Conspiracy release?

F

faliol

Acolyte
Hello all,

Been awhile since I posted, but is there any news on the release of The Conspiracy Against the Human Race? I read it back when he had it on here and loved it.

I hope soon! :)

Kevin
 
Hehe... I just logged in for the first time in way too long because I wanted to ask the same question...

Looking forward to hear if some of the people here "in the know" can help clearing up this frustrating darkness of the unknown (or something:p)
 
If I remember correctly, the publication was to have been last March. So, we're coming up on a year overdue now. I also subscribe to Durtro's newsletter, and there hasn't been a mention of Tom for quite awhile.
 
Conspiracy Update from Thomas Ligotti:
"As for information on who is going to publish CATHR, I really have zero information to impart at this point except that various options are being considered and the publication date of the book depends on which option seems best to me. The most important thing as far as CATHR is concerned is that I've continued to work assiduously on the book. Not a day has gone by since it appeared on TLO--or since early 2006 for that matter--that I haven't put in quite a number of chain-smoking hours on it. I continue to run the book through my head all the time, and this leads to additions, deletions, and rearrangements in the text. When CATHR was on TLO, I didn't realize how much it was still a work in progress. A long excerpt from the opening section of the book is going to appear in the British philosophy journal Collapse, which is doing a theme issue on Concept-Horror. There will also be an essay on my fiction in the same number of that journal."​

From the website of Collapse/Urbanomic:
The fourth volume of Collapse, to be published 1 May 2008, will feature:
New work by artists Jake and Dinos Chapman; cult weird fiction authors Thomas Ligotti and China Miéville on nihilism weirdness and horror; Eugene Thacker on theology and horror; Graham Harman on the unnatural bond between Husserl and Lovecraft; previously untranslated poetry by Michel Houellebecq; Iain Hamilton Grant on Lorenz Oken's naturphilosophische slime-horror; James Trafford on neurophilosopher Thomas Metzinger's nemocentric theory of consciousness; Reza Negarestani and Robin Mackay on decay, ontology and the Idea; graphic work by Ukrainian artist Oleg Kulik and Czech collective Rafani; a haunting visual essay on cryptozoology by Kristen Alvanson; Canadian artist Stephen Shearer's black metal poems; Quentin Meillassoux on infinite mourning and the virtual god ... and more TBA!
[nb. Advance orders will be possible when content is finalised. A full announcement will be posted here in March.]​

Collapse on "Concept-Horror":
The theme Concept-Horror is not an invitation to theorise about horror: rather it suggests the horror uncovered through conceptual investigation itself: the horror buried beneath the apparently rational discourses of philosophy and theory, the nonsense beneath sense, the abyssal unground towards which philosophical thought invites us when it dissolves the familiar and the customary.​
 
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Sorry, I forgot to thank Dr B for his update here, and TL via him for his own update.

===================================

TANGENT:

yellowish haze said:
des,
Just found a review of a book by Thomas Metzinger you might find interesting:
http://www.human-nature.com/nibbs/03/metzinger.html
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's fascinating. Excerpt:

"Metzinger claims that no such things as ‘selves’ exist in the world. All that exists are phenomenal self-models, that is continuously updated dynamic self-representational processes of biological organisms. Conscious beings constantly confuse themselves with the content of their actual phenomenal self-model, thinking that they are identical with a self."

Seems to relate to Proust and Elizabeh Bowen (and an article I'm currently writing for 'Wormwood' about the sense of non-being in her fiction) as well as to some preoccupations I've humbly had when writing fiction and publishing 'Nemonymous' etc.

Also, I've just started reading "TOWARDS NON-BEING: the logic and metaphysics of intentionality" by Graham Priest.


My essay here (on the hoof) about CATHR, I seem to recall, relates to intentionality vis a vis Ligotti! :)
 
The Concept-Horror issue of Collapse sounds great. I am going to order a copy as soon as it becomes available. Exciting to know that Ligotti is still working on Conspiracy. I look forward to reading it again. There is one problem, though, all of my philosophy books are all pencilled up. How am I going to resist writing in my copy of Conspiracy? I guess I'll have to write everything down in a notebook. Thanks for the update.
 
Reality suggests that we all relax and wait patiently for the completion and publication of CATHR. I wish to read the definitive Thomas Ligotti manifesto when the time is right. During the interim, let us turn our attention to new interests, hobbies, and pursuits...

Cooling my heels as I tat,
Phil
 
TL has been extensively revising CATHR? This really whets my appetite for the forthcoming book. I would follow GSC's lead and take up tatting to pass the meantime, but I fear the raggedness of my doilies would betray the un-serenity of my mind.

Thomas Ligotti wrote: "A long excerpt from the opening section of the book is going to appear in the British philosophy journal Collapse, which is doing a theme issue on Concept-Horror. There will also be an essay on my fiction in the same number of that journal."

The journal Collapse is affiliated with the Speculative Realist philosophers that I posted about recently. I'm still in the process of reading Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound (which sports a quote from Thomas Ligotti on its first page). I will post comments about Brassier's book on the other thread when I have the time. I can't claim any prescience here. I only heard of the Speculative Realists, Brassier, and Collapse after happening to run across an interest-piquing book by Graham Harman in a bookstore a couple years ago.
 
Is Durtro no longer publishing this book? The message from Mr Ligotti seems to indicate that, yet I hadn't heard there was an issue until now.
 
nomis said:
Is Durtro no longer publishing this book? The message from Mr Ligotti seems to indicate that, yet I hadn't heard there was an issue until now.
Click to expand...
My understanding is that publication by Durtro as a deluxe edition is still a viable event, though it may have become a secondary objective behind getting the book published as a more accessible version with regard to distribution depth and end cost. I know that many of us greatly desire that this book will be honored by the production values that Durtro is known for, but having the book readily available at a reasonable cost first and foremost is not a bad thought in itself. Of course, eventually having all of our desires met is vastly preferred!
 
Thomas Ligotti in the British Philosophy Journal Collapse

Now there is more information available on Collapse and Ligotti's contribution:

We are delighted to announce that Collapse Volume IV will be published May 2008 and will soon be available for advance purchase online.

Collapse Volume IV: 'Concept Horror' is an investigation into the philosophical, existential, aesthetic, religious and political dimensions of horror. Its task is not to promote theories of horror, but to uncover the horrors that may lie in wait for those who pursue rational thought beyond the bounds of the reasonable.

The volume brings to fruition Collapse's vision of a miscegenated text in which contributions interact and produce a series of interzones or objectively-collaborative spaces. Throughout the volume many different styles of philosophical texts and graphic works intermingle, creating unanticipated connections and adding new dimensions to one another.

George Sieg's Infinite Regress into Self-Referential Horror demonstrates the simultaneously cognitive, existential and political nature of Horror, through a conceptual investigation of victimhood.​


In The Shadow of a Puppet-Dance, James Trafford tracks weird fiction writer Thomas Ligotti's anticipation of the radical thesis of neurophilosopher Thomas Metzinger's book Being No-One: namely, that 'there has never been such a thing as a self'.​


In Thomas Ligotti's own contribution to the volume, he takes up the work of obscure Norwegian philosopher Peter Zapffe, among others, to take an unflinching journey into the depths of nihilism...​


...As a counterpoint to Ligotti's deflation of human hubris, Ukrainian Oleg Kulik, a prominent contemporary artist known for his disturbing investigations into the borders between life and death, human and animal, contributes his photographic series 'Dead Monkeys'.​


Eugene Thacker's Nine Disputations on Theology and Horror gives a detailed and penetrating account of the 'teratological noosphere', discussing the ontologies of horror from Aristotle to Lovecraft.​


Novelist Michel Houellebecq is well-known for his ability to evoke the horror that dwells within the banalities of contemporary life. His poems, of which a selection are translated into English here for the first time, distil his powerful vision into translucid moments of dread.​


Jake Chapman, half of the notorious Brothers Grim of the British artworld, who unveil their infernal new work Fucking Hell in London next month, contributes a set of etchings created exclusively for Collapse in response to the other contributions in the volume.​


Quentin Meillassoux's work is familiar to our readers. In the third of a 'trilogy' of essays published in Collapse, Spectral Dilemma, Meillassoux reveals some of the ethical consequences of his deduction of the 'necessity of contingency', through an examination of the problem of 'infinite mourning' for the dead.​


Kristen Alvanson's photographs, at once repellent and fascinating, of preserved specimens of deformed and mutated animals and humans, are accompanied by a text which discusses Paré's sixteenth-century treatise which makes of taxonomy itself something monstrous.​


German artist Todosch (Thorsten Schlopsnies) meticulous sketches seem to depict varieties of heterogenous slime in the process either of disintegration or coagulation...​


...A perfect companion to Iain Hamilton Grant's Being and Slime. This untimely excavation of the naturephilosophische work of Lorenz Oken - according to whom the generation of the universe from a 'primal zero' corresponds to its coagulation from a 'primaeval mucus' - puts an entirely new slant on Badiou's notion of 'founding on the void'.​


Benjamin Noys meditates on Lovecraft and the real, revealing that the most abyssal of Horrors is Horror Temporis.​


In Thinking with Nigredo, Reza Negarestani shows how Aristotle and Plotinus both unlock and dissimulate the ontological mechanism expressed by an unspeakable form of Etruscan torture.​


A rising star, Canadian artist Steven Shearer, contributes a new series of his Poems - striking graphical pieces created through a manipulation of the nihilistic and extreme titles and lyrics of death-metal bands.​


China Miéville, better known for his bestselling weird fiction novels, writes on M.R.James and the Quantum Vampire, introducing us to a new fearsome creature from his arsenal, the Skulltopus!​


Czech art collective Rafani present their cycle Czech Forest, an adaptation of folk-tale imagery which presents a very modern tale of warcrime and revenge from the end of WWII.​


Graham Harman returns to Collapse with On the Horror of Phenomenology: Lovecraft and Husserl. In a polemical defence of 'weird realism', Harman demonstrates that philosophical thought has more in common with weird and horror fiction than it might like to admit...​


...Singular Agitations and a Common Vertigo, Keith Tilford's series of images, deftly disintegrated objects with more than a hint of 'pulp', anticipate and shadow Harman's invocation of the weird inner life of objects.​
Collapse Volume IV // Ed. R. Mackay // May 2008 // 400pp[TBC] // ISBN 978-0-9553087-3-4 // £9.99
 
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Thanks for posting this update, Doktor Eisenbart. It sounds like a terrific issue. Let's see, first Ligotti's Conspiracy, then the article on TL, and then straight to the Skulltopus! I'll probably read this issue cover to cover.
 
I think this image by the artist Paul Rumsey would make a great cover for the Collapse Volume IV: 'Concept Horror' issue. It implies both the cerebral and the horrific. But judging by past issues, they don't focus too much on this aspect of the journal.

http://www.angelfire.com/pa5/rumsey/58a.jpg

Paul Rumsey is a very talented artist. Check out his site when you have the time. I got this from Monsterbrains.

www.paulrumsey.co.uk
 
Thank you bendk; this will be forwarded to the editor. But I believe that they only use artworks from the contributions inside collapse. My guess is that they might use an exclusive etching from Jake Chapman; if not they will use an artwork from either keith tilford or kristen alvanson. Aesthetically, as far as I have noticed, they tend to feature mechanically abstract or line drawings reminiscent of the avant-garde journals and magazines named in the interview.
If you know the artist (Paul Rumsey), maybe you should contact him and suggest he submits some art for future issues. Because collapse tends to maintain a consistent vibe despite the diversity of topics and contributors: it always has elements inspired by different horror genres or the weird (so there will always be horror!)
 
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