Philosophies of Illusion

Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh is a philosopher, literary theorist, and professor of comparative literature at Babson College, USA. His work tracks movements of radical thought across the so-called East and the West, with particular attention to concepts of chaos, violence, illusion, silence, extremism, mania, disappearance, night, evil, secrecy, and apocalyptic writing. He has published nine books to date, including two volumes titled Omnicide I and Omnicide II on madness, and two volumes on night titled Night: A Philosophy of the After-Dark and Night II: A Philosophy of the Last World. He is also the founding director of the Future Studies Program, Programmer of Transdisciplinary Studies for The New Centre for Research & Practice, USA.Ishita Jain is a scholar, consulting architect, and artist based in India working across areas of theatrical-cinematic formalism, theory fiction and spatial writing, and futurist world-building. She is the Director of the Living Midnight Narrative Outfit, India, a Fellow at the Institute of Postnatural Studies, Spain, and a Researcher in Transdisciplinary Studies for the New Centre for Research & Practice, USA. She lives in the lower Himalayas of the Kangra Valley and creates situations, encounters, and narratives entangled with transmedial storytelling. Current projects include the forthcoming book The Land of Time: Theory-Fictioning the Himalayan Mythosphere and the art installation titled The Raft of Illusions for the Bosch Parade Exhibition.

• Preface: Control Room, Jason B. Mohaghegh1. Dream (sleep, wish)2. Nightmare (fear, return)3. Mirage (despair, fatality)4. Hallucination (drug, madness)5. Fantasy (wonder, impossibility)6. Figment (ghost, shadow, mirror image)7. Spell (concoction, utterance)8. Simulation (spectacle, perfection)9. Story (recitation, turn)10. Vision (memory, prophecy)11. Rumor (insinuation, shame)12. Superstition (chance, ritual)13. Miracle (awe, otherworldliness)14. Game (test, play)15. Lie (distortion, malice)16. Conspiracy (paranoia, confabulation)17. Multiverse (infinity, eternity)Epilogue: Mirror of Uncertain Origin, Ishita Jain

Like the scientists at CERN throwing some anti-matter in the back of a delivery truck and driving it around Zurich, thus mimicing Tzara packing anarchy into the word dada and launching it outwards from the same city; or like reversed vantage point Lucifer had to occupy to fulfil the inverted radiance of his name, this endlessly variegated and prismatic compendium gives our own cosmos back to us, alight with possibility and perverse abundance.