/lit/ - Literature

>>11974254
the last passage from that second Hickman essay is worth quoting also.

>Social networking has brought about a seamless integration into the echo chamber of a completed nihilism in which the dividual rather than the individual is incorporated, profiled, imaged, modulated, and attuned to the endless 24/7 feedback systems that cater to their every need while at the same time excluding the extraneous and disturbing worlds of thought and image. We are becoming so normalized or even, hypernormalized (Adam Curtis) that we cannot know the difference. Theory is mute, thought is dead, and all our decisions are taken care of by algorithms of which we know nothing. In fact as Stiegler comments: All political questions are dissolved into economics, since ideology is no longer about collective choices but about ‘individual’ relations to products: ‘There is an ever closer linking of individual needs with the functional and ideological programs in which each new product is embedded.’ These programmed relations give rise to dividuation in Guattari’s sense, that is, to the destruction of in-dividuation in Simondon’s sense – which forms the basis of ‘algorithmic governmentality’.

for newcomers to the Exciting World of Death that is continental theory, yes, it is a kind of arms-race to see who can be the most fucked-out and miserable about la comédie humaine, it's true. but it's also a kind of craft of its own, the contours of alienation, melancholy and so on. it comes from thinking about capitalism too much, imho. there is more to life than the Wild Ride, but still, there are some gems to be found if one is prepared to wade through the awesome scrap-heap of Doom11!1 and Defenestration, Yes! but in the long run it is to be hoped that this leads to something more attractive than an other than outrage-and-paranoia-fuelled existence.