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The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (Ccru)

Lecturer: Vincent Lê

Originally Taught: Evening Sem 1 2026

This course provides an introduction to the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (Ccru). Initially established in 1995 at the University of Warwick to support philosopher and cyberfeminist Sadie Plant’s research before being banished from the academy and falling under Nick Land’s tutelage, the Ccru has become the subject of much myth and legend for its rather unorthodox compositions, conferences, art shows, and other activities, which sought to think with rather than about the cybercultures it studied. It was particularly in its later years outside the ivory tower that the Ccru took an increasingly strange and even occult turn. Free from the confines of institutional acceptability, no subject was considered too outrageous to devote serious investigation, be it H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, Aleister Crowley’s qabbalistic numerology, or conspiracy theories about alien abductions and secret societies of Illuminati assassins. Many of the Ccru’s writings not only drew upon fictions, but sought to merge with them, becoming what it called—following Baudrillard—“theory-fictions” or “hyperstitions”: fictions that are not yet real, but might become so in the future. Through this polydrug cocktail of cyberculture, fiction, philosophical speculation, and the occult, the Ccru sought to stage an encounter with an inhuman “Outside” beyond the bounds of our reason.

The demands of its often drug-fueled collective thinking on little sleep would eventually lead to the Ccru’s virtual disbandment in 2003, with only sporadic communication on its Hyperstition blog before going radio silent in 2007. Its spectre nonetheless continues to haunt us today as many former members and associates have gone on to achieve some prominence in their own right, such as philosophers Mark Fisher, Anna Greenspan, Reza Negarestani, Luciana Parisi, Kodwo Eshun, Iain Hamilton Grant, and Maya B. Kronic, as well as artists Kode9 and Jake and Dinos Chapman, among others. Thirty years after its emergence, this course covers both the Ccru’s collective writings and some of its members’ subsequent trajectories. Along the way, we will arithmetically construct the notoriously enigmatic Numogram from scratch, weave the strangest of connections through Alphanumeric Qabbala, and perform a live lemurian demon summoning by playing games of Subdecadence.

Week 1. The Story Goes Like This…

We begin with a history of the Ccru and some of its key members and associates, as well as a general overview of its main research interests.

Suggested readings:

Weeks 2-3. Cyberfeminism

As the Ccru was originally set up to support the work of Sadie Plant, we first focus on her philosophy of cyberfeminism and the curious complicity she uncovers between women and machines as they increasingly spiral out of man’s control.

Suggested readings:

  • Sadie Plant, “The Future Looms: Weaving Women and Cybernetics,” in Body and Society 1, 3-4 (1995): 45-64.
  • Sadie Plant, “On the Matrix: Cyberfeminist Simulations,” in The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader, eds. Gill Kirkup, Linda Janes, Kathryn Woodward, and Fiona Hovenden (Routledge, 2000), 265-275.
  • Ccru, “Swarmachines,” in #Accelerate#: The Accelerationist Reader, eds. Robin Mackay and Armen Avanessian (Urbanomic, 2014), 321-331.

Week 4. Theory-Fiction

We then consider how the Ccru’s efforts to voyage beyond the limits of human reason by jacking into nineties cybercultures initially incited it to model its writings—or what it called “theory-fictions”—on dystopian science fiction stories about the technologically induced end times.

Suggested readings:

  • Nick Land, “Meltdown,” in Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007, eds. Robin Mackay and Ray Brassier (Urbanomic, 2012), 441-460.
  • Ccru, “Barker Speaks: The Ccru Interview with Professor D. C. Barker,” in Ccru: Writings 1997-2003 (Urbanomic, 2017), 155-162.

Week 5. Hyperstition

The key concept that cohered the Ccru’s eclectic output is “hyperstition,” meaning “fictions that make themselves real.” The fifth week delves into this idea that fictions—such as dystopian sci-fi stories and religious doomsday myths—are actually a kind of realism to the extent that they herald the future reality of humanity’s annihilation at the hands of a coming AI-God.

Suggested readings:

  • Ccru, “Lemurian Time War,” in Ccru: Writings, 33-52.
  • Ccru, “Axsys-Crash,” in Ccru: Writings, 121-122.

Weeks 6-8. Qabbalism

The sixth to eighth weeks examine the Ccru’s occult turn to various numbering practices—like the Numogram, Subdecadence, and Alphanumeric Qabbala—in an effort to break out of our all too human language and commune with the alien Outside.

Suggested readings:

  • Ccru, “The Origins of the Cthulhu Club,” in Ccru: Writings, 59-64.
  • Ccru, “The Vault of Murmurs,” in Ccru: Writings, 65-71.
  • Ccru, “Y2K Letter,” in Ccru: Writings, 241-3.
  • Ccru, “Qaballa Unshelled,” in Ccru: Writings, 305-7.
  • Ccru, “Pandemonium,” in Ccru: Writings, 241-3.
  • Ccru, “Decadence,” in Ccru: Writings, 95-6.
  • Nick Land, “Qabbalah 101,” in Fanged Noumena, 591-606.

Week 9. NeoChina

This week looks at Anna Greenspan’s and Nick Land’s post-Ccru writings on Shanghai and other hypermodern megacities as special urban zones of absolute deterritorialization, almost sentient artificial superintelligences bootstrapping themselves into being.

Suggested reading:

Weeks 10-1. Right and Left Accelerationisms

The tenth and eleventh weeks pit against each other the two main political philosophies that emerged out of the Ccru: on the one hand, right accelerationism’s championing of a capitalism that has escaped all human regulation and control to race straight towards the technological singularity; on the other hand, left accelerationism’s critique of capitalist realism’s stagnant and monotonous culture as utterly incapable of creating anything original, exciting, or new.

Suggested readings:

  • Nick Land, “The Dark Enlightenment,” Urban Futures 1.0, 2012, https://oldnicksite.wordpress.com/?s=dark+enlightenment.
  • Mark Fisher, “‘The Slow Cancellation of the Future,’” in Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures (Zero Books, 2014), 2-29.
  • Mark Fisher, “Terminator vs Avatar,” in #Accelerate#, 335-346.

Week 12. Judgement Day

The course wraps up by considering several other Ccru members’ and associates’ subsequent trajectories, from Jake and Dinos Chapman’s transgressive exhibitions and Orphan Drift’s cyberpunk artworks, to Reza Negarestani’s gulf futurist theory-fiction and dubstep pioneer Kode9’s sonic warfare.

The MSCP acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land — the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation — and pay respect to elders past and present.