TripleAmpersand Journal (&&&)

As the consequence of a full century’s research into dynamic models, the significance of prime numbers, Lemurian ethnography, and hyperbolic horror, the recent publication of compiled writings from the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit was certainly unexpected. Those acquainted with the materials assembled here might notice that the peculiarly Gregorian sequence ‘1997-2003’ does not exactly align with more nonlinear accounts of the unit’s activity delivered elsewhere. Furthermore, since the Ccru conceived time as something that (unlike an arrow) always feeds back into itself, the chronological positioning of this work by Time Spiral Press shouldn’t necessarily indicate any ordinary interval, but might be better rendered as the opening of a channel – inviting readers to engage these writings as the time-traveling devices that they are.

Issue 000 accentuates and renders visible the divergences and unexpected overlaps between “tachophobia” (fear of speed) and “tachomania” (obsession with speed), in the ongoing debates over accelerationism that have followed the publication of Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams’ “#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics”.

Abstract. Beneath the churning apocalyptic surface of Planet Accelerate is there an unexplored reformist core? In this paper I argue the answer is “yes.” Focusing on Robert Rauschenberg’s printed works of the 1960’s, I explore that core, asking what a politically engaged aesthetic project premised on reform might look like. Making the most of Accelerationism’s permission to speak using capitalism’s own terms while troubling the movement’s more determinist tendencies, I show how accidents of capitalism can be seized interpretively to generate what I call “surplus values” which can then be leveraged in other areas of social and political life.

In this article I initially diagram a genealogy of the generic in order to reconsider long-held philosophical suppositions of difference and similarity, representation and abstraction and immanence and transcendence, as set forth in contemporary continental philosophy by thinkers such as Nietzsche and Deleuze. Next I discuss what exactly is Laruelle’s position in relation to these dialectics of difference and what constitutes his radical intentions in his Non-Philosophy and Non-Standard Aesthetics? Finally, I develop and apply possible categories of the generic through specific examples in historical and contemporary art. By ending in this way, with discrete examples of an underdetermined aesthetics, I hope to derive possible working proofs of the generic even beyond Laruelle’s theories of The Generic Orientation of Non-Standard Aesthetics.

It’s very simple to grasp accelerationism. Accelerationism refers to the engagement with forms and forces of technology and abstraction that must, selectively, be accelerated to punch through the limits of a stagnant and inertial capitalism. It’s very difficult to grasp accelerationism. There are multiple forms and types of accelerationism, if that’s even the right name for it. Maybe it would be better called ‘redesigning’, for example, or ‘extrapolation’ . We don’t know yet what accelerationism could do, or be? It may be we need ‘create two, three, many accelerationisms’.

A healthy, vibrant movement is one that invites external critique and operates in dialog with those holding different or opposing views. In short, everything must be open to revision, as long as responding to criticisms does not consume excessive time, leaving those in the movement no time to actually formulate that movement’s positions. Another sign of a credible movement is a solid grounding in the work of the past. If any new concept or movement embodies a kind of synthesis of a long dialog with those who have come before, then movements that proclaim to completely revolutionise thought and give no proper due to previous ideas are to be viewed with great suspicion.