Why is Cyclonopedia the "Platonic Idea" of TF used to denounce the whole genre? For Baudrillard, Ballard is TF. For Land, Lovecraft is TF. For CCRU, Gibson is TF. For Eshun, Sun Ra is TF. For me, Stendhal is TF (sort of kidding re that last one but also not at all kidding).
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I tend to agree that the category of theory-fiction places fiction in the service of the academic theory-mill. Yet I also wonder what is salvageable of its original (or imagined) intent: to sever what matters in theory from its high style into the world of pulp modernism.
The earliest conceptions of theory-fiction move in the opposite direction to their present iterations: not theory in fictive packaging, but fiction informing theory. Kafka, Burroughs, and Ballard precede and shape the thought of Deleuze and Baudrillard.
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Yes, CCRU & imitators have inadvertently returned precedence to the theoretical/academic element. But this is all the more reason to look elsewhere in the intersection of theory and fiction, for works that demolish that distinction and the idols of theory with it.
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Agreed on all these points.
End of conversation
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