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03-24-2017 | #1 | |||||||||||
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Re: Is Weird Fiction Slanted Towards Western Values?
@ Ibrahim
Our knowledge of Aristotle (The Philosopher) is also mediated through Avicenna and Averroes. In fact, the very language of "existence" and "essence," so important to Western philosophy, was built on an Islamic interpretation of Aristotle. I'm sure you probably already knew that. | |||||||||||
"In a less scientific age, he would have been a devil-worshipper, a partaker in the abominations of the Black Mass; or would have given himself to the study and practice of sorcery. His was a religious soul that had failed to find good in the scheme of things; and lacking it, was impelled to make of evil itself an object of secret reverence."
~ Clark Ashton Smith, "The Devotee of Evil" |
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03-24-2017 | #2 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
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Re: Is Weird Fiction Slanted Towards Western Values?
These are all fine categories for academic research and indoctrination, but history is richer than the divisions we invent to understand it. | |||||||||||
"What can a thing do with a thing, when it is a thing?"
-Shaykh Ibn 'Arabi |
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03-25-2017 | #3 |
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Re: Is Weird Fiction Slanted Towards Western Values?
Hell, I just read it because I enjoy the genre and its tropes/trappings.
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“Human life is limited but I would like to live forever.”
-Yukio Mishima |
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4 Thanks From: | miguel1984 (03-25-2017), Mr. Veech (03-25-2017), Speaking Mute (03-25-2017), ToALonelyPeace (03-25-2017) |
03-25-2017 | #4 | |||||||||||
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Re: Is Weird Fiction Slanted Towards Western Values?
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." | |||||||||||
"In a less scientific age, he would have been a devil-worshipper, a partaker in the abominations of the Black Mass; or would have given himself to the study and practice of sorcery. His was a religious soul that had failed to find good in the scheme of things; and lacking it, was impelled to make of evil itself an object of secret reverence."
~ Clark Ashton Smith, "The Devotee of Evil" |
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03-24-2017 | #5 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
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Re: Is Weird Fiction Slanted Towards Western Values?
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":
I'm not sure about other cosmic horror authors, but I think this is anathema to Ligotti's way of thinking. For example, See also the "potato masher" passage in CATHR: 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. | |||||||||||
5 Thanks From: | Arthur Staaz (03-24-2017), bendk (03-25-2017), miguel1984 (03-25-2017), Speaking Mute (03-24-2017), ToALonelyPeace (03-25-2017) |
03-24-2017 | #6 | |||||||||||
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Re: Is Weird Fiction Slanted Towards Western Values?
@ 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. | |||||||||||
"In a less scientific age, he would have been a devil-worshipper, a partaker in the abominations of the Black Mass; or would have given himself to the study and practice of sorcery. His was a religious soul that had failed to find good in the scheme of things; and lacking it, was impelled to make of evil itself an object of secret reverence."
~ Clark Ashton Smith, "The Devotee of Evil" |
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03-24-2017 | #7 | |||||||||||
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Re: Is Weird Fiction Slanted Towards Western Values?
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. 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. | |||||||||||
5 Thanks From: | bendk (03-25-2017), miguel1984 (03-25-2017), Mr. Veech (03-24-2017), Speaking Mute (03-24-2017), ToALonelyPeace (03-25-2017) |
03-23-2017 | #8 | |||||||||||
Acolyte
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Re: Is Weird Fiction Slanted Towards Western Values?
The term "insignificant" is vague; I should have used more nuance. Man is insignificant in Abrahamic religions in that he is dwarfed by God's grandeur/inhumanity/lack of need for humanity. However, he is still capable of being saved. There is a reward for the righteous after death and a future paradise after the world's end. Divine love makes him more significant than the uncaring cosmos. In the cosmic horror story, there is no salvation.
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03-23-2017 | #9 | |||||||||||
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Re: Is Weird Fiction Slanted Towards Western Values?
Of course i understand perfectly well what you mean, & you're right. But the aspect remains, that with religion, if you're 'in it for the salvation,' salvation is still quite a while off. There is, i insist, a definite requirement to feel, first, the cosmic horror without hope or thought of salvation; to know despair as despair only & not as function of salvation. At that level, the immersion in ( the idea of) an uncaring cosmos is the same. The first half of the Islamic Credo is a denial. | |||||||||||
"What can a thing do with a thing, when it is a thing?"
-Shaykh Ibn 'Arabi |
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03-24-2017 | #10 |
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Re: Is Weird Fiction Slanted Towards Western Values?
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. |
Thanks From: | miguel1984 (03-25-2017) |
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