#seven prescriptions for accelerationism

[sodomyaspraxis]

“There is no doubt that abstract processes of value-extraction, such as the increased financialization of the economy, coupled with the division of labour across the entirety of society, have permeated our everyday lives with furious (and exhausting) force. The simplistic reaction—to return to tangible and concrete modes of life/production—does nothing more than insinuate a Fordist regression to monotonous labour, a disavowal of development that would amount to the same as suggesting the restoration of a purely Euclidean universe. To denounce abstraction as a malevolent force in itself is to deny the necessary role played by the power of abstraction in shaping new modes of existence, for as Brassier reminds us, practical (concrete) incapacities reflect theoretical (abstract) incapacities. Furthermore, to denounce abstraction is to also deny any possibility of forging a 'we’ or collective body beyond what remains immediately perceptible in other words, a demos. The ‘we' is always an abstraction, it cannot be reduced to the counting of populations (all bodies cannot be concretely experienced); moreover, if this 'we' is to take into account non-human actors, abstraction must be accelerated so as to accommodate new ontological positions. The issue is not one of obliterating abstractions, since there is no concrete essential kernel of humanity to return to; the issue, rather, concerns how to deploy the power of abstraction towards alternative modes of life, distributions of exchange, production, and consumption.”

-Patricia Reed, “Reorientate, Eccentricate, Speculate, Fictionalize, Geometricize, Commonize, Absractify: Seven Prescriptions for Accelerationism (2014)