The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror

248 Pages·2011·4.009 MB·English

by  Thomas Ligotti, Ray Brassier

2010 Bram Stoker Award Nominee
THE
CONSPIRACY
HUMAN
AGAINST THE
RACE
THOMAS LIGOTTI
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
Te atro 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)
TheC onspiraagcya inst
theH umanR ace
A Contrivance of Horror
Thomas Ligotti
Hippocampus Press
New York
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To the memory of Peter Wessel Zapffe
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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 in­
debted, 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.
6
CONTENTS
Foreword by Ray Brassier . 9
............................................................................
Introduction: Of Pessimism and Paradox ............................................ 13
The Nightmare of Being .............................................................................. 19
Who Goes There? ..........................................................................................8 5
Freaks of Salvation ....................................................................................... 119
Sick to Death .................................................................................................. 147
The Cult of Grinning Martyrs .............................................................. 169
Autopsy on a Puppet: An Anatomy of the Supernatural ....... 183
Notes 229
..................................................................................................................
7

FOREWORD
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 opin­
ion in question is whether or not being alive is all right. Suitably
ennobled by the epithet "tragic," the approbation of life is im­
munized against the charge of complacency and those who deni­
grate it condemned as ingrates.
"Optimism"; "pessimism": Thomas Ligotti takes the measure
of these discredited words, stripping them of the patina of fa­
miliarity 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 ex­
change and the injunction to keep investing in the future no
matter how worthless life's currency in the present, is stigma­
tized 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
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