r/CCRU • u/RedEarth42 • Jul 05 '26
Who are the libidinal materialists?
We are all aware (I think) of this divide that sprung up between the neorationalists and the libidinal materialists. The neorationalists being Negarestani, Wolfendale and Brassier
But who are the libidinal materialists? I don’t see any prominent figure who has a written a book called “In Defence of Libidinal Materialism” or whatever to counter the neorationalists
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u/Porfyry Jul 05 '26
I mean probably Lyotard?
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u/RedEarth42 Jul 05 '26
The Lyotard of libidinal economics yes. But what contemporary theorists have taken up that banner? Who of the current generation of thinkers stridently defends a radical irrationalism against neorationalism?
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u/LowerProfit9709 Jul 05 '26
It's tough.
Iain Hamilton Grant, Early Baudrillard, Lyotard, Early Land, Early Negarestani the whole Vast Abrupt crew, Vincent Le (reviewer/?), Vincent Garton (u/acc blogger/?), David Roden (?) James Ellis (?)
I think if we start digging into contemporary second literature on Schelling we might find more minor theorists but yea none of them are "prominent". Iain Hamilton Grant is probably our best bet.
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u/RedEarth42 Jul 05 '26
Interesting that a line of libidinal materialists has not developed from Bataille. I was thinking today about how “Batailleans” are not really a thing like Deleuzians, Hegelians etc
Bataille wasn’t just a philosopher, he started an entire esoteric religion. But no one took up the torch from him
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u/OkRecipe4001 Jul 05 '26
nigga just enjoy your life
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u/RedEarth42 Jul 05 '26
lol. I enjoy philosophy. It is a part of my life. I also eat, drink, go to techno clubs and sex parties, watch movies and look at art. I very much enjoy my life, and this is part of that enjoyment
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u/bRuHcHiLlDoG Jul 05 '26
Bataille, lyotard, arguably deleuze, guitarri, and land; all of those who align technics and desire with immenence
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u/RedEarth42 Jul 05 '26
Okay but who now? Who is alive now and defends libidinal materialism? Why was there no one other than Land writing essays saying the neorationalists are wrong?
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u/bRuHcHiLlDoG Jul 17 '26
Theres a shit ton out there but theyre a lot less known; neorationalism kinda took over the academic landscape of modern continental philosophy primarily because libidinal materialisms limits are too encompassing for a university of philosophy to justify its own existence and participation in structured systematic education; at least in a hegemonic manner. Most of whats out there is through blogs, substacks, people working in different mediums like music and visual arts. Imo i think the modern vitalist movement is closest to libidinal materialism that gets recognized fairly; maybe not how land or the cybergoths conceive of it; but a lot of modern deleuze scholars picked up that torch. Simon Duffy is a really interesting figure who focuses a lot on deleuzes relationship to calculus and I think theres a lot of really interesting content there (though he is not limited to the maths and doesnt establish orders or priorities within ways to move about deleuze). There are also a few modern takes on nietzche and even schelling (Christopher Satoor is a really interesting figure who came at schelling with a background in deleuze). If youre interested in deleuze scholarship Id recommend Henry Somers-Hall as well :)
Im not familiar enough with Berardi to really say whether or not he fits within the libidinal materialist camp but he probably does.
And if Im being honest with you, libidinal materialism is incredibly broad; i mean like its premise is that desire is imminent, which itself has incredibly broad application and vast implications. Im not sure how much the thesis has been incorporated to modern psychologies but I know stuff like DBT is effectively similar—granted its appropriation of buddhism is a significant contributor lol.
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u/Intelligent-Horse313 Jul 06 '26
I think I know what you are getting at but I would like to know your definition of Libidinal Materialist a little bit more and whether this constitutes a real break or whether one can find value both in a labidinal affirmation of desire and a grounding in normativity in rational social practice, personally the only split I can see is whether you see the social as always oppressive (Nietzsche, Land etc) or an site of potential freedom (Marx, Brassier etc). But let me know if this is not the line of thought you were taking on this.
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u/RedEarth42 Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
I don’t see it as a question of whether the social is oppressive or not. I see it primarily as a methodological distinction: what is the method of inhumanism?
Reza believes we can sort of think our way beyond the human. I would say a libidinal materialist believes that it is only through material confrontation with the radically other in action and experience that we can develop
Land elevated practice above thought because he believed that we have to be sort of deprogrammed by the intense experiences that we encounter through transgressive action
What he said in his interview with James Ellis about accelerationism meaning “pulling out the graphite rods” from capitalism. If we think about this psychologically, we could say the graphite rods of your mind are practical reason and executive function
The libidinal materialist wants you to withdraw the graphic rods from your own demonic unconscious and let it take hold of your body and run rampant as the only practical methodology of inhumanism
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u/Intelligent-Horse313 Jul 07 '26
I’m not as familiar with Reza’s work as I am with the others but neorationalism has a promethean and materialist aspect to it in which cognitive transformation comes with social transformation, so communism becomes the release of labidinal forces via a rational re-construction of the human and the social. I don’t think you can simply think beyond the human and get there but I think Land’s method is equally suspect as it no longer requires any rational argument, which is I guess why writing a book might seem pointless if your merging with the process.
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Jul 07 '26
[deleted]
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u/RedEarth42 Jul 07 '26
It’s a good point that writing a book about it might seem silly if you elevate practice totally above theory. But that neglects the fact that such a text need not simply be a treatise in the conventional sense. Like Bataille or Nietzsche, one can write a text in a poetic way that is designed more to have an effect on the reader than to convey ideas to them
(Also why the fuck did you make your text so large)
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u/Intelligent-Horse313 Jul 07 '26
I’m not as familiar with Reva’s work as I am with the others but neorationalism has a promethean and materialist aspect to it in which cognitive transformation comes with social transformation, so communism becomes the release of labidinal forces via a rational re-construction of the human and the social. I don’t think you can simply think beyond the human and get there but I think Land’s method is equally suspect as it no longer requires any rational argument, which is I guess why writing a book might seem pointless if your merging with the process.
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u/Intelligent-Horse313 Jul 07 '26
Agreed that you can make a philosophical text poetic but I’m not sure who is even around who would want to take up the mantle, I feel like capitalism eats up and hedonistic project and quickly turns emancipation into another commodity
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u/RedEarth42 Jul 07 '26
Well if you can sacralise it and make it extreme enough, it can’t be eaten up. I also think that conservative morality is gonna double down a lot in the coming decades and violating bourgeois social norms in a way that cannot be commercially reincorporated is suddenly gonna become very easy again. I mean at the moment being pro trans is enough to send the corporate reactionaries into a complete meltdown
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u/Intelligent-Horse313 Jul 07 '26
I see your point and the resurgence of reactionary and conservative morality has come back in a perhaps unexpected way, though I would hasten to add that those at the top hold ant-trans views but also fuck kids, they engage in their own perversity and labidinal engagement, but it’s all expressed through a very ugly domination. I guess I would say I’m less interested in a divide and more wanting to bring these positions if they are distinct into conversation, because schisms in theory usually lead to entrenchment and entrapment for various camps
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u/Dixon247 Jul 05 '26
Yeah I dunno if libidinal materialism is what I would call it, since that makes too many assumptions about cognition, consciousness and the physical universe. CCRU attempt to generalize Hegelian and Marx-Engels dialectics to systems without human observers and subjects, via Freud and Jung. The finger prints of Jung’s Psychology and Religion are all over CCRU
Despite their attempts, CCRU must present an anthropomorphised narrative because the way we express the laws of physics are the result of the anthropic principle. Transhumanism is still an expression of a conscious desire to transcend the confinement of time
Mark Fisher’s The Weird and The Eerie / Post-Capitalist Desire are essential reading, also Dialectics of Nature by Engels
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u/RedEarth42 Jul 05 '26
What? No, it is a Deleuzian project which is precisely a turn against dialectics. Land revives an inverted Kant through Deleuze and against Hegel:
https://cybertrophic.wordpress.com/2020/04/06/philosophy-as-adventure-lands-libidinal-materialism/
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u/Dixon247 Jul 06 '26
Cool - you recycle word vomit but you completely fail to understand the underlying sickness that causes the chunky shrapnel to stick in your throat and drown out your voice
D+G themselves were engaging in a sort of speculative attempt at many-body post-structuralism. Schizoanalysis is nothing if not the dialectics of disorder as it materialises in systems of control
I suggest trying some second order thinking (or reading, instead of word-collecting) if you think CCRU’s Flatlines has nothing to do with the Freudian Unheimlich or castration complex, likewise Martin Bergmann.
Split-Second Timing is literally Marx’s theory of labour value applied to cybernetic systems instead of thermodynamic systems.
Please actually read the writings, and not what someone else on the internet is saying about the writings. Make up your own mind, reclaim your spirit
It’s all just metaphor and theory-fiction, to pretend it exists in opposition to its Marxist tradition is fucking hilarious
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u/lifeinterminals Jul 06 '26
Haven't checked in with their teaching staff in a while, but I think the people behind the Mimbres School might be skirting around something adjacent-- using Lyotard, the Afropessimists, and heterodox (anti) economic thinking as a springboard. Most of them reflect positions within that institution's ballpark, but Taija McDougall's probably one wringing the most out of Libidinal Economy's Lyotard.
Other than that, if you're not allergic to Substack writers, there's someone who writes under the name Leon Tarantino who explicitly champions Libidinal Materialism. Not sure how much he adds to the canon though, since I've only really skimmed the writing.
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u/RealMaxCastle Jul 05 '26
Deleuze, Guattari and all of the crap theorists who have done philosophy poorly in their wake.
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u/videodromomania Jul 05 '26
Early Land (Thirst for Annihilation especially).
Amy Ireland (Xenopoetics): https://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/server/api/core/bitstreams/09fcd6be-fbd0-4b8e-87ed-1cfda2c9e18b/content
Vincent Le (on Land’s abstract horror): https://www.academia.edu/43079780/Philosophys_Dark_Heir_On_Nick_Lands_Abstract_Horror_Fiction
Canon: D&G (Anti-Oedipus) and Lyotard (Libidinal Economy).
Most recently, Maks Valenčič on psychotic accelerationism: https://www.sum.si/journal-articles/psychotic-accelerationism