A review by ralowe
The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism by Nick Land

2.0

if taken as the spur to a tremendously prodigious literary production modality, i can actually identify with the annihilation that accompanies art practice. this however fails to compensate with the more practical applications of nihilism, for those actively devoted to being assholes. is it necessary to trot out bataille confirming the widely held belief that certain kinds of creative people, driven inexorably to, thirsty for, excellence in technical proficiency, are of necessity sociopaths. but maybe this was just the bitchy review i was dying to give when nick land cropped up in a achille mbembe lecture as a supposed influence upon kodwo eshun's *more brilliant than the sun.* this was the first time i ever heard mbembe graze proximate to hip hop studies, so i felt obliged to explore how "nihilism" related to eshun's amazing work on musical marronage. i just get stuck on this fatal misnomer, because if nihilism is a line of flight rather than a total erasure, then you're just being obnoxious. i don't get this conflation of marronage with nihilism. again, it would be a different thing all together if dispossessed social minorities advocated "nihilism." what would it mean for the descendants of slaves to consider ancestors at igbo landing who chose drowning over bondage? survivorship is a mess as articulated in this text, which is what this is really about, about how whites in the west survive themselves, and i don't really care.

mbembe lecture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkqmAi1yEpo