Nearing the end of Cyclonopedia, a demonology like no other…

Like the twin volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, it’s a book to plug things into – by rights, it should spawn dozens of experimental metal bands. There is a savage humour in places, as in the discussion of bullets as urban modernisers (the heat signature of a city being an index of its modernity, and bullets in urbanised warfare being the hottest and fastest things around) and the updating of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to the desert theatres of the War on Terror. Generally the book pursues the fatal strategy of raising the stakes of Orientalism, projecting a Middle East far more horrific than any idle conjuration of the Western imaginary: it can be read as a retort to Lovecraft’s “mad Arab Abhul Alhazred”, a Necronomicon for our (and all) times.

Quite a lot of Cyclonopedia makes no sense at all, but in that naggingly plausible way that, say, Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles sometimes has about it. I’ve been impressed with the Dissensus thread on the book, one of the most thoughtful in a while, which shows that it is capable of reaching, and disconcerting, a varied audience. Valter at Documents should definitely have a read…

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