Nick Land (born 17 January 1962) is an English philosopher, theorist, short story writer and blogger. He has been described as "the father of

accelerationism Accelerationism is a range of Marxist and reactionary ideas in critical and social theory that call for the drastic intensification of capitalist growth, technological change and other social processes in order to destabilize existing systems ...

", and his work has been tied to the development of

speculative realism Speculative realism is a movement in contemporary Continental-inspired philosophy (also known as post-Continental philosophy) that defines itself loosely in its stance of metaphysical realism against its interpretation of the dominant forms of p ...

. He was a leader of the 1990s "theory-fiction" collective

Cybernetic Culture Research Unit The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) was an experimental cultural theorist collective formed in late 1995 at Warwick University, England and gradually separated from academia until it dissolved in 2003. It garnered reputation for its idiosyn ...

after its original founder

cyberfeminist Cyberfeminism is a feminist approach which foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. It can be used to refer to a philosophy, methodology or community. The term was coined in the early 1990s to describe the wor ...

theorist

Sadie Plant Sadie Plant (born Sarah Jane Plant; 16 March 1964 in Birmingham, England) is a British philosopher, cultural theorist, and author. Education She earned her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Manchester in 1989 and subsequently taught at ...

departed from it. His work departs from the formal conventions of academic writing and embraces a wide range of influences, as well as exploring unorthodox and "dark" philosophical interests. Land is also known for later developing the anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic ideas behind neo-reaction and the

Dark Enlightenment The Dark Enlightenment, also called the neo-reactionary movement (sometimes abbreviated to NRx), is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, reactionary philosophical and political movement. In 2007 and 2008, software engineer Curtis Yarvin, writin ...

Biography

Land began as a lecturer in

Continental Philosophy Continental philosophy is a term used to describe some philosophers and philosophical traditions that do not fall under the umbrella of analytic philosophy. However, there is no academic consensus on the definition of continental philosophy. Pri ...

at the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands (county), West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded i ...

from 1987 until his resignation in 1998. At Warwick, he and

co-founded the

(CCRU), an interdisciplinary research group described by philosopher

Graham Harman Graham Harman (born May 9, 1968) is an American philosopher and academic. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. His work on the metaphysics of objects led to the developm ...

as "a diverse group of thinkers who experimented in conceptual production by welding together a wide variety of sources: futurism, technoscience, philosophy, mysticism, numerology, complexity theory, and science fiction, among others". During his time at Warwick, Land participated in Virtual Futures, a series of cyber-culture conferences. Virtual Futures 96 was advertised as “an anti-disciplinary event” and “a conference in the post-humanities”. One session involved Nick Land “lying on the ground, croaking into a mic”, recalls Robin Mackay, while Mackay played

jungle A jungle is land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past recent century. Etymology The word ''jungle'' originates from the Sanskrit word ''jaṅ ...

records in the background." In 1992, he published ''The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism''. Land published an abundance of shorter texts, many in the 1990s during his time with the CCRU. The majority of these articles were compiled in the retrospective collection ''Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007'', published in 2011. Land taught at the New Centre for Research & Practice until March 2017, when the Centre ended its relationship with him "following several tweets by Land this year in which he espoused intolerant opinions about Muslims and immigrants". By 2017, Land resided in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

Concepts and influence

Early work

Land's work with CCRU, as well as his pre-Dark Enlightenment writings, have all been influential to the political philosophy of

, an idea resembling that of the "fatal strategy" of "ecstasy" in the earlier work of

Jean Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard ( , , ; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as w ...

, where "a system is abolished only by pushing it into hyperlogic, by forcing it into an excessive practice which is equivalent to a brutal amortization". Along with the other members of CCRU, Land wove together ideas from the

occult The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism a ...

cybernetics Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson m ...

, science fiction, and

poststructuralist Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critique ...

philosophy to try to describe the phenomena of techno-capitalist acceleration. One of Land's celebrated concepts is "hyperstition," a portmanteau of "superstition" and "hyper" that describes the action of successful ideas in the arena of culture. Hyperstitions are ideas that, once "downloaded" into the cultural mainframe, engender apocalyptic positive feedback cycles. Hyperstitions – by their very existence as ideas – function causally to bring about their own reality. Nick Land describes hyperstition as "the experimental (techno-)science of self-fulfilling prophecies".

Mark Fisher Mark Fisher (11 July 1968 – 13 January 2017), also known under his blogging alias k-punk, was an English writer, music critic, political and cultural theorist, philosopher, and teacher based in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsm ...

, a British cultural theorist and student of Land's, argued in 2011 that Land's greatest impact so far had been on music and art, rather than on philosophy. The musician

Kode9 Steve Goodman, known as Kode9 (born 1973) is a Scottish electronic music artist, DJ, and founder of the Hyperdub record label. He was one of the founding members of the early dubstep scene with his late collaborator The Spaceape. He has releas ...

, the artist Jake Chapman, and others studied with or describe their influence by Land, often highlighting Land's inhuman, "technilist," or "delirious" qualities. Fisher underscores in particular how Land's personality during the 1990s could catalyze changes in those engaging with his work through what

Kodwo Eshun Kodwo Eshun (born 1967) is a British -Ghanaian writer, theorist and filmmaker. He is perhaps best known for his 1998 book ''More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction'' and his association with the art collective The Otolith Grou ...

describes as a manner "immediately open, egalitarian, and absolutely unaffected by academic protocol" which could dramatise "theory as a geopolitico-historical epic."

Later work

Land's

philosophy (also known as neo-reactionary movement and abbreviated NRx) opposes

egalitarianism Egalitarianism (), or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds from the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all hu ...

, and is sometimes associated with the

alt-right The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a far-right, white nationalist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late 2000s before increasing in popularity during the mid-2 ...

or other far-right movements. Land believes democracy restricts accountability and freedom. Shuja Haider notes, "His sequence of essays setting out its principles have become the foundation of the NRx canon." Land insists, however, that “as a populist, and in significant ways anti-capitalist movement, the Alt-Right is a very different beast to NRx.” His writing has variously explored themes of

scientific racism Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...

and

eugenics Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...

, or what he briefly called "hyper-racism". Land's current version of

incorporates explicitly racist views and since late 2016 has been increasingly recognised as an inspiration for the alt-right and, according to ''Vox'' writer

Dylan Matthews Dylan Matthews is an American journalist. He is currently a correspondent for ''Vox (website), Vox'', an online media venture. Professional life Early writing In 2004, at the age of 14, Matthews launched a personal blog on politics and other is ...

, for white supremacist mass murderers. Additionally, Land has promoted the

Atomwaffen The Atomwaffen Division (''Atomwaffen'' meaning "nuclear weapons" in German), also known as the National Socialist Resistance Front, is an international far right-wing extremist and neo-Nazi terrorist network. Formed in 2013 and based in the ...

-affiliated

Order of Nine Angles The Order of Nine Angles (ONA or O9A) is a Satanic and left-hand path occultist group which is based in the United Kingdom, and associated groups are based in other parts of the world. Claiming to have been established in the 1960s, it rose to ...

that adheres to the ideology of neo-Nazi terrorist accelerationism, describing O9A's works as "highly-recommended" but is also "uncomfortable with soliciting belief" in said material. Land has also written on the implications for philosophy and politics of cryptocurrency, specifically

Bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...

. Drawing from Kantian epistemology, Land has described Bitcoin as "an operational truth procedure". As of August 2019, Land is still working on a book about Bitcoin.

Ray Brassier Raymond Brassier (born 1965) is a British philosopher. He is member of the philosophy faculty at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, known for his work in philosophical realism. He was formerly Research Fellow at the Centre for Research ...

, also formerly from the

, stated "Nick Land has gone from arguing ‘Politics is dead’, 20 years ago, to this completely old-fashioned, standard reactionary stuff."

Bibliography

Books

*
Heidegger's 'Die Sprache im Gedicht' and the Cultivation of the Grapheme
' (PhD Thesis, University of Essex, 1987) *
The Thirst For Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (An Essay in Atheistic Religion)
' (London and New York: Routledge, 1992) *

' (with

Keith Ansell-Pearson Keith Ansell-Pearson is a British philosopher specialising in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. He is currently Professor of Philosophy at Warwick University. Ansell-Pearson is the author of numerous books incl ...

& Joseph A. McCahery) (SAGE Publications, 1996) * ''The Shanghai World Expo Guide 2010'' (China Intercontinental Press, 2010) * ''Shanghai Basics'' (China Intercontinental Press, 2010) * ''Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007,'' ed. Robin Mackay and Ray Brassier ( Urbanomic, 2011). * ''Calendric Dominion'' (Urbanatomy Electronic, 2013) * ''Suspended Animation'' (Urbanatomy Electronic, 2013) *
Fission
' (Urbanomic, 2014) * ''Templexity: Disordered Loops through Shanghai Time'' (Urbanatomy Electronic, 2014) * ''Phyl-Undhu: Abstract Horror, Exterminator'' (Time Spiral Press, 2014) * ''Shanghai Times'' (Urbanatomy Electronic, 2014) . * ''Dragon Tales: Glimpses of Chinese Culture'' (Urbanatomy Electronic, 2014) . * ''Xinjiang Horizons'' (Urbanatomy Electronic, 2014) . * ''Chasm'' (Time Spiral Press, 2015) .

Articles

* *
Crypto-Current: An Introduction to Bitcoin and Philosophy
' (''Šum'' 10, 2018)

References

External links

Outsideness Newsletter
(Land's Substack newsletter)
Outside In
(Land's Dark Enlightenment blog, archived fro
the original
on 2020-08-10)
Urban Future (2.1)
(Land's accelerationism blog, archived fro
the original
on 2020-08-10) {{DEFAULTSORT:Land, Nick 1962 births Living people Academics of the University of Warwick Alt-right writers British bloggers British conspiracy theorists 20th-century British philosophers 21st-century British philosophers British expatriates in China Continental philosophers Dark Enlightenment Accelerationism