Accelerationism

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"Accelerationism is [the name of a contemporary] political heresy: the insistence that the only radical political response to capitalism is not to protest, disrupt, or critique, nor to await its demise at the hands of its own contradictions, but to accelerate its uprooting, alienating, decoding, abstractive tendencies. The term was introduced into political theory to designate a certain nihilistic alignment of philosophical thought with the excesses of capitalist culture (or anticulture), embodied in writings that sought an immanence with this process of alienation. The uneasy status of this impulse, between subversion and acquiescence, between realist analysis and poetic exacerbation, has made accelerationism a fiercely-contested theoretical stance. At the basis of all accelerationist thought lies the assertion that the crimes, contradictions and absurdities of capitalism have to be countered with a politically and theoretically progressive attitude towards its constituent elements." (Mackay and Avanessian, 2014:4)

Events

Authors, Initiatives

Writings

Noys

Talks
Primary references

Noys: "In my critical account [The Persistence of the Negative], accelerationism originates as an explicit theory in the early 1970s in three main works [listed below]. The common origin lies in the recognition that capitalism forms the dominant horizon, subsuming not only forms of life but also strategies of opposition," (from his June 2013 interview). "[These three texts] reply to Marx’s contention that ‘[t]he real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself’, by arguing that we must crash through this barrier by turning capitalism against itself. They are an exotic variant of la politique du pire: if capitalism generates its own forces of dissolution then the necessity is to radicalise capitalism itself: the worse the better. We can call this tendency accelerationism," (passage) (pp 4-6).

#Accelerate Manifesto and commentaries

Selected books and essays

Anthologies

  • e-flux 46: "Accelerationist Aesthetics", ed. Gean Moreno, Jun 2013. Texts by Williams, Shaviro, Bratton, Roche, Bifo, Fisher, Singleton, Battaglia, MacCormack, and Russell.
  • Joshua Johnson (ed.), Dark Trajectories: Politics of the Outside, Hong Kong: Name Publications, Aug 2013, 155 pp. Texts by Bryant, Moreno, Negarestani, Noys, Srnicek & Williams, Thorne, and Woodard.
  • Armen Avanessian (ed.), #Akzeleration, Berlin: Merve, Dec 2013, 96 pp. Texts by Avanessian, Bifo, Land, McCormack, Noys, Pasquinelli, Srnicek, and Williams. Publisher, Introduction. Review: Drees. (German)
    • #Acceleratie, trans. Menno Grootveld and Samuel Vriezen, Leesmagazijn, Nov 2014, 101 pp. [19] (Dutch)
  • Robin Mackay, Armen Avanessian (eds.), #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, Falmouth: Urbanomic, and Berlin: Merve, May 2014, 536 pp, PDF, ARG. Texts by Fisher, Srnicek and Williams, Negri, Terranova, Parisi, Negarestani, Brassier, Singleton, Land, Reed, Bauer, and the section on "a genealogy of accelerationism". Publisher. Reviews: Harris (New Inquiry), Charlesworth (ArtReview), O'Sullivan (Mute), Andrews (Review31), Read (Frieze). Commentaries: Wark (Public Seminar), Cunningham (Radical Philosophy).
  • Armen Avanessian, Robin Mackay (eds.), #Akzeleration#2, trans. Moritz Gansen and Hannah Wallenfels, Berlin: Merve, 2014, 176 pp. Publisher. Texts by Brassier, Land, Negri, Parisi, Srnicek, Terranova and Williams. (German)
  • Matteo Pasquinelli (ed.), Gli algoritmi del capitale. Accelerazionismo, macchine della conoscenza e autonomia del comune, Verona: Ombrecorte, Sep 2014. Texts by Williams and Srnicek, Negri, Bifo, Pasquinelli, Dyer-Witheford, Bunz, Harney, Terranova, Vercellone, and Marazzi. [20] Review: Fumagalli (2014). (Italian)
  • Armen Avanessian, Helen Hester (eds.), dea ex machina, trans. Stephan Geene, Gesine Strempel and Jennifer Sophia Theodor, Berlin: Merve, 2015, 160 pp. Texts by Rosi Braidotti, Shulamith Firestone, Donna Haraway, Laboria Cuboniks, Lisa Nakamura, Alexandra Pirici, Nina Power, Paul B. Preciado, Raluca Voinea. [21] Book launch: Berlin. Commentary: Fox (2015).(German)
  • Václav Janoščík, Vít Bohal, Dustin Breitling (eds.), Reinventing Horizons, Prague: tranzit.cz, 2016. Introduction. [22] [23]
  • Tim Matts, Benjamin Noys, Dane Sutherland (eds.), Dark Glamor: Accelerationism and the Occult, 2 vols., Punctum Books, (forthcoming 2017). Introduction, Contributors.

Journal issues

  • "Akceleracionizam", section in Libra Libera 33, intro. Ante Jerić, Zagreb: Autonomna Tvornica Kulture, Dec 2013, pp 11-55. (Croatian)
  • &&& Journal 0: "Tachophobia // Tachomania", Spring 2015.
  • A2 6: "Akceleracionismus", Prague, 16 Mar 2016. [24] (Czech)
  • Cesura // Acceso 3: "Sticky Tics, Unclocked Territory: Accelerationist aesthetics and music", forthcoming 2016. [25]
  • Inter/Alia: A Journal of Queer Studies, Special Issue on Accelerofeminisms, eds. Rafal Majka and Michael O’Rourke, forthcoming. [26]

Interviews

Blogs

Nick Srnicek (Synthetic Edifice), Nick Land (Urban Future), London-based PhD-students (Accelerationism: Cosmism, Prometheanism, New Enlightenment), Craig Hickman (Alien Ecologies).

More

References

1990s UK theory-fiction on acceleration
  • Nick Land, "Circuitries", Pli 4:1/2 (1992), pp 217-235; repr. in Land, Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007, eds. Robin Mackay and Ray Brassier, Urbanomic, 2011, pp 289-318; repr. in #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, eds. Armen Avanessian and Robin Mackay, Urbanomic, 2014, pp 251-274, ARG.
  • Nick Land, "Meltdown", Abstract Culture 1, Coventry: CCRU, 1997, [27]; repr. in Land, Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007, eds. Robin Mackay and Ray Brassier, Urbanomic, 2011, pp 441-459. [28]. First presented at Virtual Futures, Warwick University, May 1994.
  • Nick Land, Sadie Plant, "Cyberpositive", in Unnatural: Techno-Theory for a Contaminated Culture, ed. Matthew Fuller, 1994; repr. in #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, eds. Armen Avanessian and Robin Mackay, Urbanomic, 2014.
  • Iain Hamilton Grant, "Los Angeles 2019: Demopathy and Xenogenesis (Some Realist Notes on Blade Runner and the Postmodern Condition)" [1997]; printed as "LA 2019: Demopathy and Xenogenesis", in #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, eds. Armen Avanessian and Robin Mackay, Urbanomic, 2014.
  • CCRU, "Cybernetic Culture"; repr. in #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, eds. Armen Avanessian and Robin Mackay, Urbanomic, 2014.
  • CCRU, "Swarmachines", Abstract Culture 1, Coventry: CCRU, 1997, [29]; repr. in #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, eds. Armen Avanessian and Robin Mackay, Urbanomic, 2014.

Documentary film

See also