The term is introduced — within a highly critical frame — here. The almost perfect coincidence with techno-commercial NRx (or proto-Patchwork tendencies) is so striking that the adoption of ‘extrastatecraft’ as a positive program falls into place automatically.

Keller Easterling is an architect, writer and professor at Yale University. Her most recent book, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014), examines a new global network woven by money and technology that functions almost like a world shadow government. Though it’s hard to grasp the full extent of this invisible network, Easterling argues that it’s not too late for us to change it.

If it’s not too late to ‘change’ it, it’s not too late to intensify and consolidate it. Tech-comm NRx is obviously doing OK, if it already looks this scary.

“Why oh why don’t those damned crackers just leave?”

If we’re already entering the ejection phase of neo-secessionism, it has to be a good thing, right?

Some chatter on various web channels about this event, which should be a great opportunity for exploring. To be clear about my participation (which has been open to confusion) — it consists of an intervention out of Cyberspace. (No chance of drinking dates in NY just yet, unfortunately.)

This is a nonlinear point, from my perspective, since the rapid development of telepresence is of obvious internal consequence to the recent intensification of Exit-oriented and neo-secessionist discussion. (Balaji S. Srinivasan brought this out very clearly in his October 2013 talk on the subject, from which this event takes its title.) Exit in depth — i.e. into the crypto-thickened ‘Net — is at the very least an important complement to more traditional notions of territorial flight. It also sustains a better purchase on the commercial principle which provides Exit with its fundamentalal model, and which can easily get lost among secessionist excitement and visions of technologically re-sculpted geographical space.

Some background to the event (and hints of choppy waters). Argument is, of course, the other side of the nonlinearity (a micro-enactment of the inclusive Democratic ideal), so it will be interesting to see whether on this occasion the controversy can remain productive in its own terms, rather than ‘merely’ stacking up the incentives to get Out.

This is not an easy subject for people to scan with calm, analytical detachment, but it is a crucially important one. It is among the rare topics that the Left is more likely to realistically evaluate than the Right. Much follows from the conclusions reached.

It can be fixed, provisionally, by an hypothesis that requires understanding, if not consent. Capital is highly incentivized to detach itself from the political eventualities of any specific ethno-geographical locality, and — by its very nature — it increasingly commands impressive resources with which to ‘liberate’ itself, or ‘deterritorialize’. It is certainly not, at least initially, a matter of approving such a tendency — even if the moralistic inclinations of gregarious apes would prefer the question to be immediately transformed in this direction. Integral Leftist animosity to capital is actually valuable in this respect, since it makes room for a comprehensive apprehension of ‘globalization’ as a strategy, oriented to the flight of alienated productive capability from political answerability. The Left sees capital elude its clutches — and it sees something real when it does so. By far the most significant agent of Exit is capital itself (a fact which, once again, politically-excitable apes find hard to see straight).

“It’s escaping! Let’s punish it!” Yes, yes, there’s always plenty of time for that, but shelving such idiocies for just a few moments is a cognitive prerequisite. The primary question is a much colder one: is this actually happening?

The implications are enormous. If capital cannot escape — if its apparent migration into global circuits beyond national government control (for non-exhaustive example) is mere illusion — then the sphere of political possibility is vastly expanded. Policies that hurt, limit, shrink, or destroy capital can be pursued with great latitude. They will only be constrained by political factors, making the political fight the only one that matters.

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Separation is Creation

(The imperative version is Split!)

A little background:

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(Open thread, and stuff.)

Too much Ebola news and commentary to process, from speculative nightmares of various kinds, to historical reminiscences, neo-Puritan panic attacks, border disputes, alarm calls, and conspiracy theory.

Ron Paul, John Glanton, and Keith Preston walk into a bar. The bartender says: “OK, break it up gentlemen.” (Jordan Bloom should get it.) Related.

Eugenics around the back.

The game has changed.

Crabby thoughts.

An unfortunate invention.

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While this blog generally seeks to spread dismay whenever the opportunity arises, it cannot pretend to a huge obsession with what might be described as ordinary racism. When perusing the thought-crimes of the mainstream racist community, it is continually afflicted by a sense of overwhelming unreality. This is not (of course), because races do not exist, or do not differ significantly, or … whatever. The most politically incorrect cognitive position on almost every point of this kind is reliably closer to reality than its more socially-convenient and comforting alternatives.

The problem with ordinary racism is its utter incomprehension of the near future. Not only will capabilities for genomic manipulation dissolve biological identity into techno-commercial processes of yet-incomprehensible radicality, but also … other things.

First, a sketch of the existing racism-antiracism contention in its commonplace or dominant form. The antiracist, or universal humanist position — when extracted from its most idiotic social-constructivist and hypocritical alt-racist expressions — amounts to a program for global genetic pooling. Cultural barriers to the Utopian vision of a unitary ‘human’ gene pool, stirred with increasing ardor into homogeneous intermixture, are deplored as atavistic obstructions to the realization of a true, common humanity. Races will not exist once they are reduced, by practical politics and libidinal indiscriminacy, into relics of contingent historical partition. In contrast, racial identitarianism envisages a conservation of (comparative) genetic isolation, generally determined by boundaries corresponding to conspicuous phenotypic variation. It is race realist, in that it admits to seeing what everyone does in fact see — which is to say consistent patterns of striking, correlated, multi-dimensional variety between human populations (or sub-species). Its unrealism lies in its projections.

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(Weekly open thread.) XS is sticking with the settled schedule, despite the risk of chaos overdose. It’s been that kind of week. Spotty coverage of 4chan craziness and failed secession in the Anglosphere heartland doesn’t begin to exhaust it.

For anybody tugging at the scorched /pol/ thread, this is an interesting — and impressively sophisticated — strand to pull at (+ some Ebola-Chan context). ++ Trolls are Kulaks — Science. Free Northener on #Gamergate (+ NIO anticipates the storm).

The regular Mitrailleuse secession round-up makes serves as a good Scottish re-dependence portal. Some now dated, but stimulating Scotland-related commentary here, here, here, and here. (Also loosely related, and highly-recommended, from Mitrailleuse.) This might also be the place to throw in some Proprietary Cities links (1, 2, 3).

Anything — however embryonic — proposing to synthesize Neoreaction and Accelerationism is bound to get a hearing here. This is the sign. From a left-slanted sensibility, but related.

Dark comedy on the civilization-morbidity front at the MacArthur Genius Grants. (Some residual seriousness still apparent.) Grants and awards are clearly a crucial zone of conflict.

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… proves yet again that it’s a reliable vote winner.

What the f…

Dig beneath the facile moralism, and Tom Engelhardt offers sentences (even the embryo of an analysis) to delect in:

Since World War II, we’ve generally been focused on the Great Concentration, while another story was developing in the shadows. Its focus: the de-concentration of power in what the Bush administration used to call the Greater Middle East, as well as in Africa, and even Europe. Just how exactly this developed will have to await a better historian than I and perhaps the passage of time. But for the sake of discussion, let’s call it the Great Fragmentation.

This is why, now in my eighth decade, I can’t help but wonder just what planet I’m really on and what its story will really turn out to be.