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Eugene Thacker is the author of a number of books, including In The Dust Of This Planet: Horror of Philosophy Vol. 1 (Zero Books, 2011) The Sight of a and After Life (University of Chicago Press, 2010). His most recent is the forthcoming Excommunication: Three Inquiries in Media and Me­ Mangled Corpse diation, co-authored with Alexander Galloway and McKenzie Wark (University of Chicago Press, 2013). Thacker also writes an online col- umn for Mute Magazine called “Occultural Studies,” and he teaches at The New School in New York. As consummate fans of horror and avid readers of Eugene’s writing, Scapegoat asked the author to engage our issue on Excess by respond- —An Interview ing to a series of questions that address the philosophical lineage of horror and its relation to speculative thought. What follows is an ed- with ited version of our correspondence. Scapegoat Says In his Confessions, Roger Corman, Mario Bava, and Teruo St. Augustine poses the rhetorical Ishii. But what I find interesting about question, “What pleasure can there the horror genre is not any of the elements Eugene Thacker be in the sight of a mangled corpse, that make it a genre—the characters, plot, which can only horrify?” As if to take setting, or style, nor the gore, the mon- up and pervert this very point, your sters, or the genre conventions. What I find work as a philo sopher, especially in interesting are the ideas embedded in your recent book In the Dust of This these stories. These are stories that are Planet, takes a certain pleasure in concept-driven, rather than being driven the horror of thought.1 In fact, the by character, plot, or genre expectations. “horror of philosophy”—a phrase Bat - Lovecraft is a great example, though he aille used to characterize the fear felt took much of what he learned from the by specialists when making more ab- likes of Poe, Machen, Blackwood, and stract claims of thought—is a concept Dunsany. In a Lovecraft story you rarely entangled in many of your recent get fully developed, well-rounded char- essays. What, in your estimation, is acters; in fact, you rarely give a damn the horror of philosophy in contem- about the characters at all. But at the core porary thought? of these stories you find a funda mental question about the fabric of real ity and Eugene Thacker Well, yes, the phrase the impossibility of ever fully knowing “horror of philosophy” is meant to be taken or comprehending it. Supernatural hor- in a couple of ways. Initially, I set out to ror moves away from human-centric con- write a book about the horror genre, and cerns over psychology, desire, motive, in particular about what H.P. Lovecraft free will, and the like, and towards a view called “supernatural horror.” But very of a world that is either against the human, quickly the book became something else. or in many cases indifferent to the human. In asking myself why I found the horror So what was a philosophical question then genre so interesting I was eventually led becomes a religious question... to consider philosophical questions, which Augustine’s words are especially apt in is a bit odd, since the horror genre has his - that he assumes that pleasure cannot be torically been very low-brow and unintel- said of something for which we feel hor ror, lectual. It is only recently that we now dread, or fear. And yet that almost exact- see the likes of Lovecraft enshrined in ly describes what the horror genre is all the Penguin Classics or Modern Library about—and it extends back to the earlier editions. The origins of genre horror have fascination with gothic novels, graveyard always been low, from the sensationalism poetry, and the like. Ultimately, for me, it of the gothic novel to pulp magazines like extends back to pre-modernity, to mysti- Weird Tales and cult film directors like cal texts that discuss shadows and dark- 379 ness, to the political theology of demonic contradictions inherent in the concept of of the unceasing creativity of nature, or the language breaks down and you get possession, to the sanctified grotesque of “life” in philosophy and theology. Many they may be taken as curiosities and enter- lost in it, as if Proust were a systems engi- the suffering body in religion, to “divine of the twists and turns of the concept de- tainment (today we should also add the neer. At other times he is enamoured of darkness;” there is a religious intuition rive from Aristotle, for whom the issue of interpretation of monsters as “errors” in the poetics of technical language—of here that I have always found fascinating, “form” was all-important. Form-giving biological information). There is one view what most of us call jargon—and it almost and it connects modern genre horror with is not only part of the life-principle for which argues that monsters are a threat becomes an exercise in sculpting nonsense philosophy, and in particular religious and Aristotle, but forming and in-forming are to the status quo; another view could (which is why I think the diagram works mystical philosophy. also part of life processes, and this led argue that monsters are precisely what well within the context of his writing). But going back to the “horror of philo- him to his natural philosophy work. But hold up the status quo, and the moment The thing that I don’t understand is the sophy”—this also means, in a more banal there is also de-forming, and even un- the monster appears it is recuperated reception of his work. Many readers seem sense, the sort of allergic reaction many forming as well. In much supernatural and designated, given a name—even if to forget that so-called theory-fiction has of us have to philosophy with a capital P. horror—particularly in the weird fiction that name is “the unnameable.” A great always been a part of the philosophically I include myself in this group. I did not of Lovecraft and his circle—you get “mon- case study is the now-forgotten field of fringe anti-tradition. What is the bulk of major in philosophy as a student, in part sters” that are atypical in that they defy teratology, which was influenced by bio- Kierkegaard’s works if not theory-fiction, because I was utterly bored with the not only existing categories of life, but logical classification and natural history, with his fake professors writing treatises analytical logic-chopping that seemed they seem to defy conceptual thought but attempted a classification system for that footnote each other? To say nothing to constitute most of the discipline. It is and language, as well. You either have to monsters—those beings that, by definition, of Nietzsche, who has, if nothing else, also quite intimidating, what with mas- question the more basic presuppositions could not be classified. Geoffroy Saint- mapped out the stylistic terrain of theory- sive Germanic tomes of systematic theo- (for instance, about the division between Hilaire’s Histoire générale et particulière fiction, from the aphorism to the fable to ries-of-everything filled to the brim with the organic and inorganic), or you can des anomalies de l’organisation chez the prophecy. And the literary examples obscure French jargon, complete with just ignore it and invent a new category, l’homme et les animaux (ca. 1832–37) is a are innumerable, not to mention the way good-old American pragmatic applica- a new name. Interestingly, we can still fascinating exercise in futility. that early-twentieth century thinkers tion (usually to politics or ethics). I also see this today in the sciences, with so- like Bataille, Blanchot, and Klossowski SS never bought the big claims philosophy called “extremophiles,” organisms liv- It seems that a common trajectory blurred the line between philosophy and often made (and makes) to know every- ing in conditions in which life was not among the various lines of inquiry literature. I’ve also always admired Pierre thing, to figure everything out. There is thought to be possible. that comprise the philosophical ten- Guyotat’s unreadable en lange novels. a bit of the know-it-all in philosophy that Monsters are, of course, everywhere dency known as speculative real- Closer to our time, a whole group of post- I am always skeptical of. in the horror genre. But they also have a ism is the movement toward a non- structuralist experiments in textuality So the phrase reflects the ways in which way of becoming quite tame and domes- anthro pomorphic philosophical are important to recognize here, from the horror genre interrogates philosophy, ticated within the confines of the genre perspective. The specificity of this Derrida’s Glas to Irigaray’s Marine Lover just as much as the way that philosophy through sheer repetition. There was a trajectory is, of course, quite various, to Barthes’ experiments in autobiogra- comes in to “explain” or help us under- time when I was interested in the figure from object-oriented ontologies, to phy. And in the 1990s we had the “hyper- stand the horror genre. I often teach Noel of the zombie, but at this point we have a new Naturphilosophie, to the more stition” of Warwick anti-philosophers Carroll’s book The Philosophy of Horror, all been so inundated with zombies every- radical anti-genre of horror fiction, like Nick Land (an influence on Reza), a book I admire very much, and the simple where (a perfect example of allegory) that as in the work of Reza Negarestani.

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