Ignota Hosts: ‘Prophetic Culture’ Book Launch

On 3 June 2021, Ignota welcomed back Federico Campagna for a special lecture to celebrate the launch of his book Prophetic Culture: Recreation for Adolescents (Bloomsbury 2021). 

Long before this book was sent to press, Federico presented the first two parts that compose it at Ignota (Part I and Part II). In this book launch, he will explore ‘Cosmography’, the third and final part of the book – a metaphysical journey across the dimensions making up reality, retold in a style that combines the tones of epic, romance and fiction for young adults.

Throughout history, different civilisations have given rise to many alternative worlds. Each of them was the enactment of a unique story about the structure of reality, the rhythm of time and the range of what it is possible to think and to do in the course of a life. Cosmological stories, however, are fragile things. As soon as they lose their ring of truth and their significance for living, the worlds that they brought into existence disintegrate. New and alien worlds emerge from their ruins. In Prophetic Culture, Campagna explores the twilight of our contemporary notion of reality, and the fading of the cosmological story that belonged to the civilisation of Westernised Modernity. How are we to face the challenge of leaving a fertile cultural legacy to those who will come after the end of our future? How can we help the creation of new worlds, out of the ruins of our own?

As part of this event, Federico will also present for the first time the earliest work-in-progress of his next publication, which will be centred on the practice of cultural syncretism.

Federico Campagna is an Italian philosopher based in London. He is the author of Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality (2018), The Last Night: Anti-Work, Atheism, Adventure (2013) and What We Are Fighting For: A Radical Collective Manifesto (2012) and visiting lecturer at Royal College of Art, UK.