Starry Speculative Corpse Quotes

“Whether we can “save” the planet is one question – whether the planet needs saving is another.”
― Eugene Thacker, Starry Speculative Corpse

“But already there is some ambiguity, for does black designate a “color” that does not reflect light (and if so, why label it a color?), or does black designate the “color” that results in the total absence of light? Without light, no color, and without color, there is only black – and yet black is not a color.”
― Eugene Thacker, Starry Speculative Corpse

“What Kant refers to as depression is simply this stark realization: that thought is only incidentally human. It would take a later generation of philosophers to derive the conclusion of this: that thought thinks us, not the reverse. Legend”
― Eugene Thacker, Starry Speculative Corpse: Horror of Philosophy

“Traditionally, the Socratic tradition in philosophy has a therapeutic function, which is to dispel the horrors of the unknown through reasoned argument. What cannot be tolerated in this tradition is the possibility of a world that cannot be known, or a world that is indifferent to our elaborate knowledge-producing schemes.”
― Eugene Thacker, Starry Speculative Corpse: Horror of Philosophy

“If one is willing to go down this path, retinal pessimism is not just about the non-color that is black, but it is about the perception of color itself. It is, ultimately, the suspicion that all colors are black, that all retinal activity is retinal inactivity. Retinal pessimism: there is nothing to see (and you’re seeing it).”
― Eugene Thacker, Starry Speculative Corpse: Horror of Philosophy

“By necessity there are other characteristics that are not accounted for, that are not measured, and that remain hidden and occulted. Anything that reveals itself does not reveal itself in total. This remainder, perhaps, is the "Planet". In a literal sense the Planet moves beyond the subjective World, but it also recedes behind the objective Earth. The Planet is a planet, it is one planet among other planets, moving the scale of things out from the terrestrial into the cosmological framework. Whether the Planet is yet another subjective, idealist construct or whether it can have objectivity and can be accounted for as such, is an irresolvable dilemma. What's important in the concept of the Planet is that it remains a negative conceit, simply that which remains "after" the human. The Planet can thus be described as impersonal and anonymous.”
― Eugene Thacker, Starry Speculative Corpse