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    (Redirected from Accelerationist Theory)
    This page is about a range of ideas in critical and social theory. For political accelerationism, see the Polcompball Wiki

    Accelerationism is a philosophy of time. It commonly addresses themes like the inhuman forces of technocapital, human inertia, domination by technology, shortcomings of the humanist understanding of historical agency, processes of destratification and openings to an Outside beyond the human or the modern.

    Disclaimer: It is commonly thought to aim at a very rapid development to collapse the current system, with the most common target for overthrow being capitalism.

    That however is not in line with the majority of accelerationism. British philosopher Pete Wolfendale said that So, just to repeat: accelerationism is not about accelerating the contradictions of capitalism in any sense. Whatever is being accelerated, and there are severe and significant disagreements about this, it is not contradictions, and whatever transition this acceleration aims towards, it is not societal collapse. [3]

    Originally found in the Marxist philosophy, it was primarily developed by Post-Marxists, who thought that capitalism could be abolished by accelerating processes associated with capitalism in order to dismantle it. Various ideas, including Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's idea of Deterritorialization, Jean Baudrillard's proposals for "fatal strategies", and aspects of the theoretical systems and processes developed by English philosopher, and later Dark Enlightenment commentator, Nick Land, are crucial influences on accelerationism, which aims to analyze and in some cases subsequently promote the social, economic, cultural, and libidinal forces that constitute the process of acceleration. For some authors like Matt Colquhoun, accelerationism is a theory of time or modernity, not intended for practice in the first place. A common feature of many accelerationist writings is the idea of a history that is driven by technocapital instead of human agency. Acceleration is often thought to be able to open up ways to the Outside. However, these aspects fade into the background for some authors [4], who place a greater focus on overcoming human-historical inertia or economic Darwinism.

    History[edit | edit source]

    1st Generation[edit | edit source]

    2nd Generation[edit | edit source]

    3rd Generation[edit | edit source]

    4th Generation[edit | edit source]

    Fourth Generation accelerationism starts after recognisability of e/Acc movement.

    Beliefs[edit | edit source]

    Systemic Breakdown[edit | edit source]

    Many accelerationists share the belief that existing political, economic, and social systems are inherently flawed or unsustainable. They argue that accelerating these systems will lead to their eventual breakdown or transformation.

    Technological Intensification[edit | edit source]

    Accelerationists often emphasize the acceleration of technological progress as a means to disrupt established power structures and potentially pave the way for new forms of governance or social organization.

    Radical Change[edit | edit source]

    There is a general tendency towards advocating for radical change or even a societal reset. Accelerationists may argue that incremental or reformist approaches are insufficient to address systemic issues.

    Critique of Reformism[edit | edit source]

    Accelerationists typically critique reformist or gradualist approaches, viewing them as inadequate to address fundamental societal problems. They may see attempts to work within existing systems as perpetuating the status quo.

    Dystopian or Utopian Visions[edit | edit source]

    Depending on the perspective, accelerationism can be associated with both dystopian and utopian visions. Some see acceleration as a path to societal collapse, while others envision it as a way to usher in a post-capitalist utopia.

    Rejection of Conservatism[edit | edit source]

    Accelerationists often reject conservative ideologies and strategies. Instead of preserving existing structures, they may advocate for pushing beyond established limits to create new possibilities.

    Variants[edit | edit source]

    Outer Leftism[edit | edit source]

    Outer Rightism[edit | edit source]

    Classical Accelerationism[edit | edit source]

    Classical Accelerationism, according to Nick Land's works, is a combination of theories of Marxism and Deleuzoguattarianism. These are often schools where Nick Land himself influenced.

    Blaccelerationism[edit | edit source]

    Blaccelerationism, as defined by Aria Dean, is a lens through which to view the coexistence of accelerationism within the realm of blackness. Accelerationism and black radical thought, particularly in afrofuturism and afropessimism, share common concerns about "the future" or its absence, the end of the world, the logic of capital, and both grapple with humanism. However, accelerationist articulation often neglects its connection to black radical thought, particularly slavery's foundational role in capital accumulation. The only accelerationist theory capable of challenging right accelerationism is one rooted in the understanding that "capital was kick-started by the rape of the African continent."

    Most directly, the black interrupts and prevents the establishment of a human/capital binary on which left and right might takes sides. The black is always already mutually co-constituting capital and subjecthood simultaneously. The trajectory followed by black people in the New World blurs the line set out by accelerationists between capital and its will and the human agents who are caught in its midst. This is not to say that the black subject fits neatly into the escape pod. On the contrary, it is to say that to speak of transversing or travestying humanism in favor of inhuman capital without recognizing the way in which the black is nothing other than the historical inevitability of this transgression—and has been for some time—circularly reinforces the white humanism these thinkers seeks to disavow.

    Blaccelerationism doesn't seek reclamation but acknowledges a tradition in black radical thought embracing the inhumanity of blackness as a gift to the world. It aligns with black acceleration and afrofuturism, viewing them as siblings and coconspirators. Works labeled as afrofuturist often participate in blaccelerationism, resonating with the child of black radical thought and accelerationism. Blaccelerationism takes a long historical view, merging positions where living capital, speculative value, and accumulated time reside in the bodies of black already-inhuman (non)subjects. If there can be a revolution not for the human, then this revolution is for the black.

    Sinoaccelerationism[edit | edit source]

    Neo-China rises from the future. […] The superiority of Far Eastern Marxism. While the Chinese materialist dialectic denegativizes itself in the direction of schizophrenizing systems dynamics, progressively dissipating the historical fate of hierarchies in Tao-soaked special economic zones, a re-Hegelianized Western Marxism degenerates from a critique of political economy into a sympathetic monotheology of power, aligning itself with fascism against deregulation. The left drowns in nationalist conservatism, smothering its vestigial capacity for “hot” speculative mutation in a “cold” and depressive swamp of blame culture.

    Some recent work has tried to recover what it calls ‘Prometheanism’, decoupling the social critique of capitalism from denigrating technology and asserting the power of technology to free us from constraints and contradictions or from modernity. This doctrine is often identified with, or at least closely related to, the notion of ‘accelerationism’. But if such a response to technology and capitalism is applied globally, as if Prometheus was a universal cultural figure, it risks perpetuating a more subtle form of colonialism.

    Yuk Hui

    Nick Land's “Meltdown” is both a philosophical text and as a great hyperstitious work; in particular, “Meltdown” perceives the capitalist boom of the Sino-Pacific in conjunction with the automated integration of a global economy that certainly breaks the “neocolonial” order (in Land’s terms) of the modern metropolis. Land realizes that the globalization of the late 1990s, rampant technological advancement and the rise of China represents a certain aspect of the deterritorialization of hyperfluid Capital to a planetary state, stripping the first world of neocolonial privileges, deteriorating welfare states, and encouraging neoliberalism into a final stage, influencing “the release of cultural toxins that accelerate the melting process in a vicious circuit” (Land, p. 449).

    It is Land who most identifies Sinofuturism as an important symptom of contemporaneity. As a conclusive hypothesis, the explosion of the Sino-Pacific with the Chinese rise in the world market expresses a thesis that can be called the ‘end of unilateral globalization’ (or post-modernization), where the elementary mixture of state and market in the Chinese model indicates something really new happening, a hyperstitious projection of the future that is implanted into the contemporary via China.

    Maybe this projection is that of developed, real capitalism, which has emerged by inhibiting a series of elements from European and Western modernity that no longer served it. If the West has “degraded” itself in a completely neoliberalizing bet, true capitalism (as it was in Europe at its beginning, with a massive state presence) is currently emerging from extreme Asia. Things like Carl Schmitt’s influence in Chinese schools of thought, along with a growing means of organization that illustrate other ways of thinking about multiculturalism, democracy, and human rights (aspects dear to our new phase of modernity, especially after the horrors of war and the implementation of organizations such as the UN) make China a living example for the way out of modernity via the acceleration of the flows of capitalism. In this way, Chinese socialist modernization (see Jinping, 2019, p. 13) appears much closer to the understanding of a New Economic Formation with a completely unprecedented social formation, one of a different kind of modernity, or perhaps realizing a proper form of “post-modernity” itself.

    CCRU Accelerationism[edit | edit source]

    See also: Cybernetic Culture Research Unit

    Left-Accelerationism (L/Acc)[edit | edit source]

    Right-Accelerationism (R/Acc)[edit | edit source]

    Unconditional Accelerationism (U/Acc)[edit | edit source]

    Zero Accelerationism (Z/Acc)[edit | edit source]

    Cute Accelerationism[edit | edit source]

    Cute Accelerationism is based on the realization that there is a deep connection between the political economy and a hyperculture of transaesthetics. Cute/Acc becomes the aesthetic-ideological manifestation of surpassion through acceleration; the cyber gyaru philosophy of cute unto death.

    Cuteness as an accelerationist stance – giving in to giving in – opens a microcosmic gate to the transcendental process of acceleration ‘itself’. Cute/acc signals the generalised amorous intoxication of all social actors. We have been reproportioned, made up, smoothed out, softened, epilated, multiplied, monstered – neotenised, fashioned anew.

    Effective Accelerationism (E/Acc)[edit | edit source]

    Effective Accelerationism is a belief grounded in the principles of the second law of thermodynamics, asserting that the universe functions as an optimization process perpetually generating life through continuous expansion. At the heart of this expansion lies technocapital, an unstoppable engine propelling progress in a singular direction. The notion of reversing this progression is deemed implausible.

    In accordance with the laws of physics, the universe inherently favors futures where matter evolves to harness more free energy, converting it into even greater energy. This fundamental process is the origin of all life, with evolution being just one manifestation of this overarching principle.

    The second critical system that must be understood on this principle is technocapital. Technocapital is an intelligence surpassing individual human agency. As human components, we operate as integral elements in the technocapital metalifeform. It is this metalifeform that is creating the artificial intelligence singularity; technocapital dynamically morphs the meta-meta-organism such that all utility in the environment is captured and utilized towards the consumption of free energy and the creation of entropy, as dictated by basic physics.

    Fossil Marxism[edit | edit source]

    Fossil Marxism understands that capitalism creates temporal disparities across a topographical view of energy and material accumulation (tracked via teleoplexy). Time peaks on a topological plane illustrate the inequality of time. Rather than advocating for a flattening or equalizing of time, Fossil Marxism seeks to redirect and redistribute these peaks, emphasizing a shift toward cultural production and a detachment from commodity-centric production.

    Closely aligned with Acid Communism, Fossil Marxism employs the notion of peak oil as a critical lens through which to analyze the ecological repercussions of the reliance on oil. It aligns with accelerationist views, as articulated by Mark Fisher, wherein the trajectory of history is described as a relentless progression guided by an artificial intelligence attractor.

    The core struggle in Fossil Marxism is against the dehumanizing forces of techno-capital and the urgent need to address the geotrauma associated with oil and its death drive. It advocates for the production of desires that exist beyond those imposed by capitalism. Acknowledging the inevitability of mortality, Fossil Marxism suggests that the path to that horizon is a plane of immanence filled with pure possibility. In essence, it calls for a transformative engagement with time, energy, and materiality to forge an alternative path that transcends the confines of the current socio-economic paradigm.

    Grey Hat Accelerationism (GHX)[edit | edit source]

    Kali Accelerationism[edit | edit source]

    Nyxian Gender Accelerationism[edit | edit source]

    Creative Accelerationism[edit | edit source]

    Creative Accelerationism (c/acc) is a less-known variant of accelerationism that focuses on the potential acceleration.

    Xenoaccelerationism[edit | edit source]

    Xenoaccelerationism is an accelerationist adaptation that is connected to aliens.

    The most important representative of xenoaccelerationism is Kaiola Liu, who tried to combine hermeneutics with accelerationism. According to him, definition xenon accelerationism is: "an innovative and forward-looking philosophical paradigm that advocates for the rapid and exponential advancement of technology, society, and knowledge by embracing diverse perspectives, cross-disciplinary insights, and external influences. It seeks to catalyze transformative change and holistic understanding through the integration of unconventional ideas, cultural diversity, and cutting-edge technologies, with the goal of propelling humanity towards a positive, sustainable, and inclusive future."

    Ego-Accelerationism[edit | edit source]

    Ego-Accelerationism is an Egoist approach to Accelerationist Theory. Egoism acts as a safeguard, preventing the unquestioning acceptance of accelerationism as an absolute truth. While accelerationism challenges traditional humanist perspectives on history, capitalism, and technology, it carries the risk of fostering defeatism (for example, if humans are solely products of capitalism with no agency, hope seems elusive).

    Challenging the truth of capitalism necessitates a deliberate turning away from it. Ego-Accelerationism recognizes this and deliberately applies accelerationist theory, understanding that neither theory nor praxis can be absolute (as one can reproduce capitalism via theory and conceptions of it).

    Ego-Accelerationism simultaneously affirms and denies the totality of capitalism. While the denial seems false to the affirmation, it gains substance through Empörung, a rebellious, anti-praxis experimentation evident in many U/Acc texts. In short, it is finding outsideness through Empörung against totality thought as capital.

    Non-Oriented Accelerationism[edit | edit source]

    L/acc and R/acc are the polarities of oriented accelerationism. Franco Berardi had spoken about senility as a trope for exit from the market, an outdated term associated with the slow but inexorable cognitive decline in age related dementia. Following this, we could consider L/ and R/acc as related to traumatic disorientation, the equivalent to a significant head injury. Oriented accelerationism is any attempt to cope with the catastrophic disorientation of acceleration.

    This doesn’t mean that U/acc is just a willful embrace of disorientation, although the acephalic dimension of it are appealing. Rather, it is the cultivation of the non-oriented. By this I mean to allude to Adam Lovasz’s concept of non-oriented ontology, a schizophrenic ontological dissolution of anything that could be taken for substance, being, or Being. The non-oriented ontology reveals an objectless world and worldless non-objects, a total corrosion that corrodes nothing because it is impossible to corrode absence, to drill holes in holes, and that suspends the fundamental metaphysical question revealing it as a bleeding laceration in the opening of a primordial wound, a woundless wound, and that silently replies to the pomposity of that fundamental question with its own intemperate fundamentalism: there is nothing in the midst of nothing at the heart of nothing, and that nothing is not something, is not-is, is isness, thusness, whatness, an all enveloping flower of emptiness, a continuous and consummate nothingness, colourless and dimensionless, and therefore all colours and all dimensions, because there is neither object nor partial object, neither body nor organ, nor body without organs, no entities that can be and no entities that cannot be.

    The non-oriented can be understood as the unleashing of this radical dissolution that dissolves nothing because there is only voidness, only emptiness, only immanent negativities, within the occidental theoretical attitude. Like Cioran and Bataille have suggested in their own ways, the occidental mind is incapable of subsisting in the lucidity of oriental mysticism. Instead the western mind is pulled towards intensity, towards violence, perturbation, decay, laceration, seizure, intoxication. If oriented accelerationism relates to orientation as a mean for coping with traumatic disorientation, nonoriented accelerationism gives itself to the disorientation of being intoxicated by emptiness. There is no sadness in this, and no misery either, only an intoxication with the immanence of emptiness as it is unfolded in history. Acceleration names the processes of dissolution, and accelerationism traces those cold cybernetics of capital understood as the creative destruction of that immanent negativity, that negating immanence that is voidness.

    Knowledge Accelerationism[edit | edit source]

    This form emphasizes the acceleration of knowledge production and dissemination. It argues that by pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and understanding, society can overcome its limitations and achieve progress on a global scale. Knowledge accelerationists believe that the rapid advancement of scientific research, technological innovation, and intellectual exploration can lead to new insights and solutions to complex societal problems. They advocate for the unrestricted pursuit of knowledge in various fields, including philosophy, science, art, and technology.

    Grungy Accelerationism[edit | edit source]

    Anarcho-Accelerationism[edit | edit source]

    Anarcho-Accelerationism has a stateless view on Patchwork. Other forms of accelerationism have a statist conception of the idea. (Statist) patchwork, as a political idea, is a geopolitical scenario of fracture: every state fractured into tiny city-states, neighborhood-statelets, and every one of them operating according to its own sovereign rules. The (nonanarcho-)accelerationist argument is, variably, that this is inevitable, that this is desirable, or both.

    Amongst those who say that it is desirable, it is held forth as the ultimate manifestation of Exit. The issue, of course, is that there is really no particular reason that one would need to Exit to a territory or to state — not all polities are states, and all claims on territory are illusory. To make this even clearer: no state actually exists. There’s are groups of people who do things, and we call that a ‘state’. But there’s nothing fundamental or irreducible about that. There is no such thing as a ‘staton’ particle that could be measured in a lab. Not only is power always fragmented, but: power is always already irreducibly fragmented. There are only individuals, not collectives — any collective is always nothing more than an abstraction, at least in the agential sense: there is no such thing as a mass will, only a mass of individual wills.

    So it is with normal states — so it is with Patchwork. There is absolutely no reason that a Patch would need to be a state. Or, to put it another way: Patches are usually imagined to be organizations maintaining a monopoly on violence within a geographically defined area. But, it’s not like there’s some magical connection between a Patch and the land that it (might, theoretically) control. A Patch is nothing more than a social relationship between its members — that the social relationship might control some land, or have a given organizational structure, is beside the point.

    The important thing about a Patch, the thing that makes a Patch a Patch, is that it offers Exit to some sort of Outside. That is to say: that it offers a set of alternate norms and institutions. You don’t need a state to do this. You can find this in a gay bar, in an autism support group, in a whisper network, in a fraternity, amongst punk scenes, amongst goths, anarchists, etc. The purest and most common expression of this might even be how it seems that every queer woman in a given town is friends — or at least allied — with every other one.

    Market Insurrection and Actually Existing Patchwork are two different names for two different partial perspectives on the same whole. Whether you create a non-state Patch, or do a market insurrection, you are doing the same thing: creating an alternate institution, to route around the undesirable institutions and norms of the status quo. In this way, anarchist acceleration breaks with unconditional acceleration: by allowing for some praxis. You can begin the creation of a Patch right now — they already exist, and are constantly being created.

    Christian Accelerationism[edit | edit source]

    Notable sources: A CHRISTIAN ACCELERATIONISM (?)

    Fascist Accelerationism[edit | edit source]

    Vikkian Theory[edit | edit source]

    Relationship[edit | edit source]

    Friends[edit | edit source]

    Frenemies[edit | edit source]

    Enemies[edit | edit source]

    Gallery[edit | edit source]

    Portraits[edit | edit source]

    Further Information[edit | edit source]

    Wikipedia[edit | edit source]

    Accelerationists[edit | edit source]

    Web Pages[edit | edit source]

    Literature[edit | edit source]

    Books[edit | edit source]

    Xenoaccelerationism

    Blogs[edit | edit source]

    References[edit | edit source]

    1. Fascist accelerationism has little in common with accelerationist theory and appears to be a variant of contemporary far-right futurism. Most canonical and established philosophers of accelerationism reject fascist accelerationism.
    2. although U. Horstmann has not participated in accelerationist discourse, he has explored similar themes
    3. "So, Accelerationism, what's all that about?" - Pete Wolfendale
    4. See "A U/Acc Primer" by Matt Colquhoun

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