Meltdown Bhāṣya: Verse 1.1.1 (Part 7)

Vulvocosmic dissolution: a materialist śāktism - Part 1: Atheism, deconstruction, & the engine of reinforcement.

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Vulvocosmic dissolution: a materialist śāktism

Previously, we mentioned how Deleuze and Guattari developed a sort of atheistic nondualism, or nirīśvaravādi advaita. Land (1992b) in turn picks up some of the threads of their thought and distills them into a much headier nirīśvaravādi śāktism (‘atheistic goddess-worship’ or ‘atheistic energeticism’) which primarily focuses with the roiling mass of undifferentiated energy that forms the ‘base matter’ of the universe; this is inextricably tied with the concept of ‘zero’ as well as that of the female.

It is here that we may finally penetrate into the pulsating, fleshy core of Land’s philosophy. In other words, it is here that Land was swallowed up by the gaping hole at the core of matter to be unbirthed in the process of attempting to return to the (black) sun.

Atheism, deconstruction, & the engine of reinforcement

Land’s idea of ‘zero’ is inextricable from his atheism (another term he uses in a different way from our colloquial usage):

“To say ‘there is no God’ is not to express a proposition in a preestablished logical syntax, but to begin thinking again, in a way that is radically new, and therefore utterly experimental. Zero is fatally discovered beneath the scabrous crust of logical negativity. It is obscurantism of the most tediously familiar kind to suggest that the ‘nothing’ of nihilism is an indissolubly theological concept. The nihil is not a concept at all, but rather immensity and fate. Nietzsche describes atheism as an open horizon, as a loss of inhibition. The ‘a-’ of atheism is privative only in the sense of a collapsing dam.

Deconstruction is the systematic closure of the negative within its logico-structural sense. All uses, references, connotations of the negative are referred back to a bilateral opposition as if to an inescapable destination, so that every ‘de-’, ‘un-’, ‘dis-’, or ‘and-’ is speculatively imprisoned within the mirror space of the concept. If we were to follow deconstruction to the letter here it would follow that atheism, antihumanism, and antilogic, far from being virulent pestilential swamps, had no force except through their determinate relations to their enemies, which had thus always already bilateralized them into docility. As for deconstruction ‘itself’, ah, it likes to suffer!” (Land, 1992b, p. 19)

His philosophy, though it might be seen as following in the lineage of deconstructionism by some, treats even that as but the terminus of the Western Tradition, and instead of engaging in its games, concerns itself only the utter collapse of the entire edifice. Land’s overarching obsession is the release of repressed desire in the form of a flood which tears through the established frameworks of Western thought, Christian and secular. Instead of seeking to overthrow ‘God’ in favour of a mundane, logically-structured, humanist system which maintains the hollowed out forms of the religious societies which preceded it, Land wishes to wash away and dissolve it all— form and substance alike— in the corrosive flows of materialism. Land (1992b) takes issue with deconstruction because he sees it as reinvesting the object of its critique with a newfound energy, in a way safeguarding it once more (perhaps from its own decadence?). In his critique of Heidegger and Derrida’s attempts to protect the prestige of philosophy Land says that “The strategy adopted in both cases is essentially Kantian; if there is something you want to protect, attack it with measured vigour yourself, thus investing it with replenished force, and pre-empting its annihilation.” (p. 20) Land calls this “conquest as the transfer of defensive responsibility” (p. 20), the consequence of which is that:

“…the ‘text of Western metaphysics’ finds itself subject to a general ‘destruction’, ‘deconstruction’, or restorative critique, which—amongst other things—fabricates ‘it’ into a totality, rescues it from its own decrepit self-legitimations, generalizes its effects across other texts, reinforces its institutional reproduction, solidifies its monopolistic relation to truth, confirms all but the most preposterous narratives of its teleological dignity, nourishes its hierophantic power of intimidation, smothers its real enemies beneath a blizzard of pseudo-irritations (its ‘unsaid’ or ‘margins’), keeps its political prisoners locked up, repeats its lobotomizing stylistic traits and sociological complacency, and, in the end, begins to mutter once more about an unnamable God. Deconstruction is like capital; managed and reluctant change.” (p. 20-21)

Land himself provides an example earlier in the first chapter of TFA, titled ‘The death of sound philosophy’:

“Kant's critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth. Its more brutish - and even more consequential - ancestor was Luther's hysterical reaction to the disintegration of Christendom. A kind of intellectual paralysis, the basic symptom of which was a demand for rigorous and consistent austerity, was common to both. Like Luther, Kant was forced into conflict with an institution steeped in tradition with which he would have been happier to conform; if only it were strong enough to keep the barbarians at bay. But whilst atheists (such as Hume) threatened to wash everything away, the pope spawned bastards and Christian Wolff pontificated absurdities. There was only one answer, revolt in the service of the establishment, and the revolt, once begun, was carried through with a steel dedication. What was also common to both of these reluctant rebels was the renewed vitality that they breathed into the antique institutions they engaged. Within a few years of Luther, the Jesuits, after Kant, Hegel. Catholicism and metaphysics both reborn. After all, fear is the passionate enthusiasm for the same.” (p. 2)

If it is still difficult to understand this principle one need only look at the phenomenon of Donald Trump. It is well illustrated by how he drew greater numbers of people to his side the more he was attacked. In their zeal to oppose and destroy this man who was responsible for revealing the real state of affairs of the world, journalists, entertainers, politicians, and their fellow travelers only stoked the flames of dissent. No doubt a similar explanation can be proffered for Narendra Modi’s attaining the headship of the Indian republic and continued power and popularity.

In the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam it is stated that “As supplying butter to a fire does not diminish the fire but instead increases it more and more, the endeavor to stop lusty desires by continual enjoyment can never be successful.” (SB 9.19.14). When these desires are unable to be satisfied, however, they turn to anger, by which one is “impelled to sinful acts, even unwillingly, as if engaged by force” (BG 3.36). As Śrī Kṛṣṇa says, “It is lust only, Arjuna, which is born of contact with the material mode of passion and later transformed into wrath, and which is the all-devouring sinful enemy of this world.” (BG 3.37).

Truly, it is das ansteckendes Nichts¹ which sickens, burns, and drives the world, in Land’s reckoning. In the ‘Editors’ Introduction’ to Fanged Noumena (Land, 2012), Mackay and Brassier say that this infectious current can even be found flowing through the otherwise “famously sober system” (p. 10) of Kant, albeit in an almost anemic state. In their words: “Land diagnoses the virulent strain of Lutheran asceticism coursing through all of Kant's writings, one which intensifies the discipline and self denial necessary to capital accumulation with the fanatical devotion of Christian martyrdom” and which results in “the philosophical justification of labour.” (p. 11). Going even deeper, Kant’s logic begins to rupture when it comes to the position of artistic genius — which we should keep in mind comes from the Greco-Roman Religions’ ideas of protective spirits (Lat. genius loci, Gr. agathodaímōn), thus implying a sort of posession — even if Land takes this to refer to an impersonal, swarming force:

“Land's pessimistic or Dionysian materialism abandons the Apollonian ideal of achieving order or reconciliation (even interminably deferred), seeking only to cause more trouble, to complexify, disrupt, disturb, provoke, and intensify. Accordingly, Land aims to plug philosophy into the 'indecent precipitation' of the poet-werewolf-rat-genius, whose operating principle is, like Artaud's spiritual plague, 'epidemic rather than hermeneutic'; who, like Nietzsche's arrow, transmits the époche, chaos, the irruptions of the energetic unconscious, as opposed to capitalising (on) them; and whose subjection to the polite deliberations, hard work, and heavy responsibilities of critique or deconstruction Land dismisses as a travesty. Only the dissolution of 'actually existing philosophy' might open the way to new practices capable of participating in the exploratory 'intelligence' of those infected by the unknown.” (p. 16-17)

Of course, as proper pagans, we should know by now that the daiva-bhiṣak Apollo is both raudra and śambhu, and thus, is just as capable of driving one mad as he is of healing, thus making whole this supposed split between the two principles. And, as we saw in the Introduction, the son of Leto has enough sway with rats (Apollōn Smintheus). And as for wolves, Apollo was also known as Apollōn Lykeios, Lyceus, deriving from the lands of Lycia in Anatolia, where his worship may have come from, which itself is related to the words for both ‘light’ (lyke) and ‘wolf’ (lykos).

1. ‘this infectious, burning nothingness’

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