About Nick Land
Nick Land is an English philosopher best known for popularising the ideology of accelerationism. His work has been tied to the development of speculative realism, and departs from the formal conventions of academic writing, incorporating unorthodox and esoteric influences. Much of his writing was anthologized in the 2011 collection Fanged Noumena. In the 1990s, Land was closely affiliated with the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), a "theory-fiction" collective co-founded by Land and cyberfeminist philosopher Sadie Plant at the University of Warwick. During this era, Land drew inspiration from post-structuralist theory and leftist thinkers like Bataille, Marx, and Deleuze & Guattari as well as science fiction, rave culture, and the occult. He also coined the term hyperstition to refer to memetic ideas that bring about their own reality. Land resigned from Warwick in 1998. After a period of amphetamine abuse, he suffered a breakdown in the early 2000s and disappeared from public view. Later, he moved to Shanghai and re-emerged as a figure on the political right, becoming a foundational thinker in the reactionary movement known as the Dark Enlightenment. His related writings have explored anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic ideas. Graham Harman also cited Land as the first philosopher in recent times to seriously engage with Lovecraft, leading Vincent Le to call Land "not so much a thinker of the speculative turn as he is its chief forerunner". One session involved Land "lying on the ground, croaking into a mic", recalls Robin Mackay, while Mackay played jungle records in the background.
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