Put the 'Rat' Back in Rationality (Libmat/Ratpack Gossip)

Introduction
Between Robin Mackay drunk Tweeting, Reza returning to Twitter, and Peter Wolfendale doing whatever it is he does (here Wolf talks about himself, Reza, and neorats), the internet has been buzzing with a revitalized discussion of the libidinal materialists vs. neorationalists divide.

Ok. There probably wasn't really a resurgence of this 'debate,'  but I am interested in using these semi-recent Twittersphere happenings to bring up a few strange connections that have been on my mind for a while:

• 1 - That one time Peter Wolfendale ambushed Nick Land in one of his own New Center for Research and Practice seminars and debated him for 40 minutes.

• 2 - The strange and sudden disappearance of a website I swear I visited called 'How to argue Nick Land' 

40 Minutes of Pete vs. Nick in 3 Memes 
1 first.

2 hours 5 minutes and 30 seconds into session 2 (06.19.16) of Nick Land’s New Center for Research and Practice class Outer Edges: 21st Century Spatial Metapolitics, a seminar largely centered on the theory of patchwork, Peter Wolfendale makes a surprise entrance to engage with Land. Pete and Nick go at it for about 40 minutes. Pete keeps arguing for some level of connection, agreement, or shared contact on a theoretical register while Land pushes back with his concepts of disintegration, fragmentation, disagreement, deuniversalization on a practical level.

Pete suggests we might have to presuppose some philosophical assumptions which Nick challenges by valuing the ability for one to protect one's sovereignty and independence over philosophical coherence. Nick then reminds Pete that patchwork doesn't want 'rational success' it wants 'several experiments many of which will fail.'

Pete thinks Nick's call to fragmentation and local, spatial agreement as opposed to universal globalist imposition is a "Nietzschean position" that posits something along the lines of 'the only ought one ought to have is to have less oughts'  (which is not the case, here Peter can't think past his own epistemological model of arguing and convincing others) which Nick responds to by pointing out that Pete seems to want libertarianism without the libertarianism (a soft categorical error).

A notable exchange that summarizes the debate:

Pete: "whenever you appeal to Darwinism as just a brute normative given from which political philosophy will start,  you're admitting you don't have an argument" 

Nick: "I think that's right because an argument implies agreement and we've given up on agreement...I reject the whole notion of the naturalistic fallacy. It's a occidental philosophical illusion"

When one watches the interchange one cannot help but laugh. Not because Peter isn't smart or interesting. He is (though I find him kind of irritating, I do admit to having his book in my Amazon cart) and Nick cordially thanks him for his contributions. No, one laughs because Peter speaks rapidly, appealing to rigorous philosophical concepts and arguments, speech and appeals that seem to be responding to - not unlike what D and G mention in a quote we cover later - Peter's own internal idea, his own fantasy of Land, more than Land himself. The tone and context seems to indicate that Peter thinks Land is going to buckle under Peter's intellectual weight; that Land, forced into compliance by the mechanisms of logic, will scurry to recant his obviously wrong statements or argue back. Rather, Land listens and basically retorts that he doesn't care. Peter appears to grow more and more frustrated, distraught, unhinged - 'how could my facts and logic have had no sway?' He cannot handle that he has been pontificating into a void. The rationalist undoes himself.

Considering we're on the Twitter plane of consistency and expression, let's take a moment to link this to three related memes;

ackchyually meme

Peter Wolfendale waiting for the right moment to pounce

Edinburgh Milk Meme

Wolfendale on the left, Land on the right.

Yes chad

Land's response  by the end of the whole thing (headphone-mic and all). 

Wolfendale thinks hes going to dunk on Land with his superior rational argumentation, Land, bored and channeling Deleuze's Nietzschean retort to his hecklers, retorts 'Yes, and?'

Disapearing Websites and Arguing into the Void
This gets us to 2. 

The story goes like this: one night I'm doing my usual Googling of Nick Land and amidst all the weird stuff I stumbled upon, the strangest was a Yahoo Answers style web page entitled 'How to Argue Nick Land.' The webpage, primitive and sparse in design, had a strange url, and had me worried I was going to receive a virus if I clicked in the wrong area. The content consisted of one poorly phrased question - 'How do you argue Nick Land, his ideas seem to not be open to discussion?' - posted by a user followed by a string of user comments (hence Yahoo answers) that covered the usual cool, warm, lukewarm, and hot takes on Nick Land.

 I remember finding the website very strange. Who would obtain a domain for a website centered on one question? Who made these user accounts for such a small, strange website? What would incentive someone to even use such a website with such a small network? etc. What is stranger is a month later when I went to revisit the website it had disappeared completely from the internet. Often one can at least find the url, click it, and get a 404 error. Nothing. I question if I did not simply hallucinate the whole thing in a sleep deprived, caffeine charged state.

Besides how consistent this strange event is with the digital nature of the CCRU, I bring this up to emphasize the effect Land has on others, and the difference between Landian (anti)philosophy and other philosophies - argument.

Nick says 'we've given up on argument.' This Landian discourse is of course reminiscent of my favorite and oft used quote of Deleuze and Guattari in What is Philosophy:

“The best one can say about discussions is that they take things no farther, since the participants never talk about the same thing. Of what concern is it...that someone has such a view, and thinks this or that, if the problems at stake are not stated? And when they are stated, it is no longer a matter of discussing but rather one of creating concepts for the undiscussible problem posed. Communication always comes too early or too late, and when it comes to creating, conversation is always superfluous. Sometimes philosophy is turned into the idea of a perpetual discussion, as "communicative rationality," or as "universal democratic conversation." Nothing is less exact...it never takes place on the same plane...All these debaters and communications are inspired by ressentiment. They speak only of themselves...Debate is unbearable.." 

Everyone loves to argue with Nick, from Pete in the New Center seminar, to Reza on and off over the last decade on the internet. Traditional philosophy is stuck in the trap of debate, of arguing. But, as seen with Pete, what happens when the argument, no matter how well thought out, has no bearing, no meaning to the other? Rationality has no sway over the void. Rationality is obsolete. The argument loses all effect, all impact. This does not sit well with those who wish to argue, however, and we get the universal unconscious wish to know 'how to argue Nick Land,' a universal unconscious wish which, it seems, manifests itself as a digital ghost.

Conclusion
Nicholas Blincoe, who apparently had land as a PHD advisor, writes

"Every month staff would give readings from work-in-progress. Nick’s first talk was entitled: 'Putting the Rat back Into Rationality,' in which he argued that, rather than seeing death as an event that happened at a particular time to an individual, we should look at it from the perspectives of the rats carrying the Black Death into Europe; that is, as a world-encircling swarm, without any specific coordinates, or any sense of individuation. An older professor tried to get his head round this idea:
'How might we locate this description within human experience?' he asked. Nick told him that human experience was, of course, worthy of study, but only as much as, say, the experience of sea slugs: 'I don’t see why it should receive any special priority.'

So, put the 'rat' back in rationality.