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Call for Papers

Accelerofeminisms

A special issue of Inter/Alia: A Journal of Queer Studies

(http://interalia.org.pl)

Edited by Rafał Majka and Michael O’Rourke

In her meticulous studies of patriarchy Luce Irigaray has amply demonstrated the

peculiar urgency of the feminist question, although the political solutions she suggests

are often feebly nostalgic, sentimental, and pacifistic. Perhaps only Monique Wittig has

adequately grasped the inescapably military task faced by any serious revolutionary

feminism, and it is difficult not to be dispirited by the enormous reluctance women have

shown historically to prosecute their struggle with sufficient ruthlessness and

aggression—Nick Land, “Kant, Capital, and the Prohibition of Incest”, Fanged

Noumena: Collected Writings (1987-2007)

An oceanic accelerationism, wired through [Sadie] Plant and Luce Irigaray, is a marine

violence … Send out the distress call for cyberfeminism—Ben Woodard, “Oceanic

Accelerationism”, Dark Trajectories: Politics of the Outside

The choice facing us is severe: either a globalised post-capitalism or a slow

fragmentation towards primitivism, perpetual crisis, and planetary ecological collapse.

The future needs to be constructed. It has been demolished by neoliberal capitalism and

reduced to a cut-price promise of greater inequality, conflict, and chaos. This collapse in

the idea of the future is symptomatic of the regressive historical status of our age, rather

than, as cynics across the political spectrum would have us believe, a sign of sceptical

maturity. What accelerationism pushes towards is a future that is more modern – an

alternative modernity that neoliberalism is inherently unable to generate. The future must

be cracked open once again, unfastening our horizons towards the universal possibilities

of the Outside—Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, “#Accelerate: Manifesto for an

Accelerationist Politics”

What would a high speed collision between feminism, queer theory and accelerationism look

like? Has it already happened? Or, if it hasn’t yet, what kind of futures might an accelerationist

feminism/queer theory promise in a world seemingly without promises?

If we look back to the early roots of accelerationist theory and politics in the dark

Deleuzoguattarianism of Nick Land, we can see that feminism is acknowledged as a key tool in

the war against both patriarchy and capitalism. Land doesn’t see Irigaray as going far enough but

does credit Wittig as an ally in the fomentation of an aggressively revolutionary feminism. Much

later Ben Woodard appeals to Irigaray’s elemental, oceanic feminism as he calls for a renewed

cyberfeminism. Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek also glance towards feminist theorists in their

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#accelerate manifesto and for Land, Woodard, Srnicek, Williams (and many others) the

cyberfeminist endeavours of Sadie Plant have been path-breaking.

Yet, despite the many nods to, and debts being paid to, earlier feminist work which has paved

the way for recent accelerationist thought, it has been a consistent criticism of proponents in this

field that they both fail to acknowledge their feminist forebears and that certain key names

(Luciana Parisi, J.K. Gibson-Graham, N.Katherine Hayles for example) get left out of these

genealogies of accelerationist trajectories. Would not, for instance, the project of J.K. Gibson-

Graham’s alternative community economies, their deconstructing of the global vs. local binary,

their furthering of heterodox Marxism’s theories of class processes, or their critical intervention

into the for-a-long-time-taken-for-granted metaphysical, organismic, essentializing and

totalizing scripts of thinking capitalism; or Judith Butler’s work on subjection or Eve Kosofsky

Sedgwick’s on strong vs. weak theories; or Lauren Berlant’s and Sara Ahmed’s takes on affects;

or Jack Judith Halberstam’s reworkings of success and failure and critique of the logics of

orderliness in producing theories for action – to name just a few – provide productive ground for

reworking and furthering certain issues bothering contemporary accelerationisms? Another

robust criticism that has been advanced against this admittedly newly emergent discourse is that

it is profoundly masculinist and male-dominated, which, as many feminist, gender and queer

theories have shown, often translates itself into particular (culturally gendered and dominant

philosophical tradition-influenced) ways of conceptualizing the social world as well as into the

emergence of particular political horizons to pursue. And such an embeddedness might result in

the politics compulsively acting out a political positioning most productive of the feelings and

emotions of awe, power and might that come with the affects of masculinist Promethean heroism

and Capitalism-total vs. Socialism/ Communism/ etc.-total binary antagonism. A further

criticism, although less easy to sustain, is an equation between accelerationism, speed and a

virile, phallic politics (Shannon Bell’s Fast Feminism is an obvious countertendency).

This special issue aims to open up a number of questions about accelerat ionism’s debts to earlier

feminist and queer theory, its development alongside and in the work of contemporary feminist

and queer theorists, the potentially fertile links between accelerationism and gender/sexuality,

and critiques of accelerationist thinking about work, neoliberalism, capitalism and futurity from

feminist and queer perspectives.

Among topics potential contributors might focus on are:

Critiques of or extensions to the #accelerate manifesto

The resources for feminist accelerationism in the early work of Nick Land (the figures of

the woman and sister in the early articles on Kant and Trakl for example) and in his later

work too (the figure of the lesbian vampire for example)

Feminist thinking on antiwork (eg Kathi Weeks, Federico Campagna) and feminist work

on technology (eg N. Katherine Hayles, Sadie Plant)

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J.K. Gibson-Graham’s work on class processes, becoming-postcapitalist and alternative

economies

Queer and feminist writing about reproduction (eg Shulamith Firestone) and reproductive

technology

Beatriz Preciado’s theories on sex and labour in the pharmacopornographic era

The debates about queer futurity, Blochian hope and utopia (in José Muñoz, Lisa

Duggan, Kathi Weeks, Lauren Berlant among others)

The gender politics of the nihilist strains of accelerationism

Accelerationist art, ethics and aesthetics (Patricia MacCormack’s Michel Serres-inspired

efforts for example)

Accelerationism, sex and sexuality

Postcolonial feminisms and queer theories’ interventions into Eurocentric

accelerationisms/ Critique of Eurocentrism in accelerationist thought

Drone Theory and feminism

Critiques and/or defences of the masculinism/phallocentrism of accelero-thought

Queer readings of and with Reza Negarestani, Ray Brassier, Mark Fisher, Steven

Shaviro, Benjamin Noys

Queer cosmism

Accelerationism and camp (eg Ivor Southwood’s book on non-stop inertia and queer

sedition as escape)

Deleuzoguattarian accelerationism and becoming-girl

Housing, infrastructure and the gendering of social organization

Geoengineering and the environment

Accelerationist transhumanism

Accelerationist posthumanism and new perspectives for feminism, gender and queer

studies

Feminism, queer theory and critical climate change

Synthetic biology

Periphery studies

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Fast Feminism (in Bataille, Cixous, Derrida, Virilio and others)

Deadline for abstracts: July 1st, 2014

Deadline for paper submissions: January 31st, 2015

The Accelerofeminisms issue is scheduled for late Spring 2015.

Paper proposals should be sent to:

interalia_journal@yahoo.com AND tranquilised_icon@yahoo.com

The guidelines for contributors can be found at:

http://interalia.org.pl/en/artykuly/guidelines_for_contributors.htm

Image source: http://trojantopher.wordpress.com/