Welcome back to a new edition of the XG reading group! After jumping around all sorts of texts last time, before settling on Jodi Dean’s Blog Theory, this time we’re readying Benjamin Bratton’s new book, The Revenge of the Real: Politics for a Post-Pandemic World.
It’s a short book with nice and condensed chapters, so it feels good to have a shorter and more digestible book to read through. (We have previously jumped at nightmare books that want to kill you, so it’s nice to read one that wants to save the world.)
This week, we read the Preface and Chapter 1, and a couple of us were immediately struck by how this book feels like left-accelerationism by another name. We connected Bratton’s understanding of the Covid-19 pandemic to how the accelerationist blogosphere tried to respond to the financial crash of 2008, and we also discussed the various stakes of Bratton’s project of planetary governmentality.
Below are links to various resources and other things discussed. Join us in two weeks’ time for a discussion of Chapter 2 (and maybe 3?)
Notes, Links and Resources:
- Levi Bryant, “flat ontology / flat ethics”
- Srnicek and Williams, “Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics”
- Ray Brassier, “Alien Theory”
- Steven Sharivo, “Accelerationism Without Accelerationism”
- Tom Whyman, “Positivist Thinking”
- Liam Kofi Bright, “Interview”
- Paul Churchland and “Eliminative Materialism”
- Benjamin Bratton, “Agamben WTF, or How Philosophy Failed the Pandemic”