Brassier on Death (and rubbing his eyes): UPDATED

I’ve been branching out lately, trying to get out of my tiresome and monotonous phenomenological lineage by re-reading the oh so hip Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou (Imagine, a whole generation of lit scholars talking about set theory, that is, if they get a hold of Badiou). I’m not sure though about what I think of Badiou thus far, at times, I’m intrigued, at other times he seems to be a bit of a monstrosity (as a friend put it): lots of things that don’t fit together, a little Lacan here, some Mao there, set theory up there, some Plato here, add some math etc. However, I’m looking at all of this stuff a little more carefully this time around. In this vein, this caught my interest: a talk on Deleuze and Heidegger, very interesting. So, who’s already or going to be the next to “stand behind” Deleuze? Manuel DeLanda? Ray Brassier? Our friend over at Larval Subjects? Who knows (or cares for that matter)…

Anyway, the lecture is “The Pure and Empty Form of Death: Deleuze and Heidegger”

Abstract: In Difference and Repetition, the third synthesis of time is the privileged locus for an apocalyptic individuation whereby, in a striking inversion of Heidegger, the future ‘ungrounds’ the past and death become the subject of a time that splits the Self. For Deleuze, contra Heidegger, time, like death, is never ‘mine’: it is no-one’s. The affirmation of eternal recurrence effects a mode of psychis individuation which transforms throught into sign of impersonal death.

Here’s the link (it starts with some spooky music laid over a very dramatic slow motion shot of Brassier rubbing his eyes, weird):

http://www.eri.mmu.ac.uk/deleuze/journalapril06_2.php

UPDATE: Plus, a bonus: a sample chapter from Brassier’s forthcoming Nihil Unbound (warning, it’s a pdf file).