I have stumbled across the legend of Nick Land. Here and there I have heard his name mentioned. I know a few people who study philosophy at Warwick, and from what they tell me there was some exciting activity going on five or ten years ago.
The Land story seems most interesting. All I have heard are dark intimations of debauchery, cocaine snorting off the ample buttocks of the secretary (putting the 'mental' into 'departmental'), and drunken post-lecture fisticuffs. Just imagine if Lucky Jim were written by Michel Houellebecq.
Unfortunately, speculation in this case means wildly overblown fantasy. However, this fascinating document, courtesy of k-punk, suggests that at least some of the rumours might be true...
As for the theory, well I don't quite know what to make of it. It's all cyber-this and viro-that: a few days ago I would've dismissed this stuff as, well, shite. But that would be a little unfair.
Things have certainly changed since then though; how I wish there were such a thing as "left-wing orthodoxies" to rail against. Now all we've got is Daily Mail politics and analytic philosophy taking over.
And anyone who finds the dance-music-and-ecstasy culture interesting must be mad (or rather, normal). If I had a penny for every thirtysomething I meet who's got a boring 90s illegal rave story to tell...
Well hopefully I can find a long-suffering postgraduate to spill the beans on the Land years. Heck, I might even try to read some of Land's book - there are three copies in the library, slightly fetid, sitting there like relics of another era.
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For Nick Land related stuff go here:
http://hyperstition.abstractdynamics.org/
Since that's the blog that he writes with a few others.
Erm... but seriously, the story of it all is about as interesting as one of those thirtysomethings you "meet who's got a boring 90s illegal rave story to tell." In the end, all drugs stories are uninteresting, even (and perhaps more especially so) if philosophy is involved.
Sometimes dead horses really shouldn't be flogged.
Nick might have lost the plot now and it's true that he was often surrounded by sycophants (or 'Landettes') when he was at Warwick, but in his defence he was responsible for encouraging some of the most radical and interesting stuff that ever went down at Warwick.
The number of people who would not have been allowed to get away with the sort of material that they could work with under his supervision is very large and that's not to imply that there was a lack of rigour in what a lot of us were doing. It's also not to imply that it was all about drugged up ravers either.
As far as I can tell, the difference between Warwick then and now was that we had a large community of people all working very seriously on explicitly extreme variations of Continental Philosophy in a sitiuation where we were largely tolerated, and in many cases respected, by the rest of the department. It sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than the situation up there now...
That bad, huh glueboot? It's not so much the drug stories that I'm interested in, but it's more that I am fascinated by the idea of openly radical thinking, hostile to any and all orthodoxy.
I still sort of feel as if a philosophy department should be the kind of place where great intellectual (not bureaucratic) struggles happen, where the atmosphere is intense, if not volatile (I'm thinking Hegel-Schopenhauer type tension).
Actually, I don't think that the philosophy and thought surrounding that time is not interesting. What does get tedious of all the stories about Warwick in its "hey-day." Especially when one gets the feeling that people think that the work being done now can never be as interesting as it was "back in the day." This is problematic as anything that we might do is a priori excluded from being radical enough as it isn't of that era. Or, even worse, people who think we want to return to that time rather than go beyond it.
As John says, the situation at warwick is far from good at the minute but that's not to say that interesting work isn't being done. In fact, the current situation of being under siege by a bunch of folk psychologists contains the possibility of pushing people in more radical directions (which hopefully will become more apparent in the next year or two. either that or we up and move to China, leaving Warwick to the rather vacant ramblings of the current hegemony).
Anyhow, I've gone on a bit... but my problem with the whole NL thing is not his work (I really like TfA) nor the work done by others. My problem is multitude of bagage that comes with it. Whispers of "Have you heard of Nick Land? He was a bad boy..." or, as bad, "Warwick will never be as good as it was then" [dreamy and vacant look] "He was our leader." Or something along those lines....
((Also, when I suggest starting something related to Bataille someone usually pipes up with "Oh, they've already done that here. No point in doing it now." Grrrrr...))
You're very right glueboot. But I think the fact that the Land era is considered a bit passé is why I am interested (especially his stuff on Bataille, which I've begun to read). I suppose my sentiments are directed more at those who either haven't heard of him, or who've come think that rebellion consists in grumbling over a pint.
Snorting coke off the secretarys buttocks, please say thats not true, when I was at Warwick, the secretary was nice, but hell you wouldnt have wanted to be doing that. Would love to find out what Nick is doing nowadays, I did find his lectures inspiring, if not sometimes bewildering...
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