Well, I feel foolish... and I apologize for this extra email.
That last newsletter went out earlier than planned and its announcement was premature (Shouts to the troopers among you who found the book on Amazon anyway).
Please read the following as if you didn't already see it. Hey, maybe you didn't!
My new book, Escape Philosophy, really is available now!
I am very excited to announce that my new book, Escape Philosophy: Journeys Beyond the Human Body, is now available from punctum books!
Using extreme examples from heavy metal music and science fiction and horror movies, Escape Philosophy is a survey of all the ways we try to shuck off the shackles of our physical forms.
The physical body has often been seen as a prison, as something to be escaped by any means necessary: technology, mechanization, drugs, sensory deprivation, alien abduction, Rapture, or even death and extinction. Taking in horror movies from David Cronenberg and UFO encounters, metal bands such as Godflesh, ketamine experiments, AI, and cybernetics, Escape Philosophy is an exploration of the ways that human beings have sought to make this escape, to transcend the limits of the human body, to find a way out.
As the physical world continues to crumble at an ever-accelerating rate, and we are faced with a particularly 21st-century kind of dread and dehumanization in the face of climate collapse and a global pandemic, Escape Philosophy asks what this escape from our bodies might look like, and if it is even possible.
Table of Contents:
0. INTRODUCTION: Exit Tragedy
1. GODFLESH: Compound Worlds
2. BODY: The Root of All People
3. MACHINE: Mechanical Reproduction
4. RAPTURE: Through Grace and Time
5. DRUGS: Encounter Culture
6. DEATH: The End of an Error
7. END: Don’t Believe the Hope
And here's what some smart folks are saying about the book:
“Too often philosophy gets bogged down in the tedious ‘working-through’ of contingency and finitude. Escape Philosophy takes a different approach, engaging with cultural forms of refusal, denial, and negation in all their glorious ambivalence.” — Eugene Thacker, author, In the Dust of This Planet
“Using Godflesh—the arch-wizards of industrial metal—as a framework for a deep philosophical inspection of the permeable human form reveals that all our critical theory should begin on the street where wasted teen musicians pummel their mind and instruments into culture-shifting fault lines. Godflesh are not just a ‘mirror’ of all the horrors and glories we can inflict on our bodies, but a blasted soundscape of our moans. Roy Christopher’s book is a thought-provoking and delightful crucible of film, music, and the best kind of speculative thought.” — Peter Bebergal, author, Season of the Witch
“In his trademark breezy yet precise style, Christopher discusses everything from stimoceivers to Southland Tales, everyone from Henry Lee Lucas to Brummbear, and all without ever losing sight of his central points of reference: our all too malleable somatic limits and Godflesh’s Streetcleaner. And the combination here could not be more apposite, for however much we stretch and augment the reaches of our physicality, imagining ourselves the theophanies of some as yet speculative deities, we get no closer to getting away from ourselves, becoming Godly it seems only in the sense of becoming increasingly empty.” — Gary J. Shipley, author, Stratagem of the Corpse
“Through the lenses of Godflesh, J.G. Ballard, UFO phenomena, psychedelics, serial killings, and so much else, Christopher investigates humanity’s growing inclination to escape our bodies, to escape our species, to escape life itself.” ~ B.R. Yeager, author, Negative Space
“A peculiar hybrid of Thomas Ligotti and Marshall McLuhan.” — Robert Guffey, author, Operation Mindfuck
“An interesting read indeed!” — Aaron Weaver, Wolves in the Throne Room
With a cover by Matthew Revert as dark as the ideas inside, it will make you look cool reading it on the bus or displaying it on your bookshelf. Escape Philosophy is the perfect read for our current uncertain moment. Now you can get yourself a beautifully menacing paperback or an open-access .pdf from punctum books.
Here's an Escape Philosophy playlist I put together featuring all of the songs and artists discussed in the book, including Godflesh, Deafheaven, Wolves in the Throne Room, Celtic Frost, and Jawbox, among others.
And here's a brief excerpt from Chapter 3, "Machine," on the Malarkey Books site. I will share more bits of it soon.
If you feel compelled, please do help others find the way out. Thank you!
While you're at it, my other new book, BOOGIE DOWN PREDICTIONS, is available for preorder from the outlet of your choice! It drops on August 16th.
As always, thank you for reading, responding, and sharing.
And apologies again for the early and extra email. I'm really excited about this new book!
More soon,
-royc.
http://roychristopher.com