Slow Down: on benjamin noys' critique of accelerationism. Issue 2 (2nd April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Barker, Jason
• Is Part Of: Angelaki. Volume 21:Issue 2(2016)
• Page Start: 227
• Page End: 235
• Publication Date: 2016-04-02
• Subjects: accelerationism -- Louis Althusser -- Matthew Arnold -- Gilles Grelet -- Nick Land -- theory; Literature -- Criticism and interpretation -- Periodicals; Philosophy -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals; 100
• DOI: 10.1080/0969725X.2016.1182743
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0969-725X

Abstract

Abstract: This paper reviews Benjamin Noys' recent attempt in Malign Velocities: Accelerationism and Capitalism to mount a critique of accelerationism. The book, persuasive in certain respects, bypasses the institutional dynamics of accelerationism's theoretical progenitors, viz. Nick Land and the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (Ccru) of Warwick University, and instead portrays it as a "defeatist strategy" of the post-'68 conjuncture of "Deleuzian Thatcherism." Such portrayal is debatable to the extent that it exhibits a questionable appropriation of "theory" in the strict sense of the term; a term the paper attempts to define with reference to Matthew Arnold, Louis Althusser and Gilles Grelet.