Abstract
This article addresses how the Iranian-born philosopher Reza Negarestani has negotiated human distinctiveness in the course of his intellectual journey from speculative realism to inhuman rationalism (Rather than rationalist inhumanism, as some sources have it (Anon 2021)). Moving from challenging the correlationism of post-Kantian Western philosophy, via critiques of the Deleuze and Guattari’s war machine, Nick Land’s accelerationism, and Ray Brassier’s nihilism, Negarestani eventually turns to the neo-pragmatists of the Pittsburgh School and their reflections on reason, normativity, and praxis. The map** of this trajectory is divided into four parts: Having already discussed the political theology of Reza Negarestani elsewhere (Kersten, World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research, 78(2–4), 256 267, 2022), the first part of this article briefly introduces Reza Negarestani’s early theory fiction as an exponent of speculative realism (Negarestani 2008), followed by two sections dedicated to close readings of Negarestani’s investigations of the inhuman (Negarestani 2011 and 2014). The examination of these writings will demonstrate how they have served as prolegomena to his next book-length publication, Intelligence and Spirit (2018), a connection that will be briefly assessed in the final part.
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Notes
Rather than rationalist inhumanism, as some sources have it (Anon 2021).
Also among philosophers of religion who draw on speculative realism or on the non-philosophy of François Laruelle, one finds an interest in Islamic themes, cf. Smith Whistler (2010).
On account of his many years at the American University of Cairo, Harman had become acquainted with medieval Islamic thought, such as the occasionalism of al-Ashʿari (d. 936), whose ideas eventually came to be considered Sunni Islamic orthodoxy (Harman 2010: pp. 120 and 125–126).
Nick Land too had written an endorsement for Cyclonopedia: ‘Read Negarestani and pray…’ (Negarestani 2008).
Cf. Mackay and Avanessian (2014) and Becket (2014).
The quote comes from Ray Brassier’s PhD thesis (Brassier 2001: p. 318).
The daemonic figure is reminiscent of the imagery used by Negarestani in Cyclonopedia, where he showcases several ancient Persian and Sumerian diabolic or daemonic entities, such as Ahriman (Negarestani 2008: p. 105ff.) and Pazuzu (p. 113ff.).
The phrase is adapted from Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things (Foucault 1970: p. 387).
Taken from his Re-Engineering Philoosophy for Limited Beings (Wimsatt 2007).
While this appears to resonate with Rosi Braidotti’s ‘The Inhuman: Life beyond Death’, I imagine that Negarestani would hesitate to identify this as a meeting of the minds (no pun intended) because the chapter appeared in a volume entitled The Posthuman (Braidotti 2013: pp. 105–142).
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Kersten, C. Inhuman Rationality: Speculative Realism, Normativity, and Praxis. SOPHIA 62, 723–738 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-023-00975-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-023-00975-y