I was about to start off this post with general apologies for more quietude, but looking back, this has actually been a busy month with a fair amount of blogging activity.
I’ve nonetheless been away for almost two of the four weeks of November, trying to complete my next book. I got very close! I’ve got a little bit more reading to do so I can properly tie it up in a neat little bow, but I’m hoping I’ll have a first draft finished by the end of the year and in Tariq Goddard’s inbox.
I’ll tell you more about that below, but in the meantime, here’s what else has gone on this month…
Repeater Fights Zer0, Zer0 Fights Back
At the end of last month, it was announced that Repeater Books (or at least its parent company) had bought out Zer0 Books, bringing the imprint back under the control of its original owners and out from underneath Doug Lain’s self-centered tailism.
The outpouring of joy from the left (at least in the UK) was huge — perhaps even a little excessive, as it allowed those behind the reactionary content farm to feign victimhood. For weeks, the war of words did not relent. Now, with Doug having finally let go of all Zer0’s assets — he tried to rebrand various Zer0 media channels under his own name and keep them — it seems like the hard part of the transition is over.
Nevertheless, if you want to catch up on my various contributions to scuffle, you can find them below:
— Against Individualizing: Personal Beef or Group Critique?
— Perpetual Yawn: More from the Ex-Zer0 Set
— Spiked: Notes on Psychedelic Fascism in the UK Media Landscape
— Repeater Takes Over… Tariq Weighs In…
Narcissus in Bloom
Beyond the petulant back and forth, this month has also been a productive one for my next book. I’ve previously teased drafts, which I may have since taken down. I feel a bit more protective of this one than I did Egress. I want to present the whole package, as brief snatches of chapters or sections don’t really do justce to the overall argument I’m trying to construct.
I think this is largely because the overall argument is still gestating. I have it and know what it is, in elevator pitch format, but the structure has changed drastically this past month, and that’s all down to having the space to think about it and nothing else, which I enjoyed over a week and a half towards the end of this month.
First, I travelled to Newcastle, to give my first in-person talk in the UK in almost two years. (The first since the Egress book launch, I think.) It’s kinda funny that I’ve spoken IRL abroad before speaking IRL at home, but maybe that is an indicator of how fucked the UK still is.
— Narcissus in Bloom: Talk at Newcastle University
It was an excellent trip, and it made me fall in love with Newcastle a bit. The people within the philosophy department there were brilliant and I’ve been thinking quite seriously about doing a PhD there at the end of next year. We’ll see if that happens…
In the midst of all, I started reading some Foucault, in preparation for my penultimate chapter, which discusses him at length. And then he was used as a scapegoat for psotmodernism again, or something like that, so he was on my mind again when I wrote this:
— Discipline is a Double-Edged Sword: Notes on the Misuse and Abuse of Foucault
Then I went off to stay at Bidston Observatory. It came recommended by a friend but I did not realise that those who ran it had so many connections with weird theory world. Some readers may be familiar with PAF (or the Performing Arts Forum), a space that was run in France over a number of years, as a site of independent study as well as collaboration and experimentation. I know Amy Ireland went a bunch, and Ben Woodard as well. It was a safe haven for many an indie research and writer. It turns out that Bidston was formed with the PAF model very much in mind. If you need a place to stay and work with sound people and a good ethos, I can’t recommend it enough
— Observatory Crest: On Narcissus in Bloom
I knew I had some work to do when I got there, but over the course of a week I completely restructured the book, moving lots of things around, and finally found a natural way to get from point A to B to C. Right now, I have two chapters left to complete — one on Herve Guibert and Foucault, and another on Derek Jarman’s garden — and the conclusion to write. Considering I wrote three chapters whilst I was away for a week, that doesn’t feel like much left to do at all. But I do need to swat up on my Foucault and the Stoics…
The Blogosphere
Somewhat unexpectedly, there was a post written by Simon Obirek this month about the validity and vitality of the blogosphere. It was an interesting post, but it’s understanding of the original blogosphere was all wrong — not to mention Simon coming out in favour of Graham Harman. It was the sort of post that really did make it clear the blogosphere is dead, just not in all of the ways that it intended.
I wrote a response, but more interestingly, Terence Blake, perhaps my favourite current blogger, came out swinging for that original blogospheric movement as well.
— In Defense of Pop Philosophy: Notes on Philosophistry
— A Further Defence of Pop Philosophy: Comments from Terence Blake
A Brief History of the New
The talk I gave for the CTRL Network was finally uploaded to YouTube. I originally gave the talk back in spring, reading two draft chapters from my forthcoming book on accelerationism.
— A Brief History of the New: Recording Now Online
Limp Bizkit
Limp Bizkit had a new album out. It wasn’t great, but I kinda liked it for that.
— Still Sucks: Transitory Music in the 2020s
Accelerationism
I found a reference made to accelerationism in Robert Musil’s unfinished 1930 book, The Man Without Qualities. Having consulted with Ed Berger and Robin Mackay, it may be the earliest reference to the term yet found, and it is all the more interesting that its usage and contextual definition isn’t too far away from what we might describe accelerationism as today…
— “What was needed was accelerationism…”: A Note on Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities
Photography
A few more photography posts. I’m going to bump up the frequency of these in the coming weeks, because my backlog is getting a bit excessive.
Reading Group
Our penultimate session reading Bratton’s The Revenge of the Real. One session left to go — the recording of which will be up in a couple of days time.
— XG Reading Group 3.5: Positive Objectification
We will see what December brings but for now it is time to wind down and get ready for the new year. Lots coming in 2022, which I’m excited to tell you about, but until then, time to have a rest.
Merry Christmas and see you in the New Year.