A Painting of Lot's Wife and She's Looking at You: Artworks in Cosmic Horror

There’s something there – something in the use of representational art works and artists in a genre virtually defined by the unrepresentable quality of its subjects – but where are we?

On Forbidden Knowledge: The Big Other and Social Censorship

This makes cosmic horror an interesting genre – what we are looking for in it is something that we tend not to think of as anywhere near desirable: we are looking for someone to assure us that an individual person’s life doesn’t matter. This is not simply a way of understanding cosmic horror, but a way of using cosmic horror as a lens through which to read other events.

On Copization (Odd Columns #4)

I label this process “Copization,” to parallel it to the evolutionary biology phenomenon of “carcinization”: there are a complex of evolutionary pressures that lead ten-legged arthropods to develop into remarkably crab-like forms. Copization, on the other hand, is the phenomenon whereby genre stories that feature violence as a central component have a tendency to evolve into a form that more closely resembles a police procedural.

Mapping the Vampire Castle: An Analysis of Rhetoric and Concepts (Fisher's Ghosts, 5)

Analyzing this piece is difficult for me: “Exiting the Vampire Castle” was my introduction to Mark Fisher. It seemed brilliant and insightful at the time. Now, it does not for a variety of reasons. I love Fisher’s longer works, but this essay is riddled with problems. The purpose of this piece is not to defend Fisher’s assertions (though I will be doing a bit of that, more due to rhetorical issues with the critiques than anything else,) but to try to recuperate some of what is valuable in the piece itself.

So, now that everyone involved is alienated, let’s get started!

Reality Gives Way to the Real: The Epistemic Crisis and the Damaging Omnipresence of the Sublime

While the news media sometimes talks about an Epistemic Crisis, or discusses the caustic effect that social media has on discourse, or features a think piece about how kids these days don't share the values of their elders, et cetera, et cetera. This isn't what I'm talking about, or not the whole thing. I feel that we are in a dangerous and critically important period of epistemic uncertainty. To whit, in addition to the examples that I mention, I want to introduce some anecdotes (which is an ironic move as far as proof goes; more on that some other time.)