A Short Prehistory of Ccru


The question of 'the' history of the Ccru is problematic, not least because Ccru activity is characterised by its antagonism towards stable temporality. It's the business of the great sedentary assemblages to establish settled lineages and well-ordered sequences, whereas Ccru-process attaches itself to coincidences, glitches and unforeseen consequences - breaks, twists and bends in time.

History insists upon a linear causal progression - a neat passage from the past (which is already decided) to the future (which is merely the playing out of what has been laid down in the past). Tell me about your mother, then, and I'll understand everything about you. Beyond this causality is another temporality, uncovered at the point where schizonanalysis meets pulp horror. Here, cause does not follow effect: there is a process of retrocontamination in which the deep past finds itself already infected with the far future. The crucial question is one of becoming: what are you changing into, what is growing out of you? Lovecraft, who specialised in narratives that looped the ancient palaeo- past into the far future, did not know that he was already infected with Ccru-virus any more than Ccru can know what strange entities are using its body to incubate the eggs from which they will emerge.