The Phenoumenodelic Ark

Mapping out multiple paths through Gabriel Catren’s innovative psychedelic work of transcendental philosophy.

In Pleromatica, Gabriel Catren confronts the most fundamental challenges of modernity. It is a major philosophical work that kicks against postmodern nihilism in a style that digests the ventriloquizing transpoetics of Leminski, the neobaroque queerness of Néstor Perlongher, the cannibalism of Oswald De Andrade, and the startling imagery of Lezama Lima, a post-Grothendieckian reconfiguration of transcendental philosophy, a "phenoumenodelic" trip through multiple kaleidoscopic perspectives on life and matter to the far side of "speculative realism," a fever vision of a hypothetical speculative, trans-specific, noncolonial and nonextractivist modernity, Catren’s ‘lanjaguar’, confronting the Kantian heritage, but infused with the vivência and razonabilidad of Latin American thought and the perspectivist Amazonian anthropology of Eduardo Viveiros De Castro, constitutes a veritable UFO in the philosophical skies. In this collection, contributors from a wide range of philosophical perspectives assess the speculative achievements of Pleromatica and extend the new perspectives that Catren’s book opens up for thought.