Unknown Lands - Lecture 2

Provenance

Self-transcribed from the recording's audio/video with Whisper ASR, then drawn from the frozen curation of the CCRU oral archive. The identifiers below fingerprint the exact source transcript files.

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Adjudicated APPROVED 2026-07-11 (basis: owner ruling 2026-07-11: institutional recordings released except fee-charging course content; lane recent-institutional -> recent-institutional-released). Series: Unknown Lands. Source: audio original (.mp3).

Timestamped map

These jump targets come from timestamps preserved in the source transcript, so they work as navigational anchors rather than editorially invented section labels. Timings are approximate — they mark where a passage begins, not exact word timing.

• 00:00:00

  Well it's 6.30 so I guess we should get started. Okay, yeah, so thanks for coming again, especially given the kind of proto-apocalyptic heat conditions. Although it might seem, it's going to be pretty hot I reckon for the rest of this course, so although it might seem that that's not really, that's sort of a drag…

• 00:16:53

  Far from living an orderly, conventional, routine life, Trackel was unemployed, an alcoholic, a drug addict, died of a cocaine overdose, was probably in an incestuous relationship with his sister, and most definitely obsessed with death. So just as Trackel's life was anything but conventional, so does his poetry…

• 00:31:52

  So, in other words, what Hegel fears here is an outbreak of the irrational which would infect spirit and sap its strength to subsume and synthesize nature into the means for its own becoming. But what does Hegel fear? But what does Hegel fear? But what does Hegel fear? But what does Hegel fear? But what does Hegel…

• 00:48:36

  Yeah, Derrida says again, if I say God doesn't exist, I would immediately say the opposite. God exists even if, and especially if, he doesn't exist, because how powerful this non-existence should be to be. How powerful is it to produce such extraordinary phenomena in what is called man? So it's because Derrida…

• 01:06:53

  So, and I think therein lies Land's solution to overcoming post-Kantian anthropocentrism, namely, transfigure death into the transcendental condition by which we judge every philosopher's claim to grasp the real as valid only to the extent that they can confess and affirm their own finitude, the limits of their…

• 01:22:02

  Incapable of making promises, even to themselves, they are excluded from every possibility of salvation. On Land's reading of In the East here, what Trappel is doing is waging a war against reason, civilization and even basic human decency by overrunning the city with the lunacy of the moon that makes werewolves…

• 01:38:36

  So Land says there are two varieties of rats, but this should not be taken as a gift for our metaphysicians or supposed anti-metaphysicians who are constantly in search of dichotomic conceptual oppositions, a logical differentiation, black and brown, not black and white. By the same token, the attempt to localize…

• 01:55:41

  Yeah, next week we'll go much further back, yeah, to the origins. Thanks. Yeah, but I guess, yeah, we're out of time. But... But... But... But... But... But... Thank you.