with John Cussans that I’ve been enjoying hugely today whilst I navigate a swamp of emails.
Cussans is a bit of a hero of mine. I was very excited to see him speak at Goldsmiths in 2017 for the launch of his book Undead Uprising, which I devoured whole like a snake in a matter of days after the lecture. He was likewise hugely influential on the upcoming Egress book, referenced on multiple occasions throughout, and much of the connections I draw upon quite tentatively there — as well as on the Vast Abrupt — are expanded on magnificently here and taken into many new places. I was admittedly a bit starstruck to hear him mention the name of this blog.
My fixation on Bataille as a postgrad reached comical levels that year. I had to preface every nod towards him in every class with an apology — and still feel like I must do that in certain company — but I have found (and continue to find) that his work resonates with so much of contemporary experience and thought — particularly in the context of our contemporaneous and fraught communities, implicitly informing all of this blog’s writings on patchwork as the proliferation of acephalic communities exorcising the god-king leviathan.
Whilst I’ve since sidestepped into Blanchot’s unavowable communisms and Fisher’s Acid Communism, Cussans here explores so much of that which remains untapped in the background.
Go listen to Cussans!