Reddit reviews In the Dust of This Planet: Horror of Philosophy (Volume 1)

I've said it elsewhere here, but the genre purism in this sub is so inane. Humans being unable to comprehend the malevolent forces acting against them is the essence of what is horrifying, and is the central conceit of It Follows, The Babadook, The Witch, and others.

>Horror is not simply about fear, but instead about the enigmatic thought of the unknown. As H.P. Lovecraft famously noted, "the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest fear is the fear of the unknown." Horror is about the paradoxical thought of the unthinkable. - In the Dust of this Planet

If you're among those complaining about Horror not being like the height of the 80s, all I can say is that I lived through that, and this modern era is way, way better

Radiolab recently did a show on how the phrase "In the Dust of this Planet" has gone viral.

Lily Jane Collins, an English-American actress and model, was seen wearing the phrase on a sweatshirt. It was turned into a shirt by Nordstrom. That sweatshirt is currently sold out: http://shop.nordstrom.com/s/blk-dnm-in-the-dust-of-this-planet-sweatshirt/3687639

It's a book by Eugene Thacker on the "horrors of philosophy" and nihilism that can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/184694676X/

Jay-Z was seen wearing the phrase in his and Beyoncé's music video "RUN". Here's a link to the spot in the video: http://youtu.be/lNcJg5svv9A?t=35s

Also, in an interview with True Detective creator and writer Nic Pizzolatto, Thacker's book In The Dust of This Planet is cited as an influence on the TV series.

I made it into a shirt because I couldn't find it anywhere else and I wanted the shirt. And, yes, it's just a ripoff of the design of the original book cover. But it's a cool design.

Ok, second stab (not at work... no interruptions): many excellent observations here, much appreciated. I've always harbored a deep prejudice against the horror genre, but I'm beginning to reconsider (I'd love to read Thacker's In the Dust of This Planet). Your comments on it are much appreciated.

>Cosmic Horror, and horror more generally, is often used to facilitate major perspectival shifts in characters who are trapped in a cyclical state of self-identification.

This is quite wonderful, thanks.

Supposing that the circle Ledoux speaks of and the spiral are indeed distinct symbols (a la Nabokov) I think we can assume the malignant circle represents the status quo and the spiral some form of transcendence. [SPOILER](#s "Errol Childress speaks of his imminent ascension") which implies transcendence of the flat circle – perhaps a conical spiral, not unlike the (inverted) one [SPOILER](#s "Cohle hallucinates in Childress' sacrificial dome.") Such a figure is not Nietzschean, as indicated in my previous post. I'm not sure what else to make of it, but between writing that last sentence and this one I've worked through the material at darknessbecomesyou and I am much gratified that the aspects I cared about most seem to have been front and center for Pizzolato and Fukunaga. (I'm so glad they've been so forthcoming.) I am content to let the mythology rest in an indeterminate state. That said, I do think the psychological lens you employ is the most productive: whatever else they may represent, the vicious circle and spiral of transcendence are useful models for conceptualizing the psychodynamics of Hart and Cohle over the course of the narrative.

So having stumbled upon your posts elsewhere, I noticed that you are working on an essay on the construction/subversion of masculinity in TD. I would love—love—to read it when you are finished.

Finally, I have to ask about your comment regarding the pertinence of commodity fetishism. This is a particular interest of mine (in fact I just returned to Taussig's The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America), but I was surprised to see it in this context. Please say more (or perhaps you were bluffing? No worries either way).

Relevant.

I feel you, friend. The journey continues, the road goes ever on. My time is longer than yours, but I hope still to have a good handful of decades left. So maybe there are more insights further on—there always have been so far—but these days it seems to me that personal peace and the socio-mental disembeddedness of being an atheist do not mix will.

(By "socio-mental disembeddedness" I mean something like being in the world with people who perceive, categorize, and think both in and through a set of concepts that you not only do not share but actively reject.)

You responded to someone else in a comment that books have always helped. The same is true for me. It's difficult to place exactly why, but reading (from paper) helps. And it helps to read surprising things. A couple that have been especially enjoyable for me recently, in the sense that they hit not only the rational notes, but also the weird imaginative ones, are Eugene Thacker's In the Dust of this Planet and Starry Speculative Corpse. They play around at a connection of horror and philosophy, and I found them counterintuitively rejuvenating. There's a third in the series, but I haven't read it yet, so can't recommend it honestly.

And, of course, like many here on the non-theistic interwebs, I welcome conversation by private message. Everybody needs that sometimes.

Just read about Uzumaki in a “philosophy” book. Sounds interesting.

Here is the book in case anyone wants to check it out. The central idea comes from, alludes to, and is about the horror genre.

In the dust of this planet
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/184694676X?pc_redir=1410065416&robot_redir=1

This is all based on this book: https://www.amazon.com/Dust-This-Planet-Horror-Philosophy/dp/184694676X

Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound

Eugene Thacker's In the Dust of this Planet