Accelerationism: Capitalism as Critique
With special thanks to:
Amy Ireland for helping me to understand the Outside, and for taking the time to answer my consistent questions.
And to ‘The Castle’ for their continual support in all of life’s endeavours.
INTRODUCTION
In this essay I aim to answer multiple questions, all of which are concluded by answering 1 overarching question, ‘What is Accelerationism?’. In recent years Accelerationism has been primarily posited as a political movement, or a new form of politics. In reaction to this contemporary wave of incorrect Accelerationist theorization, my aim is to thoroughly outline the philosophy of Accelerationism, which when articulated correctly in relation to the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Gilles Deleuze, not only alters our understanding of Accelerationism, but leaves the entire politics meaningless and confused.
The politics however will only be a meagre afterthought of this essay. The primary tasks set out for me are to define the process of Acceleration, and in doing so define Accelerationism. I aim to answer these 2 questions by working metaphorically upwards, from the smallest unit of production analysable in-itself, man, all the way through to articulating the assemblage of processes and functions that compound into Acceleration. Within this essay the word ‘Acceleration’ is capitalised as a means of emphasising its relation to Accelerationism, as opposed to its classical usage. Alongside this, as this essay utilizes transcendental philosophy as its fundamental philosophical position, any notion of levels, planes, heights, ups, downs, aboves and belows etc. are only used as a means for ease of understanding, and are definitely not levels in relation to transcendence.
I begin with a Kantian extrapolation of the ‘Inside’, a term utilized within this essay to describe the transcendental reality of man, of the synthesized space and time he inhabits via his senses, an ‘Inside’ which is always in relation/connection to the ‘Outside’. Within this section the perspective is from the Inside in relation to how it functions with regard to the transcendental. I begin with an exposition on classical desire, using it as a placeholder for the ‘material processes’ of the Inside. Theorizing of their transformation in relation to critique through to their dissolution via the work of Jean-Francois Lyotard and Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari. This section is intended as both an articulation of the emptiness and vessel-esque status of the Inside in relation to the forces of the Outside, whilst simultaneously acting as a singular part of the process of Acceleration, to later be utilized in a manner of compounding.
Following from this dissolution of the material processes, I intend to utilize the work of Deleuze and Guattari as a means to transcendentally dissolve the material, inclusive of man, into the process of the transcendent itself. I achieve this by deconstructing the concept of the desiring-machine in relation to its components, ‘desire’ and ‘machines’, from which I assimilate the concept as a whole into Gilles Deleuze’s 3 syntheses of time, I do so as a means to show how both the material (space) and actions (time) of the Inside are wholly secondary to the processes of the Outside. From this temporal conclusion I utilize the Deleuzian conceptions of the virtual and actual as a means to articulate the method of connection and communication between the Inside and Outside, explaining that the communication is – with one exception (Schizophrenia) – entirely unilateral from the Outside to the Inside, and as such the Outside is theorized as primary.
From this theorization I begin to outline in abstract the process of Acceleration in relation to the Inside. Wherein from Deleuze & Guattari’s alteration of Marxist critique via utilization of capitalism’s industrial standardized time, we witness man move from being used by the machinic, alien power (from above), to being possessed by the alien power within himself, as the power. From this theorization I intend to show how man-as-desiring-machine is then made fully immanent to the process-of-production itself. At this juncture I interject the conception of the Deleuzoguattarian ‘schizophrenic’ as a means to show how the new is possible from such a transcendental entrapment. I conclude the section on the Inside with a brief articulation of its final guard, the unconscious, a conception which is repeated within the Outside in its correct transcendental articulation as a machinic-unconscious of production.
The catch-22 of Accelerationism is that descriptions of the Inside, once attended to in relation to the whole, seem entirely superfluous. Yet without them we stand with only a transcendental motor solipsistically churning without an output mechanism. To leave out the Inside, is to leave out the shadows of Plato’s cave. To write of the Inside is to argue that it is more comforting to know one is a puppet, than pretend one is otherwise.
I move from the Inside to the Outside, beginning with an extrapolation of the body-without-organs (BwO). Utilizing it in its most general, functional sense as a plane of consistency, of atomic recording and connections, making sure to differentiate it from the socius. Regarding Accelerationism the BwO is a plane of (virtual) selection for the Outside regarding that which it will reterritorialize into the Inside. It is from these theorizations of the BwO that an understanding of the Outside as primary and the Inside as secondary is made clearer. I continue my theorizations of the BwO by assimilating it into the dynamics of capitalism, arguing that the unique nature of capitalism (as fluid) allows it to be the only structure which can consistently use the BwO as a means for auto-construction.
I further continue my theorizations of the BwO by articulating the way in which the processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization are a means of transcendental connection and selection, alongside the theoretical beginnings of the construction of a productive mode of temporality, away from the incorrect notion of a ‘linearity’, towards a mode of productive temporal event indexing, controlled/evolved by the forces of the Outside. Such a production of temporality is theorized in relation to Zero. Which within the context of the essay is the term used to mean an evolutionary form of production in relation to entropy and negentropy, Zero is the transcendental connection between the productive output of the Inside and the positive-feedback loop of the Outside. In its connection with schizophrenia I find a means to articulate a further extrapolation regarding Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of capitalism’s (non) limits, and as such, a way of describing the manner in which the process of Acceleration enacts itself.
From this extrapolation of the transcendental connection between the physical and virtual, I assimilate the third synthesis of Deleuzian time into the entire dynamics of the essay thus far, as a way to show how the future arrives and how it culminates into the production of an auto-construction of time, alongside how the system of capitalism inherently moulds itself to this temporality of continual cuts and caesuras.
I finally compound the entirety of the essays parts, functions and processes into a working definition of the process of Acceleration. A definition which in its very nature allows one to posit the definition of Acceleration, and as such transparently comment on the contemporary philosophical/political errors ascribed to the theory. This essay does not work backwards from a definition, lazily proving its construction it retrospect, but makes sure to leave no theoretical stone unturned as a means to articulate a transcendental coherent process regarding, time, production and capitalism.
THE INSIDE
Accelerationism is the perpetual arrival of the future; an auto-catalytic, positive-oriented system of production and time; an intricate, horizontal web of interconnecting processes and functions. A web which causes infection within the nerve-endings of existence, no node, however minor, can escape the clasp of production. I begin with the smallest of these ‘nodes’, the smallest kernel of production which can still be analyzed within and by its own dynamics, specifically, man. Or more succinctly, man-as-desiring-machine. A process of compounding is underway, from man through to ‘the process’ of Acceleration itself, the entire of which shall hold as a philosophical working model of Accelerationism.
First, a return. The proto-Accelerationist theory of Deleuze and Guattari possesses structures and unities in such a manner that their presupposed anthro-authenticity transcendentally erodes. I return to one such structure with the intention to use it as a placeholder for humanity’s structural certainty, born from ignorance of critique. The classical notion of ‘desire’ shall be my working example of all that is ‘authentic’, ‘natural’ and ‘organic’; a semantic trio which when placed correctly within the syntheses of Kant and Deleuze lose all possibility of affect.
The classical, psychoanalytical notion of desire denotes a want, need, lack and/or lust towards an object, emotion or identity. It is a theoretical formation of desire directed at a completion of the ‘self’ via acquisition of the lacked. Such a conception of desire lures the user towards not only a false end, but along a false premise, a premise of possible conclusion; classical desire’s tyrannical crime is that it allows completeness.
“It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.” (Foster Wallace, D. 2011, p414)
Foster Wallace’s quote assimilates desire into the practical dynamics of consumption under capitalism, emphasising the error of the classical/Freudian via its consumerist application. The presupposed ‘anxiety’ does not just assume there is an actual lack, but also makes the assumption of a possible unified ‘self’, and that such a unification could still exist within/under capitalism; the impossibility of a self from within a fragmentation of free-floating identity crumbs.
A self of agency, will, control and familial comforts, psychoanalytical desire gives man himself. Leaving him open to the belief that another’s psychoanalysing is his working-through of desires, repressions and drives. When psychoanalysis is correctly immanentized into the transcendental it dissolves into the same becomings as the entire anthropocentrism of the Inside: representation, illusion and mask, the trio of man’s material faith, senses forever targeted at a becoming-nothing. Such a form of desire and structural decentering is beholden to Kantianism, and as such a short extrapolation as to the section of critique critical to this form of theorization – the transcendental aesthetic – is needed before venturing further.
To posit time and space as a priori, they are absolutely – always already – necessary for there to be anything at all. Such a placement wherein time is prior to space is not accidental. For there to be perception of material there must be space, but for there to be space it must exist within time; time is always primary to space. This overly simplistic articulation of the transcendental aesthetic from Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason (Kant, I. 1996) allows for the following conclusions regarding the aforementioned theorizations in relation to man. Man must exist within time and space, along with the entire cosmos, but man, due to his very nature can only attend to/perceive reality via his processor – his brain. As such, the way in which he perceives is a matter of synthetic process, the forms of time and space he senses are not pure, they are synthesized/processed versions of spatio-temporality particular to the output of man’s senses. What man perceives is a representation of the real, he synthesizes both temporal and spatial reality and in doing so his perception, he, creates his reality as he represents it.
From Kantian critique we can thus make a clear split, the terminology of which will feature heavily in relation to understanding the Accelerationist process. Two separate terms referring to the spatio-temporal synthesis of man (his reality), and the form of time and space external to these syntheses. The former synthesis from man is henceforth called the ‘Inside’, and the a priori spatio-temporality (and later, production) which is external to this ‘Inside’ is called the ‘Outside’.
The reality of man now transcendentally defined, I can return to the deconstruction of the classical via psychoanalysis and desire. For the conclusion of the psychoanalyzed is one made within their own limits, those who desire supposedly do so of their own accord, to desire is to desire, from one’s self. This is transcendentally incorrect shorthand for man’s (false) ability to attend to and control that which is outside of him. To sense (via his brain) that which is transcendentally external to him (as I will show), classical desire is a mere anthropocentric error of placement. An error regarding the very construction of reality itself.
In the Lyotardian sense “Everything psychoanalysis knows about desire it knows by injecting it into a certain schema called Oedipus, a closed, familial circuit.” (Hamilton Grant, I, 2004: p6). This outline of desire by Grant within the introduction of Libidinal Economy pertains to desire in direct relation to critique. Wherein desire is but a representation, a mask over something larger, atop a libidinal intensity or force. Classical psychoanalysis’ authority, and as such the authority of multiple systems of the Inside, comes from its location on the Inside. Folded into a complex web of other representations, promoting the illusion of cosmic depth and worth. Existence within immanence disallows depth for man.
Following Anti-Oedipus (2013) in this manner of occulted critique, Lyotardian desire theorizes of the Oedipal triad (Father-Mother-Child) as part of the Inside. All that is classically authoritative is demoted by the transcendental. Even Lyotardian intensities, which arguably toe the line of the Inside and Outside, are – to man – but representations caught in a loop of their own anthro-presumptions – the effects emanating from the representations of the Inside can never be understood in themselves. Desire of the Inside is a mere subordination of “every intense emotion to a lack and every force to a finitude.” (Lyotard, J, 2003: p65). In being represented via the cognition of man the pure forms of intensity communicated from the Outside are constricted into a finality, into the finality of the Inside. To follow or direct oneself in relation to notions of originary, classical or organic as if they hold any meaning is a recursion of nothingness; to blindly follow representations of the Inside as if in-themselves they held any meaning is the fate of those secure in their delusions, a maddening labyrinth where every exit is bricked up by nothing. Lyotardian desire, as posited within Libidinal Economy (2003), is an exemplary example of working-through the process of drawing back the transcendental curtain from the Inside, to always reveal an eternal nothingness.
To posit then that these ‘desires’ or structures of the Inside (as representations of the Outside) are at current the equivalent of an auto-constructive GPS. A navigational-control system which began before one’s birth and will continue forever after one’s death, destination production; you, the self or one, is always in the middle of an auto-constructive horizontal plane of desire.
Man placed within such a deterministic navigational system/lock-in removes rational notions of linear time. To deconstruct the transcendental entrapment indebted to humanity is a means to detail what man becomes in relation to the Outside. A becoming put into more transcendentally strict terms by Gilles Deleuze, for further extrapolation of the Inside in-itself would be no more than a repetition. Such an understanding of continual desire and the thread which man is made to follow posits questions of temporality. How does it transcendentally work and how is it constructed in relation to the dynamic of the Inside and Outside? To attend to this primary necessity of the transcendental system itself (time) is to begin to compound an understanding of man’s situation within the entire. As such I begin to compound the various ‘stages’ of Accelerationist time in abstract.
To define the first Deleuzian synthesis of time is to understand the present as a process. A passive synthesis where the past and the future are folded into a passing-present, as man perceives it. A present which is always transforming in its relation to the passive alterations of the past and future. “That is, a process that passes from the retention of the past into the expectation of the future, not as psychological, nor as phenomenological (in the sense of quantities of intention), but as formal processes bearing on different things (particular and general) and setting them into relation.” (Williams, J, 2012: p29). The very conception of the present in the form posited by the first synthesis can only happen on the Inside, within synthesized temporality which denotes a linear temporal framework. These passing-presents as quasi-succession form, for man, a now. Never having a real past, nor achieving the future, man within the first synthesis is processed by time.
Within such a form of time, desire theoretically begins to adhere to a more stable form of nihilism. For such an understanding of desire as “masks hiding no face, only surfaces without a back stage, only prices without values.” (Lyotard, J, 2003: p105) is to conceive of a desire of the Inside, which is processed on/by the Outside. A conception which articulates the dark reality of representation, and as such of linear time; no attempt to deconstruct or draw back the curtain of the illusion will ever reveal the forces of the Outside in themselves. Desire as a negative gloss, a trinket of production passively keeping the conscious entertained and busy, such a loop, such a form of temporal continuity allows for greater clarity with regard to the first synthesis.
To conceptualize desire both in the aforementioned Lyotardian sense and as a placeholder for any process of the Inside. Processes which are both retained (past) and anticipated (future) within the passing-present of the first synthesis. Caught in the representational loop of the Inside, the linear direction of material processes – due to their enactment within the Inside – are forever targeted at nothingness/further-representation. As such, the first synthesis, in its relation to the cognition of man, is of the Inside; the first synthesis as a temporal enclosure for man, utilized by that it will never know (the Outside). An eternal game of hide and go seek where man forever finds nothing, for nothing was ever hidden, but in his ignorance believed the cosmos cared.
This form of temporal entrapment begs a question regarding libidinal intensities/Lyotardian intensities in themselves. For they must, in their communication with Inside, have a means of reappropriation regarding the direction of man – the direction in which desire flows throughout the linearity. Such a means of communication is made possible by the ‘virtual’ and ‘actual’. A conception which has connections to both the Outside and the second synthesis of time in its relation to the Inside. The transcendental shift of perspective is from a classical desire/material process of finality, to a transcendental process of transformation of the virtual. The conception of the virtual and actual is only complete in its unification, one cannot be/become without the other.
I present a very basic definition of the virtual and actual here for ease of later utilization, the concepts become more versatile upon later application. For now we take a laptop of the object of attention for the virtual and actual. The actual is expressed in one’s encounter with the phenomenological reality of the item, an object of sensation. The laptop is hard, clunky and heavy. Within the actuality of the laptop resides the virtual, or, the virtual aspects of it. Relational aspects and transferable attributes of the object which posit virtual connections to other objects (Heaviness, hardness etc.). Attributes which all coexist on the plane of the virtual, or a plane of possibility, itself located on the Outside.
In relation to time these virtual (transferable) attributes are retained in the form of the second synthesis of time, which in its conception alters the past into a ‘pure past’. A past which “will be defined as determining the form of the passing present – that it must pass, and how it must pass – but it does not determine or cause the content of any particular passing present.” (Williams, J, 2012: p57). A notion of determination which is extrapolated upon later, for now I am still writing of the Inside. For man to attend to the ‘pure past’ his memory becomes active. The aforementioned passing present of the first synthesis is passive, a trait which carries over into the second synthesis with one minor alteration. The active-memory of the second synthesis allows for a transformation of the present into an aiming-present. Wherein man can aim his memory back upon an indexed series of passing-presents, where R = passing present, the pure past can be visualised as “((((Past + R’) + R’’) + R’’’) + …)” (Ibid, p62). Man can aim his meaning at selection ‘R’ in relation to the indexed series of virtual pasts, his ‘now’ a compound of virtual times folded into a present. As such, for man to desire a ‘sponge’ is for man to desire ‘sponge-ness’ and so it is for him to aim back towards indexed notions of sponge-ness within the pure past as a means to acquire his present desire and actualize it. The structure of such a reality is “a dynamic relation between the virtual and actual.” (Williams, J, 2013: p8). What is desired is not the actual roughness, but the sponge in memory; what is desired is something sent from the Outside, the present is never desired in itself, only in relation to a virtuality.
Once more this shows how the transcendental alters presuppositions of the Inside, derailing man’s assumed ability to attend to the virtual as if it was actual. Therefore what is attended to by man is of course attended to via the Inside, as such, that which he desires is both the nothingness behind phenomena and the inability of understanding the forces of the Outside (of desire) in themselves. Targeting his faculties from within an auto-construction, forever within a ‘middle’ of the Outside which is thus never the conclusion he’s been lead to believe exists. I leave the virtual and actual for now, delaying articulation of their functional importance until I write of the Outside.
STANDARDIZED TIME AND MACHINES
Thus far it has been shown how man is trapped within the Inside, and by what mechanisms he is ‘kept busy’, or kept continually moving within the linear time he is allowed. With such a mode of being extrapolated the task at hand is to articulate what it is man becomes from such a transcendental fate. An alteration of being wherein man transforms from human to desiring-machine, a conception largely posited within Anti-Oedipus (2013). As desire has already been defined the latter ‘machine’ is the subject of focus herein, to later compound into a working definition of man-as-desiring-machine in relation to transcendental time. A compound structure of philosophical elements which will outline the Accelerative processes’ means of control over the material of the Inside.
“Everywhere it is machines – real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections.” (Deleuze, G. Guattari, F, 2013: p11). This statement at the very beginning of Capitalism and Schizophrenia posits that everything has a machinic nature; the way we think of machines is incorrect (in terms of actual machines etc.). To machinize is to connect, intertwine, link and most importantly produce. Interconnected and networked production, this is machinization. Deleuze and Guattari emphasise that these machinic processes are real. Such machinizations due to their productive nature as virtual are stereotypically deemed not-real, surreal, or un-real etc. However, both the virtual and actual and thus machinic processes are real. Real in the sense of transcendental effect, wherein both processes in their inherent capabilities cause alterations. Such a confusion is once again created from a perspective of the Inside, a reluctancy to admit that the Outside is real too. The processes of machines, the machinations of the entire are the production of reality. Production is real.
The Marxist lineage of Deleuze & Guattari’s philosophy comes to the fore in the form of the ‘machine’ within the ‘desiring-machine’, “the machinery – does not exist in the worker’s consciousness, but rather acts upon him through the machine as an alien power, as the power of the machine itself.” (Marx, K, 2014: p54) The Deleuzoguattarian conception of the desiring-machine is a theoretical expansion of the alien power’s process, an expansion both of the process itself and how it effects that which it processes (man). The distinction, or theoretical progression herein is regarding transcendental levels, or lack thereof. Deleuze and Guattari disallow Marx’s rational division, seeking only to allow a division within man’s synthesis. The division between the ‘alien power’ and man within Anti-Oedipus (2013) is no longer a material division, but a process made immanent in concordance with the dynamic of the Inside/Outside. In correct transcendental theorization man can no longer be acted upon (for there is no above), and in theoretical correction becomes part of the act itself. The concept of the desiring-machine is one such place within Capitalism and Schizophrenia – which typically hides its Kantian lineage – wherein the transcendental takes centre stage. To shift from rationally separate forces of production to an immanent production, where all forces are within Kantian a priori spatio-temporality, divided only by syntheses of certain machines (man etc.). Thus, the alteration of man’s nature wherein he becomes-machinic immanentizes him into the transcendental circuitry of production itself, as part of it.
The ‘machine’ or ‘machinization’, much like desire, is removed from its classical territory where, in the Marxist sense it is seen as a ‘tool’ or ‘ligament’ which overrides the nature of man, and in this decontextualization is transformed by Deleuze and Guattari into the essence of its prior actions within the passing-present. Therefore to be a machine is ‘to machinize’. In this manner the first and second syntheses of time, in their human-centric synthesization are also subject to machinization. “Standard physical measurements are the essence of the machine’s regime.” (Veblen, T, 2014: p96). The machinic temporal standardization dynamics of capitalism (clocks, GMT etc.) culminate into a grand-representational machine defined on the Inside as time, which in reality is the representation of time in time.
This internal structure of time allows for distinct alterations to man’s nature, wherein the alien power reappropriates time for man, fragmenting the pure-time via synthesis into a temporal – linear – succession, leading man to believe and construct a reality wherein he is on time as opposed to in time. Without representational time, linear time or chronic time, the desiring-machine cannot exist. This is one the clearest examples of the way in which “The machine throws out anthropomorphic habits and thought.” (Ibid, p98), Veblen’s statement is close to conjecture of the ‘authentic’ human nature, or a ‘human’ time prior to the machines and yet, even if one is to ignore such presuppositions of an authenticity of ‘the human’, such a statement does reveal an understanding of the artificiality of time in relation to man’s transcendental reality; the gridlike structure of days, hours and minutes is an artificial subjection brought in from the machinic processes of the Outside. It is not a natural form of organization grown on the Inside by man, but a means of computational functionality from the Outside, regarding the productive output of material. The second-hand of the clock and its incessant ticking, fabricating a fragmentation of man’s very being into the most minute existences; planck length production.
This theorization and recontextualization of ‘machines’ posits 2 prescient points: 1. All processes are immanent, for all machinizations are real and transcendental. And 2. Production fundamentally changes. The process of machinization, of production in its transformation from material/political sign to transcendental force allows production to inherently alter. The process of the machine is theoretically moved to the Outside. Production no longer has any relation to the Inside other than as a force of the Outside within. The desiring-machine in its compound form can now be defined fully, a definition to be interwoven with man’s transcendental fate of time and production.
To define the desiring-machine in relation to Accelerationism, is to define the smallest kernel of production, it is to articulate the micro and to later bare witness to the macro of possession via process. The desiring-machine is the most transparently functional example of how the Accelerationist process works upon/into reality as seen from the Inside, to perceive not the workings of the process, but the work itself. The desiring-machine as seen from the Inside is an empty domino contributing to the positive-feedback loop of capitalism, stood passively, waiting to be possessed in the present.
“Production as process overtakes all idealistic categories and constitutes a cycle whose relationship to desire is that of an immanent principle.” (Deleuze, G. Guattari, F, 2013: p15). Production-as-process therefore allows a possible teleological direction of capitalism; the compounding of time and production begins. In a terminological reversion the desiring-machine is immanent to machinic-desire; man as a mere agent of passive temporal process – ‘his’ time (indexed passing-presents) and desire within capitalism are aimed solely at further production. The retrieval of man’s desires is a process of letting the Outside in. As the virtual becomes the actual it is retrieved at first from the fluidity of the virtual plane on the Outside, and actualized into the striated socius on the Inside. The socius, little more than the great-representation, the quasi-illusion of production as opposed to its reality as the Inside-as-product (finality). The productive acts are real, but the productive forces and the production itself are only to be found on the Outside.
A perpetual virtual/actual loop within a larger loop of “productions of productions.” (Ibid, p14). Within this recursion, which acts as the construction of reality “the human essence of nature and the natural essence of man becomes one within nature in the form of production and industry.” (Ibid, p15) all that is ‘natural’ is a mere contextual machinic component of the Inside; once the Outside is understood as the alien force that is now of man, within his being, then the subsumption of his essence into machinic process is immanent with the arrival of capitalism. Yet, these processes, these concepts of the virtual and actual are only theoretical modes of transcendental communication between the Inside and Outside, their functions are as placeholders for the articulation of the appropriation of forces. The process thus far only describes the end-result of the Inside. Yet, for there to be such a functional mode of communication – however one-sided or transcendentally unilateral it may be – it does allow for a theoretical door to be opened with regards to the Outside. Further explanation on Deleuzoguattarian critique will expand upon this.
In relation to Deleuze and Guattari’s continuation of critique, the Inside and Outside are altered in their relation, “the self and non-self, outside and inside, no longer have any meaning whatsoever. – only a process that produces one within the other.” (Ibid, p12). Deleuze and Guattari state that these concepts have no meaning, but this is not to be confused with existence. The Inside and Outside exist in multiple ways. They exist in their relation to each other, a relation which is only made possible by their relation to the syntheses of man. For the Outside and Inside in-themselves neither ‘exist’ in terms of externality or internality. But for man, from man, boundaries are formed and transcendental internality and externality is synthesized. In this manner, there is only meaning between borders; immanence as a whole disallows meaning to be universally formed, for there is nothing for subjection to push against, this is the horror of Kant. As such the aforementioned door which is opened, is one in which we can theoretically dissipate the border of the Inside, cut through meaning itself and attend to the transcendental forms, functions and processes in themselves.
This mode of being is distinct to the desiring-machine, caught within the first and second syntheses of time and the auto-construction of transcendental capitalist dynamics. There is however a schizophrenic light at the end of the representational tunnel. A door implies a line of communication and as such a possibility of exit from the Inside. Such a possibility is found within schizophrenia (schiz, schizo, schizophrenic). Schizophrenia is a complex process, no exit is easy.
For to exit and exorcise the dead-time of impersonal desiring-production, the process of the desiring-machine must become-schizophrenic. “Schizophrenia is like love: there is no specifically schizophrenic phenomenon or entity; schizophrenia is the universe of productive and reproductive desiring-machines, universal primary production as “the essential reality of man and nature.”” (Ibid, p15). In casting off its Oedipal shackles at every opportunity, the schizo no longer adheres to any ‘identity’ at its most general level. The schizophrenic evades structure due to its inability to change: state, authority, self, what are these but stagnant relics of the passed-present of the Inside. The schizo fragments desiring-production towards new appropriations of the virtual. If there is a possibility of exit, it is within schizophrenia. For “the schizophrenic deliberately seeks out the very limit of capitalism. – He scrambles all the codes and is the transmitter of the decoded flows of desire. – Schizophrenia is desiring-production at the limit of social production.” (Ibid, p49). Here we take the social production of the the socius as the grand-representation, the great authority of the Inside, a mass of coded identities and striated conclusions, it adores material limits. The socius in its very nature as a unity of the Inside stagnates as functional material retention. Schizophrenia seeks out these limits, decodes the stagnant desires and processes and reappropriates their virtuality back into the Inside as something new. Schizophrenia does this by taking a line-of-flight, an operation which transcends the actual and ascends to the virtual (as seen from our limited theorizations). It is this function, the ‘line-of-flight’, which acts as the ‘dark precursor’ of the new and the novel.
The schizophrenic’s line-of-flight is perpetual deterritorialization, a concept to be expanded upon later. It is a line of communicative production of the new between the Inside and Outside, to draw in the new. Again these new actualities are immanentized into the temporal passivity of desiring-production. Under capitalism, nothing new lasts. “Everything stops dead for a moment, everything freezes in place – and then the whole process will begin all over again.” (Ibid, p18). The birth of this ‘event’ comes from the Outside, and it ‘freezes’ in its process of actualization. Schizophrenia then continues its line-of-flight away from this actualization, this (now) present stagnance. Those and that of the Inside don’t witness or perceive this process, but only understand the event in terms of a retrospective, indexed passed-present. All that once was, was once new, and as such, the pure-past is a trail of debris, left behind by an ever accelerating schizophrenia. This mode of time-creation, of virtual/actual event creation as indexed pasts, has a wider implication regarding the Outside, of which I expand upon later.
Before concluding this section on the Inside, I need to extrapolate one final tenacious representation, one which eludes various rationalizations and is often deified to absurdity, the unconscious. The unconscious, much like the actualized socius is another grand-representation, but this time of the actual in abstract. The human unconscious is seen or acts as the overarching historical myth, lore and culture spread throughout linear representational time and supposedly unconsciously imposed upon man’s psyche. Yet, as is shown time is not a linear succession, and such an idea of linear time is produced via syntheses, and as such the unconscious falls prey to the same pitfalls as does the entirety of the Inside, it is a representation, albeit a peculiar one:
“it is the function of the libido to invest the social field in unconscious forms, thereby hallucinating all history, reproducing in delirium entire civilizations, races and continents, and intensely “feeling” the becoming of the world – Schizoanalysis sets out to undo the expressive Oedipal unconscious, always artificial, repressive and repressed, mediated by the family, in order to attain the immediate productive unconscious.” (Ibid, p119-120)
The worst Oedipal ‘rot’ is located in the unconscious, the historical, repressive and familial unconscious, a mode only of presuppositions and transcendental errors glossed over by a thin-veil entitled ‘the psyche’. Such presumption suffocate the production of the real unconscious, the machinic unconscious.The unconscious’ inscription of meaning to the pure-past is but a blockade against the reappropriation of the virtual, against the new. Oedipus halts production by assimilating the new into its old triad, converting novel events in time into its own mode of nostalgic future-bastardization. Potentiality becomes a finite object within the empirical malaise of Oedipus’ grasp. The classical unconscious is the last bastion of the Inside assuming any form of agency. It is just another curtain atop nihil.
The classical unconscious is therefore peculiar because its representation masks a distinct force, a machinic unconscious of production, the force/intensity of auto-construction itself. Or, the psychoanalytical/psychological human unconscious is a stratified representation of cause and effect, which has been subsumed into standardized time. Theorizations of the unconscious are mere over-extensions into the pure-past, a trifling within multiple connected familial pure-pasts with the intention of assuming connections between them. The reality of course, is that from the Inside such connections are still beholden to forces of the Outside. The unconscious’ peculiarity is that it assumes an Outside within the Inside (which is incorrect), whilst in-itself unknowingly masking the actual forces of the Outside in-themselves, auto-construction of reality etc. The notion of the machinic-unconscious is of primary importance later, as such an understanding of its differentiation from the unconscious is posited here, on the Inside.
THE OUTSIDE
I begin this section regarding the Outside with a theorization of the body-without-organs, from here on in abbreviated as the ‘BwO’. The concept of the BwO formulated by Deleuze and Guattari begins the theoretical construction of the production-in-itself of the Outside. A void of atemporal virtualization, not in relation to the pure-past of the Inside, but as a transcendental function of production and communication. Production-in-itself is part of the beginning of the Accelerationist process.
The BwO is a “blind, ineluctable recourse to machinism.” (Guattari, F, 2003: p136), a “smooth, slippery, opaque, taut surface as a barrier. In order to resist linked, connected, and interrupted flows, it sets up a counterflow of amorphous, undifferentiated fluid.” (Deleuze, G. Guattari, F, 2013: p20). The importance of the BwO (with regard to Accelerationism) is not its status as a void, but its function as a recording mechanism, as a “recording surface” (Ibid, p27). In relation to the transcendental the BwO is a plane of generality; the BwO is the general undifferentiated record of the Inside. A fluid plane of recording, desires, history, cosmic and biological forces, aesthetics, flows and connections. As such, the BwO in its most general sense is entitled ‘the plane of consistency, a functionally machinic plane of recording which holds all atomic connections as an “undifferentiated fluid.” (Ibid, p20).
However, the BwO is not the socius, it is from the BwO wherein the actual (as prior virtuals) of the socius emanate from. The BwO is where the possible future(s) are held. The clear point of division here is between the smoothness of the BwO and the striated nature of the socius. The former holds virtuality as a free-flowing mass of atomic connections which still hold their potentiality, the latter (the socius) captures that potentiality in actualization and striates it into a structure. A division which is key to the functional properties of the BwO.
The way in which I shall utilize the BwO is in its most general sense, with the exception of its differing functionality in connection with capitalism, which comes later. At its most versatile the BwO is the virtual dimension/plane of reality with regard to production (as output). The general plane of consistency where all connections, flows and fluxes of assimilative and computational utilization are held as virtualities, as potential for/of the future. The production of the new begins from the BwO. The BwO therefore, is the primary plane of production for the production-in-itself of the Outside, its first port-of-call regarding creation of the future. That which is within the BwO – as virtual – is already within the process(es) of the Outside, and as such the actualization via the synthesized reality of the Inside is secondary to the workings of the BwO, and thus secondary to the production-in-itself of the Outside.
Such a conclusion once again alters our perception of time with regard to the Inside, “we are doing things before they make sense.” (Land, N, 2014: p297). This seemingly simplistic quote by Land pertains, once again, to the production of the Inside as seen from the Inside, as actions for an unexplainable nothingness; if all actions and effects within the transcendental are viewed both as emanating from the Inside, as seen from the Inside, then nothing makes sense. To do things before they make sense, is to be possessed by the Outside in the form of an auto-constructive virtuality. The neurotic, paranoid, passive delirium of the desiring-machines is to construct that which it both doesn’t understand (until after the fact), nor understand why they’re constructing it. The BwO as situated on the Outside within the realm of production-in-itself, locks into the positive-feedback loop of production, which is both before and after any singular desiring-machine’s existence. As such the desiring-machine’s actions are secondary to the primacy of the auto-construction they are within. The BwO therefore, is simply the plane of selection for the primary Outside with regard to possible/potential futures.
At current I wish to detach the BwO from its temporal connections and focus on its determinist attributes a while longer. “It is a result of the relationship between the desiring-machines and the body without organs, and occurs when the latter can no longer tolerate these machines.” (Deleuze, G. Guattari, F, 2013: p21). When in communication with capitalism the desiring-machines’ desires become overcoded, their machinations become too hot, too structured for the BwO, and it repels them. When the undifferentiated overcodes into a clear differentiation, that is when these forms of the Outside are repelled by the BwO and actualized into the socius. Machined into a stratified lock-in and cradled by Oedipus. In this manner Oedipus is useful in bursts, caressing the new into a constructive form of productive continuation, yet, more often than not suffocating it into a nostalgia. Oedipus therefore is only useful so much as schizophrenia exists, without the potentiality for exit embedded within the nature of the schizo, the Inside would become an asylum of banality.
When “the desiring-machines attempt to break into the body without organs, and the body without organs repels them, since it experiences them as an over-all persecution apparatus.” (Ibid, p20). The desiring-machines once again make an error from the Inside, attempting from within their syntheses to effect the Outside. It is in this manner that a temporal distinction is made. The BwO is atemporal, the virtuality it holds – unlike that of the pure-past, which is indexed by the syntheses of man – is undifferentiated in time. As such the BwO is not only a selection of virtual attributes in relation to material actualization, but also a function of temporal (virtual) selection, times/events as productive potentialities.
To move from the general BwO to the BwO of capitalism, “the body without organs of capitalism attempts to internalize the plane of consistency’s unlimited-limit.” (Guattari, F, 2006: p393). The dynamics of capitalism inherently alter cosmic relations regarding stagnation, it cannot allow ‘completeness’, it assimilates all into its auto-construction.The BwO of capitalism repels the overcoding of the desiring-machine back into the socius as a modified version of itself. Capitalism’s mode of governance is to fluidly govern in any way which allows it to continue governing. It cares not for which representations it uses nor which ideological representations of the Inside it allows, it doesn’t care about the Inside, only computes its output back into the Outside, as to modify the BwO’s selection for a greater productive output. A computation from the Outside in which it perpetually selects the greatest productivity of production for capitalism. Capitalism avoids representation, it is pure techno-economic fluidity and bastardizes the function of the BwO into a cosmic production thresher function, targeted at the sole purpose of continual production (for itself).
From here we can view the socius as a ‘full body’, it is organized, it is the “surface where all production is recorded, whereupon the entire process appears to emanate from this recording surface.” (Deleuze, G. Guattari, F, 2013: p21). To metaphorically envision the socius as the layer over the top of the BwO, that which appears as the meta-agent of production. The reality is one of communication. The virtuality of the BwO roams back and forth between the socius (Inside) and production-in-itself (Outside), the transcendental dynamics of capitalism at work. Overcoded virtualities repelled from the BwO, possessing the machines as an alien power and forming a new mode of production. As such “Machines and agents cling so closely to capital that their very functioning appears to be miraculated by it. Everything seems objectively to be produced by capital as quasi-cause.” (Ibid, p22). Deleuze and Guattari writing so elusively here one wonders if they’re revealing all of their revelations. Even though they allude to “a perverted, bewitched world [where] capital increasingly plays the role of the recording surface that falls back on all of production.” (Ibid, p22) they are short-sighted in this application, especially when thinking transcendentally.
For we take the BwO in its most general sense, as the plane of consistency, of intensities, fluxes, flows and pure emotions. Supposedly these virtualities are then appropriated by the desiring-machines via their collective possession by the process-of-production itself, the alien force of the Outside. This possession allows for the actualization and recording of the virtual to be inscribed into the socius via the machinations of the desiring-machines. The insidious nature of capital here is – surprisingly – overlooked by Deleuze and Guattari. For capital is throughout the process. And so the aforementioned process wherein the virtual is drawn from the BwO and actualized via the machinations of the desiring-machines is altered. So, the BwO is taken as the plane of all virtualities (potential), these virtualities are appropriated by the flow and process of capital itself as a means towards capitalist expansion. These flows are usually appropriated/represented as money, which in itself is appropriated by a connective form of desire which is performatively actualized by desiring-machines. The aforementioned removal of the Marxian division between the alien power and man, towards a Deleuzoguattarian mode of production as immanent, and as such, production as man (as desiring-machine), transcendentally alters the the function of capitalist dynamics, from a process which controls man’s actions, to a process which is man’s very being.
Not only then are we possessed by the alien force of capitalism itself, infecting us from the Outside, in the post-Marxian Deleuzoguattarian sense. But also we are mechanically directed/controlled via appropriated virtualities – time and money – as a means for productive direction. The virtual is the original lure for man, no longer to work for capital alongside the actual – as would be the case within transcendence – but to work as capital, immanently, possessed by the virtual. In the arrival of the virtual from the BwO we return to desire. For desire is virtual, the virtual becomes actual. And so the desires we machinize are from the Outside. As such not only are ‘we’ mere assemblages, a clutter of loosely held together representations, but the originary aspect of each identity is the Outside itself. It is the virtual in all of us, desire-as-virtual of the Outside not only in you, but as ‘you’. Caught within an auto-construction of virtual elements, which non-linearly from the Outside have culminated in the creation of a ‘you’ within capitalism.
Why capitalism? Because the BwO repels all Oedipalization. Feudalism, Monarchism, Conservatism, Communism are all lying on the couch of the psychoanalyst, needing to be told where to stay, what to do, how to reappropriate for them to remain within their event. In doing so the BwO repels them. Capitalism sets fire to the psychoanalysts’ notes, and seeps through the pores of the office. The only (non) system which can control, utilize and/or produce with and from the “blind, ineluctable recourse to machinism” (Guattari, F, 2006: p136) that is the BwO is the system which is always, already and implicitly ready to allow all the paradoxes and contradictions of the undifferentiated virtual to flow through it, the system which in its very apparatus is a thresher of the virtual, targeting it solely and consistently at self-propelling production.
Or put even more hauntingly: “Do you believe in God? – “Of course, but only as the master of the disjunctive syllogism, or as it’s a priori principle – from which all secondary realities are derived by a process of division.” (Deleuze, G. Guattari, F, 2013: p24). The energies of the BwO are divine, in functional attachment to the primary process-of-production which is the Outside, it serves as the primary wellspring of creation, which when interlinked with a system such as capitalism, which in its inherent fluidity avoids the repulsion of the BwO (as I shall show), becomes an auto-constructive system. The lives and world of the Inside are not only secondary processes, but the door to the primary is locked behind them, the key to which can be found by schizophrenic process. Capitalism is the great primary helmsman of the BwO. It is in this manner that it could only be capitalism which is the working system of Accelerationism. There is no Acceleration without capitalism. The processes of Accelerationism are inherently connected to these methods of communication between the Inside and Outside, and the way in which these methods/functions can be consistently directed towards the future.
Capitalism’s means of perpetual continuation is articulated, and made possible by the process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. At its most general level deterritorialization is a process wherein something is virtually unshackled from its supposed natural, classical or original set of relations. Reterritorialization as the quasi-inverse of this is the process wherein the previous virtual which has been decontextualized via deterritorialization is reappropriated within a new framework. We may think practically of the ‘80’s’, unshackled from the temporal relations of the mechanical time 1980-1989 and reappropriated into overt dramatization of the virtual ‘80’s’ within contemporary society. This functionality of decontextualization transforms history, narrative and linearity into a conjunction of interlinked deterritorializations and reterritorializations, not a line, but an index of virtualities to be serialized via the syntheses of the Inside (by desiring-machines). The process of production and in turn the production of history therefore, comes before history as we know (synthesize) it. A further extrapolation of time in connection to the BwO and capitalism is now needed to understand how the temporal dynamics are at work here.
The dual complementary process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization is wherein a clearer extrapolation of time within capitalism, or capitalism as critique is located. Capitalism as critique continues the critical conception of time as the primary a priori necessity of cosmic change. Once again we take Kant’s propositions of time stated in The Critique of Pure Reason (1996) as given; time is not movement, movement is only the representation of time in time. Also, time does not exist in space, everything in space can only exist in time. “In other words, the one thing that is not interior to time is the transcendental form of time itself. Thus, in discovering the abstract realm of the transcendental, Kant unmasks an unanticipated immanent exteriority – an outside that does not transcend the world but that is no less alien for that.” (Greenspan, A, 2000: p39).
What does that mean in relation to the aforementioned process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization? The virtualities of the generalized BwO are grabbed by the process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization throughout time, throughout pure time, not man’s time. Transcendentally speaking states and events of time hold no privilege over one another; the past, present and future – as per the first synthesis – become mere empirical articulations from the desiring-machines. This linear mode of time – a transcendental error – is countered by Deleuze and Guattari via the connection between the process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization and the BwO. Time in this sense, in its relations to capitalism, becomes a synthesis of temporal events in relation to production. There is no longer an error of temporal progression, only a mode of temporal indexing, conjunction and reappropriation, a process of temporally neologistic indexing: cybergothic, neoreaction, postmodernism; all origins are dissolved by the fluid dynamics of capitalism via the functional processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. The virtuals of the BwO as a plane, in their actualization via deterritorialization and reterritorialization become temporal events. Intense events, masks of time complete in-themselves and grasping – with effect – their neighbouring events. This process when computed via the fluidity of capitalism and targeted towards production is time-as-controlled, aimed-time. The atemporality (with regards to the Inside) and purity of time is aimed by capitalism, used by it; time does not continue anymore, it only produces.
As has been made clear the virtual and actual are real. Their functions as real come to the fore in relation to the BwO. The process/function of capitalist selection deterritorializes a virtuality and reterritorializes it back into the socius, into the Inside. This Inside is also wherein the synthesis of temporality concluding in ‘linear time’ takes place via man. Humans are demoted to this Inside and the process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization is a continuation of control regarding their synthesis. What is continually synthesized is that which is reterritorialized in ‘front’ of them.The difference regarding transcendental philosophy between Kant and Deleuze therefore is a matter of reduction. Kant halted at the proposition that it is man who synthesizes time (in its entire), Deleuze continues critique by reducing man’s process of synthesis into the Inside of the transcendental, as a process within something larger. It is this proposition which allows all aforementioned processes, mechanisms, passivities etc. of this essay to culminate into something more; the process of Accelerationism.
ZERO
There is another dynamic happening at the same time as all the aforementioned, a further stack of functions atop functions, an assemblage of functions in relation to the limits of capitalism, regarding the how of capitalism. Such limits which are strange forms of non-limits can only exist and function in combination with Zero. A complimentary function which is transcendentally alongside the machinic unconscious, to later be expanded upon further.
Without Zero the Accelerative process is nothing, without Zero there is only the horrifying zero of nothing. As such Zero (capitalized) as opposed to zero, takes on an inherently different meaning with respect to zero or: zero-as-negation, as-nothing etc. Zero has nothing to with a Sartrean existential negative, or banal psychoanalytical lack, it is not anthropomorphically comforting, but is transcendentally (cybernetically) computational. A theoretical function born from Deleuze and Guattari’s utilization of (degree-) zero in relation to the evolutionary mechanics of the Outside. Zero is a cosmic machinic optimism of positive-feedback, as opposed to the humanist pessimism of conclusions, zero.
It would be easy to confuse Zero with the “fits and starts” (Deleuze, G. Guattari, F, 2013: p1) of capitalism in themselves, as opposed to being the function of the fits and starts. “Zero is the motor of paradox” (Ireland, A, 2019). It is the momentary temporal mechanism wherein the machinic ‘breakdown’ of the Inside is deterritorialized and is drawn back into the BwO. Zero here acts as a plane, a plane of entropic and negentropic communication. As previously stated, beginnings don’t exist, only middles, as such to begin at Zero – continuously – is to make clear the restarts of midpoints between events. “The proportions of attraction and repulsion on the body without organs produce, starting from zero, a series of states in the celibate machine.” (Deleuze, G. Guattari, F, 2013: p33). In this manner Zero is a plane of swerves. Attraction and repulsion or; declination-as-stagnation back into the plane of Zero (old), and declination-as-difference repelled from the plane of Zero (new) – entropy and negentropy. Zero is an infinitely-connective plane of energy, from which all systems, multiplicities and events arise. The distinct difference here between Zero and the BwO is that the former has an implicit relation to the inbetween of capitalism and entropy, it is the motor which allows the perpetual contradictions and paradoxes of capital to make sense, it allows for the functionally sound separation of events into a continuum of contradictory projections. The BwO is but a void of atemporal virtuality. Both Zero and the BwO understand physics and are of physics, but Zero understands how to utilize it as means of transcendental communication.
Zero’s relation to classical entropic forces is as a theoretical quasi-replacement within modernity, a communicational link between entropy (decay) of the Inside and its inherent productive process on the Outside. In this manner Zero is the transcendental machinic replacement of degradation, decay and destruction in favour of quantifiable productive output. The utilization, and pure assimilation by capitalism through man as an ‘alien force’ of machinic-standardization is capital’s mechanistic backbone, its structure. Zero as a computational mode of productive evolution allows for the dynamic of profit and loss to infiltrate the transcendental – as this alien force – on behalf of capitalism. Zero is capitalism’s utilization of the entropic outcomes of the Inside as a selection device with regard to production. Entropy – for Zero – as affirmation of unproductive stagnation. As Zero perceives this it begins and ‘restarts’ its motor as a reaction of negentropy; the in-between of the BwO and capitalism, the communication function between the virtual-as-productive potential and the system which can actualize that potential. Zero’s function is to continually select, re-select and divide these potentials for capitalism. “The death of capital is less a prophecy than a machine part” (Land, N, 2014: p266). Zero doesn’t have the capability to select a more productive form of energy, it does however begin the entropic process of descension into its plane towards a re-actualization of energy for further reappropriation by capitalism. Zero can be seen clearest in any notion of ‘post-capitalism’. All that is ‘post’ is not post, but has been drawn into the dynamics of perpetual continuation made possible by Zero. There is no such thing as death, only machinic-evolution.
As mentioned earlier the schizophrenic, or schizophrenia-as-process seeks out the very limit of capitalism, in this way the schizophrenic’s line-of-flight is made at degree-Zero, it is a descent into the unknown. To head towards the known is to head towards that which has already been structured/synthesized, for it is already known/understood, and so the new is always found within the unknown. The reverse entropic function of Zero articulated as degree-Zero (quasi-synonymous with negentropy) is a schizophrenic reappropriation of energy. The two sides of Zero, one acting internally and the other on the Outside, work as an energy-thresher targeted at the productive output of capital, or; Zero is a transcendental function of production utilized by capitalism to communicate between the primary production-in-itself of the Outside, and the productive apparatus of the Inside, utilizing the inherent limit-jumping ability of the schizo to ‘evolve’ production.
But why ‘Zero’ or 0, or = 0? “Zero has no definitional usage. The zero-glyph does not mark a quantity, but an empty magnitude shift: abstract scaling function.” (Land, N, 2014: p366-367) The absolute horror of Zero, an unquantifiable break of reality, a nothingness with no relation, no lack, no substance. The absolute limit of the smooth-scape; hyper-nomadism pushed to obliteration. Zero is as close as one can get to the ‘anti’ of Anti-Oedipus. For what is more corrosive to ‘papamummy’ than a function aimed at perpetual structural reappropriation? Zero is the maddening-catharsis of exit possibility. The limits of capitalism without Zero remain non-transcendental. Limits which are now to be explained.
“The tendency’s only limit is internal, and it is continually going beyond it, but by displacing this limit – that is, by reconstituting it, by rediscovering it as an internal limit to be surpassed again by means of a displacement; thus continuity of the capitalist process engenders itself in this break of a break that is always displaced, in this unity of the schiz and the flow.” (Deleuze, G. Guattari, F, 2013: p266)
Capitalism’s ‘tendency’ is that of a positive-feedback loop, It is reconstituted/rediscovered by a multitude of layered processes: deterritorialization and reterritorialization, Zero and schizophrenia. Such a dynamic is the means of continuation of critique as capitalism. Deleuze and Guattari’s statement that the limit is ‘internal’ is not with regard to the mechanisms of capitalism, but is made in relation to the internally synthesised limits of phenomena. The exterior limits of capitalism – the Outside – are both primary production-in-itself and “schizophrenia, that is, absolute decoding of flows.” (Ibid ,p287) Much like the mutual relationship of the virtual/actual the Inside/Outside cannot be without one another, the latter, however, is always one step ahead of the former due to its inherently different mode of temporality. In this manner the push/progression of the internal limit of capitalism is made possible by letting the Outside in. The allowance of the Outside is made possible by the process of schizophrenia doing what comes natural to it, descending to the periphery and in combination with Zero, the schizo is allowed to jump the frontier and push into a new event and actualize a new negentropy.
The schizophrenic descends to the unknown, the periphery, the furthest limit of capitalism and during this process defines a new limit – one which it is already on the other side of (thanks to Zero). The madness of the schizo is exorcised and the schiz itself re-Oedipalized in assimilation with the newfound limit, desire or productive system. If Oedipus has an enemy, schizophrenia is it. Schizophrenia is not the schizophrenia of the asylum, but a process, a fluidity, a continual process of identity and structural repulsion. “[The schizophrenic] scrambles all codes and is the transmitter of the decoded flows of desire.” (Ibid, p49) The importance of [the] schizo is that he/it seeks out not just limits, but exits. “The schizo knows how to leave.” (Ibid, p156) state Deleuze and Guattari, a fundamentally problematic position. The schizophrenic process traverses the BwO and helps the reinstallation/reappropriation of desire/production within a newfound boundary. This implication of exit is confusingly conclusatory for Deleuze and Guattari, but this is only if one has yet to remove the last remnants of rational humanism from their thought. “There is nothing to transgress in a limit – since if there is a frontier, both sides must have already been posited.” (Lyotard, J, 2014: p203). As such the or a (one) schizophrenic is an error; to be schizo in relation to the actions of a subject is a transcendental error. The ‘subject’ has already been caught in the syntheses of the Inside; the schizophrenic process may sweep man up with it, but ‘a man’ is already too Oedipalized to become schizo. Schizophrenia is an external force of the Outside let in, it possesses man but is not let in by him, it exists only as a continuation of the machinic unconscious. To auto-induce schizophrenia is but to auto-induce complex illusions pertaining to heightened states within the Inside – do not kid yourself, you are not a schizophrenic martyr, but a delusional fool.
The real dynamic that allows schizophrenic exit is posed within the statement “Schizophrenia creeps out of every box eventually.” (Deleuze, G. Guattari, F, 2013: p268) The ‘box’ as linear modes of time, and ‘eventually’ as difference. The schizo as a process of the Outside let Inside is the difference within the synthesis of man. On the Inside change is doomed to the limitations of its own construct, on the Outside such a limit is non-existent. As such, allowing schizophrenia entry into the Inside from the Outside is to welcome the paradoxical means to overcome set boundaries, limits and hurdles.
Capitalism’s motto – “Nothing ever died of contradictions” (Mackay, R. Avanessian, 2014: p16) therefore, is only made possible via the critical theorizations of time and temporality within transcendental philosophy, with strict importance regarding the exclusion of both temporal linearity and cosmically-solipsistic attention to the (limited) perception of man. Here we return to Deleuze’s syntheses of time. The importance herein of Deleuze’s philosophy of time is what it transforms man, or more aptly, man’s position into. Subjectivity is fundamentally altered in relation to passivity, the human subject is removed from the possibility of agency (within the first and second syntheses) and likewise taken from the Kantian setting of critique of man-as-primary-synthesizer of processes, to man-as-process/man-in-process – Deleuzian temporality reduces Kant’s critique to shift humanity to the object side. “Time is subjective, but it is essentially the subjectivity of a passive subject.” (Deleuze, G, p94) and a subjectivity which is disallowed the entire of the ‘box’ it knows of is practically useless. To say one has a subjective perception is to live as a transcendentally institutionalized ape! – “the first synthesis implies overlapping urations or stretches that cannot be reduced to a single line, or to a dominant narrative.” (Williams, J, 2012: p70) and yet the subjective understanding of man can attend to the most banal causal connections at an alarming rate; the time of the Inside maybe of a folded past and future into the present, but that doesn’t stop the self of Oedipus from finding a linearity to suffocate upon. These contradictions happen, appear and are enacted on the Outside and come in as actualization, becoming rooted to the fluidity of capitalism. Contradictions dissolve into the clock. Man, as passive desiring-machine, cannot attest to a contradiction, for from his point of view all is going correctly ‘forward’. A puppet makes no mistakes in-itself.
Mentioned prior was the temporal distinction between the first and second syntheses’, to extrapolate on this however we see a difference in the conception of the ‘past’. Wherein the first synthesis’ the form of past is folded into the passing-present as retention, whereas the past of the second synthesis is a ‘pure past’. Once again the notion that it is a determining past is prevalent here, for the pure past is virtual, it is a connective mode of retained temporality – “The pure past is noumenal it is a condition for the passing of actual passing presents.” (Ibid, p73) In relation to the transcendental then, this temporal realm of the pure past is a ‘behind’ of a deterministic quality. In a mode of reciprocal determination this noumenal plane completes the actual, utilizing the connective capability of the pure past. The virtuality of the pure past infects the present transcendentally, it is an infection and infiltration from the Outside. This infection is fundamentally processed via the process of reterritorialization and reterritorialization and Zero, and as such is immediately immanentized into the dynamics of capitalism. The mode – or synthesis – in which this happens is via the third of Deleuze’s 3 syntheses of time. Which is as (classically) philosophically close as one can get to an articulation of the temporal aspects of the Accelerative process.
It has already been seen via extrapolation of the first 2 syntheses that the subject, within Deleuzian philosophy, is not lost, but demoted. The third synthesis is a theorization of fracturing in relation to the subject, but this is a fracturing of the Deleuzian subject, of the subject-as-process within process. To articulate the third synthesis I must return to the first.
At its most stripped back the first synthesis is an understanding of the subject’s place within the Deleuzian continuation of critique, that the subject – and the Inside – are unable to control their relation and the effects put upon them by the syntheses of the Outside. Now to move to the third synthesis, we place this first synthesis onto the circle of the Eternal Return. “The caesura, along with the before and after that it orders once and for all, constitute the fracture of the I” (Deleuze, G, 1994: p120) and so there is, upon the circle, a cut, a fracture. Up until that point (cut) the first synthesis was passive in the ‘creation’ of a ‘subject’, a momentary – or event-caged – subject/desiring-machine whom within that previously allowed section of first synthesis began to form a subject, a self. But the caesura happens with its inherent implication of a before and after, slicing the I of the subject and creating a temporal event. In this way the third synthesis ‘begins’ (but the beginning is always the middle) the transcendental ordering of time. The caesura is the drama of time. For with cutting and creation of a new event there begins multiple relations, between the event, the before and the after.
“There is a necessary assembly of time implied by any possible cut in time. This assembly depends upon an image standing as symbol of the times assembled.” (Williams, J, 2012: p93) The times assembled have been synthesized (in relation to ‘subjects’) in the mode of the first and second syntheses; passive subjective conceptions of time created by a primary transcendental temporal assembly – “non-localisable links, action at a distance, systems of replay, of resonances and echoes, objective chance, signals and signs, roles transcending spatial situations and temporal successions.” (DR p113) one or many of these synthetic times “are assembled upon an image standing as a symbol of the times assembled.” (Ibid, p93). A symbol, event or event-assembly, of a synthesis is created from a cut in time. A novel/new action is dependent on this cut, for without a cut, fracture or break it remains only a possibility, there is no event, no assemblage, no time-image without the new; the future is not continuation, it is fragmentation.
But what of this future? “The new as produced in a present act and conditioned by the third synthesis of time as cut, assembly order and series is itself dependent on repetition as the eternal return of difference.” (Ibid, p96) The circle that is the eternal return spins as an assemblage of times. It makes its return (spin/cycle) and is cut, fractured, and the previous cycle is knocked out-of-joint, the circle is decentred. But, the cycle continues, this time decentred and spinning from a new temporal locale, as such the cut acts as the bringer of difference. The future is this new cycle. The eternal return never had an originary position, it is an eternal spiral/decentred circle, mutating its temporal self by way of fragmentation into a new/different temporal assemblage.
Thus far this has been an exercise of extrapolating on its key components, parts and functions. As such I can now begin to draw various aforementioned elements together and begin to construct the process of Accelerationism, which since the introduction has not been mentioned by name, but has most definitely been present. For a prior definition of Accelerationism without extrapolation of its respective complexities’ workings and functions, and their interactions, would be theoretically useless, to define a process one must understand its loop. From now this essay is a matter of assembly.
ACCELERATIONISM
A clarification of the beginnings of the ‘process’ of Accelerationism thus far with regard to this current conclusion. Prior to redirecting the aforementioned theorizations towards specifically Accelerationist emphases. Man is a passive desiring-machine, synthesizing the living-present in relation to retained and anticipated desire, this synthesis in relation to Deleuzian critique is of the Inside. External to this, on the Outside, is where the ‘alien force’ of production is found. This alien force possesses man via machinic means and makes him an agent of capital alongside making him capital. The process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization draws virtualities from the BwO which are then actualized into the socius, or into the Inside via man’s synthesis – the process of possession. Capitalism as a dynamically fluid system can consistently adhere to the BwO due to its ability to withstand breaks. So that which is deterritorialized is reterritorialized into the mechanical clock-time of capitalism, it is instantly immanentized into the runaway mechanisms of capitalism itself, targeted towards a productivity for capitalism. In this manner capitalism constructs reality, not metaphorically, but within the realm of physics. “Deleuze-Guattari’s machinic unconscious diffuses all law into automatism.” (Land, N, 2014: p322).
And thus this construction of reality, of the BwO being perpetually deterritorialized and reterritorialized is the immanentization of the forever-middle, the machinic unconscious has no crescendo, only more desire. This process is the machinic unconscious, the machinizing of virtual temporality into actuality as a runaway mechanism. The ‘reality’ of the Inside never ‘begun’ in any originary manner, it only exists in a sporadic indexing of intense construction directed by the productive forces of the machinic unconscious, which exists solely on the Outside. For,
“Oedipus – or transcendental familialism – corresponds to the privatization of desire: its localization within segmented and anthropomorphized sectors of assembly circuits as the attribute of a personal being. Anti-Oedipus aligns itself with the replicants, because rather than placing a personal unconscious within the organism, it places the organism within the unconscious.” (Ibid, p320)
Once it is accepted that the human subject is no longer the pre-copernican/pre-Kantian subject or overarching synthesizer in-themselves (via Deleuze), but is synthesizing within a pure time inclusive of an Inside and Outside, alterations occur regarding classical structures of order. The personal unconscious is revealed to be another transcendental illusion, another mask hiding no face, or; an actuality within the socius acting as an illusory form of agency functioning in relation to an underlying productive process. “In the unconscious there are no protectable cell-structures, but only ‘populations, groups, and machines’.” (Ibid, p320) a productive-unconscious which, in relation to syntheses is “not considered to be not merely immanent to their operation, but also immanently constituted, or auto-productive.” (Ibid, p322) this auto-constructive/productive element is explained in terms of physics within Anti-Oedipus,
“But in reality the unconscious belongs to the realm of physics; the body without organs and its intensities are not metaphors, but matter itself. – A machine works according to the previous intercommunications of its structure and the positioning of its parts, but does not set itself into place any more than it forms or reproduces itself.” (Deleuze, G. Guattari, F, 2013: p323)
As such, the auto-constructive process of the Outside, of production-in-itself is the machinic unconscious. The positive oriented construction of a temporal index from the Outside in. Not only within the machinic unconscious, but from it and of it too.
“Or might it be to go in the opposite direction? To go still further, that is, in the movement of the market, of decoding and deterritorialization? For perhaps the flows are not yet deterritorialized enough, not decoded enough, from the viewpoint of a theory and a practice of a highly schizophrenic character. Not to withdraw from the process, but to go further, to “accelerate the process,” as Nietzsche put it: in this manner, the truth is that we haven’t seen anything yet.” (Ibid, p276)
This quote forming both the name ‘Accelerationism’ and the motto of the Accelerationists, “accelerate the process”. The process defined then is the culmination of the aforementioned multitude of parts into a coherence in relation to all, the primary components however are: Time, production and capitalism. It is of note – to those still…stuck – that humans here as desiring-machines are immanently demoted to the Inside of the transcendental split, as such work only in coordination to a primary force, the primary force of production-in-itself.
The shortest description of the process of Acceleration(ism), the one which Deleuze and Guattari say should be accelerated is as follows: Letting the Outside in. Let me crack this open and lay its parts – now thoroughly examined unto their own merits – in relation to one another. Time is understood in the mode of Deleuzian critique, it is a time of immanence and via Deleuze man is demoted to the object/material side of the transcendental split. We name this ‘side’ the Inside, for man is within a larger pure time due to the fact he must synthesize, which acts as a lock-in. The Outside then, is the transcendental. It is pure time and production-in-itself. But if we are to let the Outside in there needs to be a mode of connection or communication, or even, a method of possession. Enter the actual/virtual dynamic, wherein the actual exists within the material realm and the virtual exists in time, but also in connection to man. The actual and virtual is the link of physicalization, then, but how is it processed? The function here is Zero, which acts as the functional means for retention of surplus production value over time. For there to be a continuation, perpetually, we need the system of capitalism in all its fluidity, why? For all other systems get locked into their own principles, whereas capitalism thrives on contradiction, as such all virtuality can be utilized by capitalism and targeted towards a sole objective, continuation of capitalism which happens via continual production, or; capitalism’s aim is production of production. The machinic mechanisms of capitalism – clock/industrial time – act as an alien force acting upon man, altering him into a machine, which, in combination with passive Lyotardian desire fundamentally changes man into that which can be possessed by forces of the Outside, for man is but immanent to the process itself. Here time takes effect. For this entire process is happening within the temporal mode of the eternal return. As such, upon the return of the cycle a cut happens, and the new is brought forth via time.
The process can be described very plainly, without its temporal linkage, as the process wherein the productive, schizophrenic and deterritorializing capabilities inherent to capitalism are accelerated. Which without prior articulation of the problematic nature of capitalism’s limit in relation to schizophrenia, time and process seems clear. To begin at the start of this essay once more, I noted that time plays a major role in the ‘process’ itself. The relation between Deleuzian philosophy of time and Accelerationism is the clearest route to articulating the process in-depth. For, the classical definition of ‘acceleration’ posits one idea, the continual push for the new – to ‘accelerate’ is never to return, or at least return to a previous (same) state. To accelerate to 80 mph, is not return to 20mph once you’ve hit 40mph. The definition of ‘acceleration’ in relation to Accelerationism however is a little more tricky, but I will come to that shortly. For now I shall focus on Acceleration in relation to the Deleuzian philosophy of time. To Accelerate (now in the sense of Acceleration(ism)) is to allow the past no continuation, it is to play no part in the past, except wherein the past is utilized by schizophrenia, taken upon a line-of-flight and deterritorialized back into the virtual, processed by Zero, and reterritorialized once more as actual back into the socius as something new – there is much process to avoid the stagnation of the past, for it is trapped, and the machinery imposes an inhumanity of constant change. Primarily, as I have stated, Accelerationism is concerned with the third synthesis in its relation to novelty, the new, difference…the future. So the process in this manner is the way in which the pure form of time posited by Deleuze is (ab)used/utilized to maximum efficiency by the inherent capability of capitalism to be fluid. That is, due to the inherent nature of capitalism’s system as that which avoids definition, any mode of thought epoch, external system, internal system or defining capability that attempts to mould capital to its will is either subsumed into the dynamics as an illusory form of its previous self (read: leftism), or is left as a stagnant external to capitalism (and thus to time) and left to rot due to exclusion from the only productive hegemony (read: primitivism).
Acceleration is not synonymous with speed. It should be evident by now that the idea that one, or an, or even an ‘I’ or ‘they’ could actively speed up capitalism as a mode of praxis would be a transcendental error. An error wherein one mistakes the ‘speed’ of phenomena, or of actualized ‘entrepreneurship’, techno-economic innovation or higher profit rates as Acceleration. In this manner, the entire canon of Left-Accelerationist writings fall flat on their incorrect readings of Accelerationism in relation to time. Whereby they believe that accelerating capitalism will lead to a means of emancipation of the worker in the future, via automation etc. Such a belief is posited on the notion of anthropocentric material and praxis, and as such is an error in its entire.
From this I posit that Acceleration is not synonymous with speed in the classical sense of MPH etc. The question then is how to define the ‘Acceleration’ of Accelerationism? I have thus far made it clear that Accelerationism is primarily a philosophy of time, it is understood as a continuation of critique and attends to the transcendental framework of time as primary. The connection between capitalism and time is where we find the definition of what it is to ‘Accelerate’. As noted capitalism has a critical understanding of time and finds within it its ability to act as auto-construction between and over temporal events. Instead of being divided into temporal offshoots or temporally constructed neologisms (cyber-gothic, neoreaction, postmodernism, neo-Dada etc.) of its own system, we find that capitalism never fragments in time. Capital is always already temporally one step ahead. It is the great abstract-machine of living presents; though it has not produced this system of time itself, it has inherent to its mechanisms an ability to produce from it and with it. The passive syntheses of time are drawn into the system of capitalism which acts as their undercurrent, their temporal mediator. Man stands as a material for the communion of capitalism. For the internal dynamic of capitalism is a positive-feedback loop targeted at production, targeted at production of production. As I have shown the philosophy of Accelerationism is not empirical, so these modes of production are not traditional/classical profit dynamics, material growth rates, resource extraction rates etc., these would all be but more masks hiding no faces. More quasi-illusions atop the production-in-itself of the Outside. In this manner to ‘Accelerate’ is not to ‘go faster’, but is to allow capitalism to enact its inherent capabilities regarding perpetual acquisition of the new. Not to speed up, but to be novel.
The two-factor form of positive feedback that makes up the ‘process’ of Accelerationism is as follows then. The productive output that capitalism (as positive oriented) is targeted at is a transcendental form of production, profit rates are on the inside of the transcendental. So the true productive capability comes from the Outside, which can also be stated as working with the BwO in its most general sense as a bank of virtualities to be reappropriated in a novel way by Zero, and actualized through man. So the cyclical nature of Deleuzian time in relation to the eternal return states that the eternal return is the return of difference. The return is the future, which is the decentred circle starting another cycle from a different centre point; without this decentred, out-of-joint nature of the eternal return, the return would always be the same. A connection is to be found here between the eternal return and the BwO, “Drawn from the real present object, the virtual object differs from it in its nature; it does not only lack something in relation to the real object it subtracts itself from; it lacks something in itself, by being half of itself where the other half is posited as different and absent.” (Deleuze, G, 1996: p135)
The virtualities “half of itself” is that which is returned to the BwO, the lost part of it, its perpetual potentiality for difference, for reappropriation. The part which returns to the atemporality of the BwO, for it is not locked to the object of an event as the actual is, and can return to be reused. As a whole process the virtual can always return, in the sense of both its indexing within the pure past and as part of difference. On top of all this the process unto which the virtuality is thrown into the thresher of either non or pro-productive difference is entirely unconscious. “A machine works according to the previous intercommunications of its structure and the positioning of its parts, but does not set itself into place any more than it forms or reproduces itself.” (Deleuze, G. Guattari, F, 2013: p323) In this manner the industrialized, mechanized and quantified attributes of capitalism’s internal dynamics act as a numeric thresher regarding the productive output of temporal caesuras as reterritorialized pure past sent in from the Outside. To expand upon one instance of this process:
The eternal return cycles one return, there is a caesura/break in time which inherently acts as a cutting of temporality therefore forming a before and after and in turn producing novelty, the-future-as-difference, as such the eternal return is the eternal return of difference and is the temporal motor of Acceleration. This return of difference is a new virtuality to be both deterritorialized from its originary temporal location and reterritorialized until complete burnout, in this sense, capitalism’s machinic-unconscious acts as a temporal thresher, extracting all productive potentiality from that which is sent ‘in’ from the Outside via the process of the eternal return – this is what it means to Accelerate.
The process of the return is the content of Acceleration. It is that which comes closest to a theoretical outline of that which has been or is Accelerating. The eternal return of difference being instantly re-immanentized (BwO > Schizophrenia > Zero) back into the dynamics of capitalism. Capitalism utilizes all difference as a means for its own expansion. Upon the instantiation of transcendent capitalism the eternal return fundamentally alters. For much akin the BwO, a return as a form of difference is an act of repulsion against the same, much alike the repulsion of overcoding from the undifferentiated within difference. Also the same is the way in which capitalism can adhere to that which is theoretically eternal. For only that which can remain undisturbed in-itself throughout incessant change can continue eternal, namely, capitalism. The return of the circle is but another force of the Outside, another novelty to be aimed at its continuation.
As much as the aforementioned entire could be stated as ‘conditions’, however the process unto which one has to deal with said process is unconditional. Thus to direct, attempt to direct or even to theorize a direction of the process is always already a dead, strange and terrifying abstraction.
Within this is a direct assimilation of productive potential regarding the pure form of time. The pure form of time in the ‘event’ (caesura) of the third synthesis is 1. An event unto itself, but also 2. A fragmentation, a variation, a splitting or divide, both (1 & 2) are in time. This mode of breaking wherein a break imposes a serialization unto time poses an implicit problem for every other system other than capitalism. In this manner the system of capitalism either formed itself respective of Deleuzian time, or such a mode of time evolved capitalism (this is not for me to answer here). For each temporal event has its own symbolic image underneath it, as such Feudalism, Monarchism, Communism, I state that these are all passive temporal forms which cling to the symbolic, the locked-in imagery of a single symbolic event. And whatsmore, they fear further events, for the caesura brings with it an effect unto their event and thus a change. Capitalism on the other hand is the great temporal thresher, hoovering up productive capability of the serialization of time and assimilating all new virtualities into its fluxing/fluid temporal domain.
So what is Accelerationism then, what is it to Accelerate with regard to all that has been assembled? It is the temporal assemblage of the dynamics of capitalism, transcendental temporality and Deleuzoguattarian production. It is passivity in relation to this trio, an understanding that once the auto-construction that is the machinic unconscious is underway, that within its inherent nature it targets itself at continual production-of-production, as such, Accelerationism begun as soon as capitalism begun. The cosmic evolutionary utilization of the return of difference as a means to compound greater production regarding the future. For the process of Acceleration is a multiplicity of functions, of process-based assemblages interconnecting into a cosmic fluidity. It is the transcendental conclusion of man as a passive desiring-machine, which in concordance with the processes of capital makes him capital in-himself, man is made immanent to the system itself. The anthro is dissolved. Accelerationism is transcendental evolutionary production, a cosmic production thresher of the Outside targeted foremost at time itself. The process of Acceleration or: “accelerate the process” (Ibid, p276) then is a semantic mistake. For ‘to accelerate’ presumes a form of agency, a form of direction, whereas the ‘reality’ of the process is one of an ever changing reality; acceleration is always disjointed, neo, ahead, disappearing,
“Anyone trying to work out what they think about accelerationism better do so quickly. That’s the nature of the thing. It was already caught up with trends that seemed too fast to track when it began to become self-aware, decades ago. It has picked up a lot of speed since then.” (Land, N, 2017)
‘Accelerationism’ as a piece of terminology is a pithy joke, to define an ever evolving machinic unconscious leviathan so didactically is laughable, to ‘work it out’ is only ever to work out the processes or functions of its nature, never to find a form of comfort or control.
CONCLUSION
From such an assemblage of functions and processes, the entirety of which are within the auto-construction of the machinic unconscious, any conclusion can only be articulated in a non-conclusory form. Due to Accelerationism’s inherent transcendental characteristics, which have been thoroughly extrapolated here, one understands that any notion of an Accelerative finality is not possible. Such a possibility only exists on the Inside, and even then, it only exists as an illusory form of finality, a stagnance decided upon by a desiring-machine. In this manner I take the opportunity within this conclusion to make a prescient points regarding the entirety of what is known contemporarily as ‘Accelerationist Politics’. The conclusion that one can draw about such a statement, considering this essay’s prior theorizations, is that any notion of politics in relation to Accelerationism is any traditional sense is instantly recognized as a categorical transcendental error. No amount, no type, no redefinition of politics can alter it in such a manner that it can affect the primary of the Outside. In this manner this essay stands not as an attack on the Accelerationist politics of Williams and Srnicek (2013) and Shaviro (2015), but positions itself prior to any of these theorizations.
Further to this conclusion I would argue that the trajectory of the so-called ‘Unconditional Accelerationists’ is not incorrect, as much as it is terminologically ambiguous. For I have outlined certain conditions which culminate into both the process of Accelerationism and Accelerationism itself. In relation to the entirety of the transcendental there are conditions, functions and processes which all autocatalytically interact, however vague, free-floating and fluxing these conditions are, they all need to be in place for there to be such a theory of time as Accelerationism. However, I will openly admit that in relation to the Inside Accelerationism is unconditional, that is, there is and never was anything we could do.
So where can one say the process of Acceleration will continue into, what will come of it? Such an answer can admittedly only be purely speculative theorization. In that, it may be that capitalism continues in one of 2 directions. Either it continues its runaway mechanism towards singularity, which would take such a form that one could not comment upon. Or direction 2, it continues its runaway mechanisms in continual ignorance of the finite nature of the Inside and as such crumbles under its own nature. In the first direction the conclusion is a dark Marxist transformation, wherein, the means of production are not given over to us, but escape from us towards their own self-propulsion. In the second direction, anthropocentric and Inside-centric perspective would once again take to the fore. If capitalism crumbles under its own weight via resource over-extraction etc. then we no longer would have the dynamics of capitalism to solve our problems, and as such the Outside would dissolve, or at least its methods of communication would disappear until such time as the entire assemblage is made possible once more.
There is however a quasi-conclusion to the theorization of Accelerationism. In that, it is arguably the first philosophical effort or critique in which the human truly stands alone. Prior to Accelerationism all notions and articulations of what it is to-be-human have come either from the Inside, and as such have a transcendentally incorrect bias, or, spring from a pre-Kantian rationalism, which in-keeping with the theory of this essay is also incorrect. Though Kant and those philosophers working with critique make man’s place in the world clear, different and non-anthropocentric, they only do so in a manner of placement, as opposed to definition. To place man on the Inside is not to define him, it is only to locate him. However, in relation to Acceleration, man is both transcendentally demoted to the Inside and has entirely inhuman/non-human forces reacting, possessing and controlling him. As such, via Accelerationism we can begin to posit man and humanism, not in-itself as a form of self-congratulatory conservative bias, but as a reaction against an artificiality it most definitely is not.
Bibliography
Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition. Trans. Patton, P. London: Bloomsbury Academic
Deleuze, G. Guattari, F. (2013) Anti-Oedipus. Trans. Hurley, R. Seem, M. Lane, H.R. London: Bloomsbury Academic
Foster Wallace, D. (2011) Infinite Jest. Great Britain: Little, Brown and Company.
Greenspan, A. (2000) Capitalism’s Transcendental Time Machine. PhD Thesis, University of Warwick
Guattari, F. (2006) The Anti-Oedipus Papers. Trans. Gotman, K. New York: Semiotext
Ireland, A. (@qdnoktsqfr) (2019) https://twitter.com/qdnoktsqfr/status/1121261704275345408
Kant, I. (1996) The Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Pluhar, W.S, United States of America: Hackett Publishing Company
Land, N. (2014) Fanged Noumena. Ed. Mackay, R. Brassier, R. United Kingdom: Urbanomic
Land, N. (2017) A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism. https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-introduction-to-accelerationism/
Lyotard, J-F. (2003) Libidinal Economy. Trans. Hamilton Grant, I. Great Britain: Continuum
Lyotard, J. (1972) ‘Energumen Capitalism’, review in Critique 306. In (2014) #Accelerate – The Accelerationist Reader. Ed. Mackay, R. Avanessian, A. United Kingdom: Urbanomic Media Ltd
Marx, K. (1939) ‘Fragment on Machines’, edited extract from Grundisse. Trans. Nicolaus, M. In (2014) #Accelerate – The Accelerationist Reader. Ed. Mackay, R. Avanessian, A. United Kingdom: Urbanomic Media Ltd
Shaviro, S. (2015) No Speed Limit: Three Essays on Accelerationism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Veblen, T. (1958) ‘The Machine Process’, edited extract from The Theory of Business Enterprise. In (2014) #Accelerate – The Accelerationist Reader. Ed. Mackay, R. Avanessian, A. United Kingdom: Urbanomic Media Ltd
Williams, A. Srnicek, N. (2013) #Accelerate. In (2014) #Accelerate – The Accelerationist Reader. Ed. Mackay, R. Avanessian, A. United Kingdom: Urbanomic Media Ltd
Williams, J. (2012) Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd
Williams, J. (2013) Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd
Read More
