14 ms·

Accelerationism

97 points by lamby 7y ago

chobeat 7y ago
Keep in mind that "accelerationism" has been used in many different ways throughout history. Currently the most widespread usage is the Landian one but this wikipedia page is very superficial in describing it. And yes, from the original work of Nick Land many different political movements and categories are born, starting from the same analysis and the same philosophical toolbox but arriving at very different conclusion. L/acc, R/acc, U/acc, NRX and so on have almost nothing in common to the neophyte and framing them as sides of a single movement is quite pointless and confusing. As a xenoaccelerationist active in some L/acc circles, feel free to ask me questions or pointers for good readings.
- chao- 7y ago
  My first ask would be just some help cutting through the jargon. I can guess from the wikipedia article, and general political context, that the "L/" and "R/" stands for "Left" and "Right", not "Liberal", "Reform", "Restrained", or similar. But then what is "U/"? Utopian? Utilitarian? Unrestrained? Similar with "NRX", which I cannot even begin to guess at.
  - emmelaich 7y ago
    From the linked Nick Land article, NRx seems to be neoreactionary. Seems many movements fall in love with their own jargon and spend time attempting to distinguish themselves from other movements but only end up sounding even more obfuscatory.
    - dropit_sphere 7y ago
      Obfuscation serves as a surprisingly effective spam filter though....
  - tryitnow 7y ago
    My guess would be unconditional.
  - chobeat 7y ago
    U is unconditional, yes. It's not clear to me what they are or want exactly.
  - CrackerNews 7y ago
    (Cross post from another comment elsewhere) I'm not the best at understanding or explaining accelerationism, but I'll give it a shot. Accelerationism is that the current neoliberalism order will "naturally" progress to a next phase of society. I gather that left-accelerationists (L/acc) usually subscribe to the labor theory of value, and so automation's decrease of labor value to 0 will result in a collapse of capitalism that derives value of goods and services from the labor needed to produce them. Right-accelerationism (R/acc) seeks to embrace the disruption of technology to a logical extreme for technologial progress. Neo-Reaction (NRx) wants to revert back to pre-democratic ideals as they see democracy as being incompatible with their techno-libertarian ideals. I haven't heard of xenoaccelerationism (X/acc?) before but upon a cursory glance, it seems similar in that it embraces the disruption of culture and identity politics by technology's increasing encroachment and control on nature. It sounds like an overlap with transhumanism, but I am probably uninformed about the finer details.
    - remarkEon 7y ago
      Are NRx people libertarians though? That seems somewhat opposed to the fetishism of Monarchy.
  - jowday 7y ago
    Unconditional. Quoting from rational wiki: "U/Acc claims that there is no action that can lead to acceleration or deacceleration, and that "To the question ‘What is to be done?’, then, she can legitimately answer only, 'Do what thou wilt'". This however does not mean "do nothing", it rather means that "the unconditional accelerationist, more than anyone else, is free at heart to pursue what she thinks is good and right and interesting—but with the ironical realisation that the primary ends that are served are not her own."
- tryitnow 7y ago
  First question: what's a xenoaccelerationist? Is it appropriate to abbreviate it as X/acc? How does it relate to xenofeminism? What are 2 to 3 introductory texts you would recommend on acc in general and X/acc in particular? I've read "Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics", "Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation" and "#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader", what your thoughts on these books? My apologies for all the questions, but since you're offering I'd figured I'd ask.
  - chobeat 7y ago
    I've never seen that abbreviation and I don't like them but if you like, use it. Multiplicities! I would say that you need Inventing the future, that while being limited in many things, is a necessary read. Then proceed with Capitalist Realism and if you like it, Fanged Noumena.
    - claudiawerner 7y ago
      As a side note, Marxist scholar Antonio Negri has some thoughts on the accelerationist manifesto: http://criticallegalthinking.com/2014/02/26/reflections-accelerate-manifesto/ http://criticallegalthinking.com/2014/02/26/reflections-acce...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - beckingz 7y ago
    Xenofeminism is powerful
    - charlchi 7y ago
      > Hester also makes compelling and unexpected links between these second-wave feminist strategies and those of contemporary transfeminism, uncovering unlikely affinities between schools of thought often positioned in antagonism. In both of these historical instances, individuals acquire power over their bodies through building networks and repurposing everyday technologies. For Hester, the Del-Em is a direct antecedent to online trans* communities providing medical support or even grey-market hormones. At the threshold of this continuum is another of Hester’s evocative examples – a transgenic plant developed by Open Source Gendercodes which allows laypeople to grow sex hormones within tobacco leaves. For some reason I was expecting something more interesting than the same feminism and transgender politics...
- chobeat 7y ago
  Incidentally a nice talk on the topic is about to begin: https://m.twitch.tv/trust_support/profile?desktop-redirect=offline_channel https://m.twitch.tv/trust_support/profile?desktop-redirect=o...
- LiquidSky 7y ago
  >xenoaccelerationist Could you explain this term?
  - chobeat 7y ago
    Left wing accelerationism as pictured by Snircek and Williams in their work is missing a lot. It just references women's issues, minorities' issues and colonial issues but doesn't really incorporate or develop ideas on how to integrate solutions to these problems in an accelerationist, pro-technology, anti-natural perspective. So there are a bunch of authors and collectives working to enrich, directly or indirectly, this ideological framework to make it more encompassing of different human problems. Xenofeminism is one of them but it's also a lot more than that. While there is a certain dialogue between xenofeminism and the accel world, they don't really pose themselves as "we like these two guys, let's add something to their work" but more as an indipendent field of research and an indipendent methodology. Xenoaccelerationism is what sits at the conjunction of these two positions, that while similar, can still exist without the other. But to me, it's pointless to abolish work under accelerationism if we cannot abolish gender under xenofeminism. It's pointless to talk about technology repurposing under accelerationism without talking about technology dissemination and hacking under xenofeminism. It's pointless to fight bio-capitalism under accelerationism without fighting the structures that allow it under xenofeminism.
    - LiquidSky 7y ago
      Thank you for the very interesting response.
rezmason 7y ago
This is like when Keanu Reeves accelerates the train in order to derail it at the end of Speed. Though I'm bearish on applying movie logic to social change.
armitron 7y ago
Here is a -great- introduction straight from the source (Nick Land): https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-introduction-to-accelerationism/ https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-introdu... The Wikipedia entry is informative and concise but the grand scope and (some would say) madness of Land's vision only begins to emerge when one immerses oneself in Land's writings, starting from "Meltdown" [1]. One doesn't need to be versed in Philosophy, Qabalah, Mysticism, Lovecraft and several different branches of the Occult - although it certainly helps - to grasp what Land is talking about. Just having read and understood Neuromancer is enough. For a more conventional, historical, perspective see [2] and [3]. If you're wondering "is there any value in this" consider the timing. Land may have been a burned-out drug-fueled academic, but some would say he revitalized Philosophy with his willingness to go outside the norm and commune with what lies beyond the human. Reaching the apex in the mid 90s, well before the impact of the Internet was obvious to the mainstream, people laughed at him then, but it turns out, he saw it all coming. “The definite probability that the allotment of time to decision-making is undergoing systematic compression remains a neglected consideration, even among those paying explicit and exceptional attention to the increasing rapidity of change.” [1] https://genius.com/Nick-land-meltdown-annotated https://genius.com/Nick-land-meltdown-annotated [2] https://energyflashbysimonreynolds.blogspot.com/2009/11/renegade-academia-cybernetic-culture.html https://energyflashbysimonreynolds.blogspot.com/2009/11/rene... [3] http://divus.cc/london/en/article/nick-land-ein-experiment-im-inhumanismus http://divus.cc/london/en/article/nick-land-ein-experiment-i...
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  Thanks a lot for these sources. I was really puzzled as to why Alt-Righters would claim following a Marxist ideology, but them having diverged with (Left-)Accelerationists as far back as 1968' Deleuze & Guattari makes it way clearer... Also, now I understand what Charles Stross (and dot-commers) were likely "smoking" when he wrote Accelerando in the late 90's... (and maybe his claim of "being the first qualified cyberpunk author just when cyberpunk died" might have been a bit premature ?)
bigYahnz 7y ago
hello fellow anon ACCELERATE
qsymmachus 7y ago
Most "accelerationists" these days are right-accelerationists, because it turns out it only seems like a good idea if you don't actually care about human suffering.
- chobeat 7y ago
  I think it depends on the countries. While I can believe this is true in the USA, for sure it doesn't apply to Italy, UK and Germany where l/acc stuff is being read by many in the cultural elites. Also mind that l/acc is not an explicit political movement and even if you read and agree, probably you won't identify as a l/acc, something that many regard as nonsensical.
- valgor 7y ago
  That is very true. I know and follow many Communists and Socialist, and none of them support Accelerationism in any form.
  - CrackerNews 7y ago
    There is left-accelerationism.
    - valgor 7y ago
      Thanks for the downvote and a thorough list of examples proving me wrong.
      - CrackerNews 7y ago
        I didn't downvote, but I will present a blog on the topic. (Like the rest of accelerationism, it's all on blogs) https://therealmovement.wordpress.com https://therealmovement.wordpress.com
  - eranima 7y ago
    That's what's called a confirmation bias.
  - 7y ago
khawkins 7y ago
I think this article has a distinct bias and isn't considering how most people discuss the issue today. I think that colloquially this word is used both by the left and the right to suggest the political tactic based on the sensibility that the political system is near collapse and attempts to "repair" the system from within are futile. Accelerationists are frustrated with the current system's perceived corruption, injustice, and immovability, thinking that acting in good faith will never attain the progress they aim for. They suggest that it is more valuable to push society and the political system to the point of collapse in attempts to incite a revolution, expecting that rebuilding the system from scratch, or at least in a society in chaos, will allow them to achieve their political goals in the new order. Accelerationism seems to be the motive for a bunch of terrorism. For example, the Christchurch shooter cited as part of his motives wanting to spur debates on gun control, especially in the US, recognizing that these debates are increasingly dividing the country and pushing the country towards a civil war. Dylan Roof wanted to incite a race war. A lot of Islamic terror is trying to incite a pan-Islamic revolution. Antifa riots, destroys property, and often directly engages with police and right-wing groups in an attempt to weaken the "capitalist" social order.
- davinic 7y ago
  You had me until Antifa riots. Source?
  - oauaoeu123123 7y ago
    Source for what ? antifa riots ? in france antifa destroys property and engages with the police on a pretty regular basis in several cities, it's pretty much become a sport for spoiled above-average kids - despite that it would seem otherwise.
  - dropit_sphere 7y ago
    Is Antifa accelerationist? I think if you asked them they'd say they were "confronting rising threats," not spurring them on. Am I mistaken?
    - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ericmcer 7y ago
This theory always brings to mind when I worked at a grocery store. I had just gone vegetarian for environmental reasons and a lady came to the cash register with ~20 or so of the 1lb ground beef packets. I asked her what they were for and she said “my dog”. Even at my peak I would eat maybe 2-3lbs or ground beef a week, her dog eats 20X that. This was maybe 8 years ago, global warming was well known, the horrors of the meat industry were well known. My main gripe with this theory is that it acts like we have a choice about whatever fate our nature is driving us towards.
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  Maybe she bought 20 packs because they were on sale and freezes them for later use?
- hnghost 7y ago
  How are you sure that the data you are getting is valid and relative to your existence?
- jraines 7y ago
  a prominent adherent to the theory recently noted (paraphrasing): Acceleration has little need for -ism and even less for -ists
- rjsw 7y ago
  The accelerationist response could have been to offer to shoot her dog.
hnghost 7y ago
World's most boring ideology.
daenz 7y ago
Accelerationism is just nihilism masquerading as a social good. It gives you a false moral authority to say "fuck it" and try to break things, because, after all, humans will fix everything "the right way" after it's all broken, so you're really doing everyone a favor.
rgrieselhuber 7y ago
Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light was a fascinating novel about accelerationist ideas.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  "Accelerationism" in Lord of Light meant making technology, especially life-extension technology, available to the masses instead of restricting it to the elites (who had used Sufficiently Advanced Technology to gain superpowers and set themselves up as Hindu gods, controlling the masses by restricting reincarnation to those who toed the line). It had little to do with the philosophy of the same name described here.
  - rgrieselhuber 7y ago
    Depends on your viewpoint.
charliesharding 7y ago
Accelerationism does not necessarily have to be specific to capitalism. There are those on the right who see the rise of identity politics and socialist thought; to them, the idea of accelerationism is to let socialism spread so that it too can be exposed as flawed. Accelerationism can apply to any ideology taken to an extreme.
dropit_sphere 7y ago
I'm a scary far-right NRX guy, and the accelerationist idea has obviously been raised in the circles I frequent. But it generally leaves me cold. This keeps coming to mind: "Wo unto the world because of offences! For offenses must come, but wo to him by whom the offence cometh!" You have to be pretty damn sure you can build a better new world before you burn down the old one. Would-be revolutionists would do better to focus their energies on things that: - even the "evil other side" could never convince themselves to call a war crime - are resilient to and helpful after whatever collapse is foreseen - will have some benefit if the collapse does not occur - don't make things worse. It is, in fact, possible to find these things. The worst-case scenario is that there's a collapse and it brings neither a worker's paradise nor the return of kings, but pointless gang wars. You can build that worker's paradise, or aristocratic character, before the collapse, and if you're right that the system is unsustainable, you'll "start" the collapse in a much better position. Sure, there are likely entrenched obstacles in your way, but making an omelette does not justify killing a few people. Get to know your neighbors!
- armitron 7y ago
  You and almost everybody else in this thread are missing the core of the idea, which stems from Land, and tries to hammer in the fact that humanity has no agency. Rather than being a philosophy of our continued evolution - things we do - , it speaks about our imminent transformation/extinction - things being done to us -. Under that light, accelerationism is nothing else but our collective acceptance we're as powerless against the technocapital positive feedback loop as against the movement of tectonic plates. It's this separation from and casting out of the "human security system", that allows one to look at the phenomenon with objectivity, and it's this separation that most critics and readers that look at accelerationism from the prism of conventional human-centered philosophy are missing.
  - jowday 7y ago
    I can't emphasize this enough. Land had two stages of thought. The first is what's described by armitron in the parent here, and was developed at Warwick University in the 90s. During his time at Warwick, Land developed some substance issues (amphetamines, mostly) and from what I've gathered ended up having a breakdown and moving to China. A few years after that he started writing his Neoreactionary work. While you could probably draw some links between the two phases of his work if you wanted to, they're at odds with one another. In the Accelerationist framework layed out by Land in the 90s, neoreactionary thought would have been futile - everything, including reactionary social mores, would be deterritorialized by capital.
nickthemagicman 7y ago
Sometimes the only way for people to learn a lesson is to be burned. As capitalism accelerates, inequality grows, poverty spreads, and pain/suffering become more widespread, people's eyes will open to con's as well as the pro's of capitalism. So it's more than just 'fuck it' it's instructive.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Isn't that "instruction" incredibly circular logic of sabotage for the sake of "proof" justifting what they already believe because of the outcome they caused? I recall an episode from a fictional crime show where the obligatory twist behind a horrically toxic water pollution blaming a new industrial operation. It had killed three people and sickened more was a radical environmentalist who wanted to frame a factory they believed would pollute more long term. Ironically one of the give aways to investigators was something the industry no longer used.
- Analemma_ 7y ago
  This is tremendously foolish reasoning. You're basically saying, "after we burn everything down, people will naturally come to the obvious conclusion that my politics are the Objectively Correct ones". Which... no. What people want first and foremost is safety and stability, and after everything burns down, the easiest way to get that is by putting an authoritarian strongman into power. Which, historically, has been the outcome of almost every large-scale revolution except the American one. (As an aside, I don't know if you're American, but if you are, I will note that an unfortunate effect of the American Revolution is that it tends to give Americans a very optimistic view of how well revolutions work out. They don't really realize that theirs is a miraculous outlier; it's almost the only revolution which didn't put an authoritarian government into power for years or decades)
  - lukifer 7y ago
    I've been trying to figure what makes America the outlier. One could say egalitarian Enlightenment values, but that didn't prevent the French Revolution from turning into a bloodbath and eventual authoritarianism. Do you know of any theories to explain the difference, well-accepted or not?
laughingbovine 7y ago
Wow... what did I just stumble into?
- camdenlock 7y ago
  Pure unbridled intellectual masturbation.
nickthemagicman 7y ago
Sometimes the only way for people to learn a lesson is to suffer . As capitalism accelerates, inequality grows, poverty spreads, and pain/suffering become more widespread, people's eyes will open to con's as well as the pro's of capitalism. Instead of walking by the homeless person and saying 'sucks to be them' people actually experience it. I think alot of people view capitalism as the reason America is so great instead of being the surviving superpower from WW2 and coasting on that for half a century. Capitalism was pretty oppressive in the early 1900s. We'll see what happens on the future. So overall accelerrationism is more than just nihilism, it's instructive. Unfortunately, with suffering on a generational timeframe. It's also, how government has progressed historically via people suffering. Now we're shifting from governmental tyrrany to economic tyrrany. The next few decades will be extremely interesting.
octosphere 7y ago
Infinite growth in terms of capitalism is not sustainable into the future and as decades go on it will only do more harm than good. I see this weird behavior in our world where growth is equated with progress when infact in a late-capitalism world, growth is actually the opposite of progress.
cat199 7y ago
don't mean to be 'dumb' here, but how is 'left accelerationism' not some flavor of socialism and 'right accelerationism' not some flavor of facism, other than using different words and sounding more 'current'
- uxp100 7y ago
  Left-accelerationism IS some form of socialism. The goal being to heighten the contradictions of capitalism. And yes, an accelerationist tendency has existed for a long time, since Marx I think. Right accelerationism differs from fascism in its relationship to capitalism I think. But honestly, I think these groupings are a bit iffy. There are connections between Zelzany, Land, and leftist acceleration, but they are slight.
- camdenlock 7y ago
  You’re not being dumb, you’re just noticing that these “philosophers” just really really enjoy endlessly writing jargon and arguing about terminology and the excruciating and irrelevant minutiae of their ideologies (AKA religions). It’s not intended to be clear. Quite the opposite.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  They're not just socialism and fascism (or something else right-wing), they're revolutionary socialism and fascism. The intent is to destroy the existing system and replace it with their vision of what would be "better". The difference is in technique. Old-school revolutionaries tried to destroy the current system by fighting it. Accelerationists try to destroy the system by trying to make it more what it is. If you think of the system (current US democracy plus capitalism, say) in the center of a frame, a leftist would view it as being too far to the right, and a rightist would view it as being too far to the left. An old-school leftist would try to shove the whole country to the left. A left accelerationist would try to shove it to the right, thinking that the further right it gets, the closer it is to destroying itself. Of course, their perspective is a bit off. The left (or right) accelerationist sees the current system as already being pretty far right (or left), not center. They therefore mis-estimate how much further they would have to move it to bring about destruction. If they fail to move it that far, all they've done is strengthen the side they're trying to fight.
kerkeslager 7y ago
Anyone working on AI or robotics is supporting accelerationism, whether they are ideologically for it or not. The singularity will remove the need for white collar labor, and while there is not such a clear turning point for robotics, robotics will eventually replace the need for blue collar labor. When human labor has no value, then only products have value, and the world is divided into those who have the products and those who do not, with no chance for mobility between the two. Class mobility, or the assumption that labor can turn one from a have not to a have, is the only thing that makes capitalism palatable, so I can't imagine that the complete removal of that possibility will go unnoticed.
zed88 7y ago
Some say that the founder of Buzzfeed Jonah Peretti is an accelerationist. Peretti's academic writings offer one clue. In brief, the paper argues that, going forward, capitalism will need to be constantly producing identities for people to adopt at an ever-increasing rate. And now Peretti's at the helm of a firm that's doing exactly that. Coincidence? http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_peretti.html http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_perett...

97 points by lamby 7y ago

Keep in mind that "accelerationism" has been used in many different ways throughout history. Currently the most widespread usage is the Landian one but this wikipedia page is very superficial in describing it. And yes, from the original work of Nick Land many different political movements and categories are born, starting from the same analysis and the same philosophical toolbox but arriving at very different conclusion. L/acc, R/acc, U/acc, NRX and so on have almost nothing in common to the neophyte and framing them as sides of a single movement is quite pointless and confusing. As a xenoaccelerationist active in some L/acc circles, feel free to ask me questions or pointers for good readings.

chao- 7y ago
My first ask would be just some help cutting through the jargon. I can guess from the wikipedia article, and general political context, that the "L/" and "R/" stands for "Left" and "Right", not "Liberal", "Reform", "Restrained", or similar. But then what is "U/"? Utopian? Utilitarian? Unrestrained? Similar with "NRX", which I cannot even begin to guess at.
- emmelaich 7y ago
  From the linked Nick Land article, NRx seems to be neoreactionary. Seems many movements fall in love with their own jargon and spend time attempting to distinguish themselves from other movements but only end up sounding even more obfuscatory.
  - dropit_sphere 7y ago
    Obfuscation serves as a surprisingly effective spam filter though....
- tryitnow 7y ago
  My guess would be unconditional.
- chobeat 7y ago
  U is unconditional, yes. It's not clear to me what they are or want exactly.
- CrackerNews 7y ago
  (Cross post from another comment elsewhere) I'm not the best at understanding or explaining accelerationism, but I'll give it a shot. Accelerationism is that the current neoliberalism order will "naturally" progress to a next phase of society. I gather that left-accelerationists (L/acc) usually subscribe to the labor theory of value, and so automation's decrease of labor value to 0 will result in a collapse of capitalism that derives value of goods and services from the labor needed to produce them. Right-accelerationism (R/acc) seeks to embrace the disruption of technology to a logical extreme for technologial progress. Neo-Reaction (NRx) wants to revert back to pre-democratic ideals as they see democracy as being incompatible with their techno-libertarian ideals. I haven't heard of xenoaccelerationism (X/acc?) before but upon a cursory glance, it seems similar in that it embraces the disruption of culture and identity politics by technology's increasing encroachment and control on nature. It sounds like an overlap with transhumanism, but I am probably uninformed about the finer details.
  - remarkEon 7y ago
    Are NRx people libertarians though? That seems somewhat opposed to the fetishism of Monarchy.
- jowday 7y ago
  Unconditional. Quoting from rational wiki: "U/Acc claims that there is no action that can lead to acceleration or deacceleration, and that "To the question ‘What is to be done?’, then, she can legitimately answer only, 'Do what thou wilt'". This however does not mean "do nothing", it rather means that "the unconditional accelerationist, more than anyone else, is free at heart to pursue what she thinks is good and right and interesting—but with the ironical realisation that the primary ends that are served are not her own."
tryitnow 7y ago
First question: what's a xenoaccelerationist? Is it appropriate to abbreviate it as X/acc? How does it relate to xenofeminism? What are 2 to 3 introductory texts you would recommend on acc in general and X/acc in particular? I've read "Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics", "Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation" and "#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader", what your thoughts on these books? My apologies for all the questions, but since you're offering I'd figured I'd ask.
- chobeat 7y ago
  I've never seen that abbreviation and I don't like them but if you like, use it. Multiplicities! I would say that you need Inventing the future, that while being limited in many things, is a necessary read. Then proceed with Capitalist Realism and if you like it, Fanged Noumena.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    As a side note, Marxist scholar Antonio Negri has some thoughts on the accelerationist manifesto: http://criticallegalthinking.com/2014/02/26/reflections-accelerate-manifesto/ http://criticallegalthinking.com/2014/02/26/reflections-acce...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- beckingz 7y ago
  Xenofeminism is powerful
  - charlchi 7y ago
    > Hester also makes compelling and unexpected links between these second-wave feminist strategies and those of contemporary transfeminism, uncovering unlikely affinities between schools of thought often positioned in antagonism. In both of these historical instances, individuals acquire power over their bodies through building networks and repurposing everyday technologies. For Hester, the Del-Em is a direct antecedent to online trans* communities providing medical support or even grey-market hormones. At the threshold of this continuum is another of Hester’s evocative examples – a transgenic plant developed by Open Source Gendercodes which allows laypeople to grow sex hormones within tobacco leaves. For some reason I was expecting something more interesting than the same feminism and transgender politics...
chobeat 7y ago
Incidentally a nice talk on the topic is about to begin: https://m.twitch.tv/trust_support/profile?desktop-redirect=offline_channel https://m.twitch.tv/trust_support/profile?desktop-redirect=o...
LiquidSky 7y ago
>xenoaccelerationist Could you explain this term?
- chobeat 7y ago
  Left wing accelerationism as pictured by Snircek and Williams in their work is missing a lot. It just references women's issues, minorities' issues and colonial issues but doesn't really incorporate or develop ideas on how to integrate solutions to these problems in an accelerationist, pro-technology, anti-natural perspective. So there are a bunch of authors and collectives working to enrich, directly or indirectly, this ideological framework to make it more encompassing of different human problems. Xenofeminism is one of them but it's also a lot more than that. While there is a certain dialogue between xenofeminism and the accel world, they don't really pose themselves as "we like these two guys, let's add something to their work" but more as an indipendent field of research and an indipendent methodology. Xenoaccelerationism is what sits at the conjunction of these two positions, that while similar, can still exist without the other. But to me, it's pointless to abolish work under accelerationism if we cannot abolish gender under xenofeminism. It's pointless to talk about technology repurposing under accelerationism without talking about technology dissemination and hacking under xenofeminism. It's pointless to fight bio-capitalism under accelerationism without fighting the structures that allow it under xenofeminism.
  - LiquidSky 7y ago
    Thank you for the very interesting response.

rezmason 7y ago

This is like when Keanu Reeves accelerates the train in order to derail it at the end of Speed. Though I'm bearish on applying movie logic to social change.

armitron 7y ago

Here is a -great- introduction straight from the source (Nick Land): https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-introduction-to-accelerationism/ https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-introdu... The Wikipedia entry is informative and concise but the grand scope and (some would say) madness of Land's vision only begins to emerge when one immerses oneself in Land's writings, starting from "Meltdown" [1]. One doesn't need to be versed in Philosophy, Qabalah, Mysticism, Lovecraft and several different branches of the Occult - although it certainly helps - to grasp what Land is talking about. Just having read and understood Neuromancer is enough. For a more conventional, historical, perspective see [2] and [3]. If you're wondering "is there any value in this" consider the timing. Land may have been a burned-out drug-fueled academic, but some would say he revitalized Philosophy with his willingness to go outside the norm and commune with what lies beyond the human. Reaching the apex in the mid 90s, well before the impact of the Internet was obvious to the mainstream, people laughed at him then, but it turns out, he saw it all coming. “The definite probability that the allotment of time to decision-making is undergoing systematic compression remains a neglected consideration, even among those paying explicit and exceptional attention to the increasing rapidity of change.” [1] https://genius.com/Nick-land-meltdown-annotated https://genius.com/Nick-land-meltdown-annotated [2] https://energyflashbysimonreynolds.blogspot.com/2009/11/renegade-academia-cybernetic-culture.html https://energyflashbysimonreynolds.blogspot.com/2009/11/rene... [3] http://divus.cc/london/en/article/nick-land-ein-experiment-im-inhumanismus http://divus.cc/london/en/article/nick-land-ein-experiment-i...

BlueTemplar 7y ago
Thanks a lot for these sources. I was really puzzled as to why Alt-Righters would claim following a Marxist ideology, but them having diverged with (Left-)Accelerationists as far back as 1968' Deleuze & Guattari makes it way clearer... Also, now I understand what Charles Stross (and dot-commers) were likely "smoking" when he wrote Accelerando in the late 90's... (and maybe his claim of "being the first qualified cyberpunk author just when cyberpunk died" might have been a bit premature ?)

bigYahnz 7y ago

hello fellow anon ACCELERATE

qsymmachus 7y ago

Most "accelerationists" these days are right-accelerationists, because it turns out it only seems like a good idea if you don't actually care about human suffering.

chobeat 7y ago
I think it depends on the countries. While I can believe this is true in the USA, for sure it doesn't apply to Italy, UK and Germany where l/acc stuff is being read by many in the cultural elites. Also mind that l/acc is not an explicit political movement and even if you read and agree, probably you won't identify as a l/acc, something that many regard as nonsensical.
valgor 7y ago
That is very true. I know and follow many Communists and Socialist, and none of them support Accelerationism in any form.
- CrackerNews 7y ago
  There is left-accelerationism.
  - valgor 7y ago
    Thanks for the downvote and a thorough list of examples proving me wrong.
    - CrackerNews 7y ago
      I didn't downvote, but I will present a blog on the topic. (Like the rest of accelerationism, it's all on blogs) https://therealmovement.wordpress.com https://therealmovement.wordpress.com
- eranima 7y ago
  That's what's called a confirmation bias.
- 7y ago

khawkins 7y ago

I think this article has a distinct bias and isn't considering how most people discuss the issue today. I think that colloquially this word is used both by the left and the right to suggest the political tactic based on the sensibility that the political system is near collapse and attempts to "repair" the system from within are futile. Accelerationists are frustrated with the current system's perceived corruption, injustice, and immovability, thinking that acting in good faith will never attain the progress they aim for. They suggest that it is more valuable to push society and the political system to the point of collapse in attempts to incite a revolution, expecting that rebuilding the system from scratch, or at least in a society in chaos, will allow them to achieve their political goals in the new order. Accelerationism seems to be the motive for a bunch of terrorism. For example, the Christchurch shooter cited as part of his motives wanting to spur debates on gun control, especially in the US, recognizing that these debates are increasingly dividing the country and pushing the country towards a civil war. Dylan Roof wanted to incite a race war. A lot of Islamic terror is trying to incite a pan-Islamic revolution. Antifa riots, destroys property, and often directly engages with police and right-wing groups in an attempt to weaken the "capitalist" social order.

davinic 7y ago
You had me until Antifa riots. Source?
- oauaoeu123123 7y ago
  Source for what ? antifa riots ? in france antifa destroys property and engages with the police on a pretty regular basis in several cities, it's pretty much become a sport for spoiled above-average kids - despite that it would seem otherwise.
- dropit_sphere 7y ago
  Is Antifa accelerationist? I think if you asked them they'd say they were "confronting rising threats," not spurring them on. Am I mistaken?
  - 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

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ericmcer 7y ago

This theory always brings to mind when I worked at a grocery store. I had just gone vegetarian for environmental reasons and a lady came to the cash register with ~20 or so of the 1lb ground beef packets. I asked her what they were for and she said “my dog”. Even at my peak I would eat maybe 2-3lbs or ground beef a week, her dog eats 20X that. This was maybe 8 years ago, global warming was well known, the horrors of the meat industry were well known. My main gripe with this theory is that it acts like we have a choice about whatever fate our nature is driving us towards.

oh_sigh 7y ago
Maybe she bought 20 packs because they were on sale and freezes them for later use?
hnghost 7y ago
How are you sure that the data you are getting is valid and relative to your existence?
jraines 7y ago
a prominent adherent to the theory recently noted (paraphrasing): Acceleration has little need for -ism and even less for -ists
rjsw 7y ago
The accelerationist response could have been to offer to shoot her dog.

hnghost 7y ago

World's most boring ideology.

daenz 7y ago

Accelerationism is just nihilism masquerading as a social good. It gives you a false moral authority to say "fuck it" and try to break things, because, after all, humans will fix everything "the right way" after it's all broken, so you're really doing everyone a favor.

rgrieselhuber 7y ago

Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light was a fascinating novel about accelerationist ideas.

PhasmaFelis 7y ago
"Accelerationism" in Lord of Light meant making technology, especially life-extension technology, available to the masses instead of restricting it to the elites (who had used Sufficiently Advanced Technology to gain superpowers and set themselves up as Hindu gods, controlling the masses by restricting reincarnation to those who toed the line). It had little to do with the philosophy of the same name described here.
- rgrieselhuber 7y ago
  Depends on your viewpoint.

charliesharding 7y ago

Accelerationism does not necessarily have to be specific to capitalism. There are those on the right who see the rise of identity politics and socialist thought; to them, the idea of accelerationism is to let socialism spread so that it too can be exposed as flawed. Accelerationism can apply to any ideology taken to an extreme.

dropit_sphere 7y ago

I'm a scary far-right NRX guy, and the accelerationist idea has obviously been raised in the circles I frequent. But it generally leaves me cold. This keeps coming to mind: "Wo unto the world because of offences! For offenses must come, but wo to him by whom the offence cometh!" You have to be pretty damn sure you can build a better new world before you burn down the old one. Would-be revolutionists would do better to focus their energies on things that: - even the "evil other side" could never convince themselves to call a war crime - are resilient to and helpful after whatever collapse is foreseen - will have some benefit if the collapse does not occur - don't make things worse. It is, in fact, possible to find these things. The worst-case scenario is that there's a collapse and it brings neither a worker's paradise nor the return of kings, but pointless gang wars. You can build that worker's paradise, or aristocratic character, before the collapse, and if you're right that the system is unsustainable, you'll "start" the collapse in a much better position. Sure, there are likely entrenched obstacles in your way, but making an omelette does not justify killing a few people. Get to know your neighbors!

armitron 7y ago
You and almost everybody else in this thread are missing the core of the idea, which stems from Land, and tries to hammer in the fact that humanity has no agency. Rather than being a philosophy of our continued evolution - things we do - , it speaks about our imminent transformation/extinction - things being done to us -. Under that light, accelerationism is nothing else but our collective acceptance we're as powerless against the technocapital positive feedback loop as against the movement of tectonic plates. It's this separation from and casting out of the "human security system", that allows one to look at the phenomenon with objectivity, and it's this separation that most critics and readers that look at accelerationism from the prism of conventional human-centered philosophy are missing.
- jowday 7y ago
  I can't emphasize this enough. Land had two stages of thought. The first is what's described by armitron in the parent here, and was developed at Warwick University in the 90s. During his time at Warwick, Land developed some substance issues (amphetamines, mostly) and from what I've gathered ended up having a breakdown and moving to China. A few years after that he started writing his Neoreactionary work. While you could probably draw some links between the two phases of his work if you wanted to, they're at odds with one another. In the Accelerationist framework layed out by Land in the 90s, neoreactionary thought would have been futile - everything, including reactionary social mores, would be deterritorialized by capital.

nickthemagicman 7y ago

Sometimes the only way for people to learn a lesson is to be burned. As capitalism accelerates, inequality grows, poverty spreads, and pain/suffering become more widespread, people's eyes will open to con's as well as the pro's of capitalism. So it's more than just 'fuck it' it's instructive.

Nasrudith 7y ago
Isn't that "instruction" incredibly circular logic of sabotage for the sake of "proof" justifting what they already believe because of the outcome they caused? I recall an episode from a fictional crime show where the obligatory twist behind a horrically toxic water pollution blaming a new industrial operation. It had killed three people and sickened more was a radical environmentalist who wanted to frame a factory they believed would pollute more long term. Ironically one of the give aways to investigators was something the industry no longer used.
Analemma_ 7y ago
This is tremendously foolish reasoning. You're basically saying, "after we burn everything down, people will naturally come to the obvious conclusion that my politics are the Objectively Correct ones". Which... no. What people want first and foremost is safety and stability, and after everything burns down, the easiest way to get that is by putting an authoritarian strongman into power. Which, historically, has been the outcome of almost every large-scale revolution except the American one. (As an aside, I don't know if you're American, but if you are, I will note that an unfortunate effect of the American Revolution is that it tends to give Americans a very optimistic view of how well revolutions work out. They don't really realize that theirs is a miraculous outlier; it's almost the only revolution which didn't put an authoritarian government into power for years or decades)
- lukifer 7y ago
  I've been trying to figure what makes America the outlier. One could say egalitarian Enlightenment values, but that didn't prevent the French Revolution from turning into a bloodbath and eventual authoritarianism. Do you know of any theories to explain the difference, well-accepted or not?

laughingbovine 7y ago

Wow... what did I just stumble into?

camdenlock 7y ago
Pure unbridled intellectual masturbation.

nickthemagicman 7y ago

Sometimes the only way for people to learn a lesson is to suffer . As capitalism accelerates, inequality grows, poverty spreads, and pain/suffering become more widespread, people's eyes will open to con's as well as the pro's of capitalism. Instead of walking by the homeless person and saying 'sucks to be them' people actually experience it. I think alot of people view capitalism as the reason America is so great instead of being the surviving superpower from WW2 and coasting on that for half a century. Capitalism was pretty oppressive in the early 1900s. We'll see what happens on the future. So overall accelerrationism is more than just nihilism, it's instructive. Unfortunately, with suffering on a generational timeframe. It's also, how government has progressed historically via people suffering. Now we're shifting from governmental tyrrany to economic tyrrany. The next few decades will be extremely interesting.

octosphere 7y ago

Infinite growth in terms of capitalism is not sustainable into the future and as decades go on it will only do more harm than good. I see this weird behavior in our world where growth is equated with progress when infact in a late-capitalism world, growth is actually the opposite of progress.

cat199 7y ago

don't mean to be 'dumb' here, but how is 'left accelerationism' not some flavor of socialism and 'right accelerationism' not some flavor of facism, other than using different words and sounding more 'current'

uxp100 7y ago
Left-accelerationism IS some form of socialism. The goal being to heighten the contradictions of capitalism. And yes, an accelerationist tendency has existed for a long time, since Marx I think. Right accelerationism differs from fascism in its relationship to capitalism I think. But honestly, I think these groupings are a bit iffy. There are connections between Zelzany, Land, and leftist acceleration, but they are slight.
camdenlock 7y ago
You’re not being dumb, you’re just noticing that these “philosophers” just really really enjoy endlessly writing jargon and arguing about terminology and the excruciating and irrelevant minutiae of their ideologies (AKA religions). It’s not intended to be clear. Quite the opposite.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
They're not just socialism and fascism (or something else right-wing), they're revolutionary socialism and fascism. The intent is to destroy the existing system and replace it with their vision of what would be "better". The difference is in technique. Old-school revolutionaries tried to destroy the current system by fighting it. Accelerationists try to destroy the system by trying to make it more what it is. If you think of the system (current US democracy plus capitalism, say) in the center of a frame, a leftist would view it as being too far to the right, and a rightist would view it as being too far to the left. An old-school leftist would try to shove the whole country to the left. A left accelerationist would try to shove it to the right, thinking that the further right it gets, the closer it is to destroying itself. Of course, their perspective is a bit off. The left (or right) accelerationist sees the current system as already being pretty far right (or left), not center. They therefore mis-estimate how much further they would have to move it to bring about destruction. If they fail to move it that far, all they've done is strengthen the side they're trying to fight.

kerkeslager 7y ago

Anyone working on AI or robotics is supporting accelerationism, whether they are ideologically for it or not. The singularity will remove the need for white collar labor, and while there is not such a clear turning point for robotics, robotics will eventually replace the need for blue collar labor. When human labor has no value, then only products have value, and the world is divided into those who have the products and those who do not, with no chance for mobility between the two. Class mobility, or the assumption that labor can turn one from a have not to a have, is the only thing that makes capitalism palatable, so I can't imagine that the complete removal of that possibility will go unnoticed.

zed88 7y ago

Some say that the founder of Buzzfeed Jonah Peretti is an accelerationist. Peretti's academic writings offer one clue. In brief, the paper argues that, going forward, capitalism will need to be constantly producing identities for people to adopt at an ever-increasing rate. And now Peretti's at the helm of a firm that's doing exactly that. Coincidence? http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_peretti.html http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_perett...