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Mackay, Robin, and Damian Veal, eds. Collapse: Philosophical Research and Development IV. Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2008. 395 pp. Paper. ISBN 9780-9553087-3-4. £9.99. Note: This is now out of print, but a free, electronic edition is available at <http://www.urbanomic.com/CollapselV.pdf>.
This multi-genre journal explores the "intimate bond between horror and philosophical thought" and the nether realm that awaits those who pursue the rational beyond its limits. Other volumes of the journal are I: Numerical Materialism; II: Speculative Realism; III: Unknown Deleuze; V: The Copemican Imperative; and VI: Geo /philosophy. This issue includes essays, poetry, visual art, and photographs, all introduced by Robin Mackay's "Editorial Introduction" and concluding with "Notes on Contributors and Acknowledgements."
Collapse TV requires that the reader understand that it is not about horror but, in many ways, is horror. At times, it delves into fetishism (especially Keith Telford's cover art and illustrations throughout) and the underworld, often threatening the reader. Throughout, it engages the threat of the outside and the other to the survival of the self. Further, the issue does not engage literary scholarship. It is not subject to the normal rigors of literary research and, thus, promotes philosophical insights while missing observations from literary sources. Also, for the non-philosopher, it is fogged by its nomenclature, making it difficult for those outside the field.
Kristen Alvanson's "Arbor Deformia," illustrated with her own black and white photographs of deformities, is a case in point. The images of babies and animals preserved in jars are so stunning that the text almost becomes secondary to their attachment to Ambrose Paré's sixteenth-century Des monsters et des prodiges. Biology and "inter-specific biological forces" yield aberrant relationships among humans, animals, and insects (379). While the photographs are disturbing, the language is difficult for the uninitiated. For example, "Taxonomy as monstrous', [sic] 'hierarchy as deformity', [sic] 'category as schizophrenic order' and 'tree as lusus naturae' could stand as partial consequences of Paré's teratological system" requires considerable intellectual assiduousness (368). Alvanson certainly provides a much different perspective than literary approaches, such as Arthur Clayborough's The Grotesque in English Literature. Continuing this imagery and drawing upon Virgil's Aeneid and Aristotle's lost fragment "The Corpse Bride," Reza Negarestani's "The Corpse Bride: Thinking with Nigredo" begins with Mezentius's punishment of Aneas's captive soldiers by binding...