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Nick Land Philosopher

Nick Land (born 1962) is a British philosopher. He was a lecturer in Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick from 1987 to 1999 and faculty co-founder, along with Sadie Plant, of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (Ccru). He is the author of The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism and Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007, along with various articles on cybernetics, modernity, capitalism, time, and technology. The most recent of these can be found in various issues of Collapse, an independent UK-based journal for philosophical research and development, and #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader. His seminal work 'Meltdown' has recently been translated into French. Land is founder of two electronic presses, Urbanatomy Electronic and Time Spiral Press (with Anna Greenspan). He currently works as an editor at Urbanatomy in Shanghai, and teaches at the New Centre for Research & Practice.Although it only existed in an official capacity for little over two years, the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit's cultural impact has been significant. Those who were affiliated with the Ccru during and after its time as part of the University of Warwick Philosophy department include philosophers Iain Hamilton Grant, Ray Brassier and Reza Negarestani; cultural and political theorist Mark Fisher; music writer and filmmaker Kodwo Eshun; publisher Robin Mackay; digital media theorists Luciana Parisi and Matthew Fuller; DJ, producer, and owner of the electronic music label Hyperdub Steve Goodman, aka Kode9; writer and theorist Anna Greenspan; novelist Hari Kunzru; and artists Jake and Dinos Chapman, among others. Land and the Ccru collaborated frequently with the experimental art collective 0[rphan]d[rift>] (Maggie Roberts and Ranu Mukherjee), notably on 'Syzygy', a month-long multidisciplinary residency at Beaconsfield Contemporary Art gallery in South London, 1999, and on 0[rphan]d[rift>]'s Cyberpositive (London: Cabinet, 1995), a schizoid work of cut-and-paste cyberphilosophy.The role played by Land, Plant, and the Ccru in the development of what has come to be known as Accelerationism cannot be understated, and its legacy is apparent in contemporary debates concerning the viability of the theory in its various guises. It is important to note that accelerationism as it was deployed by the Ccru should be distinguished from the term more frequently associated with Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams’ ‘Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics’. Land himself makes this distinction clear in his commentary on the manifesto.Land has been described as one of the originators of the Dark Enlightenment, a neoreactionary movement that opposes universalism and egalitarianism.