Spinal Catastrophism: A Secret History (Urbanomic / Mono)

The historical continuity of spinal catastrophism, traced across multiform encounters between philosophy, psychology, biology, and geology. Drawing on cryptic intimations in the work of J. G. Ballard, Georges Bataille, William Burroughs, Andre Leroi-Gourhan, Elaine Morgan, and Friedrich Nietzsche, in the late twentieth century Daniel Barker formulated the axioms of spinal catastrophism: If human morphology, upright posture, and the possibility of language are the ramified accidents of natural history, then psychic ailments are ultimately afflictions of the spine, which itself is a scale model of biogenetic trauma, a portable map of the catastrophic events that shaped that atrocity exhibition of evolutionary traumata, the sick orthograde talking mammal. Tracing its provenance through the biological notions of phylogeny and "organic memory" that fueled early psychoanalysis, back into idealism, nature philosophy, and romanticism, and across multiform encounters between philosophy, psychology, biology, and geology, Thomas Moynihan reveals the historical continuity of spinal catastrophism. From psychoanalysis and myth to geology and neuroanatomy, from bioanalysis to chronopathy, from spinal colonies of proto-minds to the retroparasitism of the CNS, from "railway spine" to Elizabeth Taylor's lost gill-slits, this extravagantly comprehensive philosophical adventure uses the spinal cord as a guiding thread to rediscover forgotten pathways in modern thought. Moynihan demonstrates that, far from being an fanciful notion rendered obsolete by advances in biology, spinal catastrophism dramatizes fundamental philosophical problematics of time, identity, continuity, and the transcendental that remain central to any attempt to reconcile human experience with natural history. The historical continuity of spinal catastrophism, traced across multiform encounters between philosophy, psychology, biology, and geology.Drawing on cryptic intimations in the work of J. G. Ballard, Georges Bataille, William Burroughs, André Leroi-Gourhan, Elaine Morgan, and Friedrich Nietzsche, in the late twentieth century Daniel Barker formulated the axioms of spinal catastrophism: If human morphology, upright posture, and the possibility of language are the ramified accidents of natural history, then psychic ailments are ultimately afflictions of the spine, which itself is a scale model of biogenetic trauma, a portable map of the catastrophic events that shaped that atrocity exhibition of evolutionary traumata, the sick orthograde talking mammal.Tracing its provenance through the biological notions of phylogeny and “organic memory” that fueled early psychoanalysis, back into idealism, nature philosophy, and romanticism, and across multiform encounters between philosophy, psychology, biology, and geology, Thomas Moynihan reveals the historical continuity of spinal catastrophism. From psychoanalysis and myth to geology and neuroanatomy, from bioanalysis to chronopathy, from spinal colonies of proto-minds to the retroparasitism of the CNS, from “railway spine” to Elizabeth Taylor's lost gill-slits, this extravagantly comprehensive philosophical adventure uses the spinal cord as a guiding thread to rediscover forgotten pathways in modern thought.Moynihan demonstrates that, far from being an fanciful notion rendered obsolete by advances in biology, spinal catastrophism dramatizes fundamental philosophical problematics of time, identity, continuity, and the transcendental that remain central to any attempt to reconcile human experience with natural history. Title Page......Page 2 Copyright......Page 4 Preface......Page 5 Cervical Prospectus......Page 12 C1. A Giga-Annum of Genealogy......Page 14 C2. Cervical Zenith......Page 17 C3. Spirit & Bone......Page 21 C4. Chronogenesis......Page 25 C5. Belated Cosmogony......Page 30 C6. Fearful Symmetry......Page 40 C7. Traumata Triumphant......Page 45 Thoracic Retrospect (2000–1900)......Page 49 TH1. Barker Spoke......Page 51 TH2. Ballardian Kinesics......Page 64 TH3. The Law of Superposition & The Biogenetic Law......Page 71 TH4. Pharyngeal Phantasy & Spinal Polyptoton......Page 81 TH5. Littoral Osteo-Chilopoda Cross the Wounded Galaxies......Page 89 TH6. Philosophical Anthropology’s Mängelswesen......Page 95 TH7. Vertebral Euhemerism......Page 110 TH8. Psychoanalytic Flexion......Page 114 TH9. Terrestrialization & Traumatism......Page 125 TH10. Ancient Azygy Of The Pineal Sun-Blossom......Page 130 TH11. Chiropraxis, Tarzan Philosophers & Penis Poeticisms......Page 135 TH12. Global Vertebral Telegraphy & Neural Neuzeit......Page 145 Lumbar Genesis (1900–1800)......Page 151 L1. Posterus Praecox......Page 153 L2. Engraphy & Ecphory: No Brain Required......Page 157 L3. Modernity as Whiplash and Spondylosis......Page 171 L4. German Idealism & Nature’s Most Sublime Flower......Page 176 L5. Cosmic History as a Series of Ossicles......Page 185 S1. The Oldest System-Programme of Cosmotraumatics......Page 197 C1. Ubi Sunt.........Page 218 Acknowledgements......Page 228 Bibliography......Page 229