10.26180/5c9d90b0dc18a
Vincent Le
Vincent
Le
One Two Many: On Nick Land’s Numbering Practices
Monash University
2019
Nick Land
Deleuze and Guattari
Cantor
Set theory
Gödel
Numerology
Qabbalism
CCRU
The Golem
Artificial Intelligence
AI
Literary Studies not elsewhere classified
2019-03-29 07:16:05
Journal contribution
https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/journal_contribution/One_Two_Many_On_Nick_Land_s_Numbering_Practices/7914494
<p>This
paper examines Nick Land’s “numbering practices” for opening up language to
modernity’s increasing technological entanglement beyond human comprehension. I
begin by examining Land’s attempt to override our linguistic systems with
machinic code and binary symbolism in a way which mirrors modernity’s
technological future shock. I then consider his appropriation of Cantor’s set
theory and Gödel’s incompleteness theorem to plot ever greater degrees of
reality’s excess to all anthropic logic. The third section looks at Land’s use
of qabbalistic numerology to uncover the absolute contingency of all our most
strongly held beliefs, truths and values. The fourth section considers Land’s
radicalisation of qabbalism through his own particularly abstract and inhuman
notational “gematria.” I conclude by
looking at Land’s interest in the computer keyboard’s lock-in to the QWERTY
layout for proffering a glimpse of modern technology’s increasingly dehumanising
meltdown of our anthropocentric delusions of grandeur.</p>