Invaders from the Future: The CCRU and Their Legacy

Lecturer: Vincent Le

Schedule: 6.30-8.30pm. 5 Mondays starting June 17

Location: CAN, 180 Palmerston St, Carlton.

This course provides an introduction to the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit’s

writings, as well as traces their important influence on contemporary philosophy,
aesthetics and political theory. Initially established in 1995 at Warwick University to
support philosopher and cyberfeminist Sadie Plant’s work before being banished
from academia and falling under Nick Land’s tutelage in 1997, the Cybernetic
Culture Research Unit (CCRU) has become the subject of much myth and legend for
its rather unorthodox compositions, reading groups, conferences and art shows, all
of which sought to theorize and produce immanently with rather than about and from
on high the cybercultures they studied. It was particularly in their later years outside
the university that the CCRU took an ever more literary and even occult turn. Free
from the confines of academic acceptability, no subject was considered too
outrageous to seriously devote themselves, be it Aleister Crowley’s numerology,
H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos, or conspiracy theories about secret societies and
alien abductions. Many of the group’s writings not only drew upon fictions, but sought
to merge with them, becoming what they termed (following Baudrillard)
“theory-fictions” or “hyperstitions”: imaginary worlds that are not yet real, but will
become so in the future. Through this unholy, alchemic cocktail of fiction, science
and the occult, the CCRU sought to strip language of anthropocentric meanings and
dogmas in such a way as to stage an encounter with the inhuman “Outside” beyond
the finite bounds of our reason.

The demands of their often narcotic-fueled collective thinking on minimal sleep would
ultimately lead to the CCRU’s virtual disbandment in 2003, with only sporadic
communication on their ​Hyperstition ​blog before going radio silent in 2007.
Nonetheless, their influence continues to live on today like a spectre haunting the
academy as many former members and associates have gone on to achieve
prominence in their own right, including philosophers Anna Greenspan, Luciana
Parisi, Reza Negarestani, Kodwo Eshun, Iain Hamilton Grant, Robin Mackay and
Mark Fisher, as well as artists Jake and Dinos Chapman, Ranu Mukherjee, Maggie
Roberts and Steve Goodman (better known under his pseudonym Kode9). To cover
both the CCRU’s collective writings and some of the key members’ subsequent
trajectories, this course will be structured into three modules: the first module looks
at the CCRU’s collective theory-fictions and occult rituals; the second covers Land’s
post-CCRU writings as the group’s key intellectual guru; and the third explores how
other former CCRU members went on to pioneer three cultural movements of our
time: speculative realism; accelerationism (including xenofeminism); and the
antihumanist aesthetic.

Course Schedule

Lecture 1. Fictions of the Future, Numerologies of the Past: The CCRU’s

Theory-Fictions and Occult Practices

The CCRU’s efforts to critique the limits of our thought through biotechnology,
advanced AI and other modern and near-future technologies’ capacities to modify
and even surpass humanity initially incited them to model their writings on science
fiction stories about the end of the world. If their writings became extremely literary, it
was not because they were no longer interested in serious philosophy, but because
they held it is only through fictions that we can truly think about what reality is like
without us. This first lecture will be broken into two parts. The first part will focus on
the CCRU’s early theory-fictions in which they time-travel to a future where
advanced biotechnology and strong AI are already a reality. We will also look at the
work of the fictitious Professor D.C. Barker through whom the CCRU develop a
theory of the emergence of life and thought as “geotraumatic” repressions and
stratifications of the earth’s chaotic molten core. The second part will then examine
how the CCRU’s writings became increasingly abstract and occult as they turned to
qabbalistic and mathematical numbering practices like Crowley’s numerology and
Cantor’s set theory in an effort to open up our language systems to modernity’s
increasingly confounding technological entanglement.

Key readings:

● Nick Land, “Meltdown,” in ​Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings

1987-2007​, eds. Robin Mackay and Ray Brassier (Falmouth: Urbanomic,
2012), 441-460.
● CCRU, “Barker Speaks: The CCRU Interview with Professor D.C. Barker,”
in ​CCRU: Writings 1997-2003​, ed. Robin Mackay (Falmouth: Urbanomic,
2017), 155-162.
● Nick Land, “Qabbalah 101,” in ​Fanged Noumena​, 591-606.

Recommended readings:

● Andy Beckett, “Accelerationism: How a Fringe Philosophy Predicted the

Future We Live In,” in ​The Guardian, ​11 May, 2017,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/11/accelerationism-how-a-fri
nge-philosophy-predicted-the-future-we-live-in​.
● Nick Land, “Cyberrevolution,” in ​Fanged Noumena​, 375-382.
● Nick Land, “Mechanomics,” in ​Fanged Noumena​, 507-526.
● Nick Land, “Tic Talk,” in ​Fanged Noumena​, 607-622.

Lecture 2. Malfunctioning Academia: Hyperstition and The Urban Sublime

The key overarching concept that cohered the CCRU’s diverse and peculiar output is
what they called hyperstition, “fictions that make themselves real.” The first half of
this session will work through the different aspects and significations of hyperstition
to show how it essentially designates the idea that fictions like qabbalistic
numerologies, religious doomsday myths, and science fiction stories should be seen
as realisms insofar as they teleologically herald the future reality of humankind’s
annihilation at the hands of an AI-God. The session’s second half will then consider
how Land and Anna Greenspan’s initial post-CCRU writings envision modern
megacities and particularly Shanghai as centres of an ever-accelerating intelligence
explosion in a way which directly materializes the future singularity’s dissolution of
dogmatic metaphysics’ last anthropomorphic vestiges.

Key readings:

● CCRU, “Communiqué One: Message to Simon Reynolds,” in ​CCRU:

Writings​, 7.
● CCRU, “Communiqué Two: Message to Maxence Grunier,” in ​CCRU:
Writings​, 9-12.
● CCRU, “Lemurian Time War,” in ​CCRU: Writings​, 33-52.
● CCRU, “Axsys-Crash,” in ​CCRU: Writings​, 121-122.
● Anna Greenspan and Nick Land, “Neo-Modern Shanghai and the Art of
Abstraction,” in ​Flash Art,​ 206, 37-46.

Recommended readings:

● Nick Land, “Implosion,” ​Urban Future 1.0,​ 29 April, 2011,

https://oldnicksite.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/implosion/​.
● Excerpts from Anna Greenspan and Nick Land, ​Urbanatomy Shanghai
2009​ (Shanghai: Urbanatomy, 2009).
● Nick Land, “Re-Animator” Parts 1-5, ​Urban Future 1.0​, 2011,
https://oldnicksite.wordpress.com/?s=re-animator​.

Lecture 3. Philosophy’s Dark Heirs: Abstract Horror and Patchwork Theory

This session’s first half explores Land’s political philosophy of a “patchwork” of

privately-owned states, which purportedly set capitalism free to pursue technological
advancement without needing to cater to humanity’s needs. This will put us in a good
position to consider later critiques of Land by left-wing thinkers like Ray Brassier,
Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams.

While Land’s compositional prose style has always bordered on the literary and
experimental particularly during the CCRU years, it is only more recently that he has
written two novellas of what he terms “abstract horror fiction.” This lecture’s second
half will examine how Land turns to writing horror fiction because he sees the genre
as a better compositional form than traditional philosophy to continue the CCRU’s
critique of dogmatic metaphysics insofar as it is able to stage a confrontation with
that which lies beyond our parochial comprehension.

Key readings:

● Nick Land, “The Dark Enlightenment” Parts 1-4f, ​Urban Futures 1.0​, 2012,
https://oldnicksite.wordpress.com/?s=dark+enlightenment​.
● Nick Land, “Manifesto for an Abstract Literature,” in ​Chasm (​ Shanghai:
Time Spiral Press, 2015, eBook).
● Nick Land, “Appendix 2: On the Exterminator,” in ​Phyl-Undhu​ (Shanghai:
Time Spiral Press, 2014, eBook).

Recommended readings:

● Nick Land, “Suspended Animation” Parts 1-5, ​Urban Future 1.0​, 2011,
https://oldnicksite.wordpress.com/?s=suspended+animation​.
● Nick Land, ​Chasm.​
● Nick Land, “Calendric Dominion” Parts 1-6, ​Urban Future 1.0,​ 2011,
https://oldnicksite.wordpress.com/?s=calendric+dominion​.

Lecture 4. Time Travel to Judgment Day: Bitcoin, The Chapman Twins, Orphan
Drift, Negarestani, Kode9
Land’s most recent theoretical writings focus on developing a theory of time as a
positive feedback loop of explosive change accelerating towards a future singularity,
which is paradoxically determining the present in advance of its own becoming. In
particular, he has looked to bitcoin as a way to incarnate time itself as the blockchain
technology successively locks in proofs as to what is real which cannot be reversed,
thereby separating the transcendental from the empirical, truth from its false
appearances. This lecture’s first half concludes our analysis of Land’s oeuvre by
considering his theory of bitcoin’s absolute succession towards an AI-God to come
as the culmination of his entire philosophical trajectory.

Having worked through Land’s post-CCRU philosophy, we shall then consider the
work of some of the CCRU’s key members and associates, beginning with those
artists who have elaborated on the group’s ideas through their respective art forms:
Jake and Dinos Chapman’s controversial exhibition ​Chapmanworld;​ Orphan Drift’s
cyberpunk novel ​Becoming Cyberpositive​; Reza Negarestani’s theory-fiction
Cyclonopedia​; and Kode9’s dubstep album ​Nothing.​

Key readings:

● Nick Land, “Teleoplexy: Notes on Acceleration,” in ​#Accelerate#: The

Accelerationist Reader,​ eds. Robin Mackay and Armen Avanessian
(Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2014), 509-520.
● Excerpts from Nick Land, ​Crypto-Current: Bitcoin and Philosophy​, 2019,
Urban Future 2.1​,​ http://www.ufblog.net/​.
● Orphan Drift, “Vampiric Machines,” in ​Becoming Cyberpositive​ (London:
Cabinet Editions, 2012), 73-100.
● Reza Negarestani, “Paleopetrology: From Gog-Magog Axis to
Petropunkism,” in ​Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials
(Melbourne: Re.press, 2008), 9-37.
● CCRU, “From Subversion to Submersion: Galactic Bureau of Investigations
Report to the Galactic Federation on New Sonic Insurgencies,” in ​CCRU:
Writings​ (Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2017), 131-134.

Recommended readings:

● Nick Land, ​Templexity: Disordered Loops through Shanghai Time

(Shanghai: Time Spiral Press, 2014, eBook).
● Kode9 and Tom Watson, “Kode9: Nothing is Empty,” in ​Crack Magazine​,
2015,​ http://crackmagazine.net/article/music/kode9-nothing-is-empty/​.
● Kode9 and Sukhdev Sandhu, “How Dub Master Kode9 Became the Hero
of Zero,” in ​The Guardian​, 2015,
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/nov/16/kode9-nothing-album-ste
ve-goodman-hyperdub-interview​.

Lecture 5. Accelerating Speculations: Brassier and Grant, Plant and Parisi,

Srnicek and Williams

The final session will begin by tracing the CCRU’s influence on the work of Ray
Brassier and Iain Hamilton Grant, two former associates who would go on to found
the speculative realism “movement” along with Quentin Meillassoux and Graham
Harman. On the one hand, while Grant initially adheres to the CCRU’s antihumanist
thought almost entirely, he later follows Schelling’s absolute idealism by coming to
model substance on subject, nature on reason. On the other hand, while Brassier
adopts the CCRU’s notion of human extinction as the organon for the critique of
anthropocentric philosophies, he repudiates their tendency to identify the subject of
this critique with technocapitalism in favour of looking to science as better able to
index the gap between the anthropic and nihilistic images of reality.

Given that the CCRU and particularly Land’s writings are largely pro-capitalist, it is
perhaps surprising that they helped inspire a recent left-wing groupuscule of thinkers
calling themselves “accelerationists” and “xenofeminists.” The course will conclude
by looking at how both left accelerationists like Mark Fisher, Nick Srnicek and Alex
Williams and cyberfeminists like Sadie Plant, Luciana Parisi and Laboria Cuboniks
co-opt the CCRU’s theory of cybernetics as a revolutionary weapon to be wielded
against both capitalism and patriarchy.

Key readings:

● Iain Hamilton Grant, “At the Mountains of Madness: The Demonology of

the New Earth and the Politics of Becoming,” in ​Deleuze and Philosophy:
The Difference Engineer,​ ed. Keith Ansell Pearson (London: Routledge,
2002), 93-111.
● Ray Brassier, Preface and “Binding Extinction,” in​ Nihil Unbound:
Enlightenment and Extinction (​ New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), x-xii,
238-9.
● Ray Brassier, “Session 1,” ​Accelerationism​, conference, Goldsmiths,
University of London, 13 September, 2010,
https://moskvax.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/accelerationism-ray-brassier/​.
● Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, “#Accelerate: Manifesto for an
Accelerationist Politics,” in ​#Accelerate#: The Accelerationist Reader,​ eds.
Robin Mackay and Armen Avanessian (Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2014),
347-362.
● Excerpts from Sadie Plant, ​Zeros + Ones: Digital Women + The New
Technoculture​. London: Doubleday, 1997.
● Luciana Parisi and Stanimir Panayotov, “To Engineer the Time by Other
Means: Interview with Luciana Parisi,” in ​Figure/Ground,​ 2016,
http://figureground.org/interview-with-luciana-parisi/​.

Recommended readings:

● Iain Hamilton Grant, “Why Schelling? Why Naturephilosophie?,” in

Philosophies of Nature After Schelling​ (London: Continuum, 2006), 1-25.
● Alex Williams, “Escape Velocities,” in ​E-Flux,​ 2013,
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/46/60063/escape-velocities​.
● Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, “On Cunning Automata,” in ​Collapse:
Philosophical Research and Development Volume 8,​ ed. Robin Mackay
(Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2014), 463-505.
● Luciana Parisi, “Introduction: Abstract Sex” and “Virtual Sex,” in ​Abstract
Sex: Philosophy, Bio-Technology and the Mutations of Desire (​ New York:
Continuum, 2004), 1-44.
● Laboria Cuboniks, “The Xenofeminist Manifesto,” in ​Futures and Fictions​,
eds. by Henriette Gunkel, Ayesha Hameed and Simon O’Sullivan (London:
Repeater Books, 2017), 232-248.