REZA NEGARESTANI

The Modern Esoteric Philosophy of Reza Negarestani

This underrated Iranian philosopher has written some of the best works of analysis on the human condition, Iran, the Middle East, imperialism, the future of humanity, AI, and much more.

Born in 1977 in Shiraz, Iran, Reza Negarestani is an Iranian philosopher most notably known for his fascinating work, Cyclonopedia. This book established the genre of theory-fiction, which is a blend of writing a novel and an actual work of philosophical theory. Cyclonopedia serves as a meta-analysis of the condition of the Middle East, painting the war between the Western Imperium and the jihadists as a result of something cosmic and sinister.

Cyclonopedia starts with an American woman finding the writings of an Iranian scientist who disappeared, Dr. Parsani. Parsani’s research focused on the question: what if oil is sentient? Sentience, in this sense, is a parasitic intelligence, an omnipresent force of evil that uses humans, the war machine, and Abrahamic religions to automate itself and gain form. Negarestani calls this the Tellurian Antichrist.

The war in the Middle East is caused by two driving factors: the apocalyptic vision of Abrahamic religions and the implementation of capital. Throughout human history, there has been a conflict between the oppressor class and the oppressed. Negarestani reframes this Hegelian idea as a sort of esoteric fight between the Sun and the core of the Earth. Negarestani believes that the two forces, the Jihad and the Imperium, have two distinct paths that meet in one place.

The Imperium is fed through the accumulation of capital through the war machine. The capital is then injected back into the economy, which leads to the technological development of the Imperium, automation of the war machine, and more capital accumulation. The Jihad acts as a force to control this resource, to use it itself to bring on the apocalypse. This conflict is as old as human civilization, with empires always having an interest in controlling this piece of land due to the existence of this blobjective material.

Negarestani then applies this analysis of this Tellurian ether to understand human conflicts. He argues that capitalism is even older than humanity, being a force of evil, the Tellurian Antichrist, which expresses itself through various means. It is the innate subject of many stories, where greed takes various forms, and in the 19th century, it became oil. Oil by itself is not a force of evil, yet the conditions of its usage and extraction are what cause this Lovecraftian nature of oil.

In our century, Negarestani believes that artificial intelligence is the next form of this Tellurian Antichrist. His ideas are similar to the accelerationist school of thought, where they believe that capitalism will bring on the destruction of humanity and that this apocalyptic vision of reality is inevitable. The book Cyclonopedia is a fascinating analysis of human history, and it creates a new synthesis of the ongoing conflicts in the region.

“Iran is yet again in upheaval. The state answers protests with lethal force, arrest, intimidation, and deliberate severing of communication. Even the attempt to count the lost souls becomes a struggle over legitimacy. That uncertainty is not a reason for silence, but one of the regime’s instruments to shame the dead. Uncertainty is how impunity is laundered in the dark.”

Reza Negarestani on Iran.