Theoretical fictions: Ligotti, Negarestani and speculative realism
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Abstract
The article examines recent interactions between philosophy and popular literary genres. Attempting to eliminate anthropocentrism from philosophy, speculative realism draws on natural sciences, but also on the reevaluated imagery of the horror genre. “Conceptual” horror anticipates the problems that philosophy (beyond the frame of the humanities) has yet to articulate. This paper outlines two cases of horror writers using philosophy as a narrative strategy and a means of diversifying their audiences: Ligotti, whose texts undermine genre borderlines by way of metafiction, and Negarestani, who explicitly defines his debut novel as postgenre horror or “theoretical fiction”.