Tide of Extinction<\/h4>\n

Negarestani, Reza.\u00a0<\/span>Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials.<\/em> Melbourne: Re.Press, 2008. 244pp.<\/span><\/p>\n

Review by Tim Kaposy<\/p>\n

The category of narrative is widely understood as affirming the world\u2019s appearances, in part, by giving them coherence with a logical order and a communicable form. Though radical experimentation is standard in all narrative forms, standard narratives remain a linguistic and cultural category tied to acts of memory, intimate self-knowledge and the pretext for judicious History. Narrative theorists from Aristotle to Clarice Lispector have argued that without narrative one ceases to be human.<\/p>\n

Archeologist Hamid Parsani, the central character of Reza Negarestani\u2019s genre-defying text Cyclonopedia<\/em>, narrates his findings with an alternative purpose in mind.In Parsani\u2019s studies of the Cross of Akht, Persian dynastic coins, the myth of Gog-Magog, Wahhabism, and Middle Eastern languages, he queries how being coherently human is made possible by the geopolitics of oil. \u201cWhatever Parsani encounters,\u201d writes Negarestani, \u201cis immediately traced back to only one thing, Petroleum\u201d (42). Parsani\u2019s id\u00e9e fixe<\/em> fissures its way through all he encounters in the Middle East. His obsession builds to a notion that narrative allows for a better understanding of humanity, but only insofar as it helps one anticipate the demise of the species (i.e., relics yield unheeded lessons). Without narrative one is prone to affirm appearances, and most appearances today present one with the idea that sustainability, communication and redemption are always collectively attainable. Parsani makes a valuable counter claim that \u201coil is\u2026a vehicle of epic narratives,\u201d (69) and it is crucial to know the vehicles of narrative, rather than to speculate on how they might be transcended. Petroleum, too, is a relic with much to say about humanity\u2019s epic trajectory.<\/p>\n

As animist as this may sound, oil is deposited too deep and spread too wide to have talking points of its own. Therefore, oil requires vigilant interpretation. Narratives from Parsani\u2019s research surface in Cyclonopedia<\/em> as if unannounced from the soil and with an unpredictability that might prove too hectic for minds more familiar with, say, oil industry journalism. Whereas journalists critique oil orthodoxy in remote dependency or with the help of the odd dispatch from wars taking place elsewhere, Negarestani\u2019s narrative explains the historical mythos within vast petroleum fields and his sentences emit the stench of its exhaust. The desertified ground of Parsani\u2019s fieldwork is comprised of holes, dust, bitumen and critters that sink, shift and linger with an incalculable long-term effect on the archeologist\u2019s senses. Geologic formations thus seem to Parsani as sentient and responsive as any scenario above the soil. He recounts in his journal that \u201c[b]urrowing sounds may be heard from within the earth. Once they have finished infesting the earth\u2019s solid part, the larvae will cut breathing holes and press their headless tails against the surface for air\u201d (67)Very little \u201chappens\u201d in Cyclonopedia<\/em> in the traditional sense of imparting a plot. The text consists of a series of exegeses of Parsani\u2019s thoughts, primarily from his lifework Defacing the Ancient Persia<\/em>. The effect of reading Parsani within a Negarestani\u2019s text is disquieting and it causes one to question how fact, fiction, fantasy and theory coexist in contemporary accounts of oil culture.<\/p>\n

Without a firm sensory footing, why assume that the value of narrative has its basis in stock-still and clear-eyed composition? What\u2019s more, the surfaces of Negarestani\u2019s oil rich terrains are charred, slurry-ridden and militarized for a more predictable rate of extraction and steady refinement. Unheeded lessons? Who has time to interpret relics? Who has the peace of mind or protection to interpret oil further than its use?<\/p>\n

Aside from Parsani and an animated cast of mythic petroleum figures, Negarestani\u2019s dramatis personae<\/em> consists of the largely anonymous \u201cglobal war machine.\u201d Far away in networked office buildings, operatives are poised to hail rockets down upon those exceedingly<\/em> attuned to oil. That is: beware to those who are defiant enough to stand their ground, slow things down, and who try to provide readers with coherent details of petroleum\u2019s past. A surprising number of people die from petroleum wars every day. Parsani\u2019s paranoia is, apparently, merited; or, is not paranoia one of oil\u2019s narrative vehicles?<\/p>\n

The overall aesthetic of Cyclonopedia<\/em> verges on breakdown. Like many of the characters written into existence by Georges Bataille and H.P. Lovecraft nearly a century earlier, Negarestani\u2019s Parsani is elusive because he is summoned from \u2018below\u2019 and not from \u2018on high.\u2019 Lost deities, hidden numbers and script, the sun\u2019s detritus, corpses, generational layers of decay\u2014Negarestani pulls the reader across the contours of Parsani\u2019s enervated narrative to exhume the sounds from this infested source of energy.<\/p>\n