/lit/ - Literature

>For over a century (but less than two) Shanghai Capitalism – despite dramatic interruption – has been building a real time machine, which Rian Johnson, among many others, stumbled into, and tangentially fictionalized. Although the detailed workings of this machine still escape public comprehension, its intrinsic self-reflexion ensures its promotion, as an object of complex natural science, of spectacular dramatization, and of multi-leveled commercialization. It enthralls East and West in an elaborate exploration of futuristic myth. At its most superficial, where it daubs the edges of the mind with its neon-streaked intoxication, it appears as a vague but indissoluble destiny. What it is becoming remains to be recalled.

>Which leaves us, for the moment, with Joe talking to himself in an American diner, his identity divided generationally, across a gulf of unprocessed Shanghai memories. A Wells-class private time-pod has been dramatically substituted for the city, but – because this is cinema – everyone is overlooking the stage effects for now. “This is going to end raggedly, isn’t it?” says the young Joe. (He has a contract to execute.) “It’s going to end?” “When did this stop being about business, and become an exercise in the topology of time?” “It never stopped.” “So what happens next?” “Really, after all of this, you still don’t remember?” “Well, now you ask, I think – at least I think that I think – it’s coming back ...”

he's unironically one of the most fascinating human beings alive. nobody should be this interesting.

>>11105360
oh man. too good.

so no, i'm not butthurt that marx was wrong about capitalism. i don't believe that he was, for one thing. not in the slightest. surplus and capital accumulation is for real. i am a confirmed nick land fanboy for this reason. land also believes that marx is right. and do did deleuze, for that matter.

there are at least two major questions that result. the first is the one about psychoanalysis: that is, whether it's oedipal theatre at the bottom, or the BwO, or so on. that's one thing.

and the second is the question about society, the polis, the university, the role of the corporation, the open society, and about twenty million other things. land himself will say that one of the original and major turning points in western civilization is actually the protestant reformation for this reason.

the chaos, political impotency and damnation memoriae (that's a wonderful term, by the way, and i am going to steal it) is exactly the drivers of the rage virus and other various brands of ideological militancy in university cultures today. i'm not on the side of that. i think land poured a corrosive acid over a lot of the language games that ruled philosophy in the 1990s and which are absolutely moribund today.

but it didn't actually involve a complete rejection of marx. it's more the opposite: after all of the social upheaval of the 19C and 20C, *capitalism remains.* for the accelerationists it is *all that remains* and everything else gets shelved to second place - hopes and dreams, wishes, all of it.

asking whether or not democracy is compatible with libertarianism is an absolutely spot-on question to be asking these days. land thought it through to the nth degree and decided on corporate formalism. that's not crazy. nor is the motto: optimize for intelligence. again, i don't endorse his politics all the way down the line, but if you think my interest him proceeds from feeling butthurt about marx, you've got me completely wrong on this one.

capital is going ahead one way or the other, and it is ploughing up a lot of sacred cows and making people restless. i'm not on the side of the resultant chaos. i'm more interested in extracting some sanity from the turbulence. hope that makes sense. and this is said with no hostility, either: i genuinely do appreciate you making me think about these things too and making me clarify my positions on this stuff.