April-May 2017 we hosted an online debate at Furtherfield called We Need to Talk about Accelerationism

“Back in 2013 Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek published the influential “#ACCELERATE MANIFESTO for an Accelerationist Politics” which proposes an embrace of automation and the tools and strategies of capitalism for species survival against the odds. It rejects other resistance strategies of protest, occupation, culture-jamming and strike, as outmoded and ineffective in the face of Neoliberal strategies.”

I wrote the following as part of the discussion thread My name is […] and I am an Accelerationist

Thursday, 21 April 2016 – 6:27pm

Dear Annie, Dave, Alan and Paul,

Annie you asked
“I want to slow down, to be attentive, to touch – can that be part of Accelerationisme?”

Yes. I think so.
This is less about speed (as distinct from Futurism) than it is about rates of change.

The technologies that we use are bound up with with advanced capitalism.
We watch our political and social infrastructures unable to evolve fast enough to solve the wicked problems – for environment, democracy, justice and a good life- than they create.

I think we can take two attitudes

1) Save ourselves! Take what we can carry, run for the hills and build the best fortresses we can with people whose values we share.

or

2) coordinate and collaborate in the higher interests of all living beings – constantly working out who and what these are- and using all means at our disposal.

I like the idea of living in the hills.
But not under siege, and not in earshot of future generations of bemused, brutalised, alienated people.

The dominant model of global coexistence is that of endless economic growth and Neoliberalism (the (increasingly automated) marketization of everything). This tends to centralize power and resources and renders less effective the usual ways of blocking and resisting; of work-based and traditional-identity based solidarity.

Instead Contemporary Accelerationism suggests (I think) that we use in new combinations all the tools, tactics, and knowledges in an attempt to perform a series of judo moves (using the force rather than resisting the force), or to sling-shot our way through the mess we are in.

As always, there needs to be a way to accommodate the visions and madcap schemes of all sorts- many islands rather than one land mass as Paul said. That’s why this discussion here and now.

Respect!
Ruth

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Read the whole thread here