"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 [ edit ]

Authors, Initiatives [ edit ]

Writings [ edit ]

Noys [ edit ]

Talks

Benjamin Noys, "The Grammar of Neoliberalism", 2010; printed in Dark Trajectories: Politics of the Outside , ed. Joshua Johnson, Hong Kong: Name Publications, Aug 2013. Talk given at the Accelerationism workshop at Goldsmiths on 14 Sep 2010. "Gramatika neoliberalizma", trans. Tomislav Žilić, Libra Libera 33, Dec 2013, pp 49-53. (Croatian)

, ed. Joshua Johnson, Hong Kong: Name Publications, Aug 2013. Talk given at the Accelerationism workshop at Goldsmiths on 14 Sep 2010. Benjamin Noys, "Abandoning Accelerationism? Two Exits", 2013. Talk given at University of Westminster on 23 May 2014.

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).

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia [1972], trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane, University of Minnesota Press, 1983.

[1972], trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane, University of Minnesota Press, 1983. Jean-François Lyotard, Libidinal Economy [1974], trans. Ian Hamilton Grant, Indiana University Press, 1993.

[1974], trans. Ian Hamilton Grant, Indiana University Press, 1993. Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death [1976], trans. Ian Hamilton Grant, Sage, 1993.

Selected books and essays [ edit ]

Anthologies [ edit ]

Journal issues [ edit ]

"Akceleracionizam", section in Libra Libera 33, intro. Ante Jerić, Zagreb: Autonomna Tvornica Kulture, Dec 2013, pp 11-55. (Croatian)

33, intro. Ante Jerić, Zagreb: Autonomna Tvornica Kulture, Dec 2013, pp 11-55. &&& Journal 0: "Tachophobia // Tachomania", Spring 2015.

0: "Tachophobia // Tachomania", Spring 2015. A2 6: "Akceleracionismus", Prague, 16 Mar 2016. [24] (Czech)

6: "Akceleracionismus", Prague, 16 Mar 2016. [24] Cesura // Acceso 3: "Sticky Tics, Unclocked Territory: Accelerationist aesthetics and music", forthcoming 2016. [25]

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 [ edit ]

Blogs [ edit ]

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

More [ edit ]

References [ edit ]

1990s UK theory-fiction on acceleration

Documentary film [ edit ]

Hyperstition, dir. Christopher Roth with Armen Avanessian, 2015, 102 min. 15-minute excerpt. [30] [31]

See also [ edit ]



