Chapter

Accelerationism

Epistemic, Economic, Political

EXCERPT

In recent discussions, ‘accelerationism’ has arisen as an expression which purports to unify a wide swathe of seemingly disparate movements under its referential gesture: from ultramodern epistemology to Promethean dreams to cosmist utopianism to post-capitalist economic organising. My aim is to try to highlight some of the connections between these tendencies, in particular emphasising a subtle distinction between epistemic accelerationism and political accelerationism. The former indexes an approach to knowledge that involves expanding the scope of knowledge, synthesising disparate fields through creative bridging constructions, and ramifying the space of reasons. It is enlightenment principles of critique and rationality shorn from their contingent humanistic basis. Political accelerationism, on the other hand, indexes a postcapitalist order whereby the limitations of the current accumulative logics are torn down and the productive potentials of society unleashed…