Acéphale and Autobiographical Philosophy in the 21st Century (Schism Press), 2021
[W]e are nothing, neither you nor I, beside burning words which could pass from me to you, imprin... more [W]e are nothing, neither you nor I, beside burning words which could pass from me to you, imprinted on a page: for I would only have lived in order to write them, and, if it is true that they are addressed to you, you will live from having had the strength to hear them.
Hebdige and Subculture in the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave Macmillan), 2020
"This book assesses the legacy of Dick Hebdige and his work on subcultures in his seminal work, S... more "This book assesses the legacy of Dick Hebdige and his work on subcultures in his seminal work, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979). The volume interrogates the concept of subculture put forward by Hebdige, and asks if this concept is still capable of helping us understand the subcultures of the twenty-first century. The contributors to this volume assess the main theoretical trends behind Hebdige's work, critically engaging with their value and how they orient a researcher or student of subculture, and also look at some absences in Hebdige's original account of subculture, such as gender and ethnicity. The book concludes with an interview with Hebdige himself, where he deals with questions about his concept of subculture and the gestation of his original work in a way that shows his seriousness and humour in equal measure. This volume is a vital contribution to the debate on subculture from some of the best researchers and academics working in the field in the twenty-first century."
Floating Tomb: Black Metal Theory (Mimesis International), 2015
In short, this chapter, following a certain Landian logic (a logic that is in itself the effect ‘... more In short, this chapter, following a certain Landian logic (a logic that is in itself the effect ‘of a generation of graduates, metallectuals on the margins of the Academy, for whom metal’s “unemployed negativity” provides the most appropriate vehicle,’ a practice ‘with which to articulate not just their discontent and contestation of the violence of neoliberal subjectification in state institutions, but also and as such to forge a different form of intellectual life on the other side of culture’) reveals how Black Metal Theory (BMT) was initiated/inaugurated with the aim of providing black metal music and the commentarial tradition with ‘a vanguard front capable of exposing the established order to the corrosive influence of the outside and affecting any outside-oriented determination with the non-escapist influence of the established.’
With recourse to commentarial remarks on the composition of Moévöt’s Voèkrèb I (1994), in this sh... more With recourse to commentarial remarks on the composition of Moévöt’s Voèkrèb I (1994), in this short article we draw on ‘nonlocal’ correlations in quantum physics in an attempt to speculatively account for a creative process Vordb Na R.iidr (previously Vordb Báthor Ecsed: 1991–1994; Vordb Dréagvor Uèzréèvb: 1994–2012) calls ‘instinctisation’. Engaging the same conceit as Xasthur’s ‘Telepathic with the Deceased’, from the eponymous 2004 album (Moribund Records), the composition of Voèkrèb I forcibly returns us to the otherworldly aspects of a mode of transmission Einstein famously dubbed ‘spooky action at a distance’ (spukhafte Fernwirkung).
A fictional exploration of sex, death, misanthropy and sadism.
"Bareback riding, psychotic sadne... more A fictional exploration of sex, death, misanthropy and sadism.
"Bareback riding, psychotic sadness, online hate, real-world anonymity, gloomy shadows illuminating the Lost Prophets sex scandal, identity games, human arrogance and anxiety, consent and the lack thereof, death as isolation – these are just some of the uneasily aggressive themes and frontiers which A.D. Hitchin confronts in this collection... A tangled, gnarled post-Burroughsian blend of Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, Lenny Bruce and François Villon." – Joe Ambrose, Tangier Tsunami, Chelsea Hotel Manhattan, Serious Time
"A sexual, sacrificial, spectacular tour through the darkest recesses of his psyche… the words of A.D. Hitchin will rip your senses raw." – Billy Chainsaw
"A.D. Hitchin cuts samples from the space of possible desire in vivid prose recalling the best of Burroughs or Ballard in its willingness to anatomise without humanist illusion. Consensual, it should be said, is also deeply erotic, reminding us of the strange shapes of our own need." —David Roden, author of Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human (Routledge, 2014)
"Consensual explores the depth of the human psyche, doors accessed only by the few that possess an inner wisdom. Here you'll find the various shifting themes of erotica, subjugation and fear, and reach a new enlightened perspective – a shift in consciousness – with New Laws to be broken – above and beyond the primitive roles mankind or God has permitted..." – Jerome Alexandre, Deadcuts
Mors Mystica: Black Metal Theory Symposium (Schism Press), 2015
Essays and artworks related to Mors Mystica, a Black Metal Theory symposium that took place at St... more Essays and artworks related to Mors Mystica, a Black Metal Theory symposium that took place at St. Vitus Bar in Brooklyn, NY, April 25, 2015, on the theme of mystical death."Only that person who says: 'My soul chooses hanging, and my bones death' can truly embrace this fire . . . for it is absolutely true that 'no one can see me and live.'" -- Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum
Floating Tomb: Black Metal Theory (Mimesis International), 2015
"I begin with a catena, really an acatena — a broken scriptureless exegetical chain — as the only... more "I begin with a catena, really an acatena — a broken scriptureless exegetical chain — as the only conceivable way of opening discourse on anti-cosmic black metal, an art that proceeds in principle against the universe as the principle of order, which is what cosmos means, and thus against the very possibility or ground of discourse." — Nicola Masciandaro
Season 1 of True Detective, the HBO series authored by Nic Pizzolatto, is at once heir to the pul... more Season 1 of True Detective, the HBO series authored by Nic Pizzolatto, is at once heir to the pulps, those ‘literate comic strips,’ and to the genre that marks their development and acceptance as serious ‘works of art.’ While the puzzle inherited from Poe remains, True Detective places emphasis on atmospherics and characterization, deemed the ‘saving grace’ of this development. In keeping with the rebellion in crime fiction initiated by Hammett, Pizzolatto’s heroes are men not far removed from the criminal elements they combat. Organized crime pervades Season 1 of True Detective, not in order to disclose some quotidian familiarity with guns and violence, but to show how the law and its agents of social justice are either incapable of solving certain crimes because of the orthodoxy of their methods, or unwilling to for reasons of political prosperity. In this ‘world gone wrong,’ where ‘nothing grows in the right direction,’ the miscreant is no longer an idiosyncratic glitch in the system, but a faceless cog in a larger whole or ‘sprawl’ that exercises violence with a ruthless neutrality. One of the show’s opening and, in many ways, most definitive scenes is codified with imagery of medieval knight-errantry, giving rise to this chapter in which I explore True Detective’s “genric” pre-history.
Employing the epistemological principle of black metal theory (BMT), this article maps
the centr... more Employing the epistemological principle of black metal theory (BMT), this article maps
the central phenomenological feature of apophatic mysticism onto the loss sustained
in Vordb Na R.iidr’s first non-material edition: Moévöt’s De fenêtre entrouverte
(Kaleidarkness, 1992–2015). With recourse to personal commentary, this loss is traced
not only through the work, but the spiritual life of Vordb, the founding member of up
to nineteen known permutations of Les Légions Noires: from the infamous Vlad Tepes
and Bèlkètre split, March to The Black Holocaust (1996), to his figural equation
with John the Baptist, an homage to the latter’s ministry in Guido d’Arezzo’s solmization
system, and related synaesthetic elements, to reveal an affective identification
with divinity through intimate exposure to the utmost negativity.
Mors Mystica: Black Metal Theory Symposium (Schism Press), 2015
Essays and artworks related to Mors Mystica, a Black Metal Theory symposium that took place at St... more Essays and artworks related to Mors Mystica, a Black Metal Theory symposium that took place at St. Vitus Bar in Brooklyn, NY, April 25, 2015, on the theme of mystical death."Only that person who says: 'My soul chooses hanging, and my bones death' can truly embrace this fire . . . for it is absolutely true that 'no one can see me and live.'" -- Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum
"Amygdalatropolis is a work of brilliant neurorealism in which the city is a Computer, a libidina... more "Amygdalatropolis is a work of brilliant neurorealism in which the city is a Computer, a libidinal pornutopia voided of all bedeutung other than the residual, electronic prickling of sexual fear and auto-autistic aggression where software and synapse flicker in an endless algorithmic loop. Norburt Wiener’s apocalyptic steersman leads directly here: a psychopathological cyberutopia heading straight into the lake of fire."
— Scott Wilson, author of Great Satan's Rage: American Negativity and Rap/Metal in the Age of Supercapitalism
"Yeager’s haphephobic protagonist /1404er/ has got over reality, family or the social and moved on - to a somewhat more tenable amnion of snuff porn, clickbait and casual online scapegoating. Amygdalatropolis inhabits our post-truth heterotopia like some virulent new literary life form, perfectly tooled for the death of worlds."
— David Roden, author of Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human
Serial Killing: A Philosophical Anthology (Schism Press), 2015
"Serial Killing leaves behind the analysis of the serial killer as a romantic anti-hero, diagnost... more "Serial Killing leaves behind the analysis of the serial killer as a romantic anti-hero, diagnostic category of psychopathology or sociological symptom to offer a collection of essays that infuses the conventional delusions of critical distance with the passionate, homicidal embrace of loving neighborliness. The theoretical, photographic and fictional essays in this volume take the serial killer as an object of both philosophical speculation and spiritual contemplation. In a brilliant cornucopia of styles and obsessions, serial killing becomes, among many other things: the touchstone of common in-humanity, a form of sacrifice and mystical rite, a leisure activity, a kind of bloody ikebana, a kaligraphic and auto-graphic mode of self-portraiture and flesh inscription, the meta-relational emanation of immanent suffering, a form of kleptomancy, an expression of neoliberal love, an ascetic practice of cosmic joy. It is properly mad."
— Scott Wilson, author of Scott Walker And The Song of The ONE-ALL-ALONE (Bloomsbury, 2020), Stop Making Sense (Karnac, 2015), The Order of Joy (SUNY, 2008)
Floating Tomb: Black Metal Theory (Mimesis International), 2015
The Areopagite, who delighted in etymologies, puns, and allusions, fictionalized himself (or hers... more The Areopagite, who delighted in etymologies, puns, and allusions, fictionalized himself (or herself) through the adoption of a pseudonym, that of an Athenian converted to Christianity by St. Paul in the first century AD. In Acts 17, we read: 'When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said "we want to hear you again on this subject". At that, Paul left the council. Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus'. We should not be surprised that this same passage, which ends with Dionysius' conversion, begins with a sermon on 'THE UNKNOWN GOD'. As yet unnamed and unknown, the sixth-century Areopagite -- whose pseudonymous corpus has inspired the open burial and consecration of authorial identity in a luminous blackened scriptorium of secret press (HWORDE) within secret press (gnOme) where, writing neither as 'oneself nor someone else' , bergmetal theorist Denys X. Abaris presents his (or her) Oro-Emblems of the Musical Beyond (2014) -- is responsible for what has been identified as black metal theory's apophatic outlook.
Floating Tomb: Black Metal Theory (Mimesis International), 2015
This chapter, presented in inchoate form as a lecture in the aesthetics of music and sound at the... more This chapter, presented in inchoate form as a lecture in the aesthetics of music and sound at the University of Southern Denmark (2015), attempts to answer the question ‘What is Black Metal Theory?’ by addressing the formation, recordings, and inscrutable legacy of Les Légions Noires (LLN) through Nicola Masciandaro’s ‘Labor, Language, Laughter’ (Sufficient Unto The Day, Schism Press: 2014). Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s reflections on language in Rabelais and His World (1965), LLN’s carnivalization of speech is posited as a form of verbal absurdity that succeeds in achieving what Masciandaro terms a ‘laughing laboring logos’ that ‘traces the tragedy of not not knowing’ through a medieval poetics that is characteristic in form to Black Metal Theory (BMT): construed herein as ‘the working together of texts; the working together of these powers within individual beings; and the working together of persons,’ to distill a monstrous hermeneutics that apophatically keeps open the question of human cognition (Masciandaro: 2014, 120; 118).
"This book contains the proceedings from Weaponising Speculation, a two-day conference and exhibi... more "This book contains the proceedings from Weaponising Speculation, a two-day conference and exhibition that took place in Dublin in March 2013. Weaponising Speculation was organised by D.U.S.T. (Dublin Unit for Speculative Thought) and aimed to be an exploration of the various expressions of DIY theory operative in the elsewheres, the shafts and tunnels of the para-academy. The topics covered all come under the welcoming embrace of speculation, spanning a broad range: from art, philosophy, nature, fiction, and computation to spiders, culinary cosmology, and Oscar the Grouch. The book itself aims to be more than just a collection of essays and catalogue of artworks, but also a documentation of the event as a whole. An object that both those present at the event and those who missed it would want to own — bringing something new to both sets of readers.
The range of topics covered in this collection, along with the added elements of design and photography, result in a book that appeals beyond the (para)academic circle within which the Speculative Realist community currently resides. One of the original aims of the Weaponising Speculation conference, and by extension, the book, is to expand what might be considered the expected reach of the subject, bringing Speculation to a new audience — artists, designers, fans of fiction, photographers, biologists, film theorists, comedians, culinary artists, illustrators, computer programmers, and individuals from any number of fields.
Before the storms the para-academic needs to equip herself. Not only with tools, but weapons. In this way this collection is not only a book to read, an object to own, or a tool for learning, but a weapon with which to break open academic discourse, to invade and conquer as yet unknown territory, and to aid thinkers in the siege to reclaim the real."
Georges Bataille and Contemporary Thought (Bloomsbury), 2017
"Bataille’s particular brand of nihilism also appears in Edia Connole’s essay,
albeit not within ... more "Bataille’s particular brand of nihilism also appears in Edia Connole’s essay, albeit not within the context of the planetary annihilation of thought but as part of an intellectual journey through the history of philosophy, science-fiction imaginaries, black metal theory and careful analysis of Bataille’s terminology. In a long essay that rewards multiple readings, Connole begins by treating Bataille as part of the lineage of mysticism, and manages, by the end of the exegesis, to turn his thought into a speculative philosophy of the thing itself." — William Stronge, Editor's Introduction
Acéphale and Autobiographical Philosophy in the 21st Century (Schism Press), 2021
In “Le Corps du Néant,” Pierre Klossowski situates Acéphale within a lineage of “Parisian Messian... more In “Le Corps du Néant,” Pierre Klossowski situates Acéphale within a lineage of “Parisian Messianism” he sees burgeoning in the mythology of the city since the great Revolution of 1789. The term, which is immediately abandoned, but given flesh in the surrounding narrative, suggests that the political and religious are somehow intertwined. Insofar as this political messianism is unique to Paris, to the mythology of Paris, to a tradition that, stemming from an essentially anti-religious movement, passes from crime to crime, how exactly does the Catholic Klossowski see it related to religion at the time?
Acéphale and Autobiographical Philosophy in the 21st Century (Schism Press), 2021
[W]e are nothing, neither you nor I, beside burning words which could pass from me to you, imprin... more [W]e are nothing, neither you nor I, beside burning words which could pass from me to you, imprinted on a page: for I would only have lived in order to write them, and, if it is true that they are addressed to you, you will live from having had the strength to hear them.
Hebdige and Subculture in the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave Macmillan), 2020
"This book assesses the legacy of Dick Hebdige and his work on subcultures in his seminal work, S... more "This book assesses the legacy of Dick Hebdige and his work on subcultures in his seminal work, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979). The volume interrogates the concept of subculture put forward by Hebdige, and asks if this concept is still capable of helping us understand the subcultures of the twenty-first century. The contributors to this volume assess the main theoretical trends behind Hebdige's work, critically engaging with their value and how they orient a researcher or student of subculture, and also look at some absences in Hebdige's original account of subculture, such as gender and ethnicity. The book concludes with an interview with Hebdige himself, where he deals with questions about his concept of subculture and the gestation of his original work in a way that shows his seriousness and humour in equal measure. This volume is a vital contribution to the debate on subculture from some of the best researchers and academics working in the field in the twenty-first century."
Floating Tomb: Black Metal Theory (Mimesis International), 2015
In short, this chapter, following a certain Landian logic (a logic that is in itself the effect ‘... more In short, this chapter, following a certain Landian logic (a logic that is in itself the effect ‘of a generation of graduates, metallectuals on the margins of the Academy, for whom metal’s “unemployed negativity” provides the most appropriate vehicle,’ a practice ‘with which to articulate not just their discontent and contestation of the violence of neoliberal subjectification in state institutions, but also and as such to forge a different form of intellectual life on the other side of culture’) reveals how Black Metal Theory (BMT) was initiated/inaugurated with the aim of providing black metal music and the commentarial tradition with ‘a vanguard front capable of exposing the established order to the corrosive influence of the outside and affecting any outside-oriented determination with the non-escapist influence of the established.’
With recourse to commentarial remarks on the composition of Moévöt’s Voèkrèb I (1994), in this sh... more With recourse to commentarial remarks on the composition of Moévöt’s Voèkrèb I (1994), in this short article we draw on ‘nonlocal’ correlations in quantum physics in an attempt to speculatively account for a creative process Vordb Na R.iidr (previously Vordb Báthor Ecsed: 1991–1994; Vordb Dréagvor Uèzréèvb: 1994–2012) calls ‘instinctisation’. Engaging the same conceit as Xasthur’s ‘Telepathic with the Deceased’, from the eponymous 2004 album (Moribund Records), the composition of Voèkrèb I forcibly returns us to the otherworldly aspects of a mode of transmission Einstein famously dubbed ‘spooky action at a distance’ (spukhafte Fernwirkung).
A fictional exploration of sex, death, misanthropy and sadism.
"Bareback riding, psychotic sadne... more A fictional exploration of sex, death, misanthropy and sadism.
"Bareback riding, psychotic sadness, online hate, real-world anonymity, gloomy shadows illuminating the Lost Prophets sex scandal, identity games, human arrogance and anxiety, consent and the lack thereof, death as isolation – these are just some of the uneasily aggressive themes and frontiers which A.D. Hitchin confronts in this collection... A tangled, gnarled post-Burroughsian blend of Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, Lenny Bruce and François Villon." – Joe Ambrose, Tangier Tsunami, Chelsea Hotel Manhattan, Serious Time
"A sexual, sacrificial, spectacular tour through the darkest recesses of his psyche… the words of A.D. Hitchin will rip your senses raw." – Billy Chainsaw
"A.D. Hitchin cuts samples from the space of possible desire in vivid prose recalling the best of Burroughs or Ballard in its willingness to anatomise without humanist illusion. Consensual, it should be said, is also deeply erotic, reminding us of the strange shapes of our own need." —David Roden, author of Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human (Routledge, 2014)
"Consensual explores the depth of the human psyche, doors accessed only by the few that possess an inner wisdom. Here you'll find the various shifting themes of erotica, subjugation and fear, and reach a new enlightened perspective – a shift in consciousness – with New Laws to be broken – above and beyond the primitive roles mankind or God has permitted..." – Jerome Alexandre, Deadcuts
Mors Mystica: Black Metal Theory Symposium (Schism Press), 2015
Essays and artworks related to Mors Mystica, a Black Metal Theory symposium that took place at St... more Essays and artworks related to Mors Mystica, a Black Metal Theory symposium that took place at St. Vitus Bar in Brooklyn, NY, April 25, 2015, on the theme of mystical death."Only that person who says: 'My soul chooses hanging, and my bones death' can truly embrace this fire . . . for it is absolutely true that 'no one can see me and live.'" -- Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum
Floating Tomb: Black Metal Theory (Mimesis International), 2015
"I begin with a catena, really an acatena — a broken scriptureless exegetical chain — as the only... more "I begin with a catena, really an acatena — a broken scriptureless exegetical chain — as the only conceivable way of opening discourse on anti-cosmic black metal, an art that proceeds in principle against the universe as the principle of order, which is what cosmos means, and thus against the very possibility or ground of discourse." — Nicola Masciandaro
Season 1 of True Detective, the HBO series authored by Nic Pizzolatto, is at once heir to the pul... more Season 1 of True Detective, the HBO series authored by Nic Pizzolatto, is at once heir to the pulps, those ‘literate comic strips,’ and to the genre that marks their development and acceptance as serious ‘works of art.’ While the puzzle inherited from Poe remains, True Detective places emphasis on atmospherics and characterization, deemed the ‘saving grace’ of this development. In keeping with the rebellion in crime fiction initiated by Hammett, Pizzolatto’s heroes are men not far removed from the criminal elements they combat. Organized crime pervades Season 1 of True Detective, not in order to disclose some quotidian familiarity with guns and violence, but to show how the law and its agents of social justice are either incapable of solving certain crimes because of the orthodoxy of their methods, or unwilling to for reasons of political prosperity. In this ‘world gone wrong,’ where ‘nothing grows in the right direction,’ the miscreant is no longer an idiosyncratic glitch in the system, but a faceless cog in a larger whole or ‘sprawl’ that exercises violence with a ruthless neutrality. One of the show’s opening and, in many ways, most definitive scenes is codified with imagery of medieval knight-errantry, giving rise to this chapter in which I explore True Detective’s “genric” pre-history.
Employing the epistemological principle of black metal theory (BMT), this article maps
the centr... more Employing the epistemological principle of black metal theory (BMT), this article maps
the central phenomenological feature of apophatic mysticism onto the loss sustained
in Vordb Na R.iidr’s first non-material edition: Moévöt’s De fenêtre entrouverte
(Kaleidarkness, 1992–2015). With recourse to personal commentary, this loss is traced
not only through the work, but the spiritual life of Vordb, the founding member of up
to nineteen known permutations of Les Légions Noires: from the infamous Vlad Tepes
and Bèlkètre split, March to The Black Holocaust (1996), to his figural equation
with John the Baptist, an homage to the latter’s ministry in Guido d’Arezzo’s solmization
system, and related synaesthetic elements, to reveal an affective identification
with divinity through intimate exposure to the utmost negativity.
Mors Mystica: Black Metal Theory Symposium (Schism Press), 2015
Essays and artworks related to Mors Mystica, a Black Metal Theory symposium that took place at St... more Essays and artworks related to Mors Mystica, a Black Metal Theory symposium that took place at St. Vitus Bar in Brooklyn, NY, April 25, 2015, on the theme of mystical death."Only that person who says: 'My soul chooses hanging, and my bones death' can truly embrace this fire . . . for it is absolutely true that 'no one can see me and live.'" -- Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum
"Amygdalatropolis is a work of brilliant neurorealism in which the city is a Computer, a libidina... more "Amygdalatropolis is a work of brilliant neurorealism in which the city is a Computer, a libidinal pornutopia voided of all bedeutung other than the residual, electronic prickling of sexual fear and auto-autistic aggression where software and synapse flicker in an endless algorithmic loop. Norburt Wiener’s apocalyptic steersman leads directly here: a psychopathological cyberutopia heading straight into the lake of fire."
— Scott Wilson, author of Great Satan's Rage: American Negativity and Rap/Metal in the Age of Supercapitalism
"Yeager’s haphephobic protagonist /1404er/ has got over reality, family or the social and moved on - to a somewhat more tenable amnion of snuff porn, clickbait and casual online scapegoating. Amygdalatropolis inhabits our post-truth heterotopia like some virulent new literary life form, perfectly tooled for the death of worlds."
— David Roden, author of Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human
Serial Killing: A Philosophical Anthology (Schism Press), 2015
"Serial Killing leaves behind the analysis of the serial killer as a romantic anti-hero, diagnost... more "Serial Killing leaves behind the analysis of the serial killer as a romantic anti-hero, diagnostic category of psychopathology or sociological symptom to offer a collection of essays that infuses the conventional delusions of critical distance with the passionate, homicidal embrace of loving neighborliness. The theoretical, photographic and fictional essays in this volume take the serial killer as an object of both philosophical speculation and spiritual contemplation. In a brilliant cornucopia of styles and obsessions, serial killing becomes, among many other things: the touchstone of common in-humanity, a form of sacrifice and mystical rite, a leisure activity, a kind of bloody ikebana, a kaligraphic and auto-graphic mode of self-portraiture and flesh inscription, the meta-relational emanation of immanent suffering, a form of kleptomancy, an expression of neoliberal love, an ascetic practice of cosmic joy. It is properly mad."
— Scott Wilson, author of Scott Walker And The Song of The ONE-ALL-ALONE (Bloomsbury, 2020), Stop Making Sense (Karnac, 2015), The Order of Joy (SUNY, 2008)
Floating Tomb: Black Metal Theory (Mimesis International), 2015
The Areopagite, who delighted in etymologies, puns, and allusions, fictionalized himself (or hers... more The Areopagite, who delighted in etymologies, puns, and allusions, fictionalized himself (or herself) through the adoption of a pseudonym, that of an Athenian converted to Christianity by St. Paul in the first century AD. In Acts 17, we read: 'When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said "we want to hear you again on this subject". At that, Paul left the council. Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus'. We should not be surprised that this same passage, which ends with Dionysius' conversion, begins with a sermon on 'THE UNKNOWN GOD'. As yet unnamed and unknown, the sixth-century Areopagite -- whose pseudonymous corpus has inspired the open burial and consecration of authorial identity in a luminous blackened scriptorium of secret press (HWORDE) within secret press (gnOme) where, writing neither as 'oneself nor someone else' , bergmetal theorist Denys X. Abaris presents his (or her) Oro-Emblems of the Musical Beyond (2014) -- is responsible for what has been identified as black metal theory's apophatic outlook.
Floating Tomb: Black Metal Theory (Mimesis International), 2015
This chapter, presented in inchoate form as a lecture in the aesthetics of music and sound at the... more This chapter, presented in inchoate form as a lecture in the aesthetics of music and sound at the University of Southern Denmark (2015), attempts to answer the question ‘What is Black Metal Theory?’ by addressing the formation, recordings, and inscrutable legacy of Les Légions Noires (LLN) through Nicola Masciandaro’s ‘Labor, Language, Laughter’ (Sufficient Unto The Day, Schism Press: 2014). Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s reflections on language in Rabelais and His World (1965), LLN’s carnivalization of speech is posited as a form of verbal absurdity that succeeds in achieving what Masciandaro terms a ‘laughing laboring logos’ that ‘traces the tragedy of not not knowing’ through a medieval poetics that is characteristic in form to Black Metal Theory (BMT): construed herein as ‘the working together of texts; the working together of these powers within individual beings; and the working together of persons,’ to distill a monstrous hermeneutics that apophatically keeps open the question of human cognition (Masciandaro: 2014, 120; 118).
"This book contains the proceedings from Weaponising Speculation, a two-day conference and exhibi... more "This book contains the proceedings from Weaponising Speculation, a two-day conference and exhibition that took place in Dublin in March 2013. Weaponising Speculation was organised by D.U.S.T. (Dublin Unit for Speculative Thought) and aimed to be an exploration of the various expressions of DIY theory operative in the elsewheres, the shafts and tunnels of the para-academy. The topics covered all come under the welcoming embrace of speculation, spanning a broad range: from art, philosophy, nature, fiction, and computation to spiders, culinary cosmology, and Oscar the Grouch. The book itself aims to be more than just a collection of essays and catalogue of artworks, but also a documentation of the event as a whole. An object that both those present at the event and those who missed it would want to own — bringing something new to both sets of readers.
The range of topics covered in this collection, along with the added elements of design and photography, result in a book that appeals beyond the (para)academic circle within which the Speculative Realist community currently resides. One of the original aims of the Weaponising Speculation conference, and by extension, the book, is to expand what might be considered the expected reach of the subject, bringing Speculation to a new audience — artists, designers, fans of fiction, photographers, biologists, film theorists, comedians, culinary artists, illustrators, computer programmers, and individuals from any number of fields.
Before the storms the para-academic needs to equip herself. Not only with tools, but weapons. In this way this collection is not only a book to read, an object to own, or a tool for learning, but a weapon with which to break open academic discourse, to invade and conquer as yet unknown territory, and to aid thinkers in the siege to reclaim the real."
Georges Bataille and Contemporary Thought (Bloomsbury), 2017
"Bataille’s particular brand of nihilism also appears in Edia Connole’s essay,
albeit not within ... more "Bataille’s particular brand of nihilism also appears in Edia Connole’s essay, albeit not within the context of the planetary annihilation of thought but as part of an intellectual journey through the history of philosophy, science-fiction imaginaries, black metal theory and careful analysis of Bataille’s terminology. In a long essay that rewards multiple readings, Connole begins by treating Bataille as part of the lineage of mysticism, and manages, by the end of the exegesis, to turn his thought into a speculative philosophy of the thing itself." — William Stronge, Editor's Introduction
Acéphale and Autobiographical Philosophy in the 21st Century (Schism Press), 2021
In “Le Corps du Néant,” Pierre Klossowski situates Acéphale within a lineage of “Parisian Messian... more In “Le Corps du Néant,” Pierre Klossowski situates Acéphale within a lineage of “Parisian Messianism” he sees burgeoning in the mythology of the city since the great Revolution of 1789. The term, which is immediately abandoned, but given flesh in the surrounding narrative, suggests that the political and religious are somehow intertwined. Insofar as this political messianism is unique to Paris, to the mythology of Paris, to a tradition that, stemming from an essentially anti-religious movement, passes from crime to crime, how exactly does the Catholic Klossowski see it related to religion at the time?
This paper was originally a performative presentation forming part of the proceedings of Weaponis... more This paper was originally a performative presentation forming part of the proceedings of Weaponising Speculation, a two-day conference and exhibition that took place in Dublin in March 2013. Weaponising Speculation was organised by D.U.S.T. (Dublin Unit for Speculative Thought) and aimed to be an exploration of the various expressions of DIY theory operative in the elsewheres, the shafts and tunnels of the para-academy. The topics covered all come under the welcoming embrace of speculation, spanning a broad range: from art, philosophy, nature, fiction, and computation to spiders, culinary cosmology, and Oscar the Grouch.
Sovereignty and the Human: Exploring Bataille’s Accursed Share Project
[Again] and UWE Philosophy... more Sovereignty and the Human: Exploring Bataille’s Accursed Share Project [Again] and UWE Philosophy, Bristol, April 25th 2014: Keynote.
ISMMS 4th Biennial International Conference, Le Lieu Unique, Nantes, France, 17-20 June, 2019
"Five years ago, the International Society for Metal Music Studies was created. The ISMSS is an i... more "Five years ago, the International Society for Metal Music Studies was created. The ISMSS is an international association of social scientists dedicated to the study of hard rock, heavy metal and metal. After the United States, Finland and Canada, France will be greeting the fourth edition of its conference, from June 17th to 20th, 2019. It will take place at the Lieu Unique, Nante's main popular music venue, with 25 different countries represented, and from a great variety of academic fields, including sociology, musicology, history, law, literature or gender studies. Considering the issue of 'Locating Heavy Metal', we will discuss situated analyses, based on fieldwork or specific (cannibal ;) ) corpuses."
Dublin Gastronomy Symposium, Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland, 3-4 June, 2014
As one of the ‘three great luxuries of nature’ (AcSh 1), eating has a privileged place throughout... more As one of the ‘three great luxuries of nature’ (AcSh 1), eating has a privileged place throughout Georges Bataille’s oeuvre. From the multiple references to eating, spittle and the mouth, and the slaughterhouse’s ancient link to sacrifice (not to mention the eye as ‘a cannibal delicacy’) in Documents, to his later works in which the eater and eaten are the very definition of the Order of Intimacy in History of Religion, which, in parlance with the divinity of the hunted and consumed animal celebrated in The Cradle of Humanity, conjoins religion and science in a culinarism that opens the human form to the forces of consumption and excess in continuity with eroticism and death. This paper gives an Introduction to MOUTH’s forthcoming work, The Bataille Cookbook, a series of original recipes and accompanying essays that explore the intimate relation between culinarism and animality, eating and eroticism, conjoining the sacred and the profane within a‘community of blood’ in which butchery, cooking and religion form a whole. Engaging Bataille’s ouevre through various speculative ontologies of the living (that eschew any conception of man as ‘the shepherd of being’), this paper also situates MOUTH in relation to other food-hospitality art groups and movements such as the Futurists, Fluxus, the Viennese Actionists, Relational Aesthetics and Art Oriente objet (AOo).
1913/The Art of Noises/2013, Modernisms Research Centre, University College Cork, Ireland, 13 December, 2013
"... l’érotism était silence."
– Georges Bataille
Silence, as we know from John Cage’s experim... more "... l’érotism était silence." – Georges Bataille
Silence, as we know from John Cage’s experiments in art and science, is impossible. But so too, perhaps, is noise. Certainly the title of Russolo’s great text is paradoxical given that in so far as there is an art of noise, which is to say a form of music that encompasses noise, noise is abolished. On the one hand, all Russolo’s lettermanifesto seeks to do is expand the repertoire of sounds that can be music, to ‘enlarge and enrich more and more the domain of musical sounds’ and ‘score and regulate’ them. As such, The Art of Noise is one of a number of works in the 20thC that transformed and infinitely expanded the definition of music to one of a simple principle of organization, bringing it in line with the Pythagorean tradition in which the old idea of natura musicans is revived in the ecological idea that music permeates, even constitutes the cosmos. On the other hand, there is in the Futurist imperative of the piece a conception of noise that breaks violently with any natural order of things that it dismisses as a world of silence. (‘In Antiquity life was nothing but silence. Noise was not really born until the 19thC with the advent of machinery. Today noise reigns supreme over human sensibility’). Another tendency in Russolo’s text, then, is to evoke an erotic mechanics of noise that denudes itself of all the discursive trappings of human sensibility, all sense and organization, at the explosive, violent threshold of death – and therefore silence – (‘those noises man’s mouth can make without talking or singing’). When Bataille says that ‘eroticism is silence’ he means two things: first, that it is beyond speech and second, that ‘the final sense of eroticism’ is death. Eroticism is noisy, but it can be figured as an open, ‘divine’ mouth stripped of speech and song that ‘moans, screams, laughs, rattlings and sobs’ (Russolo) in a negation of the animal desire that it paradoxically wishes to regain in order to communicate from the mute site of enunciation overwritten by the signifier. This is a noise that ultimately obliterates dissonance and the sonic differences necessary for an art of noisemusic, a noise that is equivalent to the silence of death and the continuity of nonhuman sound from which it irrupts. This paper will therefore produce a ‘Bataillean’ double reading of Russolo’s Art of Noises but in relation to early 20thC contemporary examples in which this double movement is in play whereby music, discourse and song are invoked only to be displaced by the animalistic machinism of the body – especially the speechless and songless mouth (and other apertures) – in the silence of eroticism. In so doing, we will invoke and deploy the futurist concepts of conrumore and disrumore, conmusica and dismusica.
Mystical Anarchism, with Simon Critchley and Clodagh Emoe, Block T, Dublin, Ireland, 25 March, 2012
"Celan's unnamed poem that begins 'The broached year' might be approached as a condensed iteratio... more "Celan's unnamed poem that begins 'The broached year' might be approached as a condensed iteration of his famous holocaust poem Todesfuge or Deathfugue where the command given is to drink the blackmilk of daybreak. The figure of the mouth appears in Celan as the last site of pleasure, and indeed of ethics, in a postapocalyptic world. If the broached year only offers delusion bread or literally 'crazy bread', then drink from another's mouth. Thus Celan inverts Adorno's infamous dictum, no poetry after Auschwitz. From now on, there is only poetry, only the figure of the mouth. Edia Connole and Scott Wilson in Mouth follow this ethical demand, drink from my mouth, as the only possibility of love. We are sure you will love what they offer to you if you manage to open your mouth and hear them…" — Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster, New York, May 2012
This seminar, which took place at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU, Odense: 2015), attem... more This seminar, which took place at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU, Odense: 2015), attempts to answer the question ‘What is Black Metal Theory?’ by addressing the formation, recordings and inscrutable legacy of Les Légions Noires (LLN) through Nicola Masciandaro’s ‘Labor, Language, Laughter’ (Sufficient Unto The Day, Schism Press: 2014). Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s reflections on language in Rabelais and His World (1965), LLN’s carnivalization of speech is posited as a form of verbal absurdity that succeeds in achieving what Masciandaro terms a ‘laughing laboring logos’ that ‘traces the tragedy of not not knowing’ through a medieval poetics that is characteristic in form to Black Metal Theory (BMT): construed herein as ‘the working together of texts; the working together of these powers within individual beings; and the working together of persons,’ to distill a monstrous hermeneutics that apophatically keeps open the question of human cognition (Masciandaro: 2014, 120; 118).
BatailleNow Conference, French Institute, Athens, Greece, 21-23 September, 2023
This paper was presented in the Gisèle Vivier Amphitheatre at the French Institute in Athens, Gr... more This paper was presented in the Gisèle Vivier Amphitheatre at the French Institute in Athens, Greece, on September 22 2023 as part of the BatailleNow conference organised by Konstantinos Kerasovitis and Jon Auring Grimm. It is a brief excerpted homily from a larger book project on Saint Ignatius of Loyola and the Spiritual Exercises of Acéphale.
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Books by Edia Connole
—Georges Bataille
"Bareback riding, psychotic sadness, online hate, real-world anonymity, gloomy shadows illuminating the Lost Prophets sex scandal, identity games, human arrogance and anxiety, consent and the lack thereof, death as isolation – these are just some of the uneasily aggressive themes and frontiers which A.D. Hitchin confronts in this collection... A tangled, gnarled post-Burroughsian blend of Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, Lenny Bruce and François Villon."
– Joe Ambrose, Tangier Tsunami, Chelsea Hotel Manhattan, Serious Time
"A sexual, sacrificial, spectacular tour through the darkest recesses of his psyche… the words of A.D. Hitchin will rip your senses raw."
– Billy Chainsaw
"A.D. Hitchin cuts samples from the space of possible desire in vivid prose recalling the best of Burroughs or Ballard in its willingness to anatomise without humanist illusion. Consensual, it should be said, is also deeply erotic, reminding us of the strange shapes of our own need."
—David Roden, author of Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human (Routledge, 2014)
"Consensual explores the depth of the human psyche, doors accessed only by the few that possess an inner wisdom. Here you'll find the various shifting themes of erotica, subjugation and fear, and reach a new enlightened perspective – a shift in consciousness – with New Laws to be broken – above and beyond the primitive roles mankind or God has permitted..."
– Jerome Alexandre, Deadcuts
the central phenomenological feature of apophatic mysticism onto the loss sustained
in Vordb Na R.iidr’s first non-material edition: Moévöt’s De fenêtre entrouverte
(Kaleidarkness, 1992–2015). With recourse to personal commentary, this loss is traced
not only through the work, but the spiritual life of Vordb, the founding member of up
to nineteen known permutations of Les Légions Noires: from the infamous Vlad Tepes
and Bèlkètre split, March to The Black Holocaust (1996), to his figural equation
with John the Baptist, an homage to the latter’s ministry in Guido d’Arezzo’s solmization
system, and related synaesthetic elements, to reveal an affective identification
with divinity through intimate exposure to the utmost negativity.
— Scott Wilson, author of Great Satan's Rage: American Negativity and Rap/Metal in the Age of Supercapitalism
"Yeager’s haphephobic protagonist /1404er/ has got over reality, family or the social and moved on - to a somewhat more tenable amnion of snuff porn, clickbait and casual online scapegoating. Amygdalatropolis inhabits our post-truth heterotopia like some virulent new literary life form, perfectly tooled for the death of worlds."
— David Roden, author of Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human
— Scott Wilson, author of Scott Walker And The Song of The ONE-ALL-ALONE (Bloomsbury, 2020), Stop Making Sense (Karnac, 2015), The Order of Joy (SUNY, 2008)
The range of topics covered in this collection, along with the added elements of design and photography, result in a book that appeals beyond the (para)academic circle within which the Speculative Realist community currently resides. One of the original aims of the Weaponising Speculation conference, and by extension, the book, is to expand what might be considered the expected reach of the subject, bringing Speculation to a new audience — artists, designers, fans of fiction, photographers, biologists, film theorists, comedians, culinary artists, illustrators, computer programmers, and individuals from any number of fields.
Before the storms the para-academic needs to equip herself. Not only with tools, but weapons. In this way this collection is not only a book to read, an object to own, or a tool for learning, but a weapon with which to break open academic discourse, to invade and conquer as yet unknown territory, and to aid thinkers in the siege to reclaim the real."
albeit not within the context of the planetary annihilation of thought but as
part of an intellectual journey through the history of philosophy, science-fiction imaginaries, black metal theory and careful analysis of Bataille’s terminology. In a long essay that rewards multiple readings, Connole begins by treating Bataille as part of the lineage of mysticism, and manages, by the end of the exegesis, to turn his thought into a speculative philosophy of the thing itself." — William Stronge, Editor's Introduction
—Georges Bataille
"Bareback riding, psychotic sadness, online hate, real-world anonymity, gloomy shadows illuminating the Lost Prophets sex scandal, identity games, human arrogance and anxiety, consent and the lack thereof, death as isolation – these are just some of the uneasily aggressive themes and frontiers which A.D. Hitchin confronts in this collection... A tangled, gnarled post-Burroughsian blend of Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, Lenny Bruce and François Villon."
– Joe Ambrose, Tangier Tsunami, Chelsea Hotel Manhattan, Serious Time
"A sexual, sacrificial, spectacular tour through the darkest recesses of his psyche… the words of A.D. Hitchin will rip your senses raw."
– Billy Chainsaw
"A.D. Hitchin cuts samples from the space of possible desire in vivid prose recalling the best of Burroughs or Ballard in its willingness to anatomise without humanist illusion. Consensual, it should be said, is also deeply erotic, reminding us of the strange shapes of our own need."
—David Roden, author of Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human (Routledge, 2014)
"Consensual explores the depth of the human psyche, doors accessed only by the few that possess an inner wisdom. Here you'll find the various shifting themes of erotica, subjugation and fear, and reach a new enlightened perspective – a shift in consciousness – with New Laws to be broken – above and beyond the primitive roles mankind or God has permitted..."
– Jerome Alexandre, Deadcuts
the central phenomenological feature of apophatic mysticism onto the loss sustained
in Vordb Na R.iidr’s first non-material edition: Moévöt’s De fenêtre entrouverte
(Kaleidarkness, 1992–2015). With recourse to personal commentary, this loss is traced
not only through the work, but the spiritual life of Vordb, the founding member of up
to nineteen known permutations of Les Légions Noires: from the infamous Vlad Tepes
and Bèlkètre split, March to The Black Holocaust (1996), to his figural equation
with John the Baptist, an homage to the latter’s ministry in Guido d’Arezzo’s solmization
system, and related synaesthetic elements, to reveal an affective identification
with divinity through intimate exposure to the utmost negativity.
— Scott Wilson, author of Great Satan's Rage: American Negativity and Rap/Metal in the Age of Supercapitalism
"Yeager’s haphephobic protagonist /1404er/ has got over reality, family or the social and moved on - to a somewhat more tenable amnion of snuff porn, clickbait and casual online scapegoating. Amygdalatropolis inhabits our post-truth heterotopia like some virulent new literary life form, perfectly tooled for the death of worlds."
— David Roden, author of Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human
— Scott Wilson, author of Scott Walker And The Song of The ONE-ALL-ALONE (Bloomsbury, 2020), Stop Making Sense (Karnac, 2015), The Order of Joy (SUNY, 2008)
The range of topics covered in this collection, along with the added elements of design and photography, result in a book that appeals beyond the (para)academic circle within which the Speculative Realist community currently resides. One of the original aims of the Weaponising Speculation conference, and by extension, the book, is to expand what might be considered the expected reach of the subject, bringing Speculation to a new audience — artists, designers, fans of fiction, photographers, biologists, film theorists, comedians, culinary artists, illustrators, computer programmers, and individuals from any number of fields.
Before the storms the para-academic needs to equip herself. Not only with tools, but weapons. In this way this collection is not only a book to read, an object to own, or a tool for learning, but a weapon with which to break open academic discourse, to invade and conquer as yet unknown territory, and to aid thinkers in the siege to reclaim the real."
albeit not within the context of the planetary annihilation of thought but as
part of an intellectual journey through the history of philosophy, science-fiction imaginaries, black metal theory and careful analysis of Bataille’s terminology. In a long essay that rewards multiple readings, Connole begins by treating Bataille as part of the lineage of mysticism, and manages, by the end of the exegesis, to turn his thought into a speculative philosophy of the thing itself." — William Stronge, Editor's Introduction
[Again] and UWE Philosophy, Bristol, April 25th 2014: Keynote.
– Georges Bataille
Silence, as we know from John Cage’s experiments in art and science, is impossible. But so too, perhaps, is noise. Certainly the title of Russolo’s great text is paradoxical given that in so far as there is an art of noise, which is to say a form of music that encompasses noise, noise is abolished. On the one hand, all Russolo’s lettermanifesto seeks to do is expand the repertoire of sounds that can be music, to ‘enlarge and enrich more and more the domain of musical sounds’ and ‘score and regulate’ them. As such, The Art of Noise is one of a number of works in the 20thC that transformed and infinitely expanded the definition of music to one of a simple principle of organization, bringing it in line with the Pythagorean tradition in which the old idea of natura musicans is revived in the ecological idea that music permeates, even constitutes the cosmos. On the other hand, there is in the Futurist imperative of the piece a conception of noise that breaks violently with any natural order of things that it dismisses as a world of silence. (‘In Antiquity life was nothing but silence. Noise was not really born until the 19thC with the advent of machinery. Today noise reigns supreme over human sensibility’). Another tendency in Russolo’s text, then, is to evoke an erotic mechanics of noise that denudes itself of all the discursive trappings of human sensibility, all sense and organization, at the explosive, violent threshold of death – and therefore silence – (‘those noises man’s mouth can make without talking or singing’). When Bataille says that ‘eroticism is silence’ he means two things: first, that it is beyond speech and second, that ‘the final sense of eroticism’ is death. Eroticism is noisy, but it can be figured as an open, ‘divine’ mouth stripped of speech and song that ‘moans, screams, laughs, rattlings and sobs’ (Russolo) in a negation of the animal desire that it paradoxically wishes to regain in order to communicate from the mute site of enunciation overwritten by the signifier. This is a noise that ultimately obliterates dissonance and the sonic differences necessary for an art of noisemusic, a noise that is equivalent to the silence of death and the continuity of nonhuman sound from which it irrupts. This paper will therefore produce a ‘Bataillean’ double reading of Russolo’s Art of Noises but in relation to early 20thC contemporary examples in which this double movement is in play whereby music, discourse and song are invoked only to be displaced by the animalistic machinism of the body – especially the speechless and songless mouth (and other apertures) – in the silence of eroticism. In so doing, we will invoke and deploy the futurist concepts of conrumore and disrumore, conmusica and dismusica.