Why Start a Demonology Club?

General Outline of the “In the Style of Demons” Project 

The story of how the Other’s voice speaks within our intention, so that we become ourselves as the Other. 

Following Eugene Thacker’s categories: 

1. The World-For-Us is the instrumentalized intention that Heidegger called the “Ready-to-Hand" intention because being is graspable as objects in this sort of intentional aboutness. When consciousness accords with the given concepts of science, culture, religion, and philosophy, or what Lacan Called the “Symbolic,” the intention is “for” the subject to hold in hand as if a tool. Graham Harmon helpfully calls this sort of intention for being “Tool-Being.” Thacker associates this intention with Heidegger's notion of “Dasein’s” project of making a world for human aims. Thacker calls this human-centered, world-making project the “world” because human beings transact a world with the symbolic objects of the Lacanian “Big Other,” or the Heideggerian “The They.” 
2. The World-In-Itself is what withdraws from Dasein’s instrumental intentions, or what Heidegger thought of as being “for” itself and not “for” human being specifically. However, this sort of being-for-its-own-sake is still related to human being even as it withdraws from human intentions because human intention, or awareness, is being’s awareness of itself. Heidegger called the relation of human consciousness to the intentions of Being-in-itself the “Present-at-Hand" intention because in this sort of aboutness being is no longer objectified to grasp or manipulate for human purposes. This sort of intention clears away human intentions for economic use-value and instead values what is without value in the sense of “invaluable.” Because of Dasein’s excessive care for being, it cares for what is beyond its own intentions for being. Dasein cares for what being intents for itself, which is to be known “as” and “in” the intention through the process of self-revelation that Heidegger called Being-in-Time. Heidegger saw human being as the “Shepard of Being” when it becomes a clearing for being’s non-instrumental intentions. Thacker uses the term “Earth” for the world when the world includes the intentions of Kant’s “Things-in-Themselves,” which are only “in-themselves” because their intentions withdraw from the “Ready-to-Hand" intention of Tool-Being and appear rather in the Present-at-Hand intention as Things-for-Themselves. Being is “in” itself when it withdraws from the intention, which means that it is “for” itself because it is not for a transactional intention, but it is still for the most basic intention of awareness.   
3. The World-Without-Us is the world without intention as awareness and without intention as Heideggerian “Care” for being. The world without Care is ultimately governed by entropy just as Dasein’s world is, but without Care, there is none of Dasein’s intentional “world-making.” There is no use of talking about whatever will be there without us because there will no longer be any concepts, including concepts of entropy, with which to conceive of whatever it maybe. Thacker calls the world without us the “Planet” because it is some sort of unobserved physical reality but without concepts of physics or of reality. The Planet is without the intention to either be objectify as a planet, or the intention to let whatever speak for itself from the subjective position because the speaking being has disappeared into the silent horror of absolute nihility. If language is “the House of Being,” then language’s disappearance is also the disappearance of being “in” and “for” it-self, which is either Nirvana or nothing, or both. But this nothing would not be Samuel Beckett’s “incontinent void,” nor Pseudo-Dionysus's “Super-Saturated” nothing, which can be reached dialectically through the Via Negativa, this is the perfect nothing of entropy’s ultimate non-goal of undoing the possibility of Dialectic altogether. Nothing-in-Itself is the no-possibilities of no-relations. No-relations means the no-possibilities of either no-entropy, which is the Singularity compacted so tightly that there is no space for relations, or complete entropy, which is matter-energy so spread out across space that being cannot relate to itself. 

Thacker’s Types of Worlds in relation to horror: 

1. Pagan horror, such as Wicker Man, The Witch, and Midsommer, are the horror of the World-for-Us because pagan techne is for the instrumentalization of the world. In Pagan religious praxis the spiritual realm is studied to transact with according to the intentions of the practitioner. From the perspective of Demonology, which is how the Christian Church viewed pagan praxis, demons were identified by name to bind them for a transactional intention. However, once summoned, demons often were able to trade their binding for the binding of the summoner. The mythological structure of the Faustian Bargain reveals this reversal in which obtaining the demon’s favor exacts a high price. 
2. The Horror of the unknowable intention of the Other explored in narrative troupes such as the “Slasher” or demonic possession is the horror of the World-In-Itself. The world of the unknowable other withdraws from us as the enigma of Being-In-Itself. This is the same enigma as that of the Being-for-Itself of Heidegger's Present-at-Hand intention, but the Other’s intention withdraws from subjective intention in a sinister manner in the Horror genre because the paradox of intentional ambiguity appears as the threat of desire’s inherent unknowability. It is not just unclear what motivates Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers to kill, it is unknowable. This unknowability is the horror of the “in-itself” of desire’s eternal withdrawal from the intention. When this indeterminacy shifts from the external Other to the internalized Other of the voice from within, the question shifts from “What does the Other want from me?” to “What does the Other who speaks as me want?”. This internalization of unintentional desire is ultimately the reason why the desire of the Other is unknowable i.e.: the Other’s desire is also unknowable to himself. Jason Vorhees and Michael Myers also don’t know why they do what they do, even though the narratives of both include various versions of “Origin Stories.” Origin Stories may go some way to suggesting the Slasher’s intentions but offer no final or definitive account of the ambiguous excess of his desire. The demonic possession narrative simply conveys the unknowability of the desire of the Other to the ambiguity of the desire within. The intention of the Other withdraws from the subjective intention in the same way that the subject withdraws from itself as the subjective unconscious, which is why the unconscious is the fount of all horror. 
3. The Cosmic horror of no-intention is most associated with HP Lovecraft. The end of entropy is not the unintentional relations of chaos but the total absence of relations. Cosmic Horror such as Stephen King’s The Mist or Lovecraft’s The Color out of Space present the absence of intention as what cannot be brought into relation with the subjective intention. This is not the unknowability of intention, nor the negation of intention, but the before and beyond of both.