/lit/ - Literature

>>11158226
The only change will be collapse

>>11158232
Suppose that you're just lacking imagination a little

>>11158226
Accelerationism is the last gasp attempt of academic ideologues towards coherence and it is laughable.

No, it'll continue to be a joke and a cult, with or without what's left of Bell's palsy man and his Italian kitchen full of ideology

>>11158226
>It seems
leading into
>This means
makes this a shitpost

>>11158262
Read the blurb I you want

In recent years, techno-scientific progress has started to utterly transform our world - changing it almost beyond recognition. In this extraordinary new book, renowned philosopher Slavoj Zizek turns to look at the brave new world of Big Tech, revealing how, with each new wave of innovation, we find ourselves moving closer and closer to a bizarrely literal realisation of Marx's prediction that 'all that is solid melts into air.' With the automation of work, the virtualisation of money, the dissipation of class communities and the rise of immaterial, intellectual labour, the global capitalist edifice is beginning to crumble, more quickly than ever before-and it is now on the verge of vanishing entirely. But what will come next? Against a backdrop of constant socio-technological upheaval, how could any kind of authentic change take place? In such a context, Zizek argues, there can be no great social triumph--because lasting revolution has already come into the scene, like a thief in broad daylight, stealing into sight right before our ever eyes. What we must do now is wake up and see it. Urgent as ever, Like a Thief in Broad Daylight illuminates the new dangers as well as the radical possibilities thrown up by today's technological and scientific advances, and their electrifying implications for us all.

It's too late to do anything. Give up and enjoy what's left of life.

>>11158226
>With Zizek set to look closely at the rapid change in our societies in his new book, seeing everything that was solid melt into air and so on
woah it's almost as if everyone has been saying this for years

>>11158290
woah it's almost as if what mattered about a book was it's specific content and not a pithy summary of its premise

>>11158262
Based logical poster

What if in stead of meme speculation the so called geniuses spent time on education reform or reducing infant mortality? Almost as if these fuckers are the worst product of capitalism.

>>11158329
All of their theory basically amounts to "this is why i fail to contribute to society..."

>>11158226
Zizek is extreme fringe

>>11158350
I would say he has more exposure than any other intellectual force, save mediocrities like Peterson and co. I understand the majority aren't politicised at all, getting politics off the internet is difficult now.

>>11158329
>Almost as if these fuckers are the worst product of capitalism.
this nigger gets it. Marxism nowadays is basically a twisted form of consumerism

>>11158398
That's dumb anon, just read Marx or just stop bullshitting.

>>11158424

>>11158329
You want more monsters running around?

>>11158438

>>11158424
I have read more Marx than you you fucking faggot. Leftism has exhausted any kind of vitality since the fall of the Soviet union and nowadays has become completely comatose: it has no political vision, no coherent thought, no political power whatsoever. The only people who read and talk about Marx are internet retards (here the consumer nature of their engagement with left wing thought can be clearly seen in how they have basically adopted the spaces and the modes of expression of internet culture, fake expression meant to posture and dissimulate) and philosophy students whose engagement with Marx amounts to nothing more to a meaningless, impotent chit chat that results in nothing more than a puerile, stunted and cretinous "lol capitalizm suxx, everyone who doesn't agree is brainwashed by ideology, muh ebil corporations, i guess, lol" weltanschauung. Fucking retards.

>>11158329
That's what gives them such authority on the dangers of capitalism

>>11158485
Redundant, psychotic, and empty. I can tell you read a lot of Marx.

>>11158554
mein gott, why do I even try to communicate with you people

>>11158438
Now is the time of monsters.

>>11158485
Even if you have read Marx then your view on things might be slightly tinged by the edginess of this site. Unless you are in fact, secretly Noam Chomsky, then righting off all efforts of criticism and thought as posturing will just lead us all into more nihilism, or fascism. These options aside, I'd like something more. There is hope that 'more' is possible, it has happened before.

>>11158485
Honest question, is it explicitly accepted that political poles (left and right) only exist imminently as the collection of people who identify as such at any given moment? In other words, is it simply accepted that left and right don't signify any values, morals, norm, theories, philosophies, ect. because the meaning of the terms are entirely contingent on the whatever the self-identifying populations particular caprice happens to be?

>>11158596
Age, education and circumstances of course factor in on how you think. Most dedicated and competent Politicos are or were usually young, male, Caucasian and single. Most people can't or weren't given a chance to think abstractly outside of the coordinates of basic desire, this isn't elitism, it's just an unfortunate fact of human limitations.

>>11158726
>outside the coordinates of basic desire
There is nothing outside of that. Abstraction is merely disavowing.

>>11158726
My question is more about how we understand the meaning of the terms "left" "right", whether they correspond to objective ideas/ideals, or the people who self-identify as with the terms "left" and "right" instead.

>>11158764
If you want to know the truth the individuals who are extremely wealthy, exert much more force than you do in media, politics, etc. And actually manufacture these concepts. It is a heavily driven spectacle not a rhizomatic flow.

isn't left-accelerationism kind of sad at this point? we're theoretically viewing capital as a quasi-autonomous force that humans have no control over, but somehow this will be channeled into milquetoast social democracy but with open borders and definitively feminist, antiracist, etc.
yay!

>>11158781
>Against a backdrop of constant socio-technological upheaval, how could any kind of authentic change take place? In such a context, Zizek argues, there can be no great social triumph--because lasting revolution has already come into the scene, like a thief in broad daylight, stealing into sight right before our ever eyes. What we must do now is wake up and see it.
much more cynical than that

>>11158772
The "far left" neo marxists are actually capitalism apoligists. They present their selves and their "radical" theories as an antidote to the universal and brutal hegemony of billionaires. And idiots believe

>>11158772
>>11158798
You guys need to read more Zizek. It's not the case that the people are simply blindly manipulated by consumerism, because we all already know this is the case. There's no hidden strings here. That's Zizek's old standard, "They know what they do, and yet they continue to do so."

>>11158794
more cynical argument: racial maoism with american characteristics is more expedient for seizing power than classical marxism-leninism

>>11158813
"Slavery is a choice"
t. Kanye Zizek

I would gladly watch every university burn

>>11158844
zizek confirmed racist

>>11158844
Watch Zizek analyze West Side Story, it's brilliant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bx515O2l8Y

>>11158764
I guess you're making a nominalist argument? I don't really know what I could say on that, except, social Mileu will affect how you think in a tribal sense. Of course that isn't thinking, it's not being able to escape a prison because you don't know you're in one. Signifying terms usually themselves signify something theory related even if it's a vulgarised theory, or indeed ideals and such.

>>11158959
It's a question not an argument

>>11158975
It's maybe perhaps a nominalist question, then. I'm trying to understand as best as I'm capable.

>>11158226
How to get into accelerationism?

>>11159044
https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-introduction-to-accelerationism/
Searching 'accelerationism' or 'post capitalism' on YouTube will show you both left and right accelerationist resources.
All of the following recommended texts and thinkers assume a grounding in Marxist and Freudian thought as a minimum.
Key contemporary texts would be dark Deleuze and no speed limit, available as audiobooks on YouTube.
Nick Land and Giles Deleuze tend to be the historically significant thinkers in this area, although people like Mark Fisher did also take part. Most worthwhile thinkers tend to move in this direction as change is speeding up at an unprecedented rate, Zizek being one of these.
Good luck, anons feel free to add.

>>11159093
Thanks. Also Alexandr Dugin is an accelerationist, is he not?

>>11158982
this post:
>>11158485
implies the "left" is defined more by people who today call them selves Marxists than Marx's actual work. Those people aren't "bad leftists" or "fake leftists", they are the "real leftists" by the fact that those are the people today that identify as left wing. Trying to boil this down best I can.

>>11159151
A bad leftist is just one who isn't in power at the moment or whose revolutionary proram proved unsuccessful in the long run. The Soviets were good leftists when in power and then bad once they fell out of power, same goes for Mao, Pol Pot, etc.

>>11159151
Wouldn't it be more correct to say that the old maxim 'A capitalist is someone who reads DasKapital and understands it while a communist is someone who does not either read or understand Das Kapital' still applies?
Anyone who has studied Marx isn't left any illusions that could allow for ironic posturing. 'Real leftists' in the sense as taken most common aren't Marxist at all and work off the back of populism and western liberalism.
>>11159136
Dugin isn't as far as I know In favour of accelerating Capitalism to achieve a desired end and more for calling for an apocalypse and rebirth through military provocation.

>>11158764
If I identify as a purple unisexual alien dolphin, does that make me one? This is how stupid your question sounds.

>>11159370
depends how we want to define the class of "purple unisexual alien dolphins", which is exactly the type of question I'm asking. What qualifies someone as left or right? /lit/ is surprisingly bad at abstract thinking tonight.

>>11159422
In terms of economic policy. Do you want to privatize more shit? You're a rightist. Do you want to collectivize shit? You're a leftist. It's not that hard. If you say to me that you're a leftist because you love sucking big african dicks and want to let anyone into your country, but don't say a thing about economics, I'm just gonna laugh in your face and go away because you're not worth my time.

>>11159448
So are monarchists leftist since everything is ultimately the property of the king? How is this distinct from collective ownership through the state?

>>11159481
Thanks for confirming my suspicion that talking to you is a waste of time. Have a nice day.

>>11159494
I'm not the person you were replying to. That was a serious question by the way: What is the essential difference between ownership by the King and the Politburo?

>>11159501
>That was a serious question by the way
Very sad if true.

>>11159494
>>11159370
>>11159547
The fuck is it just one autistic shitposter in this thread or something? no one can answer the simplest fucking questions.

>>11158350
His ideas are fringe but as a personality he is not.

>>11158596
Left and right are meaningless terms but Marxism is not.

>>11158798
Zizek had a great video recently where he says they're Bourgeois moralists and puritans dressed as Marxists and that is a perfect way of describing them.

>>11159501
Socialism is democratic control of the means of production like in Rojava, not just "the government owning shit."

>>11158798
Exactly, most of what passes for 'Marxism' these days is standard middle-class penitent moralism but with with a different name for the scourge.

>>11160851
I'm not like those other marxist professors :^)

>>11158226
>real progressive change
wtf does this even mean?

>>11161826
Breaking out of neoliberal, global capital before we really do become zombies feeding off the table scraps of technocrats.
Progression and change imply urgency more than anything else.

>>11163069
>Breaking out of neoliberal, global capital before we really do become zombies feeding off the table scraps of technocrats.
By doing what? Saying "Yay!" at unregulated, "unconditional" capitalist expansion?
>Progression and change imply urgency more than anything else.
Because multinationals hate ideas and innovators, right?

>>11158764
Zizek, being the unconquerable hegelian that he is, would argue that in their most extreme, contorted forms, the two poles of political opinion actually meet in the middle. If you have a system which privileges absolute differentiation (IE. an inclusive, multicultural society/leftist utopia), then all differences between the internal elements are nullified with respect to their outside– the only ones ostracised are those who refuse to abide by the customs of tolerance, but this refusal in effect negates and excludes them from even being acknowledged as citizens or subjects to it. On the other hand, a system which privileges absolute equivalence or binary functions (nationalism, closed borders, heterogeneity, etc.) would ultimately be dictated by the immanent judgement of "us" against "them", and inevitably imposes the differences it sought to dismantle.

It is likely that capitalism is only able to accommodate both ideals by catalysing the antagonism between them, as the more the one opposes the other the less the one depends on the other for its definitions. Under the divisions of capitalism the line between them is increasingly blurred, as paradoxical as that sounds.

>>11159044
get a job in finance

>>11160864
Did the USSR have democratic control of the means of production?

>>11164966
also, per https://libcom.org/library/grim-reality-rojava-revolution-anarchist-eyewitness, private property is still upheld in Rojava. The next society of sufficient size that holds all property as public without some sovereign as an enforcing body will be the first. Or it will be primitivist.

nothing will happen, only overpopulation
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1754/20122845.short

>>11158798
>>11158596
median voter theory

/trhead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9z-8fMJrB4

I haven't been following Zizek for a couple years.
Did he have a stroke?