Is Weird Fiction Slanted Towards Western Values?

[paeng]

I think the Eastern philosophies of the Axial Age contained similar, and more. There are some references here:

Axial Age - Wikipedia

but I recall reading about them in Armstrong's Great Transformation.

[gveranon]

Quote Originally Posted by Evans

Quote Originally Posted by Raul Urraca I don't know if the concept of "mastering" the world comes into it, but scientific materialism is western in the sense that it achieved its highest expression in the west (though materialism is not just a western phenomena- ancient indian philosophers came to similar conclusions). Materialism's westernness seems more the fault of historical exigencies than an innate feature of western culture (or any culture for that matter). I think the issue here is not so much the 'materialism' but the 'scientific' (you are of course absolutely correct about Indian philosophers have espoused a similar view to Epicurean Atomism, some Chinese thinkers did the same). Materialism is an ontological thesis and is no more inherently motivational towards the natural sciences than it is towards anything else e.g. poetry. The so called Scientific Materialism is a more overtly modern, Western idea, a running together of two different philosophical strands - ontological materialism and the epistemic view that virtually all knowledge should be deprived from the natural sciences, themselves often taken to be reducible to fundamental Physics (historically in the time of Lovecraft and before this view was associated not with materialism, a dangerously 'metaphysical' notion, but with Humean phenomenalism). Those alone aren't enough to generate the perception of the world re Cosmic Horror that I mention though, I suspect there has to be some unspoken third element about scientific endevour being linked to moral improvement (through acquisition of Utility?).

I'm not sure about other cosmic horror authors, but I think this is anathema to Ligotti's way of thinking. For example, this thread contains a perceptive essay about a couple of Ligotti's stories, and the following response from the Yellow Jester himself about his naming of the "Quine Organization":

Quote

Yes, W. V. O. Quine, who concluded that the sole function left to philosophy was to be the servant of science, and thus to serve industry, business, and facilitate the longevity of human life. If anyone doubts this is happening right now, consider the current discussion of raising the retirement age of American workers from sixty-five to sixty-seven or seventy. The power of science to allow us to live longer translates into the power of government and business to make us work longer. When the President of the United States declares in his State of the Union address that we must foment the study of math and science, as if all education were equivalent to these two subject areas, you can be sure that the era of the human being is at an end and the nightmare of productivity has returned from the grave of the Industrial Revolution. No politician can conceive of not working until he dies in harness, especially tyrants and other maniacs. American politicos work into their seventies and eighties, then “retire” and find more work in the private sector. Hosni Mubarak, at the age of 83, fights to stay in office for a few more months, scheming no doubt of how he may extend his stay and still dreaming that his sons—his golems, his doppelgangers—will return to succeed him, extending in some spectral manner his own rule. In Lovecraft’s time, social scientists worried about how the working class would spend its leisure time once machines had relieved them of seven-day weeks and eighteen-hour days. Now we know they need not have brooded over this problem. Machines have either put us out on the street or protracted work time to encompass all of our hours and find us wherever we go. All horror, all terror, is existential. Even now our future existence is being broadcast to you by your televisions, computers, and portable gadgets. Welcome to the conspiracy against the human race. TL

See also the "potato masher" passage in CATHR:

Quote

"A potato-masher is not useless if one wants to mash potatoes." "Nothing is self-justifying. Everything is justified only in a relativistic potato-masher sense." Etc.

It is probably true that cosmic horror (at least in Ligotti's rendition) has something to do with modern, Western materialistic philosophy and the technological orientation derived from that. But I don't think it is, as you put it in your original post, "...a horror of thwarted desire: Humanity simply are not up to the task of making the world amenable to Man." The pessimistic thinkers that Ligotti likes to quote never thought that the world could be made "amenable to Man"; for instance, recall Zappfe's connections to and influence on the Deep Ecology movement. Rather, Ligottian horror seems to be, at least in part, a primal recoil from the materialistic-technological reduction, but without ultimate hope for anything else but non-existence.

I suspect this is why some religiously-inclined readers are drawn to Ligotti. He shares their horror of the scientistic view of things and their refusal of life-affirming panaceas and bromides drawn from it. (A better potato-masher would be existentially irrelevant for us, however much it might help with those damned potatoes.) What Ligotti doesn't share with his religiously-inclined readers is a belief that pre-modern religious notions are or might be true and salvific.

I don't think negative utilitarianism (if some of Ligotti's statements could be characterized as such) is fully free of modern materialistic assumptions, even in its recoil from them, but it's a different thing from a Kurzweilian panic-attack about the inefficacy of modern, Western life-reengineering projects.

[Mr. Veech]

@ gveranon

"[L]igottian horror seems to be, at least in part, a primal recoil from the materialistic-technological reduction, but without ultimate hope for anything else but non-existence."

Yes, but doesn't that imply that Ligotti's own account of "horror" is mediated through a technological understanding of the world? Even if his claim is that existence never was susceptible to Western "subjugation," this type of disillusionment is, at the very least, meaningfully related to the "materialistic-technological reduction." Someone claiming the opposite would need to show in what way Ligotti extricates himself from said project.

Then again ...

A part of me doesn't really buy into the West/East dichotomy either, even though each exhibit certain characteristics more clearly than others. You can find examples of the same characteristics on either end. Ligotti's example of a relativistic potato masher system is exactly what Heidegger calls the "significance of the world" in Being and Time. Is Heidegger's existential ontology Western or Eastern? I doubt it really matters at the end of the day. You might say that the question concerning whether or not someone like Ligotti escapes the Western "trap" is rendered meaningless, assuming the West/East divide is merely an ideological form of distortion.

Then again ...

If we were to get rid of every binary, we could not think on the basis of concepts.

[gveranon]

Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Veech

@ gveranon "[L]igottian horror seems to be, at least in part, a primal recoil from the materialistic-technological reduction, but without ultimate hope for anything else but non-existence." Yes, but doesn't that imply that Ligotti's own account of "horror" is mediated through a technological understanding of the world? Even if his claim is that existence never was susceptible to Western "subjugation," this type of disillusionment is, at the very least, meaningfully related to the "materialistic-technological reduction." Someone claiming the opposite would need to show in what way Ligotti extricates himself from said project.

Isn't it clear that Ligotti would be disillusioned even without modern materialism/technology? The pessimistic critique of life that he draws on predates that and goes deeper than that. I can't speak for him, but it appears to me that materialism/technology is, for him, just one more horrific manifestation of life.

I do think that Ligotti's negative utilitarianism (if it could be called that) -- a focus on pain-alleviation in life, the option of a painless, chosen death, antinatalism, and the assumption that death is followed by non-existence -- is metaphysically and ethically materialistic. But with this qualification: Ligotti wants OUT; to the extent he's embracing anything of the materialistic project, it's only transiently, as a means to palliation and to achieving the end of nullity. Contra what I took Evans to be contending, Ligotti's cosmic horror isn't a matter of being down-at-the-mouth because the modern, Western materialistic project isn't working better. (In fairness to Evans, I do realize that he was speaking of cosmic horror in general, and didn't mention Ligotti, but I think Ligotti is surely a salient case here.)

But, as outlined above, I agree that Ligotti's pessimism and his chosen solutions are not entirely free of modern materialistic, technological assumptions, however much he recoils from them. And--please check back--I said as much in the post you are responding to.

Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Veech

Then again ... A part of me doesn't really buy into the West/East dichotomy either, even though each exhibit certain characteristics more clearly than others. You can find examples of the same characteristics on either end. Ligotti's example of a relativistic potato masher system is exactly what Heidegger calls the "significance of the world" in Being and Time. Is Heidegger's existential ontology Western or Eastern? I doubt it really matters at the end of the day. You might say that the question concerning whether or not someone like Ligotti escapes the Western "trap" is rendered meaningless, assuming the West/East divide is merely an ideological form of distortion. Then again ... If we were to get rid of every binary, we could not think on the basis of concepts.

I didn't take issue with the Western/Eastern aspect of this thread, because I don't feel I have a very good grasp of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of those generalities myself.

[Speaking Mute]

Quote Originally Posted by Evans

The title says it all. Is modern Weird Fiction largely slanted towards a view of the world informed by modern Western values, that is that it implies a perception of the world as 'inert' material to be mastered by human endeavor, usually technological, the punchline often being that we are too insignificant to carry out this operation. Cosmicism, the most extreme example of this world-desire, is a horror of thwarted desire: Humanity simply are not up to the task of making the world amenable to Man.

Setting aside all the difficulties in defining both "West" and "Western values" and sticking with your specific framing of a problem, I'm still going to say no.

Restricting Weird Horror to Lovecraft and Ligotti, the typical character featured in either author's fiction is usually wholly indifferent to social status, professional achievement, personal happiness, and even self-preservation. The only aspiration that ever seems to be thwarted in Lovecraft and Ligotti is the basic, everyday grasp of reality, and however we slice or define the West, I think it's fair to say that the West only ever sees the basic, everyday grasp of reality as an aspiration for a pitiable minority of mental invalids. I think this is one of the most subversive aspects of Lovecraft and Ligotti and one of the few themes they genuinely share in common.

Before moving on to Weird Fiction in general, I don't think Cosmicism played the role in Lovecraft's fiction that he himself thought it did. Indeed, I'd go even further and say Lovecraft failed to incorporate cosmic indifference in his fiction; aside from the insentient Color Out of Space, all of his creatures show interest in humans one way or another - even the Idiot God sent emissaries to us wee little humans. Nor do I follow Joshi in thinking Cosmicism separates Weird from mainstream horror since a very large number of prominent authors popularly classified as Weird reject the view outright. But this tangent leads me back to why I'd say "no" in general - there's just too many different authors with different beliefs and backgrounds to pin Weird Horror to any particular set of cultural values. This isn't saying that aren't tropes that distinguish Weird Horror as a specific sub-genre - just that the tropes in and of themselves don't commit authors to a particular worldview, and have appealed to readers and authors all over the world.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Quote Originally Posted by Speaking Mute

Nor do I follow Joshi in thinking Cosmicism separates Weird from mainstream horror since a very large number of prominent authors popularly classified as Weird reject the view outright.

Could you give us examples? I'm not quite certain what you're saying they're rejecting.

[Justin Isis]

The idea that there is a separation between the human mind and the cosmos is a Western idea. Cosmic horror is sort of like a panic attack experienced by a teenage boy who feels alienated - “Monotheist God isn’t real...The universe is blind and indifferent."

So in that sense cosmic horror can only exist in a post-Enlightenment or scientific context…which was appropriate when Lovecraft was writing, but is fairly played out at this point.

As for materialism, Ligottian thanatic desire is still thwarted desire (at least while the speaker or narrator is still speaking and therefore still conscious) and still materialist, since it assumes that death consists of a cessation of consciousness - or if it doesn’t, it would be construed as (even more) horrific. "I can't die!" would not be an exclamation of joy in a Ligotti story.

[Frater_Tsalal]

Hell, I just read it because I enjoy the genre and its tropes/trappings.

[Mr. Veech]

The more I think about what constitutes "Weird" fiction, the more hesitant I become about trying to define the genre itself. I would include Thomas Hardy, Heinrich von Kleist, and Nathaniel Hawthorne as part of the genre.

I think what Speaking Mute said is all that can really be said:

"[T]here's just too many different authors with different beliefs and backgrounds to pin Weird Horror to any particular set of cultural values. This isn't saying that aren't tropes that distinguish Weird Horror as a specific sub-genre - just that the tropes in and of themselves don't commit authors to a particular worldview, and have appealed to readers and authors all over the world."

[Speaking Mute]

Quote Originally Posted by Robert Adam Gilmour

Quote Originally Posted by Speaking Mute Nor do I follow Joshi in thinking Cosmicism separates Weird from mainstream horror since a very large number of prominent authors popularly classified as Weird reject the view outright. Could you give us examples? I'm not quite certain what you're saying they're rejecting.

Joshi has often projected his anti-theism and scientific materialism onto the Weird Fiction genre as a whole - I forget the specific contexts, but he's claimed that authors like Robert Aickman either fall outside or fall short of the "Weird" aesthetic simply because their fiction incorporated the supernatural. So far as rejecting Cosmicism (a lifeless, indifferent universe), there's very few authors who actually embrace it - canonical Weird Fiction authors like James and Machen were practicing Christians, whereas others like Blackwood held pantheistic and spiritualist beliefs.