Network Power The Deep State: a term whose deployment in popular discourse has reached fever-pitch, uttered daily by a legion of commentators, pundits, streamers and activists. It has become something of a slogan with a particular reputation, tarnished in the eyes of the popular left by its association with the political right. Insofar as it has traction on the left itself, it remains marginalized, a conceptual enemy of the fringe. Above all, it is associated with conspiracy, serving as the signifier for a regime of unseen agents who, from behind closed doors and in the shadows of the world economy, dictate an unpredictable chain of events that shake the foundations of reality itself.
one question that popped up for me and you’ll have to forgive me as I only got into accelerationism as well as parapolitics in 2020 (and I only really started to to become conversant in “acc” in the last year or so); but do you think part of why patchwork and neo-monarchism first emerge out of Silicon Valley is due to America producing subjects who don’t have any cultural or historical memory of feudal relations, both in terms of I guess actual human memory or in material objects from old castles to the layout of cities and such? Also because in N. America there are no (so we’re made to believe) ceremonial positions for an old Nobility inscribed into the constitution or for that matter the existence of an old Aristocratic class who still retain their legal titles as well as some small amount of land, that because we don’t have those reminders it leads to a fetishizing desire for feudal relations. That because the legacy isnt here that is why the NRx crowd are able to glorify the paternalism of monarchism thus believing it to be preferable to the uncertainty and chaos of neoliberal austerity?
Glad you enjoyed the post, and what a great question! I'll try my best to answer... apologies for an incoming novel.
So first off, the coincidence of patchwork appearing in Deleuze and Guattari in the 1970s and then Nick Land—very very well read in D&G—picking up on patchwork via NRx is a very intriguing dynamic, even given that the two different versions have significant differences (intensive patchwork in D&G and extensive patchwork in NRx). When we (the U/Acc crew, of which I was part) stumbled on this coincidence, we began to find that 'patchwork' was a significant trope in other theorists in the 'accelerationist canon'... not just D&G but Lyotard etc. I don't think we ever really squared whether or not Land was picking up on it consciously, even when the question was directly posed to him.
Then we have to split NRx in two—the Moldbuggian NRx, and the way that Land kind of used it as a 'mask' to write through. This gets into the core of Land's philosophy, which is really a philosophy of time, with a specific focus on what we might call 'anomalous temporalities'. At the risk of oversimplifying things (jettisoning for sake of length a lot of the philosophical frameworks governing this), Land draws a 'diagonal' between pre-modern versions of time, which are cyclical, and the time of modernity, which is linear time. What gets us beyond each of these? Time as a spiral, which contains both cyclical temporality ("time of return") and linear temporality ("time of escape"). This time spiral for land is compressive and involutionary—it cycles 'inward' the further we move down the line of time, and this is where acceleration is taking place.
But what does it mean to reconcile linear time, which is future-oriented, with cyclical time, with is aimed at a restoration of the past? You get a kind of schizophrenic picture, where the deeper we get into the future, the most the ancient and archaic seems to be reborn. My sense is that Land tends to read these temporal dynamics as 'deposited'—or more properly, 'indexed'—within culture. Think of the 1990s early tech culture: cutting edge experience, the future perceived as unfolding, but there was a cultural rush of 'techno-primitivism', talk of network tribalism, the resurgence of shamanism, 'technocculture'. Past and future, together. The CCRU seemed to make a 'theory-fiction' of this with with their writings about the "cybergoths". The name reflects this schizzed temporality: cyber, the futuristic, and the goths, the ancient.
Land also finds this in contemporary China, with the move towards a "neo-traditionalism" (there's that time schiz again"), and even more recently, the CPC's promotion of a 'Neo-Confucianism'. But flip back to tech culture. What produced the anomalous cyber-tribalism in the early 1990s is the same culture that, by the late 2000s, produced NRx. And there's the anomalous temporality at play again: Neoreaction, neo- the new, reaction, restoration of the old. So I think this is why Land latched onto it... he also made a series of rather esoteric posts describing Moldbug etc as really just being "Exoteric NRx". What would the esoteric doctrine then be? Seems to me that this would be the primary process itself, this spiraling, accelerative mode of time that the machinic future is constructing itself within.
But you point out something important: *why* neofeudalism and neo-monarchy as the aesthetic expression in that moment? Clearly a component has to do with a rejection of 'popular democracy', which was regarded as a degenerative practice. Moldbug's leaping-off point was Thomas Carlyle, who rejected all that "swarmery", the "Gathering of Men in Swarms". While immediately the swarmery is a pejorative for advocates of liberty, constitutional government and the like, it also invokes something more primal coursing under the surface of modernity: the molten mass of The People, the irreconcilable contradiction within the fragile state that modernity has to erect on the ruins of the Ancien Regime.
The irony is that the people, the swarm, is the real locus of tradition, forged in pre-modern eras and transmitted into the future, where it is constantly molded and shaped within their 'lifeworlds'. This is where Dewey becomes important... but for the Silicon Valley goons, with their detachment from this very ground, perhaps it registers for them as lack. Maybe papering over the gap does exactly what you say, pulling back to the system that America broke with, the monarchies and aristocracies of old Europe?
Another irony is that Moldbug was very concerned with what he sees as America's intrinsic communist impulses, which he sees as empowering 'popular democracy' and going back to the Puritans. Maybe he's right—America always had a socialistic bent, from its inception, albeit in a highly experimental form, and this was connected to the sort of popular democratic efforts that preceded the formation of a common public managed by Lippmannite-style experts. But, after stripping away the aesthetics, isn't the point of view of somebody like Moldbug really fall closer the 'progressives' and their regime of experts?
thanks for the response, I remember when Yarvin was on what seemed like every podcast tied to post-left twitter and his going on about Carlyle had me put Sartor Resartus on my list but still haven’t read (think I’ve lost a little interest tho). but back to what the actual meat of what you said it’s got me working out some other follow up that I want to ask, but I’m wiped out and not particularly ableto articulate so I’ll get back to ya
What an opening number! Really great work.
one question that popped up for me and you’ll have to forgive me as I only got into accelerationism as well as parapolitics in 2020 (and I only really started to to become conversant in “acc” in the last year or so); but do you think part of why patchwork and neo-monarchism first emerge out of Silicon Valley is due to America producing subjects who don’t have any cultural or historical memory of feudal relations, both in terms of I guess actual human memory or in material objects from old castles to the layout of cities and such? Also because in N. America there are no (so we’re made to believe) ceremonial positions for an old Nobility inscribed into the constitution or for that matter the existence of an old Aristocratic class who still retain their legal titles as well as some small amount of land, that because we don’t have those reminders it leads to a fetishizing desire for feudal relations. That because the legacy isnt here that is why the NRx crowd are able to glorify the paternalism of monarchism thus believing it to be preferable to the uncertainty and chaos of neoliberal austerity?
that got real long sorry Ed, you rule.
Glad you enjoyed the post, and what a great question! I'll try my best to answer... apologies for an incoming novel.
So first off, the coincidence of patchwork appearing in Deleuze and Guattari in the 1970s and then Nick Land—very very well read in D&G—picking up on patchwork via NRx is a very intriguing dynamic, even given that the two different versions have significant differences (intensive patchwork in D&G and extensive patchwork in NRx). When we (the U/Acc crew, of which I was part) stumbled on this coincidence, we began to find that 'patchwork' was a significant trope in other theorists in the 'accelerationist canon'... not just D&G but Lyotard etc. I don't think we ever really squared whether or not Land was picking up on it consciously, even when the question was directly posed to him.
Then we have to split NRx in two—the Moldbuggian NRx, and the way that Land kind of used it as a 'mask' to write through. This gets into the core of Land's philosophy, which is really a philosophy of time, with a specific focus on what we might call 'anomalous temporalities'. At the risk of oversimplifying things (jettisoning for sake of length a lot of the philosophical frameworks governing this), Land draws a 'diagonal' between pre-modern versions of time, which are cyclical, and the time of modernity, which is linear time. What gets us beyond each of these? Time as a spiral, which contains both cyclical temporality ("time of return") and linear temporality ("time of escape"). This time spiral for land is compressive and involutionary—it cycles 'inward' the further we move down the line of time, and this is where acceleration is taking place.
But what does it mean to reconcile linear time, which is future-oriented, with cyclical time, with is aimed at a restoration of the past? You get a kind of schizophrenic picture, where the deeper we get into the future, the most the ancient and archaic seems to be reborn. My sense is that Land tends to read these temporal dynamics as 'deposited'—or more properly, 'indexed'—within culture. Think of the 1990s early tech culture: cutting edge experience, the future perceived as unfolding, but there was a cultural rush of 'techno-primitivism', talk of network tribalism, the resurgence of shamanism, 'technocculture'. Past and future, together. The CCRU seemed to make a 'theory-fiction' of this with with their writings about the "cybergoths". The name reflects this schizzed temporality: cyber, the futuristic, and the goths, the ancient.
Land also finds this in contemporary China, with the move towards a "neo-traditionalism" (there's that time schiz again"), and even more recently, the CPC's promotion of a 'Neo-Confucianism'. But flip back to tech culture. What produced the anomalous cyber-tribalism in the early 1990s is the same culture that, by the late 2000s, produced NRx. And there's the anomalous temporality at play again: Neoreaction, neo- the new, reaction, restoration of the old. So I think this is why Land latched onto it... he also made a series of rather esoteric posts describing Moldbug etc as really just being "Exoteric NRx". What would the esoteric doctrine then be? Seems to me that this would be the primary process itself, this spiraling, accelerative mode of time that the machinic future is constructing itself within.
But you point out something important: *why* neofeudalism and neo-monarchy as the aesthetic expression in that moment? Clearly a component has to do with a rejection of 'popular democracy', which was regarded as a degenerative practice. Moldbug's leaping-off point was Thomas Carlyle, who rejected all that "swarmery", the "Gathering of Men in Swarms". While immediately the swarmery is a pejorative for advocates of liberty, constitutional government and the like, it also invokes something more primal coursing under the surface of modernity: the molten mass of The People, the irreconcilable contradiction within the fragile state that modernity has to erect on the ruins of the Ancien Regime.
The irony is that the people, the swarm, is the real locus of tradition, forged in pre-modern eras and transmitted into the future, where it is constantly molded and shaped within their 'lifeworlds'. This is where Dewey becomes important... but for the Silicon Valley goons, with their detachment from this very ground, perhaps it registers for them as lack. Maybe papering over the gap does exactly what you say, pulling back to the system that America broke with, the monarchies and aristocracies of old Europe?
Another irony is that Moldbug was very concerned with what he sees as America's intrinsic communist impulses, which he sees as empowering 'popular democracy' and going back to the Puritans. Maybe he's right—America always had a socialistic bent, from its inception, albeit in a highly experimental form, and this was connected to the sort of popular democratic efforts that preceded the formation of a common public managed by Lippmannite-style experts. But, after stripping away the aesthetics, isn't the point of view of somebody like Moldbug really fall closer the 'progressives' and their regime of experts?
thanks for the response, I remember when Yarvin was on what seemed like every podcast tied to post-left twitter and his going on about Carlyle had me put Sartor Resartus on my list but still haven’t read (think I’ve lost a little interest tho). but back to what the actual meat of what you said it’s got me working out some other follow up that I want to ask, but I’m wiped out and not particularly ableto articulate so I’ll get back to ya
Glad to see you’re back Ed.
Would love to see you talk to Haz again sometime. Two greatest Marxists alive IMO and both working on books trying bring it into the 21st century.
You might appreciate this podcast:
https://open.substack.com/pub/soberchristiangentlemanpodcast/p/s2-ep-14-the-truth-about-the-administrative?r=31s3eo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
just reading your intro I know we’re on the same wavelength
Wonderful, I look forward to your contributions and insights. Our high-vibe tribe is growing.
I think you will like this book, armour for your mind, just posted the pdf link:
https://open.substack.com/pub/soberchristiangentlemanpodcast/p/fyi-book-reading-the-rape-of-the?r=31s3eo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Great opener. Will be signing up to this. Looking forward to your Garton colab with Urbanomics!