Matt Colquhoun's Blog, page 75

Surfascism and Surneoliberalism: Notes of Fisher, Bataille and Accelerationism

Another bit of cribbing from @k_punk_unlife that has raised some interesting questions for me this fine Sunday afternoon.

Taken from Fisher’s review of a Carlo Ginzberg lecture from 2004, originally posted on the Hyperstition blog [currently down but available here], Bataille and the College of Sociology receive a bit of a damning appraisal. Mark writes:

Between Baudelaire and Foucault lie Bataille and the College de Sociologie, but implicit in Ginzburg’s narrative was a total debunking of...

First Thought Best Thought

Simon Reynolds has informally celebrated his eighteenth blog birthday with a reflective post on what it means to blog and for so long. He’s posted a little something here (which includes a nice hyperlinked shout-out to Xenogothic, along with a few other bloggers in the current blogosphere). It also signals a sad end though, as Simon points out that Bruce Sterling’s blog at Wired is shutting this month.

Sterling’s blog has been an interesting vector for weirder goings-on in cyberspace and, in...

Damaged Lives: Notes on Adoption and Subjectivity

At the moment, I keep thinking — no doubt needlessly — about how a book about adoption, written by yours truly, could be perceived in the wider world. I have this anxiety, as I sink my teeth into it, that the end product might be appear, superficially at least, like a book that has been written with a very specific reader in mind — an adopted reader. In truth, I want to write a book about adoption that will be of interest to anyone.

I am left with a strange desire to start the book with a qu...

Front Window #9: Antigone Beyond the City Walls (XG Beyond The M25)

Having successfully passed through our close encounter with the coronavirus many weeks ago — my girlfriend had it and recovered; I’m (presumably) asymptomatic — my girlfriend and I have wanted nothing more than to go outside.

We spent at least a month, perhaps it was six weeks, not going outside our front door. After our stress lessen, we didn’t leave the neighbourhood. When the mood swings started getting quite intense, we knew we had to do something.

The lack of direct sunlight h...

Cold Rationalism and Psychedelic Consciousness: Mark Fisher’s Acid Reflux — XG at the University of Birmingham Contemporary Theory Reading Group

I’m really excited to have been invited to give a guest lecture as part of k-punk quarantined, a online workshop around the work of Mark Fisher organised by the University of Birmingham’s Contemporary Theory Reading Group.

I’m going to be talking about some of my more recent research around Mark’s final postgraduate module at Goldsmiths, building towards his Acid Communism, excavating a thread that can be traced back through ten years of his writing, revealing how Acid Communism might st...

Postmodern Neomarxism: Round Two — XG on the Jordan Peterson Subreddit

My recent post on Postmodern Neomarxism has gone the distance, appearing on the Jordan Peterson subreddit and receiving quite a few responses. Lets go through them and maybe start a fight for shits and giggles, shall we?

The first commenter doesnt like my previous suggestion that theres a similar cynicism under the surface of our popular understandings of the neo- prefix in neoliberalism and neomarxism.

Nice of him to tell us what these words really mean when everyone else thought they...

Fanged Noumena

Still thinking about this

Should have been the cover of Fanged Noumena.

Cyclonopedia: Hypercodex

The XG Discord started showing signs of life last week as, after an extended period of inactivity, following the general insanity of what has been the last few months, we finally found a way to hold another reading group. Due to popular demand, we had a go at Reza Negarestanis Cyclonopedia. (Hopefully well keep this up every week from now on. I really enjoyed it and felt like a right idiot for allowing life to get in the way for so long without us doing another hang out.)

I hadnt read Rezas...

We Must Imagine Sisyphus Pathological

I finally watched Joker the other night. It was pretty good. Most takes on it seemed bad though.

For instance, I along with about half of Reddit kept thinking about Sisyphus throughout my viewing, particularly Camuss absurdist Sisyphus. It is as if Arthur is the epitome of the Absurd Hero or so the script wants us to think. This is to say that, despite all the shit hes put through, we have to imagine Arthur happy. Otherwise why would he continue to live? He has to be able to affirm the...

Postmodern Neomarxism

When a tweet encourages half a dozen replyguys missing the point, it evidently needs a bit more exposition.

Rather than being a mindless dismissal, is postmodern neomarxism actually an incredibly accurate name for a left made impotent by its own internalisation of late capitalist logics?