Outstanding work, and it clearly traces out our moment, the stakes, and the challenges. I took a lot of notes to think through. Thank you, Cadell, very well done.
Brilliant stuff Cadell. This is quality work that deserves to be well read.
"The hard road dwells in and endures the pain of misunderstanding precisely where it hurts the most." -- This is one of the core lessons I attempt to convey in the context of guiding Voicecraft dialogues. It's not an abandoning, for sure. I do think there are some interesting affective / poetic differences between 'enduring' and 'accepting'. For instance, one can only hold their breath so long -- and perhaps important to brace for impact (is it?). But to breathe through a process begins to regulate the energy necessary to stay longer. Put another way, maintaining a certain softness and lightness may be critical to support the kind of endurance necessary.
Now my hypothesis is that embedded in the CCRU nonetheless remains the formula for the type of art/play (a la Dimitri) which can sing the poetics of technocapital (possibly with warmth). Whereas pure Hegelianism trends towards Crooijman's "Lackanianism", a continual orbiting of the void while hypothesizing about doing something religious and cultural with it.
Mark Fisher's PhD paper on "Gothic Materialism" is fascinating here, as it stands before his slide into depression and despair at the failure of the 20th century leftist project. A philosophical and artistic ethos that investigates the monstrous/noumenal character of matter without denying its intensities, and still aims at a synthetic, universal language of symbols and hallucinations. Fisher is Nick Land with a heart (possibly a burden that annihilated him).
On the flipside, one aspect of "exit" underconsidered in this paper, is the exit "upwards", that is to say, the exit of particular peoples and groups into the upper (and stranger) regions of technocapital. This is the "Altered Carbon" outcome, a cybernetically enhanced post-human aristocracy with enough capacity to avert the "Roman Empire collapse scenario" indefinitely. Where the demos fights it out in neo(n)African globojungle, with new Christian, Islamic and Chinese interference patterns.
This certainly seems to be the wager of the Silicon NRx crowd, as evinced by the Marquesse de Andreessen and co.
More notes apologies not sorry for using this as a note app perhaps interesting to someone
Important for this discussion is to compare also early Soviet Modernist art with late 19th /early 20th C Socialist Realism.
The former aims at an entirely new (proletarian) affective language liberated with the productive technologies of the present. The latter aims to expose the suffering of ordinary people using established methods (the bourgeois novel, play etc.)
This interestingly parallels the CCRU vs. Lacanian dialogue, where the former aims at an entirely new cybernetic (kpunk) affective language while the latter still operates largely via the conventions of 20th century high academia.
Here what matters is not so much the Landian political teleology as the STYLE that Land unleashes and nurtures in his students.
Mostly clearly seen in the clash between CyberGothic vs. NeoProtestant aesthetics.
truly the theory underground is what it means to search out love. finding what you do not have and giving it away to those who dont what it but really need it.
Monstrously fecund... a ROAR on the other side of silence :
“That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch
On "other styles (with ethical consequence) in which we can contemplate the dizzying complexity of the intersection between the biocultural and the technological", strongly urge a conversation with Bonnitta Roy.
As Todd Mcgowan wrote in his chapter on Hegel in Love, also an invaluable reference for this reflection..."After Hegel discovers the philosophical significance of love, he never again adopts a critical position relative to the masses. His philosophy becomes an effort to theorize what subjects are already doing rather than an attempt to enlighten them. This attitude culminates in his constant refrain that philosophy has nothing to say about the future."
Deep gratitude Cadell for "howling with the wolves’!!!!!
Outstanding work, and it clearly traces out our moment, the stakes, and the challenges. I took a lot of notes to think through. Thank you, Cadell, very well done.
Brilliant stuff Cadell. This is quality work that deserves to be well read.
"The hard road dwells in and endures the pain of misunderstanding precisely where it hurts the most." -- This is one of the core lessons I attempt to convey in the context of guiding Voicecraft dialogues. It's not an abandoning, for sure. I do think there are some interesting affective / poetic differences between 'enduring' and 'accepting'. For instance, one can only hold their breath so long -- and perhaps important to brace for impact (is it?). But to breathe through a process begins to regulate the energy necessary to stay longer. Put another way, maintaining a certain softness and lightness may be critical to support the kind of endurance necessary.
HOME RUN
Now my hypothesis is that embedded in the CCRU nonetheless remains the formula for the type of art/play (a la Dimitri) which can sing the poetics of technocapital (possibly with warmth). Whereas pure Hegelianism trends towards Crooijman's "Lackanianism", a continual orbiting of the void while hypothesizing about doing something religious and cultural with it.
Mark Fisher's PhD paper on "Gothic Materialism" is fascinating here, as it stands before his slide into depression and despair at the failure of the 20th century leftist project. A philosophical and artistic ethos that investigates the monstrous/noumenal character of matter without denying its intensities, and still aims at a synthetic, universal language of symbols and hallucinations. Fisher is Nick Land with a heart (possibly a burden that annihilated him).
On the flipside, one aspect of "exit" underconsidered in this paper, is the exit "upwards", that is to say, the exit of particular peoples and groups into the upper (and stranger) regions of technocapital. This is the "Altered Carbon" outcome, a cybernetically enhanced post-human aristocracy with enough capacity to avert the "Roman Empire collapse scenario" indefinitely. Where the demos fights it out in neo(n)African globojungle, with new Christian, Islamic and Chinese interference patterns.
This certainly seems to be the wager of the Silicon NRx crowd, as evinced by the Marquesse de Andreessen and co.
More notes apologies not sorry for using this as a note app perhaps interesting to someone
Important for this discussion is to compare also early Soviet Modernist art with late 19th /early 20th C Socialist Realism.
The former aims at an entirely new (proletarian) affective language liberated with the productive technologies of the present. The latter aims to expose the suffering of ordinary people using established methods (the bourgeois novel, play etc.)
This interestingly parallels the CCRU vs. Lacanian dialogue, where the former aims at an entirely new cybernetic (kpunk) affective language while the latter still operates largely via the conventions of 20th century high academia.
Here what matters is not so much the Landian political teleology as the STYLE that Land unleashes and nurtures in his students.
Mostly clearly seen in the clash between CyberGothic vs. NeoProtestant aesthetics.
truly the theory underground is what it means to search out love. finding what you do not have and giving it away to those who dont what it but really need it.
Monstrously fecund... a ROAR on the other side of silence :
“That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch
On "other styles (with ethical consequence) in which we can contemplate the dizzying complexity of the intersection between the biocultural and the technological", strongly urge a conversation with Bonnitta Roy.
As Todd Mcgowan wrote in his chapter on Hegel in Love, also an invaluable reference for this reflection..."After Hegel discovers the philosophical significance of love, he never again adopts a critical position relative to the masses. His philosophy becomes an effort to theorize what subjects are already doing rather than an attempt to enlighten them. This attitude culminates in his constant refrain that philosophy has nothing to say about the future."
Deep gratitude Cadell for "howling with the wolves’!!!!!