Category: Social Theory
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the project of human mastery must always remain incomplete
Procrastinating this morning by catching up on a stack of as-yet-unread newsletter emails from L M Sacasas. This bit in particular, from 11th March, chimed with a lot of my recent early-morning thinkings-through of The Ongoing Situation: … it is curious to note again the recent proliferation of conspiracy theorizing, something I’ve previously attributed to…
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the caricature of a time that is no longer ours
Oncle Bruno on the radical ecological potential—or perhaps the lack thereof— of the current moment: The originality of the present situation, it seems to me, is that by remaining trapped at home while outside there is only the extension of police powers and the din of ambulances, we are collectively playing a caricatured form of…
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archaeology of prestidigitatory production
A short Doug Rushkoff riff that chimes with my extended infrastructure-as-stage-magic metaphor: The industrialist’s dream was to replace [workers] entirely — with machines. The consumers of early factory goods loved the idea that no human hands were involved in their creation. They marveled at the seamless machined edges and perfectly spaced stitches of Industrial Age…
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an almighty crash in the heart of the form
Lovable Marxist granddad David Harvey, getting in there early on neoliberalism’s final Wile E Coyote moment: … contemporary capitalist economies are 70 or even 80 percent driven by consumerism. Consumer confidence and sentiment has over the past forty years become the key to the mobilization of effective demand and capital has become increasingly demand- and…
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no ists for this ism
Interesting squib here from Matt “Xenogothic” Colquhoun, highlighting a section of a Reddit of a discussion on accelerationism, and his description of the absurdity of identifying as an accelerationist: As far as I see it, there’s no such thing as “being an accelerationist” because there’s nothing I can do to impact the process of acceleration.…