Accelerationism Revisited

15 June 2026, University College Dublin, Ireland

Guest Speaker: Hari Kunzru, interviewed by Mark O’Connell

Further speakers TBC

Accelerationism, a fraught term variously employed by critical theorists, was coined by Benjamin Noys to describe the argument that ‘if capitalism generates its own forces of dissolution then the necessity is to radicalise capitalism itself’ (2010: 5). Noys’ association of this impulse with a body of post-1968 French theory (Baudrillard 1993, Deleuze and Guattari 1983, Lyotard 1993) was supplemented by a series of works in the early 2010s (Noys 2014, Mackay and Avanessian 2014) that sought to provide a genealogy of the further development of this branch of thought by the experimental members of the Cybernetic Cultures Research Unit (CCRU 2017, Land 2011). This synthesising of previous work came alongside calls for a new Left Accelerationism (Srnicek and Williams 2013, Bastani 2019). In an era of ‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher 2009) when the Left, struggling to respond to neoliberal hegemony, seemed fated to stagnation and decline, a generation of theorists sought to reclaim the imagining of futurity. Automation and artificial intelligence could be a socialist project, combined with Universal Basic Income as means to achieve a ‘post-work’ society of increased leisure time (Srnicek and Williams 2015).

A decade and more on from this energised moment, and with all the contradictions implied by a ‘revisiting’ of an imagined future, this symposium will look backwards and forwards. With the acceleration of generative AI, the time has come for an urgent reconsideration both of this earlier body of critical thought and its viability in contemporary politics and culture. The utopian imaginings of automation must now contend with the formation of ‘Silicon Empires’ (Srnicek 2025) including companies such as OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic, Palantir, and Nvidia, in addition to state actors. The monopolies of AI research, and its imbrication with authoritarian and reactionary (perhaps fascistic) politics, raises pressing new questions for a critical theory of speed and acceleration. While Nick Land (2022) remains misread and misunderstood both within and outside Silicon Valley (Andreessen 2023), his theoretical trajectory as an enigmatic figure of the Neoreactionary Right offers challenges for left accelerationists. Meanwhile, emerging research is exploring the ideological inheritance of the new Tech Right and the links between eugenics and AI research (Gebru and Torres 2024, Slobodian 2025).

We welcome participants to the Museum of Literature Ireland, a partner institution of University College Dublin, for a day of discussion guided by an admittedly decelerationist impulse – the need to pause and take stock. Speakers may explore, but are not limited to, accelerationism and:

• The development and use of generative AI
• The imagining of artificial general intelligence
• The right-wing trajectory of Nick Land, the ‘Dark Enlightenment’, the relationship between Land’s early and later work, and what this may or may not reflect of the accelerationist project
• The economic conditions of AI development
• The morphologies of accelerationism in Silicon Valley
• The current viability of ‘hyperstition’ as a methodology
• Reflections upon ‘sinofuturism’ given recent technological and geopolitical developments
• Science fiction as a vehicle for imagining and theorising futurity
• The relevance (or otherwise) of horror and the cyber-gothic to the contemporary encounter with forms of AI.
• The legacy of the Cybernetic Cultures Research Unit
• Automation, ‘Xenofeminism’ (Hester 2018, Laboria Cuboniks 2018), and an ethics of care
• Posthumanism and transhumanism
• Epistemic Accelerationism and rationalism
• Pedagogies and learning, inside and outside the academy
• The environmental impact of AI, and the implications for Left Accelerationism
• The affordances and risks of acceleration as it is explored within literature, film, and aesthetics

Abstracts of 200-300 words for 15-minute papers should be sent as attachments to accelerationism2026@gmail.com by 10 March 2026. These should be accompanied by a 100-word author bio. Authors should note that we intend to pursue avenues for publication developing the proceedings of the symposium.

This event is supported by funding from the School of English, Drama, and Film, UCD.

Organiser: Dr Rhona Jamieson, UCD

References

Andreessen, Marc. ‘The Techno-Optimist Manifesto’. 2023,  https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/.

Bastani, Aaron. Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto. Verso, 2019.

Baudrillard, Jean. Symbolic Exchange and Death. Translated by Iain Hamilton Grant, Sage, 1993.

Cybernetic Culture Research Unit. Writings 1997-2003. Urbanomic, 2017.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, University of Minnesota Press, 1983.

Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Zero Books, 2009.

Gebru, Timnit, and Émile P. Torres. “The TESCREAL Bundle: Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through Artificial General Intelligence.” First Monday, vol. 29, no. 4, 2024.

Hester, Helen. Xenofeminism. Polity, 2018.

Laboria Cuboniks. Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation. Verso, 2018.

Land, Nick. Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007. Edited by Ray Brassier and Robin Mackay, Urbanomic, 2011.

------------ The Dark Enlightenment. Imperium, 2022.

Lyotard, Jean-François. Libidinal Economy. Translated by Iain Hamilton Grant, Indiana University Press, 1993.

Mackay, Robin, and Armen Avanessian, editors. #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader. Urbanomic, 2014.

Noys, Benjamin. The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory. Edinburgh University Press, 2010.

------------  Malign Velocities: Accelerationism and Capitalism. Zero Books, 2014.

Slobodian, Quinn. Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right. Zone Books, 2025.

Srnicek, Nick, and Alex Williams. #Accelerate: Manifesto of an Accelerationist Politics. 2013, criticallegalthinking.com.

------------  Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work. Verso, 2015.

Srnicek, Nick. Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI. Polity, 2025.