Gregory Marks

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).

From the other end, theorists/philosophers such as Nietzsche, Blanchot, or Haraway all use fictive devices in their writing. Even if Cyclonopedia is now the nexus around which TF as a genre has coalesced, the intersection between theory and fiction has always been well-populated.

Nietzsche and Blanchot are philosophers using literary devices sure. Nietzsche also wrote a lot of poetry poetry and Blanchot some very fine novels which primed their writing for it. The word "theory" signals an allegiance to academic formalism and the "critical theory" industry

Perhaps Laruelle's "philofiction" is a more interesting way of conceptualising these experiments in thought (though I doubt it). I especially dislike this attempt to add experimental artists and philosophers to this very narrow canon. The Stendhal notion is risible.

Beckett makes a huge number of references to Kant and Geulincx, Joyce to Bruno and Cusanus—does that me they are now de facto "theory fiction", part of this cynical post-CCRU publishing category aimed at those with an anglophone education in continental philosophy?