Tentacles Longer than Night: Horror of Philosophy Vol. III - Eugene Thacker

Published in 2015 by Zero Books, Alresford, UK

ISBN: 978 1 78279 889 7

Horror and philosophy are two subjects that seldom intertwine. Philosophy is often viewed as a high-brow and inaccessible enterprise, only practiced in the halls of elite universities. Horror, on the other hand, is often castigated as low-brow entertainment for the masses, filled with clichéd writing, gore, and cheap scares. Yet, throughout his “Horror of Philosophy” trilogy, philosopher, poet, and author Eugene Thacker attempts to read each genre in light of the other. While the previous installment of the trilogy, Starry Speculative Corpse, sought to read Western philosophy as if it were horror, the third and final book in this series seeks to do the inverse.

Published in 2015, Tentacles Longer than Night attempts to read works of horror as if they were philosophy, focusing on the ideas contained in the works of H.P Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Thomas Ligotti, and many horror writers. Tying supernatural horror to the concepts of medieval mysticism, Thacker argues that horror attempts to articulate the basic relationship of the human being to the indifferent world in which we inhabit, and the limit of our abilities to comprehend it. 

Overview:

Thacker builds upon the foundations that have been laid in the previous two books in the series, revisiting several works of horror that he first introduced and discussed in the first volume, In the Dust of this Planet. Thacker utilizes works from well-known authors in the genre (such as Lovecraft, Poe, Dante, etc) as well as many obscure works of horror. The book is subsequently divided into three main chapters, which address the intersections between horror and philosophy that stretch the limits of thought, including the demonic, the gothic, and the weird. 

In the first chapter, Thacker explores the relationship between horror literature and the body politic through the work of Dante, which challenges the ways we think about political order. He elaborates on four principles that delineate how our ideas of order and hierarchy are still shaped by political theology. Thacker also explores the role of medicine, epidemic, and disease in shaping our concepts of the body politic throughout history, as he constructs the category of necrology to underscore how we must always consider the eventual dissolution and decay of our collective political order. 

In the second chapter, Thacker takes a deep dive into an anonymously published 1868 book, Les Chants de Maldoror, as he explores the concepts of animality, monstrosity, apophatic theology, and gothic anti-humanism. In this gothic mode, Thacker argues, “ life exists only to the extent that it constantly ceases to exist...in the gothic mode, animality is a form of life that only exists in so far as they are decaying, that is built in ruins, and that is prodigious in its nothingness” (86). Thacker then explores the concept of religious horror, which is a non-philosophical attempt to think of life in terms of negation. Ultimately, these forms of horror are defined by their failure, as language itself begins to crumble under the gothic logic of decay and decomposition. 

Finally, in the third chapter, Thacker compares the concept of horror as viewed through the Kantian, Heideggerian, and Lovecraftian paradigms. For Kant, horror comes at the limit of thought and is intimately connected with the sublime. For Heidegger, horror confronts us with our fear of death. According to Heidegger, death doesn’t stand in opposition to life, but rather is immanent within life itself, and it infuses life with meaning. For Lovecraft, however, horror shows us that the limit of thought constitutes thought itself and that horror acts as a kind of anti-humanism, forcing us to confront an indifferent universe. In this way, as opposed to Kant and Heidegger, Lovecraft’s cosmic horror eludes the traps of anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism. The universe has no feeling or bent toward the human, neither positively nor negatively, and the human is ultimately small and insignificant in the grandness of the unknown universe. Thacker elaborates that horror reveals that the world is ultimately indifferent to us, while supernatural horror, taking up the concerns of medieval religious mysticism in a secular, godless context, is an attempt to think toward the unhuman. In the latter half of the chapter, Thacker provides us with commentary on the works of Junji Ito, Schelling, Kyoka Izumi, Caitlín Kiernan, China Miéville, Vilém Flusser, and Thomas Ligotti. The book then concludes with a few stray thoughts on Kant’s concept of the sublime, Rudolf Otto’s idea of the numinous, and the dark materialism of medieval mysticism. 

Commendations: 

As the final book in Thacker’s trilogy, many ideas are well worth commending. Especially when contrasted against the second book, Starry Speculative Corpse, this work is much lighter in terms of philosophy. It is much more accessible than SSC, and Thacker has several fascinating ideas regarding the connections between medicine in the early modern period and the development of political theology (a topic of great interest and intersection to my work). Several concepts that Thacker has introduced throughout the trilogy help the reader to keep up with his eclectic examples and concepts, which feels rewarding to read.  

While, in the second chapter, the focus on Maldoror was a bit too esoteric and dense, there were some interesting insights into apophatic theology and gothic philosophy, especially with its focus on decomposition and ruin. I also found his continual integration of horror and theology has the potential to open up some fascinating lines of inquiry and further study for students of the field. Thacker is an innovative and brilliant synthesizer, taking an eclectic approach to bring out some incredibly interesting connections between the fields of literary horror, philosophy, and negative theology. 

Critique: 

On the other hand, many of the ideas presented here were discussed in the first book of the trilogy, In the Dust of this Planet. If you’ve worked your way through this series and have finally arrived at the final volume, you’ll find that several ideas have already been discussed at length in those previous books. This makes Tentacles Longer than Night a bit repetitive, as concepts and examples from previous books are rehashed, even if there’s a slightly different angle to them. To his credit, many of the discussions and works of horror that were only briefly introduced in the first volume are expanded, and there are several new and novel takes on these works. Yet, Thacker ends up repeating the same central idea (horror as the limit of thought that defines thought itself through negation) over and over again throughout the series. 

Additionally, while there are several recognizable works in this volume (such as Lovecraft and Poe), most of the works of horror that Thacker utilizes are incredibly obscure and avant-garde. While these works are indeed fascinating, they are not readily available or accessible, which makes it difficult to relate to this book. Thacker tends to analyze esoteric works over mainstream horror literature or films (which he explains why in this book), so for those who are more casual fans of mainstream horror, there will be little to find here that is recognizable. The book also ends without much fanfare, with a loose, unrelated collection of brief thoughts and asides. While some of them are interesting, others tend to meander and feel incomplete, which was a bit disappointing and anticlimactic, especially as the culmination of a trilogy. 

Conclusion: 

Overall, Tentacles Longer Than Night is a fascinating, if occasionally frustrating examination of the philosophical implications of horror literature. While there are few familiar faces in Thacker’s pantheon of horror writers, his complex ideas are worth untangling, as they open up myriad paths for further exploration. If you’re a diehard fan of horror literature, especially if you have a penchant for obscure and little-known texts, then this book is well worth the effort.