The words “sublime” and “numinous” have shifted in meaning somewhat over recent years. The word “sublime,” I presume, would now generally be interpreted to mean something of particularly great beauty, or an action particularly well executed. It would not be limited to a narrow usage but could be applied to any thing or action of particular excellence, perhaps with a slightly pretentious connotation of elegance. (more…)
Author: Christopher Pankhurst
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5,511 words
When Yukio Mishima arose on the morning of November 25th, 1970 he knew that it would be his last day on Earth. It was the deadline for completion of his novel, The Decay of the Angel, the fourth book in his tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. He placed the completed manuscript, sealed in an envelope addressed to his publisher, on a table. Mishima had given intimations that the completion of the tetralogy would be the culmination of his life’s work. (more…)
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Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the second movie in the rebooted Planet of the Apes series, establishes this as a superior franchise inviting comparisons with Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.
The movie begins exactly where Rise of the Planet of the Apes left off, with a tracker plotting flights around the globe showing the spread of “simian flu.” (more…)
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Mark Fisher
Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures
Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2014Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx was an attempt to resurrect Marxism. Published in 1993, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe, Specters of Marx was an attempt to disrupt the apparent flow of historical progression (more…)
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5,903 words
We never manage to bury the dead completely. Their words still echo down to us from beyond life’s event horizon in direct contravention of physical law. Our stance towards death is a determining factor in how the dead return to us; in what form and with what significance they haunt the living. Although they are always there, the ways in which they interact with us vary and shift through time. And, at the present time, there is a strange blend of residual religious funerary rites and atheistic materialism. It feels very much as though we go through the motions of dispatching the dead to the next world without believing a word of it. (more…)
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3,374 words
For the radical Right the issue of contemporary art is something of a non-starter. The past century or so of developments in the fine arts have been dominated by American (and often Jewish) theoreticians who have fashioned a sensibility wherein anything that smacks of European tradition is automatically verboten, unless it can be refracted through a distorting lens of ironic detachment or disinheritance. (more…)
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4,884 words
Czech translation here
The speed of technological development can be dizzying, and it has become natural for us to expect a never-ending stream of faster, more powerful devices. The future development of such technologies promises increasingly sophisticated machines that will challenge the very notion of man’s supremacy. (more…)
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Transcendence marks the directorial debut of Wally Pfister, Christopher Nolan’s cinematographer. Nolan is also the executive producer so the expectation is that this sci-fi project could aspire to the heights reached by Nolan’s Inception. Sadly, it fails to live up to the comparison.
Johnny Depp stars as Dr. Will Caster, a leading researcher in artificial intelligence (AI). His work is opposed by a terrorist group known as RIFT (Revolutionary Independence From Technology) (more…)
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1,821 words
English original here
“La fin du monde présent” est le titre d’une conférence qui s’est tenue le 12 Octobre 2013 dans un lieu prestigieux de Londres. Les trois conférenciers étaient tous des sommités de la Nouvelle Droite européenne: Laurent James, Alain de Benoist et Alexandre Douguine. Le thème de la conférence s’articulait autour du déclin de la puissance américaine et de l’émergence du monde multipolaire.
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1,825 words
French translation here
The End of the Present World conference was held on October 12th, 2013 at a prestigious London venue. The three speakers were all luminaries of the European New Right: Laurent James, Alain de Benoist, and Alexander Dugin. The conference was themed around the idea of the waning of American power and the rise of a multipolar world.
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D. Jonathan Jones
3 Paths Through Midgard: A Rune Poem
Portland, Or.: Ravenshalla Arts, 2010 -
1,457 words
The Confession of Isobel Gowdie is an orchestral work by the Scottish composer James MacMillan. It was premiered at the 1990 BBC Proms where it drew instant and enduring acclaim. (more…)
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Martin Aston
Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD
London: The Friday Project, 2013Towards the end of Martin Aston’s monumental history of the 4AD record label he claims that one of the label’s later signings was “guilty of lacking transcendence” (p. 550). (more…)