Worth dying for

[noel emits]

Yeh- the sacrificial Gods of mystery religions basically... Also dudes like Osiris...

I'm electing not to comment on the substantial point of this thread cos every time I typed a response it looked a little overly mentalist!

Oh go on.

 

[nomadologist]

Ahhh that's what a wheat god is. Nevermind me, I was just raised by Xtians.

 

[mistersloane]

Oh go on.

seconded!

 

[gek-opel]

Hmm... Just that I agree with Zhao to the extent that I have been looking for just such a praxis, but that I would disagree with his methodology- in that it seems obvious that you can't 5u1c1d£ 80m8 Capitalism out of existence even if you had an army at your disposal. So the approach needs to be just as committed, but incorporating a broader conception of the terrorist war machine. There was an exceptionally interesting article in the journal Collapse on this topic by Reza Negarestani ("The militarization of Peace" I believe it was called) which focused on the ability of covert terrorism in the post Qutb mold to create its most disruptive effects by allowing agents to manifest themselves as nothing more than hyper-conventional versions of ordinary citizens and in so doing turn the state against itself, in the manner of what Negarestani called the die-back mechanism in plants.

 

[nomadologist]

Where I can read Collapse? Is it online?

Like this "die-back" idea...

 

[mistersloane]

in the manner of what Negarestani called the die-back mechanism in plants.

Is that like self-fertilisation to induce death?

 

[nomadologist]

It's a mechanism that rots out the roots, steals nutrients from the root structure. A form of fungus I think.

 

[gek-opel]

Re: Collapse-Don't think its available online unfortunately. It is an absolutely superb journal though, from the design (like a small victorian pocketbook) to its interdiscerplinerary thematics (first one on science/mathematics and theory, second one on speculative realism, third one on Deleuze) and cutting edge brain mashing theoretics (especially the Quentin Meillassoux in vol 2)...

linky: http://blog.urbanomic.com/urbanomic/archives/2007/09/collapse_volume_1.html

 

[nomadologist]

Thanks, these look excellent. You think it's worth it to buy all three (or four?)? Or do you have a favorite?

P.S. Vimothy linked to a Nick Land--who has a piece in one of these volumes of Collapse--article the other day and was claiming that he is a "right-wing" Deleuzian. Is this true??

 

[gek-opel]

Thanks, these look excellent. You think it's worth it to buy all four? Or do you have a favorite?

P.S. Vimothy linked to a Nick Land--who has a piece in one of these volumes of Collapse--article the other day and was claiming that he is a "right-wing" Deleuzian. Is this true??

Yeah its well worth getting. You can read it on the tube/subway with ease cos its so dinky! (the second one is the best so far tho... ) Uh yeah Nick Land has taken a turn for the neo-con it would seem... my friend was telling me about a piece of his (which probably is online) against what Land terms "Transcendental Miserablism" (ie moaning about capitalism)... and his response to it (err "Everything is great- shut the fuck up" apparently) He also is obsessed with Qabbalistic numerology (which I haven't a fucking clue about). And he's ex CCRU so obviously Deleuzian... Lets just say I like his perversity and oppositional status, but I'm not especially sure how productive it is.... Linky: http://hyperstition.abstractdynamics.org/archives/008891.html

Actually on re-reading I totally agree with part of his argument. However Capitalism cannot be thought as the only force at work, and needs to be accelerated OUT of the po-mo loop that its trapped in at present in order for the more radical aspects to be correct...

 

[gek-opel]

Also-- I would add that the cosmic despair that he alludes to is precisely what needs to be incorporated into the body of capital itself, to become self-aware, self-conscious of its annihilist status.

 

[nomadologist]

Ahhhh, I remember reading 'Transcendental Miserablism' quite a few months ago--didn't make the connection between this and Vim's linked article. I actually sympathized with a couple of his points in TM, but this other article was full of strange contradictions.

We all know that I am all in favor of a "strict constructionist"-style reading of Deleuze, and find it extremely silly when people try to twist such obviously anti-capitalist strategies and goals into anything but. Why would you want to use the deterritorialization of market structures to *accelerate* a descent into "chaos" if you believe those structures to be positive or "vital" forces?

Weirdly contradictory.

 

[nomadologist]

The weak part of his argument in TM is right here:

‘Post-capitalism’ has no real meaning except an end to the engine of change.

Life continues, and capitalism does life in a way it has never been done before.

Newness is always in and of itself good? Newness is = to change? Capitalism is an agent of change and newness?

This is a profoundly anti-Deleuzian sentiment, in a very backhanded way. One of D's major ontological sticking points was his very clever insistence on the notion of "difference", where to have being--to be a thing, entity, idea, whatever--meant that something or someone was "different" than every other thing. To be alive, to have being, is to be constantly differentiating/differentiated from other beings. This is how beings flow, they did before capitalism and they will after it.

 

[nomadologist]

Also-- I would add that the cosmic despair that he alludes to is precisely what needs to be incorporated into the body of capital itself, to become self-aware, self-conscious of its annihilist status.

Agreed.

 

[gek-opel]

Well there are two options as to "acceleration"- either the "chaos" effectively removes whatever the barrier IS which is created by this latest form of capitalism to innovative thought, or instead of chaos Capital is pushed into a new form, bringing with it unimaginable change.

Also Land effectively fails to effectively differentiate between the merely churning changing same of fashion and the shocking ontological shifts of the new (though weirdly he alludes to it). This is cos both he AND the positions he criticises fail to effectively differentiate the fact that Capital shifts through eras, each bringing their own inimitable costs and benefits, and changing regimes of political organisation, changing flows of productive energy. Whats interesting to me is how THIS Capital of now has given rise to effects quite distinct from those of 40 years ago, and how we can intervene to change those effects.

But lots and lots of ideas in that article that I agree with, especially about Capitalism and time, and the need to adopt a position INSIDE capitalism, that the flaw in post-Marxist thinking is that in all its avowed immanence it never ever deigns to get INSIDE the infernal machine itself, that it is itself the one system (and not the proletariat) capable of delivering the unimaginable change. But the miserablists are accurate when they point to the fact that presently the de/re-territorialization of time has led to an utterly deadlocked moribund position of un-death, a cancerous ahistorical replicator effect, dyschronic grey goo eating the planet, all dead-eyed death-drive...

 

[nomadologist]

Yes, the problem with TMs is their failure to deal with the fact that we are alreay INSIDE the machine--that we are already cogs. We are the viral contagion. The CHALLENGE (and D&G recognize this, and this is why I think they were the pre-eminent thinkers of the 20th century after Heidegger) is to resist capitalism on the level of individual desiring machine, by deterritorializing desire, remapping your cognition, controlling the flows, redistributing them, feeding them. Not *fighting* capitalism, but *flight-ing* out of it in what D&G call the "stationary" mode of the nomad. This is the only way to create a successful war machine that stands a chance against capitalism.

A good analogy might be antibodies. We need to become antibodies, participants in the expression of the virus that bind to the antigen/microbe (capitalism) and immobilize/destroy it.

 

[gek-opel]

Hegel's "spirit" reinterpreted not as= "the human" or "species being" or whatever, but rather as the INHUMAN, as the virus mind-state of infinite interoperability of materiality which is Capital. A phenomenology of Capital itself is what is needed! (with Absolute Knowing posited as the event horizon of Capital...?)

The only possible resistance is through the machinery of Capital, true. But in a sense the goal is for a self-conscious Capital, the machine designed ultimately to assure the creation of the new human.

 

[nomadologist]

Snuck some Badiou in there! And Hegel.

So you think we need to remap cognition on a cultural level and become non-human(ity)?

I have trouble with this but only because Baudrillard on plastic surgery (and having observed surgeries for a few years just for fun) influenced me so much. I have trouble with our current medical fixation on *aesthetic* modes of remapping ourselves phenomenologically.

 

[gek-opel]

Sorry Ive got a bit lost in the theory-rush... had to go off and rant maniacally at my father... which only made me realise that I need to write some kind of article on Iggy Pop's "Mass production" (as the single finest interweaving of commodified sexuality, post-fordist production, James Brown's sex machine re-mapped onto a sluggish skullfucking zombified death drive, the interoperability of all humans and the impossibility of release...)

 

[nomadologist]

Love love love love LOVE that song and album, was listening to it all day yesterday as a matter of fact.

I'm writing the same paper but about Kraftwerk Die Mensch Maschine.