Image of Nick Land by Victor Stones
I.
Despite Michael Scott's belief to the contrary, the seven-letter assemblage s-t-i-t-i-o-n is neither an actual word in itself, nor even a suffix as such [2].
And apart from superstition and interstition, I think even Susie Dent - Countdown's resident lexicographer and etymologist - would struggle to come up with any other terms ending this way.
Unless, that is, she happens to be familiar with the writings of rogue philosopher Nick Land who developed (and weaponised) the term hyperstition in the mid-1990s, when guiding spirit and chief theorist of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, at the University of Warwick.
II.
Hyperstition is a rather lovely neologism and a crucial concept within Land's work and the thinking of those who were in some manner influenced by him - such as Mark Fisher and Simon O'Sullivan, for example [3]. It can, surprisingly perhaps, be defined quite simply and clearly:
Hyperstition is the idea that theory, fiction, or memetic ideas can manifest and bring about their own reality via feedback loops and cultural momentum. [4]
It is, if you like, a more dynamic and active form of superstition that can materially change things. For example, cyberspace originated as a purely fictional concept in William Gibson's novel Neuromancer (1984). But it inspired engineers, investors, and cultures to build the actual Internet [5].
Another example is provided by Bitcoin, which started as a highly technical (if somewhat speculative) proposal posted on an obscure forum. As traders bought into the narrative of a decentralised cryptocurrency, however, their collective belief created the multi-billion-dollar market we see today [6].
But hyperstition isn't just the science of self-fulfilling prophecy - it's also a way of playing with time; of telling stories about the future in order to retroactively affect the present. In other words, by articulating tomorrow, you change how people act today to make that future happen. This is what gives science fiction its potency.
It all sounds a bit like magical thinking and I'm sure that's how friends at Treadwell's would interpret the theory. But it's not quite that - even if Land himself often discussed hyperstition in occult language borrowed from Lovecraft; he would, for example, call it a coincidence intensifier or speak of invoking the Old Ones [7].
Such framing, of course, serves to highlight the idea that when collective narratives take hold of a society they seem to possess an autonomous life of their own, becoming forces independent of human agency.
And so we arrive at Land's other big idea - accelerationism, or the virulent logic of techno-capitalism. The key point is this: don't fool yourself that mankind is master of events or will determine its own destiny (and don't think all knowledge is empowering).
III.
In sum: whilst there are many criticisms one might make of Land's theory - it depends, for example, "on a concept he never properly defines: non-human intelligence" [8] - the idea of hyperstition is always going to appeal to those who are searching for a form of post-irony; "a cultural condition in which sincerity returns [...] but returns transformed, self-aware, no longer naive" [9].
For this has the amusingly paradoxical result that it becomes possible to say something absurd but in all seriousness: "Not because you forgot it was absurd, but because you no longer believe that absurdity disqualifies meaning." [10]
Could it be that Nick Land takes us back to Albert Camus (albeit with a dark twist)? That suggests an interesting post for another day ... [11]
Notes
[1] Victor Stones (aka Victor Alfons Steuck) is a Brazilian writer, artist, and musician with a deep interest in philosophy, language, and the evolving role of technology in society. He explores many thought-provoking topics on his website, blending critical thinking with creativity.
His excellent essay 'Hyperstition and Nick Land's Accelerationism: A Deep Reflection', in which he introduces the concept of metastition as a diffractive counterpoint, can be found on his website linked to above or on medium.com (18 Nov 2024): click here. I will refer to this essay in the main text and quote from it in the notes below. I have also borrowed and adapted (a detail from) the amusing image created by Stones featuring Nick Land (and, originally, Michael Scott).
[2] The sitcom character Michael Scott - played brilliantly by Steve Carell in The Office (US version) utters the immortal line 'I'm not superstitious, but I'm a little stitious', in the season 4 two-part episode titled 'Fun Run' (written and dir. by Greg Daniels): click here to watch on YouTube.
Interestingly, Victor Stones argues that stition is effectively a real word - even if it has been extracted as a grammatical phantom from superstition - as it refers to the "underlying scaffolding of beliefs that helps us navigate reality" and would include ethical principles and cultural norms. But he also insists that Land's 'stition' is not truer than Michael Scott's; "it is simply dressed in theory" and coined knowingly.
[3] I'm assuming most readers will be familiar with the name Mark Fisher, if only because I have written many posts about his work on TTA: click here. As for Simon O'Sullivan, he's a philosopher and artist working at the intersection of these two practices who regularly writes about hyperstition as an experimental methodology.
Other thinkers influenced by Land who have developed his theory of hyperstition in their own work include Austrian philosopher Armen Avanessian, who co-directed the documentary Hyperstition in 2016; Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani, who, in his seminal theory-fiction book Cyclonopedia, utilised the concept to describe petroleum-based mythologies that alter geopolitical realities; and the Australian xenofeminist Amy Ireland, whose work frequently explores the hyperstitional properties of language, logic, and poetry.
[4] Nick Land helpfully described hyperstition himself as 'an element of effective culture that makes itself real, through fictional qualities functional as a time-travelling device'.
[5] As Victor Stones reminds us, in a similar manner "many technologies initially imagined in science fiction, such as Artificial Intelligence or Virtual Reality, have transitioned from speculative fiction into practical innovation because of their hyperstitional power". See his essay linked to in note 1 above.
This is why we should not only be careful what we wish for, but cautious about what we dream, fantasise, or imagine.
[6] It is important to remember, however, that for every Bitcoin, "a thousand crypto-narratives collapsed" and one of the criticisms of Land's theory is that it doesn't account for this: "It notices winners and retroactively calls them inevitable; survivorship bias dressed in cybernetics." Empirical claims about how narratives become real should always be treated with caution for as long as they remain untested or are in fact untestable. Again, see Victor Stones, from whose essay I quote here.
[7] As Stones says, the CCRU deliberately wrote about "time-warps and Lovecraftian magic" for a good reason; it induced readers of their philosophy to act as if these things were real: "And acting-as-if, for Land, is indistinguishable from reality."
[8] "Land writes as if capitalism or the market 'thinks', processing information, selecting trajectories, and 'manufacturing intelligence' without human direction. Yet he provides no operational criteria to
distinguish such intelligence from stochastic noise, homeostatic feedback, or simple anthropomorphic projection."
Quoted from Victor Stones, 'Hyperstition and Nick Land's Accelerationism: A Deep Reflection' ... See link provided in note 1 above.
Stones goes on to accuse Land of being a crypto-theologian when it comes to this question of non-human intelligence; one who has fooled himself (and his loyal followers) into thinking he's making strictly analytical assertions, when he is actually making faith claims or expressing his own ideological preferences.
Ultimately, the practice of metastition proposed by Stones is a conscious, reflective intervention into the blind feedback loops of hyperstition and rooted in old
school sincerity; strong, but not naive and with nothing post-ironic about it. Politically, it allows for (and encourages) accountability and responsibility, whereas the politics of hyperstition and accelerationism promoted by Land ushers in a radically inhuman future via a post-democratic period he terms the Dark Enlightenment (which I have written about on TTA here).
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] That day is now here.
