Episode 36: On Hyperstition

Episode 36: On Hyperstition

Author: SpectreVision Radio December 19, 2018 Duration: 1:13:52
Hyperstition is a key concept in the philosophy of Nick Land. It refers to fictions which, given enough time and libidinal investment, become realities. JF and Phil explore the notion using one of those optometric apparatuses with multiple lenses -- deleuzian, magical, mythological, political, ethical, etc. The goal isn't to understand how fictions participate in reality (that'll have to wait for another episode), but to ponder what this implies for a sapient species. The conversation weaves together such varied topics as Twin Peaks: The Return, Internet meme magic (Trump as tulpa!), Deleuze and Guattari's metaphysics, occult experiments in spirit creation, the Brothers Grimm, and the phantasmic overtones of The Communist Manifesto. In the end we can only say, "What a load of bullsh*t!" Header Image: Still from the 1920 German Expressionist film The Golem: How He Came in the World, by Paul Wegener. REFERENCES JF's notes on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the refrain Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus David Lynch (director), Twin Peaks: The Return Phil Ford, "Garmonbozia" (work in progress, unpublished) Delphi Carstens, "Hyperstition" Delphi Carstens, "Hyperstition: An Introduction" (2009 interview with Nick Land) Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene CCRU Archives The occult concept of the egregore William Irwin Thompson, Imaginary Landscape: Making Worlds of Myth and Science Martin Heidegger, Being and Time Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford, The Blood of the Saints A. T. L. Carver, "The Truth About Pepe the Frog and the Cult of Kek" Paul Spencer, "Trump's Occult Online Supporters Believer 'Meme Magic' Got Him Elected" Colm A. Kelleher, The Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy Sun Ra, Space is the Place Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the heart of Weird Studies, a podcast from SpectreVision Radio, you’ll find long-form conversations between Professor Phil Ford and writer J. F. Martel. Their discussions aren’t simple reviews or straightforward analyses; instead, they wander through the tangled undergrowth where art and philosophy meet, giving generous time to concepts that resist easy understanding and to creative works that fracture our ordinary sense of the world. This podcast deliberately lingers in that ambiguous space, treating the “weird” not as a genre but as a particular mode of experience-one that reveals the cracks in what we comfortably assume is real. Each episode feels like joining a deep, meandering dialogue between two friends who are both deeply knowledgeable and endlessly curious, covering a vast terrain that includes literature, film, music, and esoteric thought. It’s a show for anyone who suspects that the most profound truths are often found in the shadows, the anomalies, and the strangely beautiful. As part of the SpectreVision Radio network, which specializes in content that explores the uncanny edges of creativity, Weird Studies builds a unique community of listeners who are eager to think differently. You won’t find pat answers here, but you will encounter compelling questions and a shared sense of exploration that makes each installment a distinctive journey.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 230

Weird Studies
Podcast Episodes
Episode 47: Machines of Loving Grace: Technology and the Unabomber [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:08:24
Made in 2003, Lutz Dammbeck's documentary The Net: The Unabomber, LSD, and the Internet is a film about many things, but the gist of it is something like what William Burroughs called the doctrine of control. We live in…
Episode 46: Thomas Ligotti's Angel [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:29:37
In his short story "Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel," contemporary horror author Thomas Ligotti contrasts the chaotic monstrosity of dreams with the cold, indifferent, and no less monstrous purity of angels. It is the story of a bo…
Episode 45: Jeffrey J. Kripal on 'Flipping' Out of Materialism [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:10:27
"May the present 'you' not survive this little book," Jeffrey Kripal writes in the prologue to The Flip. "May you be flipped in dramatic or quiet ways." Indeed, Kripal's latest is a kind of manifesto, a call to embrace t…
Episode 43: On Shirley Jackson [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:16:32
Shirley Jackson's stories and novels rank among the greatest weird works produced in America during the 20th century. However, unlike authors such as Philip K. Dick and H.P. Lovecraft, Jackson didn't cut her teeth in the…
Episode 42: On Pauline Oliveros, with Kerry O'Brien [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:04:12
In the mid-1960s, Pauline Oliveros was a composer of experimental electronic music. But at the end of the 1960s, shocked by the political violence around her, she turned away from electronic technology and towards to a d…
Episode 41: On Speculative Fiction, with Matt Cardin [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:22
Neil Gaiman wrote, "If literature is the world, then fantasy and horror are twin cities, divided by a river of black water." Flame Tree Publishing underwrites this claim with their recent publication, The Astounding Illu…
Episode 40: On Jonathan Glazer's 'Under the Skin' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:18:29
In Jonathan Glazer's loose screen adaptation of Michel Faber's novel Under the Skin, a creature of mysterious origin drives around Scotland in a white van, collecting lonely men and spiriting them away to an otherworld w…
Episode 39: The Challenge of the Paranormal, with Jeffrey J. Kripal [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:45
"The world is not simply composed of physical causes strung together in strictly materialistic and mechanical fashion," writes Prof. Jeffrey J. Kripal in his seminal book, Authors of the Impossible. "The world is also a…
Episode 38: Style as Analysis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:10:45
Music writing has always been something of an occult practice, trying by some weird alchemy to use concepts to describe stuff that defies the basic categories of intellect. So long as we stick to classical music, we can…