Anti-Oculus: A Philosophy of Escape

by Acid Horizon

Anti-Oculus is a psychedelic trip through the eyes of power, exploring avenues of escaping systems of control in our cyberpunk reality.

Anti-Oculus is a work of conceptual an assemblage of polemical tracts complete with a gallery of graphic illustrations inspired by postmodern and pulp classics from Anti-Oedipus to Ways of Seeing.
Through the concept of "Ocularity", the Acid Horizon crew trace the political, medical, and historical ways power sees us through its categories of control and counter-insurgency.

From the thermodynamics of policing in the cyberpunk present, to the psychiatric colonization of the image, to bodies that "go astray" in an increasingly reactionary society; Anti-Oculus maps out the ways we are captured under the eyes of cyber-capital, and provokes us to find each other in pursuit of emancipation, community, and new forms of life.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Theory

202 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 10, 2023

Reviews

[Lime Snicket · Rating 5 out of 5]

This made me cum.

[Sergio Segura · Rating 2 out of 5]

What I got were frequent references to better books (The Cybernetic Hypothesis, A Thousand Plateaus, The Accursed Share, etc., etc.) and a concept of ocularity that really didn't leave much of an impression on me. The framing of part of the book as an I.R.I.S. counter-insurgency manual was cool, but I feel like it wasn't utilized to its fullest potential. I didn't enjoy reading this, but I see what Acid Horizon were going for and I think other people might find something here. I might try to give it a re-read some day.

[npc · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a good excuse to hang out in coffee shops or pubs and talk shop about derailing and escaping the cyber-capitalist hellscape constantly under construction around us. Maybe escape is impossible, maybe reconceptualizing our immanence is a fool’s errand, but damn it if we won’t give it the ole’ college try. All I know for certain, is that this text made my brain go brrrrr.

[Severin M · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great first book to come out of the Acid Horizon process and a much needed venture beyond the gates of leftist theory which has opted all too often to be complacent with a cultural commentary whose stakes have been surrendered as a prerequisite of being taken up.

[Maty Candelaria · Rating 5 out of 5]

One must imagine Capitalism as how Deleuze and Guatarri model a certain configuration of a Face. In a Thousand Platues, Deleuze and Guatarri provide multiple models of faces: such as simple, four eyes, and a proliferation of eyes. Anti-Oculus, as such, maps out how our current state of affairs is dominated by a panopticon of eyeballs.

Every route of escape is risked by an ocular capture which reduces its activity (which is itself vital) to something static and dividuated. Only when something is made to be a simple component, easily translatable, can it be easily controlled. Only when something can be predicted in its fullest accuracy, can it not only be set on course, but driven.

Anti-Oculus is exactly what it’s subtitle suggests: a philosophy of escape. It’s power resides in its vitality, and it’s poly-vocality.

Concepts flow kinetically, with sensitivity, yet with an anarchistic (non)direction of detteritorialization (what is referred to in the text as destitution). What matters more than interpreting concepts is to follow them, to understand the enemy, and use their machines against them. “The concept is a brick” as said in the introduction to A Thousand Platues. The authors of this text think very similarly, but with their own vantage points, hostilities, and focuses.

[Herm · Rating 3 out of 5]

they say that meditation without real world application is dissociation, this is what portions of this book feel like. Certain parts are great explanations of important ideas (kettling, Jung via Hillman, the image). As a side note I think they should have leaned in more to the IRIS bit.

[Emanuele · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Il desiderio di riconoscimento che caratterizza la nostra interpretazione delle immagini dunque si presta a una tendenza paranoica. Deriva dall'impulso a barattare
immagini viventi in cambio della solidità di significati fossilizzati. Si potrebbe piuttosto scommettere su un senso di completezza, scoprendo cosa significano le proprie fantasie anziché assumersi il compito ambiguo di scoprire cosa stanno facendo.
In altre parole, c'è un potenziale fascistizzante nella nostra fascinazione per gli schemi riduttivi, che preferiscono l'identità trascendente di un'immagine alla sua potenza immanente. In ultima analisi,
per Hillman, l'intervento del simbolo o del tipo <

[Bryan Glosemeyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anti-Oculus: A Philosophy of Escape by the Acid Horizon collective left me with one main question: Who is this book for?

It begins with interesting examinations of our “cyberpunk present” and a theory of the oculus, whereby the constant surveillance we live under not only invades our lives, but defines and delimits our thoughts and potential through feedback control systems.

But as the book goes on, to put it frankly, the authors get their collective heads further and further up their own butts. We get to a point where nearly every page and paragraph is throwing out terms like “epistemologies,” “hermeneutics,” and more, like they’re really trying hard to impress their college philosophy professors with their term papers, when they just as easily could use “theories,” “interpretations,” and so on Add in unnecessarily convoluted sentences and topics that stray further into pure theory and less life as it is lived and the point gets increasingly lost. I know it’s possible to convey complex and multifaceted concepts in a way that’s readable and digestible. That however, does not seem to be what Acid Horizon was trying to do.

Is this an academic book? It's not packaged that way.
Is this a popular big ideas book? It’s certainly not written that way.

So who is this book for? That I can’t answer. I can say that it does offer some interesting “theories and interpretations” before it squanders its potential.

[Di · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great bite sized book of clues on how you can resist the totalizing and often bleak tide of ever-growing fascistic sentiment in today’s political climate. Powerful examples of real life resistance gives one hope and inspires to learn more for the betterment of oneself and others in my circle.

Moments of invigoration aside, the Deleuze-o Guattari-anisms of the 5th chapter left me scratching my head at times (thank you Craig), but that just means I have more reading to do!

Great first book by the Acid Horizon crew. They get one thing really right that I appreciate a whole hell of a lot. Philosophy is a tool and one that must be embraced to change minds and sentiments.

“Philosophy is the creation of concepts in a manner hostile to the order of things, or it is mere collaboration with it.”

[Clint · Rating 2 out of 5]

Everything in Anti-Oculus is strictly on its own terms, including the language and vocabulary Acid Horizon deploys to explore and share its theory and ideas. As a postmodern abstract on leftist theory, Anti-Oculus is a dry read with some good moments. However, Acid Horizon deploys a gluttonous buffet of SAT vocabulary words and portmanteau throughout this book. Any theory, idea, or application is blurred in a naval-gazing obsession with cyberpunk dystopias. Some readers may have the patience to parse this out, but I found it an impractical use of my time.

[Toni Gómez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book taught me how kettles work. Thank you.

In all seriousness, Anti-Oculus provides a great charachterisation of the way power works in our contemporary capitalist society through the concept of ocularity, along with an equally great account of tactics of resistance to said power. It's a book which inspires political action and gives one much to think about as to how to carry it out, please do yourself the favour of reading it.

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

La intención de Acid Horizon es publicar casi un manifiesto, un manual de pensamiento para el escape. Lo logran bastante bien en los primeros dos capítulos: hay una articulación algo simplista pero interesante en torno a la idea de "Ciberceno". Sin embargo, el capítulo sobre la "imagen sin imagen" y toda la crítica deleuziana a Freud que desarrolla es bastante poco interesante, y sobre todo desligado del proyecto de intervención política contemporánea que postulaba el libro en su inicio.

[Amar · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had high hopes. Really, this book is just elementary leftist criticisms of the status quo put in dazzling language. Educationally, you could get something much more straightforward and substantive from reading something else. If you are informed enough to be capable of reading this kind of book, then you will be thoroughly unimpressed by its lack of complexity.

[Alexander Pyles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love this debut work of Acid Horizon. Lots of challenging ideas, but also many that resonate with me at a deep deep level. Becoming unintelligible to common perception is a trick, but in so many ways it is what we must do in order to defeat capital and the other hegemonic forces at play.

[Kholan ᎪᎳᏄ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling and more entertaining than I was expecting. Pretty jargony with Western and continental philosophy, but not as bad as I expected. Great introduction to Cybernetics and a good precursor to Adam C. Jones' The New Flesh (2024).

[Sarbajit Ghosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Right up subversive alley

[toots · Rating 3 out of 5]

convoluted

[Clinamen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non ci assomiglia per niente ma mi ha ricordato per certi versi Ballardismo Applicato, che è praticamente la bibbia di chi voglia tentare di vivere, e non sopravvivere, sotto l'ombra del Capitale.

[Lewis Carnelian · Rating 4 out of 5]

With a heavy indebtedness to Deleuze and Guattari, especially their opposition to the reductionism of Freudian psychoanalysis, AH attempts, with a distinct playfulness at times (that nonetheless does not distract from the transgressive nature of the work) to calibrate a way to escape the cybernetic feedback loops of the All-Seeing State: the Imageless Image, non-binary, revolution..? Algorithms, predicative text, capitalist co-opting of previously revolutionary chic: all are fodder for the determinism of the cybernetic society, all a form of reductionism that can alternatively harvest and exhaust for the furnaces of Capital. With the true horizon of AI looming, the ultimate predicative text that threatens and competes with the slight amount of human ingenuity left within the Mainframe, this volume hopefully is a footnote to greater and brighter things, concepts that escape the ever-widening WeB of calibrated homo-generativity. What is essential is how all this is related to the political animal, and one can see the shadow of Fisher's Capital Realism here: it's bathed in it. Hillman and Jung both make strong appearances, too, which relates all to the interior self as a means of Escape. All in all, a fun and engaging read that hopefully points to more dissembling synthesis before the All-Seeing EyE.