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Cold World: The Aesthetics of Dejection and the Politics of Militant Dysphoria
To live well in the world one must be able to enjoy to love, Freud says, and work. Dejection is the state of being in which such enjoyment is no longer possible. There is an aesthetic dimension to dejection, in which the world appears in a new light. In this book, the dark serenity of dejection is examined through a study of the poetry of Hopkins and Coleridge, and the music of depressive black metal artists such as Burzum and Xasthur. The author then develops a theory of militant dysphoria via an analysis of the writings of the Red Army Fraction's activist-theoretician, Ulrike Meinhof. The book argues that the cold world of dejection is one in which new creative and political possibilities, as well as dangers, can arise. It is not enough to live well in the one must also be able to affirm that another world is possible.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
96 pages, Paperback
First published October 25, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 15, 2014
"Not only is another world possible, but the present world is impossible: its very appearance is a kind of ontological mishap, a disorder of the real."
"Depressive thinking is simultaneously intensely lucid and intensely blinkered: ruthlessly and brilliantly reductive, it is able to demolish any consoling counter-argument by referring it immediately to the ground zero of its own originary devastation."
"The cold world of black metal is a deliberate freezing of the world, fixing it withing a terminal image, in order that its frost-bitten surface may be shattered by anonymous, inhuman forces rising from the depths of the self. It is a withdrawal of affect from the world, in order to experience 'the eerie bliss and torture of solitude' and so discover the forces at war withing oneself. These operations must be understood as spiritual exercises, as forms of emotional fasting intended to release the soul from its world attachments. Such exercises are purely narcissistic and self-salving if they do not also release the soul for new worldly commitments. The vertiginous dysphoria of Xasthur's sound-world is not yet the focused displeasure of the militant, but a simulacrum - a spiritualisation - of malcontent. It embodies a will that that which is should not be, but not a will that that which is should be otherwise."
A refreshing dip into the ice pools of black sorrow. The book is cooly lyrical in an affectively British way, similar in overall concept to Thacker's Horror of Philosophy, but with the significant difference that where Thacker embraces a renewal of traditional mysticism, "a new darkness mysticism" and "most difficult thought" that "doesn't help anyone", Fox's thought is bound by a nostalgic sense of responsibility for the world, a nostalgia for the possibility of responsibility, dejection before the impossibility of worldly responsibily, and hence a romance of militancy that true militancy, which can only exist within the truth of self-militancy, must precisely reject.
"Depressive thinking is simultaneously intensely lucid and intensely blinkered: ruthlessly and brilliantly reductive, it is able to demolish any consoling counter-argument by referring it immediately to the ground zero of its own originary devastation."
"The cold world of black metal is a deliberate freezing of the world, fixing it withing a terminal image, in order that its frost-bitten surface may be shattered by anonymous, inhuman forces rising from the depths of the self. It is a withdrawal of affect from the world, in order to experience 'the eerie bliss and torture of solitude' and so discover the forces at war withing oneself. These operations must be understood as spiritual exercises, as forms of emotional fasting intended to release the soul from its world attachments. Such exercises are purely narcissistic and self-salving if they do not also release the soul for new worldly commitments. The vertiginous dysphoria of Xasthur's sound-world is not yet the focused displeasure of the militant, but a simulacrum - a spiritualisation - of malcontent. It embodies a will that that which is should not be, but not a will that that which is should be otherwise."
A refreshing dip into the ice pools of black sorrow. The book is cooly lyrical in an affectively British way, similar in overall concept to Thacker's Horror of Philosophy, but with the significant difference that where Thacker embraces a renewal of traditional mysticism, "a new darkness mysticism" and "most difficult thought" that "doesn't help anyone", Fox's thought is bound by a nostalgic sense of responsibility for the world, a nostalgia for the possibility of responsibility, dejection before the impossibility of worldly responsibily, and hence a romance of militancy that true militancy, which can only exist within the truth of self-militancy, must precisely reject.
December 6, 2009
I don't think it gives anything away to write that Norwegian Black Metal comes out looking seductive. I look forward to the sequel, or others picking up the concept of the cold world.
May 7, 2022
Required reading for anyone wondering how to extend Badiou's amorous heroism beyond the restricted neo-classical space it comes out of. Well argued and compelling throughout. My only reservation concerns the valorization of integrity in his analysis of Coleridge (p40), which could be read as endorsing an angelic vision of sexuality.
***
Take two: I was wrong, integrity isn't necessarily a problem as long as we are honest about the often fascistic uses made of it.
***
Take two: I was wrong, integrity isn't necessarily a problem as long as we are honest about the often fascistic uses made of it.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews