The Conspiracy against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror

143 Pages·2017·0.88 MB·English

by  Ligotti, Thomas

THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE
Also by Thomas Ligotti
FICTION
Songs of a Dead Dreamer
Grimscribe
Noctuary
The Nightmare Factory
My Work Is Not Yet Done
The Shadow at the Bottom of the World
Teatro Grottesco
POETRY
I Have a Special Plan for This World
This Degenerate Little Town
Death Poems
SCREENPLAYS
Crampton (with Brandon Trenz)
The Frolic (with Brandon Trenz)
The Conspiracy against the Human Race
————————
A Contrivance of Horror
Thomas Ligotti
Hippocampus Press
—————
New York
Copyright © 2010 Thomas Ligotti. Foreword © 2010 by Ray Brassier. Thomas Ligotti photograph © 2010 by Jennifer
Gariepy.
Parts of this work were published, in different form, in the following publications: “Literature Is Entertainment or It Is
Nothing: An Interview with Thomas Ligotti” by Neddal Ayad, Fantastic Metropolis (website), October 31, 2004; “Thomas
Ligotti on Sweeney Todd,” Horror: Another 100 Best Books, Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, eds., 2005; Introduction by
Thomas Ligotti, The Tenant by Roland Topor, 2006; “‘It’s All a Matter of Personal Pathology’: An Interview with Thomas
Ligotti” by Matt Cardin, The Teeming Brain (weblog), 2006.
All excerpts from the works of Peter Wessel Zapffe © Gisle R. Tangenes; used with permission. All excerpts from the
writings of H. P. Lovecraft © Robert C. Harrall; used with permission of Lovecraft Properties LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ligotti, Thomas.
The conspiracy against the human race: a contrivance of horror / Thomas Ligotti. – 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-9824296-9-3 (hardcover) – ISBN 978-0-9844802-7-2 (pbk.)
1. Horror in literature. 2. Literature–Philosophy. 3. Pessimism in literature. I. Title.
PN56.H6L55 2010
809’.9164–dc22
2010008781
Published by Hippocampus Press
P.O. Box 641, New York, NY 10156.
http://www.hippocampuspress.com
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission
of the publisher.
Cover design by Jennifer Gariepy. Cover production by Barbara Briggs Silbert. Hippocampus Press logo designed by
Anastasia Damianakos.
First Digital Edition(s) May 2012
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
ISBN 978-1-61498-030-8
Digital book(s) (epub and mobi) produced by Booknook.biz.
To the memory of Peter Wessel Zapffe
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my appreciation to Tim Jeski and Scott Wetherby for supplying me
with materials essential to the writing of this work; to the members of Thomas Ligotti
Online and its administrator, Brian Edward Poe, for participating in a forum of commentary
on an early version of The Conspiracy against the Human Race; to Robert Ligotti for being
a ready test subject whenever I needed an alert response from a mind akin to my own; and
to Jennifer Gariepy for the encouragement and insight she has afforded me over many
years. In addition, I would be more than remiss not to acknowledge the counsel and labors
of S. T. Joshi, David E. Schultz, and Jonathan Padgett, with special recognition reserved for
Nicole Ariana Seary, who granted me the benefit of her talents and experience during the
most crucial stages of this book’s composition. Finally, I am indebted, as are all devotees of
philosophical pessimism who are not knowledgeable of the Dano-Norwegian language, to
Gisle R. Tangenes for his translations of and writings on the works of Peter Wessel Zapffe.
The responsibility for the use made of these valued contributions lies entirely with the
author.
CONTENTS
Foreword by Ray Brassier
Introduction: Of Pessimism and Paradox
The Nightmare of Being
Who Goes There?
Freaks of Salvation
Sick to Death
The Cult of Grinning Martyrs
Autopsy on a Puppet: An Anatomy of the Supernatural
Notes
F
OREWORD
Ray Brassier
We know what verdict is reserved for those foolhardy enough to dissent from the common
conviction according to which “being alive is all right,” to borrow an insistent phrase from
the volume at hand. Disputants of the normative buoyancy of our race can expect to be
chastised for their ingratitude, upbraided for their cowardice, patronized for their
shallowness. Where self-love provides the indubitable index of psychic health, its default
can only ever be seen as a symptom of psychic debility. Philosophy, which once disdained
opinion, becomes craven when the opinion in question is whether or not being alive is all
right. Suitably ennobled by the epithet “tragic,” the approbation of life is immunized against
the charge of complacency and those who denigrate it condemned as ingrates.
“Optimism”; “pessimism”: Thomas Ligotti takes the measure of these discredited words,
stripping them of the patina of familiarity that has robbed them of their pertinence, and
restoring to them some of their original substance. The optimist fixes the exchange rate
between joy and woe, thereby determining the value of life. The pessimist, who refuses the
principle of exchange and the injunction to keep investing in the future no matter how
worthless life’s currency in the present, is stigmatized as an unreliable investor.
The Conspiracy against the Human Race sets out what is perhaps the most sustained
challenge yet to the intellectual blackmail that would oblige us to be eternally grateful for
a “gift” we never invited. Being alive is not all right: this simple not encapsulates the
temerity of thinking better than any platitude about the tragic nobility of a life
characterized by a surfeit of suffering, frustration, and self-deceit. There is no nature worth
revering or rejoining; there is no self to be re-enthroned as captain of its own fate; there is
no future worth working towards or hoping for. Life, in Ligotti’s outsized stamp of
disapproval, is MALIGNANTLY USELESS.
No doubt, critics will try to indict Ligotti of bad faith by claiming that the writing of
this book is itself driven by the imperatives of the life that he seeks to excoriate. But the
charge is trumped-up, since Ligotti explicitly avows the impossibility for the living to
successfully evade life’s grip. This admission leaves the cogency of his diagnosis intact, for as
Ligotti knows full well, if living is lying, then even telling the truth about life’s lie will be a
sublimated lie.
Such sublimation is as close to truth-telling as Ligotti’s exacting nihilism will allow.
Unencumbered by the cringing deference towards social utility that straightjackets most
professional philosophers, Ligotti’s unsparing dissection of the sophisms spun by life’s
apologists proves him to be a more acute pathologist of the human condition than any
sanctimonious philanthrope.
Look at your body—
A painted puppet, a poor toy
Of jointed parts ready to collapse,
A diseased and suffering thing
With a head full of false imaginings.
—The Dhammapada