Over the past half century, antihumanism has been—paradoxically—the reigning paradigm in the humanities. But the rise of Large Language Models, which automate so much of what has been understood to constitute “the human,” marks the eclipse of the antihumanist paradigm, at least if it is understood as an emancipatory project. This talk will trace the intellectual arc of antihumanist thought with particular attention to the career of the philosopher Nick Land, who transformed the premises of poststructuralist thought into a radical case for AI accelerationism. It will then consider some of the proposed ways beyond the impasse of exhausted antihumanism, especially in Leif Weatherby's new book Language Machines. 

Register to livestream the event.

Geoff Shullenberger is managing editor of Compact. His writing has also appeared in publications including American Affairs, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New Atlantis, The Point, Tablet, UnHerd, and the Washington Examiner. He is co-editor of the book Covid-19 and the Left: The Tyranny of Fear (Routledge, 2024). He is writing an intellectual history of the tech right, to be published by Henry Holt in 2027. He holds a doctorate in comparative literature from Brown University and held positions at California State University, Monterey Bay and New York University.