Eugene Thacker

In this course

Eugene Thacker is a philosopher and theorist of horror, weird materialism, and the relationship between life, death, and unknowability who appears throughout these readings as a conceptual anchor for thinking about biological systems and contagion outside humanistic frames. The excerpts invoke his work on microbial life and viral unpredictability to argue that natural systems—like artificial ones—exceed human prediction and control, collapsing distinctions between animate and inanimate agency. His thinking enables the course to move beyond intentionality and toward a posthuman account of networks, parasites, and forms of existence that undermine anthropocentric survival narratives.

Mentioned in 2 readings