Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials (Anomaly) (Paperback)

~ Reza Negarestani (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

At once a horror fiction, a work of speculative theology, an atlas of demonology, a political samizdat and a philosophic grimoire, CYCLONOPEDIA is work of theory-fiction on the Middle East, where horror is restlessly heaped upon horror. Reza Negarestani bridges the appalling vistas of contemporary world politics and the War on Terror with the archeologies of the Middle East and the natural history of the Earth itself. CYCLONOPEDIA is a middle-eastern Odyssey, populated by archeologists, jihadis, oil smugglers, Delta Force officers, heresiarchs, corpses of ancient gods and other puppets. The journey to the Underworld begins with petroleum basins and the rotting Sun, continuing along the tentacled pipelines of oil, and at last unfolding in the desert, where monotheism meets the Earth's tarry dreams of insurrection against the Sun. 'The Middle East is a sentient entity - it is alive!' concludes renegade Iranian archeologist Dr. Hamid Parsani, before disappearing under mysterious circumstances. The disordered notes he leaves behind testify to an increasingly deranged preoccupation with oil as the 'lubricant' of historical and political narratives. A young American woman arrives in Istanbul to meet a pseudonymous online acquaintance who never arrives. Discovering a strange manuscript in her hotel room, she follows up its cryptic clues only to discover more plot-holes, and begins to wonder whether her friend was a fictional quantity all along. Meanwhile, as the War on Terror escalates, the US is dragged into an asymmetrical engagement with occultures whose principles are ancient, obscure, and saturated in oil. It is as if war itself is feeding upon the warmachines, leveling cities into the desert, seducing the aggressors into the dark heart of oil ...

Product Details

• Paperback: 268 pages
• Publisher: re.press (August 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0980544009
• ISBN-13: 978-0980544008
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #89,551 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Anonymous, anomalous, July 14, 2009

By	mole sandwich (usa) - See all my reviews

Is oil an intelligent entity? Is the platform of technology upon which our civilization functions "scientific," or is it actually a kind of voodoo, controlled and constructed behind the scenes by ancient sorcerers? Is there a bizarre and esoteric shared goal that secretly unites Western global technocapitalism and Islamic militants?

Is "pink" an important philosophical concept? And where do rats fit into all of this?

After a few chapters into Cyclonopedia, even the most skeptic reader may begin to ponder these seemingly ridiculous questions. Negarestani takes fiction and theory, genius and madness, discovery and creation and builds an entire alternate universe that is so convincing and compelling, you'll never look at the Middle East in the same way again. And the horror fan will find thrill alongside theory. Ancient Babylonian demons lurk inside video games, and an unfathomable cosmic force known simply as "the Outside" hungrily waits to devour and butcher us open. Who's next?

There are too many fresh ideas to absorb in one reading. Cyclonopedia's madness is quite rigorous, reshaping concepts from Deleuze, poromechanics and military intelligence to occult numerology. It explores little-known Indo-Iranian linguistic archeology alongside fantastic folk tales of burning rain and sentient dust devils.

Throughout the book, we are gradually acclimated to see the world in the terms of a philosophical premise that Negarestani calls the "non-metaphorical" identity of concrete materials with supposedly abstract or mental phenomena. For example, the Middle East is a sentient being; thought is dust; and war itself is a Fog, an object more tangible than any Deleuzian warmachine. Somehow, this superficially inane/insane premise takes on a plausibility within these pages that rivals everyday, common-sense perceptions of reality as well as established philosophical dogmas.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Complicity with Anonymous Philosophers, September 14, 2008

By	G Samsa "m-morphic" - See all my reviews

Readers who are looking for new thoughts and concepts will find some unprecedented ideas in Cyclonopedia. For example, in one place Negarestani challenges Deleuze and Guattari's concept of war machines in relation to war. In another place he builds a different philosophy of becoming. He analyzes the politics of the Middle East through the eyes of a mad archeologist who has discovered connections between monotheism, petroleum and geology. These are just a few things that stand out for me after my first read through. I plan to go back chapter by chapter for a slower read to take in the many more themes he has presented.
I think there are a couple reasons why this book might be difficult for some readers though-

1. For readers who are expecting a novel, Cyclonopedia works like a theory book and for those who anticipate a philosophy book, it may read like a novel. My thought is that it would be best to read it as a philosophy or theory book which uses different or alternative ways for thinking. Negarestani doesn't strictly abide by philosophy or politics in order to discuss politics and philosophize about the world, but instead opts to also use a wide variety of speculative tools to make points (i.e. occult, archeology, Islamic theology and even current culture such as video game and literary studies).

2. At first, readers might feel alienated from Cyclonopedia. One of the reasons for this estrangement may be due to a lack of a parallel works to compare it with. Cyclonopedia like every other book has references and influences, but it is hard to give a coherent list of similar books. The closest and most helpful example which comes to mind is A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari. The influence of Deleuze is obvious throughout the book and the narrative resembles the chapter 'The Geology of Morals'. Deleuze and Guattari have incorporated experimental writing into a work of philosophy (for example, every chapter a is 'plateau' covering every topic imaginable) in much the same way Negarestani uses experimental narration and 'plotholes' throughout the book to create a work of experimental writing opposed to an academic philosophical work. While this sounds like a Deleuzian book it should be noted that Negarestani's ideas are independent of Deleuze and sometimes transcend them. Another reason for Cyclonopedia's eccentricity is that it is inherently Middle Eastern, it uses alternative resources and concepts related to different forms of thought, politics, cultures and people. In my opinion, it is what makes Negarestani's work so compelling.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reviews for re.press (publisher) website, September 3, 2008

By	Paul Ashton - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

'Incomparable. Post-genre horror, apocalypse theology and the philosophy of oil, crossbred into a new and necessary codex.' (China Miéville, author of Perdido Street Station and The Scar)

'Reading Negarestani is like being converted to Islam by Salvador Dali.' (Graham Harman, author of Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things)

'It is rare when a mind has the courage to take our precious pre-conceptions of history, geography and language and turn them all upside down, into a living cauldron, where ideas and spaces become alive with fluidity and movement and breathe again with imagination and wonder. In this great novel by Reza Negarestani, we are taken on a journey that predates language and post dates history. It is all at once apocalyptic and a beautiful explosive birth of a wholly original perception and meditation on what exactly is this stuff we call "knowledge".' (E. Elias Merhige, director of Begotten and Shadow of the Vampire)

'This brilliant and exhilarating work is a forensic journey across the surface territories of the Middle East and into the depth of its sub-terrain. The earth is produced as a living artifact, gutted and hollowed out by nomadic war tactics, the practices of extreme archaeology and the logic of petroleum extraction. Inventing a radical new language and reconceptualizing the relationship between religion, geology, and ways of war, Reza Negarestani philosophically ungrounds thus the very grounds of contemporary middle-east politics.' (Eyal Weizman, author of Hollow Land)

'Cyclonopedia is an extraordinary tract, an uncategorizable hybrid of philosophical fiction, heretical theology, aberrant demonology and renegade archaeology. It aligns conceptual stringency with exacting esotericism, and through its sacrilegious formulae, geopolitical epilepsy is scried as in an obsidian mirror.' (Ray Brassier, author of Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction)

'Reza Negarestani's Cyclonopedia is rich and strange, and utterly compelling. Ranging from the chthonic mysteries of petroleum to the macabre fictions of H. P. Lovecraft, and from ancient Islamic (and pre-Islamic) wisdom to the terrifying realities of postmodern asymmetrical warfare, Negarestani excavates the hidden prehistory of global culture in the 21st century.' (Steven Shaviro, author of Doom Patrols)

'The Cyclonopedia manuscript remains one of the few books to rigorously and honestly ask what it means to open oneself to a radically non-human life - this is a text that screams, from a living assemblage known as the Middle East, "I am legion." Cyclonopedia also constitutes part of a new generation of writing that refuses to be called either theory or fiction; a heady mixture of philosophy, the occult, and the tentacular fringes of Iranian culture - call it "occultural studies." To find a comparable work, one would have to look back to Von Junzt's Unaussprechlichen Kulten, the prose poems of Olanus Wormius, or to the recent "Neophagist" commentaries on the Book of Eribon.' (Eugene Thacker, author of Biomedia and The Global Genome)

'From the city of Poetry and Roses in Iran comes this bloody bypass surgery on the heart of darkness.' (David Porush, author of Soft Machine: The Cybernetic Fiction)

'Negarestani's Cyclonopedia meticulously plots the occult matrices of an archaic petrochemical conspiracy that has set the earth on its carbon-cycle feedback loop to Hell.' (John Cussans, Chelsea College of Art and Design)

'Western readers can expect their peculiarly schizoid condition to be 'butchered open' by this work. Read Negarestani, and pray.' (Nick Land, author of The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism)