More Accelerationism

Reminded by the post below, I've been meaning to link to this for ages: Accelerationism

Metaphysically Accelerationism could be aligned with Brassier's nihilism; life is not a positive force escaping death but death itself miming a vital energy. Politically it intersects at exiciting points with Marxism, postmodernism and techno-capitalist ideology. Rhetorically it provides writers with a wonderful dystopian sci-fi register. It's a lot of fun. Download the audio and check it out.

4 Responses to “More Accelerationism”

1. 
   peter
   17/11/10 01:30

   I listened through the entire conference on sunday (while slightly hungover) and then afterwards finally watched Avatar.
   
   firstly, avatar; honestly whats the big deal with this film? it real is, as southpark says, "dancing with smurfs". The dialogue is so stale, some of the lines literally grated my nerve endings to shreds. there isn't a eco-political subtext here. this fucking film is a subtext for having ridiculous eco-politics shoved down your throat. it was gaia theory eat-your-heart-out gone mad. it certainly looked pretty but the relentless bullshit coming out of people's mouths, the lack of any "real" characters - would of been funny to watch it in 3D considering how 2 dimesional the characters were (good or evil) - and idiotic ferngulliness-as-seriousness just ruined the whole thing.
   also the eco-politics it enshrines is just factually wrong: nature vs human; primitive pre-reflexive engagaement-in-the-world vs the industrial-corporate-military complex. this is a. ontologically wrong b. naive to the point of ludicrous. if only it were this simple then it'd be solveable by nullifying the "bad side of the equation". but as harman-echoing-latour and brassier's nihilism shows this is a spurious dualism.
   there is no separation because there is nothing to separate in the first place.
   
   secondly, accelerationism. I was equally moved by annoyance and confusion by most of the papers. and in places it seemed ill defined what these guys were trying to talk about - was it political or metaphysical? also i couldn't really see the point in some of their discussions.
   at the same time I really enjoyed the fact that accelerationism treats capitalism, and the system as such, as a real object. calling it skynet or the terminator was interesting, or equating it to an organism or machine is secondary i think (although a very interesting secondary) to treating it as a real object and not just reducible to its parts: neither overmining or undermining as Harman would say.
   also i liked the indepth discussions about complex systems theory as a romanticism that has both left and right political outcomes. I'm really happy that people are showing the links between anarchists and neo-liberals! but also showing that this dyad is only part of a fourfold discussion in terms of complex systems theory, namely its positive implications.
   I'm really grateful to chris for first showing me the medea hypothesis and i'm keen to known if anyone else has seen any papers discussing the negative effects of self-organisation. would be well interesting to see how left wing and right wing theorists utilise this as well as the positive.

2. 
   Chris
   18/11/10 12:47

   Avatar is very, very silly. But as Mark Fisher likes to keep pointing out it says some really interesting things about the ways in which we tell stories about nature and technology.
   
   I share your frustration with some of the accelerationism stuff but I can't help loving its apparently wilfuly obscure sci-fi doomsaying.
   
   Your talk of self-(dis)organisation made me remember this: http://books.global-investor.com/books/443388/Elie-Ayache/The-Blank-Swan/ which I can't find a review for but sounds really interesting as Meillissouxean assualt on probability (and hence organisation?)

3. 
   peter
   27/11/10 09:22

   will add it too my xmas list. have really got myself into a proper doomy self-(dis)organisation trend at the moment. made me remember reading a book that was a paradigm eg. of romantic connotations about self-organisation along the lines of "if you leave it alone it'll sort itself out fine" so i posted a review of it above. hope you enjoy.

4. 
   Chris
   17/12/10 10:34

   I finally found the piece of paper with the quote I wanted to describe Accelerationism. I'm pretty sure it's from Mark Fisher:
   "Deleuze and Guattari's machinic desire remorselessly stripped of all bergsonean vitalism made compatible with Freud's death deive and Schopenhauer's will"