No Speed Limit: Three Essays on Accelerationism

Forerunners: Ideas First

by Steven Shaviro

Accelerationism is the bastard offspring of a furtive liaison between Marxism and science fiction. Its basic premise is that the only way out is the way through: to get beyond capitalism, we need to push its technologies to the point where they explode. This may be dubious as a political strategy, but it works as a powerful artistic program. 

Other authors have debated the pros and cons of accelerationist politics; No Speed Limit makes the case for an accelerationist aesthetics. Our present moment is illuminated, both for good and for ill, in the cracked mirror of science-fictional futurity.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Essays, Theory, Economics, Sociology

77 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 30, 2015

Reviews

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was good and the argument was ultimately compelling, but it took a long time to get there, and the books only 60 pages. Definitely worth the read and thought though! And I really liked the alternatives presented at the end.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shaviro's essays are written in such a way that anyone could pick them up and read them, even without having read the manifesto for acceleration by Srnicek and Williams – though reading the manifesto first is helpful. Shaviro 3 essays interrogate the Acceleration movement through a reading of Deleuze and Guattari, Marx, and Science Fiction.

The introductory essay helps the reader acclimate to accelerationism's history and its ties to neoliberalism. Understanding neoliberalism is key to understanding accelerationism for two reasons. Neoliberalism undermines the traditional acceleration thesis of Marx that capital would create its own undoing. Rather, neoliberalism has transformed capitalism isn't a accelerating behemoth that destroys itself in order to grow, but it also produced a system where there is enough surplus that a system of full automation (as described in Srnicek and William's Inventing the Future) might be possible.

The second essay looks at the aesthetic problems with both capitalism and the traditional leftist accelerationism. The blockages put in place by capitalism limit the flows, but so too do the planning exercises put in place by left accelerationism. They do not allow an openness, which can be provided through aesthetic undertakings of accelerationism. Shaviro suggests that the aesthetic accelerationism must come before the implementation in order to undermine the prioritization of utilitarianism over aesthetic.

Following a more cynical view of the potential for acceleration than Srnicek and Williams, Shaviro suggests a different type of acceleration within capitalism: A parasitic acceleration that realizes it can't escape the capitalist socius, but attempts to survive within it at a molecular level. This requires a different understanding of human relationship to capital – rather than striving to overcome its destruction, the goal should be rather to adapt in order to survive.

[Robert Tate Morrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Aesthetic sensations and feelings are no longer disinterested because they have been recast as markets of personal identity: revealed preferences, brands, lifestyle markers, objections of adoration by fans.”

[Wan Feng An · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short read but one nonetheless very insightful and fruitful. These three essays explore accelerationism, its aesthetics and how a future after(and within) capitalism may look like. In recent times the idea of accelerationism has seen a rising tide of popularity - those who believe that capitalism cannot be reversed or be returned from, that the only way is through. And faster. Accelerationists believe that as capitalism is pushed further and further, the internal contradictions will eventually lead to an implosion. The only question is - what will this new society look like? Will it be communism, or a turbo-capitalism with no trace of humanity? The inherent ambiguity in the accelerationist future is why the author proposes an aesthetics of accelerationism, to explore tendencies and extrapolate uncertain futures. If there is no alternative, there may still be a future.

[Roberto Yoed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too philosophical yet to concrete and to-the-point.

Accelerationism is the voyeurism of the petty bourgeoisie: "yeah we want socialism but we don't want to partake on the revolution, so let's consume". Despite this vice, its analysis is pretty good and can denote the parasite that capitalism is.

[Dominik · Rating 2 out of 5]

It sucks actually. This is not introduction to accelerationism, nor aesthetic project for it.

Shaviro is (to my humble philosophical knowledge) right about everything. He's right about non-accelerationist things like Kantian aesthetics or Keynes' or Hayek's economy. He's MOSTLY (as I can't stake my life to that, because I won't shit you that I've read something that I didn't like SOME writers) right for pre-accelerationists like Marx or Deleuze & Guattari. He's right about people related to accelerationism in the 1990s and 2010s like Beniamin Noys (mostly likely, as I haven't got to this), Mark Fisher, Alex Williams, Nick Srnieck and even crazy meth man Nick Land.

What he doesn't get is what accelerationism is. Or rather - he doesn't interpret it as pre-acc or accelerationists see this, but he creates his own interpretation. Shaviro states that accelerationism is advocating for disruption of capitalism by speeding up its contradictions (in Marxist sense, so, more or less antagonisms). I get this, I was thinking the same, basing my understanding from internet discourse and memes, but none of the academics somewhat related with this movment thought that's a case, nor Marx or Deleuze and Guattari. This is a disruption of a sense that was accustomed at the first place. Later on, at mid 2010s, people for some (still don't know how) reason started to think that's actually a case and many fascist or racist terrorist's attack was based upon this strange assumption to create fascist society or starting race war or other dumb shit. Shaviro understands this term just as dumb teenager terrorists and bigots. But he's old professor that probably got massive grant for these essays!! And it doesn't even have footnotes!!

Plan for building aesthetic background for accelerationist politics sounds massively interesting, but how do you propose this if you're primary assumption is so wrong and lacks basic understanding of the subject that it blows away all your thesis?
The strange this is, as I've mentioned, that these essays doesn't have any footnotes or clear sources. But it got bibliography, and there are two interesting positions: #ACCELERATE: The Accelerationist Reader and Peter Wolfendale's blogpost 'So, Accelerationism, what's all that about?'. The first one was massive publication with all variaty of pre-acc or accelerationist thinkers, from Marx through Deleuze to Nick Land. Editors of it wrote expanded introduction, which says, at the first two pages, that 'Accelerationism is political heresy: the insistence that the only radical political response to capitalism IS NOT to protest, disrupt or critque, NOR TO AWAIT ITS DEMISE AT THE HANDS OF ITS OWN CONTRADICTIONS... [...]. Peter Wolfendale was a guy in the enviroment in the 2010s, and due to massive journalist's misunderstandings about it, he wrote above-mentioned article, that directly says, that believe for speeding up contradictions is a strawman argument: [...] this is not a position that anyone has ever held (in #ACCELERATE book).
How did professor wrote a totally wrong book based on strawman and false assumption, probably got good chuck of money for it, didn't give any footnotes and did offer fake bibliography with at least two positions that obliterate his book?

It frustrates me. These people are supposed to be smart, thoughtful and intelectually honest.

[Sol · Rating 5 out of 5]

noice

[Ava Huang · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In today’s capitalism everything is aestheticized, and all values are ultimately aesthetic ones. Yet at the same time, this ubiquitous aestheticization is also a radical extirpation of the aesthetic. It’s not just that sensations and feelings are trivialized when they are packaged for sale and indexed upon the most minute variations of product lines; it’s also that the two most crucial qualities of the aesthetic according to Kant—that it is disinterested and that it is noncognitive—are made to vanish or are explained away. Aesthetic sensations and feelings are no longer disinterested, because they have been recast as markers of personal identity: revealed preferences, brands, lifestyle markers, objects of adoration by fans. Aesthetic sensations and feelings are also ruthlessly cognized: for it is only insofar as they are known and objectively described, or transformed into data, that they can be exploited as forms of labor and marketed as fresh experiences and exciting lifestyle choices."

"The emotional lives of the neohumans are effectively streamlined in a post-Fordist manner as well. Feeling an overwhelming sense of loss, and aware of all the ways that their potential has been constrained, these people see no hope of things ever getting better. But they conclude that “we just have to make the most of the life we have.” Both materially and affectively, they develop an ethos of abundance, generosity, and self-cultivation, even in the face of terror and dispossession. This is, finally, what we must learn to accelerate."

Good intro. I like Shaviro's writing.

[Steen Ledet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shaviro's take on accelerationism is less despairing, though certainly not optimistic, than other variations. There is exhaustion and frustration, a clear indication of the limits of speed, but also an acceptance that speed carries its own forms of joy and pleasure and those are the sensations we must seek out, hedonistically, almost.

[Minäpäminä · Rating 3 out of 5]

As one of the uninitiated this felt like a surprisingly accessible introduction to accelerationism. The jist of it is that capitalism is a very unstable system. Booms and depressions are a feature, not a pathology. Karl Marx predicted this inherent instability would be the end of capitalism and bring about communism. The 20th century proved him wrong as capitalism, instead of crashing, turned its crises into business opportunities and a "permanent flux" of ever renewing "creative destruction" (Joseph Schumpeter). The accelerationists suggest the only (or at least the fastest) way out of capitalism goes through it - meaning the inherent self-destructive tendency of capitalism should be accelerated to bring about its demise.

I'm left to wonder why they think this would lead to anything different than the acceleration so far - which has led to just that: acceleration instead of destruction. But this short collection of essays doesn't venture much deeper as regards the actual philosophy of accelerationism. It does discuss accelerationist aesthetics and posits a specific type of dystopian science fiction as something essentially accelerationist. I found especially interesting the discussion on the role of transgression in the current system. Transgression is no longer subversive but actually functional in that it serves to create new business opportunities by destroying social barriers. Capitalism listened to the '68-generation and gave them everything they ever wanted: free sex, drugs and art, multiculturalism, women in the workplace, etc. And it's profiting from all of it, maybe more than ever before.

So far it all seems to me like a naughty thought, attractive solely because of its transgressive (!) nature. Plenty to remind me of Naomi Klein (disaster capitalism understood in a broad manner), the situationists (the Spectacle) and Eugene Thacker and Ulrich Beck (the incomprehensibility of modern problems).

[Andrew Blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

I began this book while researching for a paper I was writing about digital technoaesthetics and 2hollis. I think it's great to read alongside Mark Fisher's work about digital music.
Here's a bit of the essay on Shaviro and 2hollis' "jeans":

"Recursive self-reference is not resignation, because it is a condition. The textures of "jeans" refuse transcendence. They cannot go beyond the automatism, even as they interact with the automatisms voluntarily. It doesn’t seek escape because it does not ask what comes next and it certainly doesn’t hope for a future. It insists, instead, on what remains.
For Shaviro, then, the aim isn’t to step outside digital capitalism and critique it from a safe distance. That’s no longer viable. The structures of mediation saturate consciousness too completely. So the only way forward is through excess feedback and overload as tools to reveal the unlivable pace and affective flatness of digital life. Acceleration becomes an aesthetic strategy. What Shaviro offers to my reading of jeans is a way to read 2hollis not as ironic pastiche or aesthetic fatalism, but as an experiment in critical immanence. The form does not transcend its materials so much as it intensifies them. If we are haunted by the inability to imagine alternatives, as Fisher would say, accelerationism wages that saturating the present might reveal cracks in its architecture."

Because I suck and I'm kind of lame, I will throw out occasionally that I'm an "accelerationist", if anything, just to get a good conversation started and hopefully enjoy some drinks along the way. Shaviro grapples with the ethical implications of this far better than I do. Great read1

[melancholinary · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favourite part of this tiny book: Shaviro decodes the emerging Accelerationism through its propensity to aesthetic. Mix of several science-fiction observation—of course it is not Shaviro if he's avoiding science-fiction—and legacy of Marx and a very brilliant analysis of Deleuze & Guattari. The Accelerationist Aesthetic chapter in this book is outstanding on its own. The death of transgression is partially real, in the neoliberal world people are immune to subversiveness—because everything is just part of the market.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came across this while researching a piece on accelerationism. No Speed Limit provides some insight into Marxist accelerationism, though more so on the general sensibilities, outlook, and critique of modern society to be found in such circles, which a specific focus on accelerationist fiction. The prose was dry, but the book is quite short, and, as these things go, more readable than most.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. First essay is a little shaky -- some misuse of terms like "ultra-leftism" as well as a significant misunderstanding of Zizek and Badiou's theorizing almost made me give up on the book. But ultimately, a very good and interesting read, and a thorough analysis of late capitalism and the impulse to go "through" to get "out."

[Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite good overview of accelerationism as a concept. But also the author pretty much just uses quotes from other books for probably over 50% of the book. Typical of an accelerationist: the academese just oozes through it.

[Kyrill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Agree aesthetics is important here but not sure it is separate from cognition and culture in the ways Saviro needs to suggest. I'm sure he's justified it better elsewhere but here it's just an appeal the the authority of Kant.

[cab · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is why accelerationism needs to be an aesthetic program first, before it can be a political one. Speculative fiction can explore the abyss of accelerationist ambivalence, without prematurely pretending to resolve it.
(“Introduction to Accelerationsim”, Steven Shaviro)

[Henrique Valle]

hm pode cre

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basically a beginner's guide to accelerationist theory and the debates within it

[Amir Heidari · Rating 5 out of 5]

این کتاب با دقت مناسب توسط پیمان غلامی، ساره پیمان ترجمه و از نشر بان، به فارسی منتشر شده، و از کمتر کتاب های خوب فلسفه پست مدرن این روزهاست

[emi · Rating 2 out of 5]

i've been saying this all my lajf; burnoutmaxxing is real fr

[Samuel Luther · Rating 3 out of 5]

plunging back into non-fic (and reading) in a while and this was somewhat digestible. interesting ideas, though some of the more abstract exposition lost me a bit.

[haryii]

prose poem of sorts

[Roger Whitson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd say about 3.5 to 4 stars. Shaviro's work is best when he's discussing the aesthetic applications of accelerationism, carefully reading the work of Marx, Deleuze and Guattari, and Keynes, and when he points out the contradictions of some of the more recent work of Nick Land and the Accelerationist Manifesto. I loved his reading of Paul DiFippio's "Phylogenesis" as well as his masterful discussion of Richard Morgan's book Market Forces.

I was less satisfied with his rejection of probabalistic logic and economic theory. To be sure, there's a lot to be said about the problems with finance capitalism and the way it manipulates the future as by reducing it to a probabilistic game. But I also feel that Shaviro's use of Keynes to argue that "[u]ncertain events are irreducible to probabilistic analysis, because 'there is no scientific basis on which to form any calculable probability whatever'" to unfortunately reinscribe the tendency of humanist thinkers to think of the future as a vast nothingness and ignore the potential benefits of quantification when discussing economic theories. Thomas Picketty, whether you agree with his analysis or not, could be seen as an economist who opposes the excesses of finance capitalism and does so with a probabilistic model. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the rest of the book to see if Shaviro engages with him or any of the newer thinkers who might oppose the excesses of finance capitalism and neoliberalism as an "extraction, by banks and other large corporations, of a surplus from all social activities" yet also engage in probabilistic analysis of the future.

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucid and fecund.

[Minotaur Mangum · Rating 2 out of 5]

Left-Accelerationism= reading & writing Marxist SF.