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Alien Capitalism Ver the Past Three Centuries, Oplanet Earth First Turned Into a Factory, and Later on Into a Labo- Ratory

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Alien Capitalism Ver the Past Three Centuries, Oplanet Earth First Turned Into a Factory, and Later on Into a Labo- Ratory VOICES Bureau d’études (p.02) • Keith A. Spencer (p.03) • Špela Petric (p. 04) • WORDS Alienology (p.02) • Imperial anthropomorphism (p.03) • Teratope (p.04) • Phy- Ewen Chardronnet (p. 05 & 19) • Aliens in Green (p. 06 & 24) • Donna Haraway (p.09) • toteratology (p.04) • Xenobiology (p.05) • Shadow life (p.05) • Photoautotrophy (pp.06-07) • Helen Hester (p.10) • Émilie Notéris (p.12) • Konrad Becker (p.16) • Pablo de Soto (p.17) Chthulucene (p.09) • Inhabitability (p.09) • Xenofeminist Ecologies (p.10) • Alien Citizens (p.13) • • Eugene Thacker (p.18) • Alejandra Pérez Núñez (p.20) • Matteo Pasquinelli (p.21) Xeno Capital (p.14) • Algorithmic Terror (p.16) • Regeneration (p.17) • Oil Cults (p.18) • Gnostic •Deborah Danowski & Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (p.22) Anthropos (p.19) • Word Virus (p.20) • Machinic Cognition (p.21) • Perspectivism (pp.22-23) n°5 The Laboratory Planet 2016 • 71Th year since 1945 Why are we working for our own Obsolescence? Xenopolitics of the Anthropocene 24 pages # 2 euros www.laboratoryplanet.org OF A WORLD BECOMING :ALIEN: Research hypotheses on Capitalism aims and genesis alien capitalism ver the past three centuries, 5 n° OPlanet Earth first turned into a factory, and later on into a labo- ratory. The Laboratory Planet doc- uments this transformation. alien The Anthropocene debate aims Evolution of HUMAN SPECIES POPULATION Fertilizer consumption Computer Power / Cost to date the moment when human 1000 The Laboratory Planet 7 Mac II Power Tower 180e 6 capitalism300 1 IBM PC species, or part of it, started to 5 250 Apple II 1/1000 Whirlwind 4 200 IBM 704 Univac Eniac become a significant driving force 3 150 Colossus 1/million IBM 7040 2 100 MIPS per $1000 (1997 dollars) Burroughs Class 16 1 (million) 50 1/billion Univac of major and irreversible terres- Zuse-1 people (billion) 0 0 trial environment transformation. tonnes of nutrients 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 Hardly able to figure out an Strategic nuclear NON HUMAN SPECIES ExtinctionS weapons stockpile ozone depletion earthly human project unity leads 60,000 20,000 70 s 50,000 60 15,000 to extend reflexion on this trans- 40,000 50 40 30,000 10,000 USA+USSR 30 formation real agents. This investi- 20,000 5,000 column ozone 20 gation states the probability than 10,000 Risk of climatic catastrophe % loss of total 10 Extinction number 0 0 0 this major transformation may be 18001830 1860 1900 1920 1950 1980 2010 1940 1960 1980 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 The productivity revolution the fruit of a xeno power, alien Concentration of Manufacturing jobs share UFO sightings US banking system vs. manufacturing output capitalism, denying present and 900 40 35% 125 Industrial Production : Total assets of top three US banks 30 manufacturing 100 600 30 as % of total commercial past Earth humankinds ontologies. banking sector assets 25 75 400 20 20 50 15 200 10 Manufacturing jobs as 25 10 percentage of all jobs (continues on last page) 0 0 5 1970 1980 1990 2000 20102015 1935 1950 1960 1970 1980 19902000 2010 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 contact [email protected] themselves. It has no regard for this membrane pol- and cosmic reintegration. The cult would freneti- 02 GENERAL itic, which Sloterdijk devotes himself to describing cally celebrate the final endgame of the cosmos, at length. This is why mineral intellectuality could cherishing the possibility of a radical dissolution of well lead to radical new experiments and to the all that is living and of the whole depleted cosmos; ALIENOLOGY creation of new worlds, possibly post-organic ones, the end of excitability, and also, the end of its most whether on other planets, stars or in other galaxies, sophisticated production, that of interiority. This is or even other dimensions of reality. a nihilistic goal that consists of the final eradication by BUREAU D’ÉTUDES artist group Let this acellular intellectuality, subject to the laws of the convolutions of matter, and in particular such redric Jameson (1) considers pleasure borne of physics and chemistry by dint of its absence of folds of cellular matter, such recesses or cavities Fof catastrophe to be one of the most striking discontinuity, be referred to as Cthulhu, the Great sheltered by the fine, translucid membranes as give traits of postmodern capitalism. Deriving pleasure Old One evoked by Lovecraft. By the same token, rise to certain ways of thinking, a mind frame borne or finding relief in impending catastrophe has be- we could call him by Egyptian names, given the ex- on cavities, on a steeping of thought. That matter come a new means by which to inspire faith, a new tent to which the ancient Egyptians faith that delights in disaster. This faith is the very conceived of their gods as being antithesis of the struggle for salvation that brings formed of minerals (the minerals, in displeasure, along with the drive to secure another turn, being emanations of the di- possible world. vine). As far back as the 18th cen- We can hence see the immense gap between the tury, a text from the dynasty of the power of dystopia and the frequently false nature time refers to all minerals as “di- of utopian pretension; utopia can only maintain its vine members” (2). The divine eye practicability and integrity if it eschews being the of Ra causes metals and minerals ultimate fulfilment of the pleasure taken in catastro- to multiply and the Pharaoh gov- phe. This is why it must needs remain hidden from erns the production chain of mining the powerful gaze of the automatons of alien cap- prospection. He presides over the fecundity of the finally obliterate itself. That there be nothing rather italism. mines. Gold in particular is the principle constitutive than something, that one cease to believe that there However, despite utopia being the anticipated pro- element of the gods. It is the flesh of Ra, it is life has to be something. jection of light onto the world, is there not meantime itself. It confers immortality, incorruptibility. It brings Utopia is hence the way to a radical otherness. a struggle to shed light on what the fate of the Osiris back to life, rendering him indistinguishable Love your otherness as you do yourself. Convert to world is, and how it is that the roads to deliverance from a sun god. It allows for the dead to pass from it and disappear... or fight to the death against it. are so at odds with one another? human to divine form, by way of mineralisation. Gold is the means - although both bitumen or tar Cut up technique Mineral utopia can serve as substitutes (3) - by which the mummi- But let’s forget for the moment these movements of Let us forget for a moment the standpoint that fied corpse may finally depart the humid and per- matter, and all their convolutions and complexities. comes of being human, of being alive, of being ishable realm of organic life, to live for all eternity, Let us put aside the livingness that, like everything earthbound to boot, and let us imagine, for the sake young once again, young for all time. transient, secretes a lie in order not to die, a lie of argument, the absence of any anthropomorphic proportionate to the threat of death. Let us forget rendering of objects ( Illich’s tools for conviviality, Cellular utopia the order of being and the power of becoming. Rodchenko’s comrade objects), even the absence of This mineral intellectuality, on such a grand scale, Forget the facts and let’s chant with Hegel “Too any biomorphisation that has as its aim to preserve and as deep as the cosmos itself, reminds cellular bad for the facts (um so schlimmer für die Tatsack- organic life. There would then be no objects in op- beings of their origin and of their inorganic fate. en)” For the action has already occurred and histo- position to those that would be subjects, instead Cthulhu, the original great mineral being, is disturb- ry is finished. There is nothing left to be done. Let us there would be agents, objects or subjects, humans ing to any lucidity born on the surface of organic even go so far as to forget Nothing and its ultimate or non-humans, biomorphic or otherwise, depending viscuous fluxes. He constitutes evidence of the sec- pretension to obliterate the world’s value by resign- on circumstance, context, perspective, and light. We ondary nature of this lucidity which, born after the ing itself to disappearing into the cosmic abattoir. might envisage for example a method of inorganic fact, has its origin in an age-old rationale with no Let us surrender the ancient mineral gods and the emancipation, one we could qualify as cold - not voice ... (as is channelled by Nietzsche declaring young organic gods and turn our attention instead having the safeguards of that which is animate (eu- that a living being is a rare variety of dead being). to the means of production behind all that is real, karyotes or prokaryotes) - and which would be de- The faith native to eukaryotes, their antagonistic this intoxication mechanic that is not anthropomor- fined by its very resistance to death. intellectuality separating their insides from their phic, no more biomorphic than it is lithomorphic. In such an instance, the agent is acellular, inorganic. out, may thus be radically differentiated from that This machine, this system of control, that Burroughs It carries the power, the range and the antiquity of of beings with no membrane.
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