Petroleum as a space for non-translation: Hikmet, Negarestani, Parshchikov
... most large-scale embodiment in the philosophical novel “Cyclonopedia” by Reza Negarestani, where petroleum constitutes a new type of subjectivity, simultaneously fluid and explosive. On the other hand, the image of petroleum will play a key role in Alexei Parshchikov’s poem of the same name, where one can also discern echoes of this philosophy in Hikmet’s Baku cycle. For all these authors, petroleum acts as a radical expression of the logic of non-translation: it is a condensed memory of antiquity,...
