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Symptomatic Horror: Lovecraft's "The Colour out of Space"

  • Anthony Sciscione (author)
Chapter of: Leper Creativity: Cyclonopedia Symposium(pp. 131–146)

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Metadata
TitleSymptomatic Horror
SubtitleLovecraft's "The Colour out of Space"
ContributorAnthony Sciscione (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0017.1.08
Landing pagehttps://punctumbooks.com/titles/leper-creativity-cyclonopedia-symposium/
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
CopyrightSciscione, Anthony
Publisherpunctum books
Published on2012-12-22
Long abstractSymptomatic horror describes works that attempt to encounter the radically non-human without recourse to ontological presence and positive conceptualiza-tion, instead channeling the incompatible agency through its effects on the landscape and representing it in the text primarily with reference to the discursive and hermeneutic gaps it occasions. In H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space,” a classic work of this sort, a constitutionally-indeterminate extraterrestrial agency deposited by a meteorite infiltrates a local bio-physical milieu and reengineers it in accordance with its alien molecular agenda. At the same time, the agency occupies a liminal dimension with regard to phenomenal (extensive) space by nesting in the inter-stice between object and quality and also suggesting itself just beyond the borders of perception by sounds sensed only at “moments where consciousness [seems] to half slip away.” The habits of “stealthy listening” and obsessive nocturnal watching the Gard-ners develop thus increase its phenomenal availabil-ity, making paranoia a ‘schizotrategic’ mode of drawing victims toward it at “the outer limits of de-mon and system” where, to borrow from Deleuze-Guattari, “the interior forces of earth [and] the exterior forces of chaos...clasp and are wed in a battle whose only criterion and stakes is the earth.” The “xeno-agent” or radical outsider never appears as a discrete entity or individuated substance beyond vague indica-tions of motion and fog, but is revealed only nebulous-ly on the ground (the superficial or visible outside) through symptoms of transmutation and madness. In cosmic horror fiction, radical exteriority tends to re-flect some abyss in cognitive apprehension, a chasm or disjuncture between person and world widened by our profound vulnerability in an aleatory, unfavorable cosmos. The shadow of what we don’t know becomes an alterior horror that knows all, that stares back through mist with myriad eyes or takes advantage of solidity’s dependence on void to wriggle out the eye-holes of anthropocentrism. In this paper I will explore symptomatic horror in Lovecraft’s tale through Negar-estani’s “( )hole-complex,” understood as a “machine” by which the xeno-agent as “avatar of absolute exteri-ority” infiltrates the interior of a system and opens it up to the outside (the unhuman) via derangement and disintegration, making what once thrived a dusty sig-nature of human impotence in a world that, the more it opens up to us, the more horrifyingly weird it be-comes.
Page rangepp. 131–146
Print length16 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)