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Eugene Thacker is an American author. He is a professor of media studies atParsons School of Design in New York City.^[1] His writing is associated with the philosophies ofnihilism andpessimism. He is known for his booksIn the Dust of This Planet andInfinite Resignation.

Thacker was born and grew up in thePacific Northwest.^[2] He received aBachelor of Arts degree fromUniversity of Washington, and aMaster of Arts andDoctor of Philosophy in comparative literature fromRutgers University.^[3] Prior to teaching at The New School, he was a professor atGeorgia Institute of Technology in the school of literature, media, and communication.^[4]

Thacker's work has been associated withphilosophical nihilism,pessimism, and tocontemporary philosophies ofspeculative realism andcollapsology.^[5] His short bookCosmic Pessimism defines pessimism as "the philosophical form of disenchantment": "Pessimism is the night-side of thought, a melodrama of the futility of the brain, a poetry written in the graveyard of philosophy."^[6]

Thacker's bookInfinite Resignation was published byRepeater Books. The book combines several genres of writing, and consists of fragments, aphorisms, and poetic prose that mixes the personal and philosophical. Thacker engages with writers likeThomas Bernhard,E.M. Cioran,Osamu Dazai,Søren Kierkegaard,Clarice Lispector,Giacomo Leopardi,Fernando Pessoa, andSchopenhauer.The New York Times notes: "Thacker has thrown a party for all of these eloquent cranks inInfinite Resignation, and he is an excellent host...This book provides a metric ton of misery and a lot of company."^[7]

Thacker'sAfter Life is a book of philosophy published by the University of Chicago Press. In it, Thacker argues that philosophies of life operates by way of a split between "Life" and "the living," resulting in a "metaphysical displacement" in which life is thought via another metaphysical term, such as time, form, or spirit: "Every ontology of life thinks of life in terms of something-other-than-life...that something-other-than-life is most often a metaphysical concept, such as time and temporality, form and causality, or spirit and immanence"^[8] Thacker traces this theme inAristotle,Dionysius the Areopagite,John Scottus Eriugena,negative theology,Immanuel Kant, andGeorges Bataille.^[9]After Life also includes comparisons with Islamic, Japanese, and Chinese philosophy.

Thacker's follow-up essay "Darklife: Negation, Nothingness, and the Will-to-Life in Schopenhauer" discusses the ontology of life in terms of negation,eliminativism, and "the inverse relationship between logic and life."^[10] Thacker argues that Schopenhauer's philosophy posits a "dark life" in opposition to the "ontology of generosity" ofGerman Idealist thinkers such as Hegel and Schelling. Thacker has also written in a similar vein on the role of negation and "nothingness" in the work of mystical philosopher Meister Eckhart.^[11] Ultimately Thacker argues for a skepticism regarding "life": "Life is not only a problemof philosophy, but a problemfor philosophy.^[12]

Thacker's most widely read book isIn the Dust of This Planet, part of theHorror of Philosophy trilogy.^[13] In it, Thacker explores the idea of the "unthinkable world" as represented in the horror genre, in philosophies of pessimism and nihilism, and in "darkness" mysticism. Thacker calls the horror of philosophy "the isolation of those moments in which philosophy reveals its own limitations and constraints, moments in which thinking enigmatically confronts the horizon of its own possibility."^[14] Thacker distinguishes the "world-for-us" (a human-centric view of the world), and the "world-in-itself" (the world as it exists), from what he calls the "world-without-us": "the world-without-us lies somewhere in between, in a nebulous zone that is at once impersonal and horrific."^[15] In this and the other volumes of the trilogy Thacker writes about a wide range of work:H.P. Lovecraft,Algernon Blackwood,Edgar Allan Poe,Dante's Inferno,Les Chants de Maldoror byComte de Lautréamont, theFaust myth, manga artistJunji Ito, contemporary horror authorsThomas Ligotti andCaitlín Kiernan,K-horror film, and the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer,Rudolph Otto, Medievalmysticism (Meister Eckhart,Angela of Foligno,John of the Cross),occult philosophy, and the philosophy of theKyoto School.

These ideas extend to what Thacker callsdark media, or technologies that mediate between the natural and supernatural, and point to the limit of human perception and knowledge.^[16] Thacker has written a series of essays on "necrology", the decay or disintegration of the body politic. Thacker writes aboutplague,demonic possession, and theliving dead, drawing upon the history of medicine, biopolitics, political theology, and the horror genre.^[17]

Thacker's earlier works adopt approaches from thephilosophies of science,technology, and the study of the relation between science and science fiction. Many of his media contributions are developments ofScience and Technology Studies. Examples are his bookBiomedia,^[18] and his writings onbioinformatics,nanotechnology,biocomputing,complex adaptive systems,swarm intelligence, andnetwork theory.^[19] Thacker definesbiomedia as follows: "Biomedia entail the informatic recontextualization of biological components and processes, for ends that may be medical or nonmedical...biomedia continuously make the dual demand that information materialize itself...biomedia depend upon an understanding of biological as informational but not immaterial."^[20]

Thacker, along withAlexander Galloway andMcKenzie Wark, published the co-authored bookExcommunication: Three Inquiries in Media and Mediation. In it the authors ask: "Does everything that exists, exist to be presented and represented, to be mediated and remediated, to be communicated and translated? There are mediative situations in which heresy, exile, or banishment carry the day, not repetition, communion, or integration. There are certain kinds of messages that state 'there will be no more messages'. Hence for every communication there is a correlative excommunication."^[21] This approach has been called the "New York School of Media Theory."^[22]

Thacker has written ananti-novel titledAn Ideal for Living, of which American poet and conceptual writerKenneth Goldsmith has said: "this an important book...these pages take cues from Burroughs and Gibson, while at the same time presciently pointing to the web-based path writing would take over the next decade."^[23] In the 1990s, Thacker, along withRonald Sukenick andMark Amerika, founded Alt-X Press, for which he edited the anthology of experimental writingHard_Code. Thacker is part of the editorial board of underground publisher Schism Press.^[24]

Thacker is a contributor toThe Japan Times Books section, where he has written about the work of Junji Ito,Osamu Dazai,Haruo Sato,Keiji Nishitani,Izumi Kyōka,Edogawa Rampo, and Zen death poetry. He wrote a column for London-basedMute Magazine called "Occultural Studies," on topics as the Surrealist poetRobert Desnos, Schopenhauer's philosophy, the horror writing of Thomas Ligotti, and the music ofAnd Also The Trees. He has written the Forewords to the English editions of the works ofE. M. Cioran, published by Arcade Press. he has contributed to limited edition books produced by Fiddleblack Press, Infinity Land Press, Locus+, Mount Abraxis, [NAME], Schism, and Zagava Press.

Thacker also collaborated with artists and musicians. These include the art collective Fakeshop, which presented work atArs Electronica,^[25]ACM SIGGRAPH,^[26] and theWhitney Biennial.^[27] He has also collaborated with Biotech Hobbyist, and co-authored the art bookCreative Biotechnology: A User's Manual.^[28] Thacker as collaborated with Japanese noise musicianMerzbow/Masami Akita,^[29] and with Iranian composer Siavash Amini.^[30]

In an interview with theWall Street Journal,Nic Pizzolatto, creator and writer ofTrue Detective, cites Thacker'sIn the Dust of This Planet as an influence on the TV series, particularly the worldview of lead characterRust Cohle, along with several other books:Ray Brassier'sNihil Unbound,Thomas Ligotti'sThe Conspiracy Against the Human Race, Jim Crawford'sConfessions of an Antinatalist, andDavid Benatar'sBetter Never to Have Been.^[31]

In September 2014 theWNYC'sRadiolab ran a show entitled "In the Dust of This Planet." The program traced the appropriation of Thacker's book of the same name in contemporary art, fashion, music video, and popular culture.^[32] Both Thacker's book and the Radiolab podcast were covered byGlenn Beck on TheBlazeTV.^[33] Thacker has commented on 'nihilism memes' in an interview: "Is it any accident that at a time when we have become acutely aware of the challenges concerning global climate change, we have also created this bubble of social media? I find social media and media culture generally to be a vapid, desperate, self-aggrandizing circus of species-specific solipsism — ironically, the stupidity of our species might be its only legacy."^[34]

Comic book authorWarren Ellis cites as an influence the nihilist philosophies of Thacker and Peter Sjöstedt-H for his 2017 seriesKarnak: The Flaw in All Things, a re-imagining of the original MarvelInhumans characterKarnak.^[35]

The writing of Thacker and Thomas Ligotti is cited as an influence on the 2021 albumThe Nightmare of Being by the Gothenburg melodic death metal bandAt the Gates.^[36]

Thacker's writing is cited as an influence onPolia & Blastema, an experimental film and opera written and directed byE. Elias Merhige.^[37]

Eugene Thacker is one of the main characters of the animation filmTetragrammaton;^[38] the last chapter is devoted to his philosophy.

• An Ideal for Living: An Anti-Novel. Schism Press, 2000 [20th Anniversary Edition, 2020].ISBN 979-8682903832.
• Hard Code: Narrating the Network Society. Edited by Eugene Thacker. Alt-X Press, 2002.ISBN 978-1931560047.
• Biomedia. University of Minnesota Press, 2004.ISBN 978-0816643530.
• Creative Biotechnology: A User's Manual, co-authored withNatalie Jeremijenko andHeath Bunting. Locus+, 2004.ISBN 978-1899377220.
• The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture. MIT Press, 2005.ISBN 978-0262701167.
• The Exploit: A Theory of Networks, co-authored withAlexander R. Galloway. University of Minnesota Press, 2007.ISBN 978-0816650446.
• After Life. University of Chicago Press, 2010.ISBN 978-0226793726.
• In the Dust of This Planet (Horror of Philosophy Vol. 1). Zero Books, 2011.ISBN 978-1846946769.
• Leper Creativity: The Cyclonopedia Symposium, co-edited withEd Keller andNicola Masciandaro. Punctum Books, 2012.ISBN 978-0615600468.
• Excommunication: Three Inquiries in Media and Mediation, co-authored withAlexander R. Galloway andMcKenzie Wark. University of Chicago Press, 2013.ISBN 978-0226925226.
• Dark Nights of the Universe, co-authored withDaniel Colucciello Barber, Nicola Masciandaro, Alexander R. Galloway andFrançois Laruelle. [NAME] Publications, 2013.ISBN 978-0984056675.
• And They Were Two in One and One in Two, co-edited with Nicola Masciandaro. Schism Press, 2014.ISBN 978-1494701239.
• Starry Speculative Corpse (Horror of Philosophy Vol. 2). Zero Books, 2015.ISBN 978-1782798910.
• Tentacles Longer Than Night (Horror of Philosophy Vol. 3). Zero Books, 2015.ISBN 978-1782798897.
• Cosmic Pessimism, with drawings byKeith Tilford. Univocal Publishing, 2015.ISBN 978-1937561475.
• Infinite Resignation. Repeater Books, 2018.ISBN 978-1912248193.
• Arthur Schopenhauer,On The Suffering Of The World. Edited with an Introduction by Eugene Thacker. Repeater Books, 2020.ISBN 978-1913462031.
• The Repeater Book of the Occult, co-edited withTariq Goddard. Repeater Books, 2021.ISBN 978-1913462079.
• Songs for Sad Poets, Siavash Amini & Eugene Thacker, Hallow Ground Records, 2022^[39]
• Sad Planets. Co-authored with Dominic Pettman. Polity, 2024.ISBN 978-1-509-56237-4.

• Official website
• Parsons School of Design: Eugene Thacker
• The New School for Social Research: Eugene Thacker
• Radiolab - In the Dust of This Planet, Radiolab interview with Eugene Thacker,Simon Critchley,Jad Abumrad, and others, WNYC (September 8, 2014)
• Horror of Philosophy: Three Volumes, Interviewed byCarla Nappi on New Books Network (2015)
• New Yorker feature (9–16 July 2018)
• VICE interview with Zachary Siegel (8 August 2018)
• The Quietus interview with Michael J. Brooks (October 28, 2018)
• Creative Independent interview withMeredith Graves (November 8, 2018)
• O32c Magazine interview with Daniel Beatty Garcia (July 2019)
• The Patron Saints of Pessimism - A Writer's Pantheon, excerpt fromInfinite Resignation @ LitHub (2018)
• "Pessimism, Futility, and Extinction" Theory, Culture & Society interview with Thomas Dekeyser (17 March 2020).
• "On Suffering" interview with Brad Evans, Los Angeles Review of Books (February 1, 2021).
• "How Algernon Blackwood Turned Nature Into Sublime Horror" LitHub (2021).

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• American philosophers of technology
• Philosophers of nihilism
• Philosophers of pessimism
• Rutgers University alumni
• The New School faculty
• University of Washington alumni

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