"We have been reading the same old books for too long."

Eindelijk toegekomen aan 'Cruise Control' van McKenzie Wark. Een fijn stuk over Accelerationisme, in korte observaties geschreven, dat een groot aantal hedendaagse problemen haarfijn analyseert. Kleine aanzetten die verder moeten worden uitgedacht.

08. By their rhetoric you shall know them. The talk these days is of disruption, creation, destruction. The old language of the avant gardes and revolutionaries is now the province of Silicon valley publicists. So we need a careful analysis of that language – and we need a new avant garde. Its clear that this is a commodity economy busy cannibalizing its own means of subsistence. It has run out of ideas. The task of the neo-liberal state is to destroy the social so that it may be commodified, even though this will result in less efficient and effective forms of organization. So: let there be iPads in the charter schools! The result will be less effective, and more expensive, which is of course the goal.

After Neoliberalism?

This is no time for simple retreat. What is required is a renewed sense of being on the side of the future, not stuck in the dugouts of the past. We must admit that the old forms of the welfare state proved insufficient. But we must stubbornly defend the principles on which it was founded – redistribution, egalitarianism, collective provision, democratic accountability and participation, the right to education and healthcare – and find new ways in which they can be institutionalised and expressed. All of us who oppose the current direction, whether from inside or outside party politics or other organisations, must invent. We must set about disrupting the current common sense, challenging the assumptions that organise our 21st-century political discourse. We hope our manifesto will open a dialogue with a new generation shaped by different political experiences. This is a moment for challenging, not adapting to, neoliberalism's new reality, and for making a leap.

...en esthetisch discours zou ik daar, haast vanzelfsprekend, aan willen toevoegen. Stuart Hall (oude naam uit de studietijd, Resistance Through Rituals is een sociologische klassieker) kondigt een nieuw manifest aan dat in delen gaat verschijnen. We zullen zien maar het is al een opluchting om een culturele theoreticus de term 'toekomst' zo expliciet te zien gebruiken.