Reading for 6/25

Next week we’re asking ourselves: Is consciousness a maladaptation? We’ll begin with Peter Wessel Zapffe’s The Last Messiah, which you can also listen to a reading of here if you like. Then we’ll take a look at part of Thomas Ligotti’s book setting out from Zapffe’s thesis, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. The section “Who Goes There?” (pp. 85-119) is all we’ll be discussing but the whole book is worth reading, so I’m including it in its entirety.

Reading for 6/18

Next time we’re discussing a classic of poststructuralist feminism: The Laugh of the Medusa by Helene Cixous. Be there.

My caustic gaze and voluptuous ass
turn patriarchs to stone and make outlaws swoon
While Jacques Lacan, that fascist goon
rots in his tomb under blood-glutted grass

Poets and artists are all full of shit
cops, gods, and judges — drown in my spit!