Chronosis

by Reza Negarestani, Keith Tilford, Robin Mackay

A unique fusion of comics culture and philosophical cogitation takes readers on a ride through time, space, and thought.

Approaching the comic medium as a supercollider for achieving maximum abstraction, in Chronosis artist Keith Tilford and philosopher Reza Negarestani (author of Cyclonopedia and Intelligence and Spirit) create a graphically stunning and conceptually explosive universe in which the worlds of pop culture, modern art, philosophy, science fiction, and theoretical physics crash into one another.

Stalking the multiverse, a strange entity manifests itself in different guises, visiting trauma upon whoever it manifests to—whether Jeremy Charles, earthbound hawker of paranoid cosmic visions, or the interplanetary order of the Lazars, intent on extending their galactic empire to planet Earth. This is the figure of Time itself, with whose birth the story of Chronosis begins.

Dwelling nowhere and nowhen, the monk-like order of the Monazzeins are the only ones in the multiverse to have mastered Time. Chronosis narrates the story of a sprawling multiverse at the center of which their esoteric time-cult attempts to build bridges between the many fragmented tribes and histories of multiple possible worlds.

A unique fusion of comics culture and philosophical cogitation, this conceptually and visually mind-expanding tale takes the reader on a dizzying rollercoaster ride through time, space, and thought.

This volume contains the entire Chronosis story in full color, along with additional background materials including early sketches, script notes, and alternative covers.

Genres: Philosophy, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Comics, Science Fiction, Iran, Theory

136 pages, Paperback

First published November 12, 2019

About the author

Reza Negarestani is an Iranian philosopher and writer, known for "pioneering the genre of 'theory-fiction' with his book" Cyclonopedia which was published in 2008. it was listed in Artforum as one of the best books of 2009. Negarestani has been a regular contributor to Collapse (journal), as well as other print and web publications such as Ctheory. On March 11, 2011, faculty from Brooklyn College and The New School organized a symposium to discuss Cyclonopedia titled Leper Creativity. Later on in the year, Punctum books published a book with the same title that included essays, articles, artworks, and documents from or related to the symposium. In 2011, he co-edited Collapse's issue VII with Robin Mackay titled Culinary Materialism. In 2012, Negarestani collaborated with Florian Hecker on an artwork titled "Chimerization" that was included in the dOCUMENTA (13) exhibition.

After being associated with the philosophical movement of Speculative Realism for several years, Negarestani is currently lecturing and writing about rationalist universalism beginning with the evolution of the modern system of knowledge and advancing toward contemporary philosophies of rationalism, their procedures as well as their demands for special forms of human conduct.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[No · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compact and conceptually abstract tale with a strange, nested structure. First, there is the story or rather a monologue in which time in its Parmenidean form recounts its birth, then in this broad narrative, there is the story of a mysterious cult of time named Monazzeins who have previously been incapable of seeing the true nature of time. Now they are the enforcers of a Block time worldview where the flow of time is illusory. They don’t think inside time, they think as time. Next, inside the story of the Monazzeins, we have the story of the Lacars, an advanced civilization going through an extinction event. Finally, in the last nested narrative, we have the story of humans struggling to make sense of the Darwinian humiliation and its consequences which are perfectly captured by the glossary at the end particularly Stephen Jay Gould's Rewinding the Tape thought experiment. In my opinion, Chronosis is better than Cyclonopedia. In spite of its labyrinthine structure, it's a very reserved and thoughtful story while still delivering a lot of conceptual richness thanks to how the text and Tilford's work come together.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just wanted more, perhaps 400 pages of endnotes regarding the influence of geotrauma upon the concept of the Chameleon Shadow.

Mr Negarestani has led us to certain excessive expectations. This was a twisting story of pan-dimensional wisdom and the projection of time across such deterritorialized space.

I was still hoping in the epilogue for a Kantian reading of Trackl amidst the husk and debris of post-existence.

[Ronald Morton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely worth snagging a copy after you’ve worn out your copy of Cyclonopedia; it’s not as good as that by a long shot, but few books are. The art is mesmerizing for long stretches, and the the brief story is rich for exploration and re-reads. Glad this finally exists, it’s been a long ass wait.

[SARDON · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though 'Chronosis' is not a simple mirror of Negarestani's current philosophical perspective--transcendental computationalism--even his casual readers should be able to notice some of his fundamental themes mutated as more dramatically and vividly expressed forms, with the atemporality of thought being the one most centrally important to this book. Instead of projections of AGI as the potential paladin of continued cognitive evolution on Earth, this intensely illustrated and reasonably comprehensible nonlinear narrative offers critical glimpses into the complex and strange relations of an imperialistic colony of reptilians, a secret society of monastic time-travelers, a human grown disillusioned of his search for truth, and the entity of Time itself. In reference to style and theme, David Conway's 'Metal Sushi,' the conspiracy theory-inspired works of Jordan Krall, and the posthumanist antipoetry of Lee Kwo seem to come the closest to the overall aesthetic. Closing the book, passages from various philosophers and scientists reveal key concepts of genetics, memory and physics which, to varying degrees, have served as the intellectual framework of this project; the most notable of these probably is Bertrand Russell's "Five Minutes Ago" hypothesis which seems to have inspired the Monazzein's "Ultimate Machine" (these esoteric temponauts are also sometimes referred to as "Monnazeins"; considering how relatively scant the text is, the editing easily could have been more precise). Nevertheless, this daringly styled and provocatively thoughtful example of the philosophical comic book, as its own proper genre, will hopefully inspire the minds of those willing and able to further explore how well this medium evocatively expresses the most rarefied regions of experience and thought.

[melancholinary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolute beautiful abstraction - makes me think that comic as a medium is an apt representation of the 'narrative' of eternalism (see Tristan Garcia's essay on Steve Ditko and Dr. Strange). Love the reference to David Icke. Will revisit this often to understand more the leitmotif of the Monazzeins.

[Eutocius · Rating 5 out of 5]

This could be Christopher Nolan's source of inspiration for Tenet but alas or thankfully it's not. Visually it's far more gorgeous. Storywise, it's a mindscrew beyond any time-traveling story I recall, maybe because it doesn't treat time as a flow. The ode to Parmenides's account of time is notable. My favorite parts are the first pages and the ending sequence with the aging monk resetting his memories of the world and himself. Brain-scratching stuff to say the least.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have never read a comic book before, so this is the first! Astute observers of Mike’s GoodReads have seen him derailed by the book Cyclonopedia, a philosofictional tale of big words and oil as Cthulhian elder gods that has entire chapters that he can’t make any sense of. This was an attempt to take another stab at Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani in a medium that might make his insights more friendly to Mike’s small brain. Sadly, this one, centered on time, also proved confusing, but the art here is sick and mind bending and reading through philosophical madness about time while looking at cool pictures of lizard people, space travel, conspiracy wackjobs, and a world-consuming manifestation of time is about as cool of an experience as you can have with a book in your hands.

[birdbassador · Rating 3 out of 5]

the jack kirby style spacescapes are nice to look at and of course it's correct that time is illusory and that our temporal and epistemological shackles will doom us from encountering (let alone ever really knowing) the Other, but otherwise the book didn't move me. sorry, reza!

[brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

my 3 year old daughter loves the drawings!

[Pieter-Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surprising that the simularities between Chronosis and Grant Morrison's Nameless haven't been addressed anywhere, but it's quite clear we get two stories dealing with the same material: the nature of time and the entryism of the Outside.
What's peculiar about Morrison's story is that it's a 2016 comic dealing with the entry of a strange asteroid that passes through our solar system and causes a shift in consciousness... In our world, one year later, we do get this manifested in the form Oumuamua. That object sort of did cause a massive shift in our understanding of what could be there Outside.
With Chronosis, we see the object again, but it's written about after the fact. It's more a pondering about the metaphysics concerning this event and dealing with the nature of those facts that lead straight back to 2016 story that is Nameless . We come full circle with fiction making claims about factual reality that fiction had assessed before it happened.
If anything is an example of hyperstition, it's Morrison's work. As is the work of another occultist, Kenneth Grant, who was the first to suggest this principle at work in the universe, decades before Negarestani or Land even started to conceptualize this.
So this is not a review, but more a personal observation on the reality of hyperstition, which is sort of what this comic is hinting at: a new form of developing knowledge.

[José · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of an insane book. The illustrations are beautiful and striking, you can look at them for ages without ever getting tired. The Monazzeins, a tribe which has mastered time, is on a path to somehow link different multiverses; for them, time is but another traversable dimension: typical relations of continuity and causality are suddenly meaningless in such a simple stroke of the pen. From what I understood, the Monazzeins seek to make life uninhabitable for every other "tribe". At the same time, other tribes are seen as facing mysterious materialisations of adversity, presumably invoked by the Monazzeins as some sort of actualisation of time. But these are still some ongoing thoughts, it is hard to decode this work. Negarestani compiles some texts at the end that perhaps contextualise this, but I will have to re-read the book to consider it in light of this new information.

[Zac · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t understand what was going on at least 70% of the time, even after reading further about some of the philosophical concepts at the back of the book, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. I loved some of the wordless pages of abstract art, and the colouring. There were a lot of strange shapes and textures mixed together and it sometimes reminded of graffiti art, where you are forced to search for some meaning (e.g. text) buried somewhere within the elaborate image. The story perhaps could have been dumbed down a little if Reza really wanted to get his ideas across, but I think I would pick up more of what is going on if I immediately re-read this. 3 stars, but may have been 4 if the concepts ‘clicked’ a little more.

[Thomas Hale · Rating 3 out of 5]

A graphic novel written by a philosopher? Exploring ideas of time, subjectivity, panspermia and the unknowable otherness of deep time? I was so excited to read this! And pretty disappointed with it, unfortunately. There are neat snippets of human and alien lives, and there is a throughline of influence and consequence. But it doesn't really go anywhere? There are also a lot of abstract illustrations and sequences that dragged on past the point of interest for me. The back matter includes a number of paragraphs quoted from philosophers and physicists that I wish had been presented at the start so that I would have been primed for the otherwise underwhelming experience. I hear Negarestani's other writing is much more engrossing, so I'll explore that next.

[Steven]

I am a considerable fan of graphic novels and what they can accomplish, and Reza Negarestani is an author who pushes interesting ideas. So indeed this book has all kinds of fertile ground in it. On the other hand, I didn't discover it to be a life-changing piece, or something that radically altered my understanding of what a graphic novel can do, or my understanding of, say, time, space, and meaning, which are some of the ostensible topics here. Maybe that's too high a standard to be holding for a book, I suppose. But in any event I think I'd only recommend this to the exact people whom I know who are fixated exactly on these issues...

[Zoe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fascinating exploration of time from three different perspectives, each tied to a character striving for some semblance of immortality and understanding of his place in the universe. I can't come close to understanding Negarestani on a line-by-line basis; visually, this was not for me either. Yet the core idea here is easy to latch onto: the past, present, and future coexist in synchronicity. Something deeply horrifying, too, when considering the shared element of trauma found in this and CYCLONOPEDIA: your life, your experience, your memory, and your pain is not yours at all but, rather, "an instance of unconscious automatism".

[Sebastian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick, fun little read full of some absolutely beautiful art. Can be read both as an entertaining "attempt" (insofar as an experiment destined for [admirable] failure represents an "attempt") at visually and narratively representing the necessarily unrepresentable eternalist vision of the universe, or, alternatively, as a baffling introduction to the complexities and contradictions inherent in theorizing/thinking the present in any "absolute" sense.

Regardless, well worth the quick read—and, I should restate, the art really is wonderful.

[Massimo · Rating 5 out of 5]

It isn't exactly a comic in the traditional sense. It's more like a compression of the comic medium textually and visually. Judging by the backmatter, I think Tilford and Negarestani knew what they wanted, a well-crafted package of sophisticated abstraction. I'm not sure if the earth chapter works in this configuration, it's a bit corny in comparison to the rest. It looks more like an afterthought to make standard comic readers happy. Otherwise, a true achievement if you are willing to not approach it as a regular comic.

[Rick Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conceptually abstract with tons of mind-bending artwork that really does impress. I found the opening and ending pages to be quite breathtaking, but the overall story did lose me in the middle. I don't think it's because the story is meant to be complicated, but it ends up reading a bit dull which is a shame due to the Kirby-esque artwork that screams excitement. I liked it enough, but I was definitely hoping for more when I saw the interiors.

[Altay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind boggling but really good! Combination of theory and popular(? digestible? not completely abstracted) art is really great. Definitely a lot more decipherable than Reza's other works which I don't think I'll be able to attempt for a long while. Keith Tilford's art is absolutely gorgeous and he does an amazing job with the comic medium.

[Hakim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short and sweet yet complex and abstract. The artwork is trippy as hell, and the themes are timeless (pun very well intended). While they manage to get their points across, the writers should have made an effort to develop this world a little more, to give the story more depth, and breathe more life into the characters. What a missed opportunity.

[Maddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting way of showing otherwise very dry writings about the concept of time, that are in reality extremely mindbending if you think about them hard enough.
Also some of the best art ive seen in a long while, almost all of the full page and double pages were breathtaking

[Carson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing art and fascinating concepts. It is set up like a fable rather than a full "modern" narrative. Only a few characters who are symbolic rather than individual. It reads like a koan of some kind, meant to shake us loose from rigid thought patterns.

[Matthew WK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Confusing in a good way - the way where there is enough of a plot thread to keep you involved in the story and gnaws on you afterward to re-read! And re-read it I will definitely be doing. And the art is top notch!

[Justin Kern · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it in 20 minutes. It was kind of cool, had the faint potential to be interesting, but it's really just not enough. A bit superficial and empty. Pretty, interesting comic art, but the story isn't memorable.

I'll forget about this soon.

[Raino Isto · Rating 4 out of 5]

The art is really incredible; the story is kinda meh, especially in comparison to what I remember of Cyclonopedia. But the overall vibes are excellent, and you can spend hours gazing at some of these pages.

[Café · Rating 1 out of 5]

male-centered, high school level "philosophy".

[Ondřej Trhoň · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tvl to je velkohubý a coloring teda fakt nic extra, spíš než fůze je to felení teorie a komiksu vedle sebe, zklamání.

[Dominic Trinajstic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great art and a surprisingly accessible & fun exploration of Negarestani's philosophy

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally got a copy of this and read it in one short sitting. Not sure what to say other than that it's exquisitely illustrated and the story is both abstract and compelling.

[Barry Shitpeas · Rating 4 out of 5]

schizo