Graham Harman

Weird Realism

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As Hlderlin was to Martin Heidegger and Mallarme to Jacques Derrida, so is H.P. Lovecraft to the Speculative Realist philosophers. Lovecraft was one of the brightest stars of the horror and science fiction magazines, but died in poverty and relative obscurity in the 1930s. In 2005 he was finally elevated from pulp status to the classical literary canon with the release of a Library of America volume dedicated to his work. The impact of Lovecraft on philosophy has been building for more than a decade. Initially championed by shadowy guru Nick Land at Warwick during the 1990s, he was later discovered to be an object of private fascination for all four original members of the twenty-first century Speculative Realist movement. In this book, Graham Harman extracts the basic philosophical concepts underlying the work of Lovecraft, yielding a weird realism capable of freeing continental philosophy from its current soul-crushing impasse. Abandoning pious references by Heidegger to Hlderlin and the Greeks, Harman develops a new philosophical mythology centered in such Lovecraftian figures as Cthulhu, Wilbur Whately, and the rat-like monstrosity Brown Jenkin. The Miskatonic River replaces the Rhine and the Ister, while Hlderlins Caucasus gives way to Lovecrafts Antarctic mountains of madness.
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316 printed pages
Publication year
2012
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Quotes

  • Дмитрий Веснинhas quoted6 years ago
    “Above the waist it was semi-anthropomorphic; though its chest… had the leathery, reticulated hide of a crocodile or alligator. The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly suggested the squamous covering of certain snakes. Below the waist, though, it was the worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer fantasy began…” (DH 389)
  • Дмитрий Веснинhas quoted6 years ago
    Lovecraft’s first description of a Cthulhu idol runs as follows: “If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing… but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful…” (CC 169; emphasis modified).
  • Дмитрий Веснинhas quoted6 years ago
    But if we define pulp as fiction unaware of its medium, there is a problem with any dismissal of Lovecraft as a pulp writer: namely, Lovecraft was by no means unaware of his medium, as one of his key theoretical works makes clear

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