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...That the desired other cannot be the other of capitalism because it is the essence of capitalism to have its other in itself and that is recuperation...
-Jean-Francois Lyotard1
If it takes us over, then it has no more enemies, nobody leftto kill it. And then it's won.
-MacReady2
1. Accelerate into the Abyss
In his popular book Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher compares capitalism to the Thing from John Carpenter's classic 1982 horror film of the same name: it is "a monstrous, infinitely plastic entity, capable of metabolizing and absorbing anything with which it comes into contact."3 The film follows a group of Antarctic researchers led by MacReady (played by Kurt Russell), when to their shock, they discover a strange and grotesque organism digesting and replicating a pack of their sled dogs. Next, the organism moves on to the humans in the [End Page 409] camp, surviving by means of consuming and imitating them perfectly. As the film progresses it becomes increasingly unclear as to who is authentically human (who pre-exists the Thing) and who is an imitation (an effect or production of the Thing-the Thing itself). Everyone is suspect. Everyone has potentially been absorbed. No one is to be trusted. Like capital, the Thing lives, grows in strength, and multiplies through the bodies of its hosts. It would be nothing without us.4 Like Capital, the Thing seeks to colonize all forms of life, until there is nothing leftbeyond it. No outside.
Accelerationism as a political theory and strategy...