Some Thoughts Regarding Affective Accelerationism: Axiomatics, Affective Investments, and The Situation

Affective Accelerationism!

I want to dedicate a post regarding my thoughts to my good friend

HelloThere314

‘s recent post on Affective Accelerationism. But it went a little bit off my hands. I’ve been wanting to write a response to

HelloThere314

‘s vital strategies series for some time now, but hadn’t really found the way to do so. But with the start of his affective accelerationism project, I found myself comfortable enough to write down my thoughts and develop further some of his ideas. I want to also say that this post was written before PunishedFelix’s video Where Did Tech Bros Get Their Ideas From? was published, yet I still hope it could be read as kind of a response to his grievances of Guattari’s apparent dismissal within CCRU circles with our use and discussion of Guattari’s concepts throughout the post.

Affective accelerationism is still very much in its infany and in developing. I envision myself continuing to develop affective accelerationism, and will continue to post here essays on affective accelerationism regarding various topics, which have been hastily mentioned or not discussed at all, such as Laruelle’s non-philosophical project, Badiou’s transitory ontology, Negarestani’s neo-rationalism, Zalamea’s Synthetic Philosophy of Contemporany Mathematics, Guattari’s schizoanalytic studies, Huserlian and Sartrean phenomenology in relation to the transcendental, Lautman’s and Cavaillès’ discussions on mathematical creativity, a ‘return to Kant’, Desargues’ projective geometry, the critique of planar metaphysics, Mandelbrot’s fractal geometry, the planar dimensions of affect, Nietzschean and Spinozian vitalism and affectivity, Chaitin's information theory, and Tiqqun’s and the Situationists’ insurrectionary rediscovery of presence, alongside any other theory or framework that we find that suits our needs.

0.1 - The Becoming-Immanent of Power

“But isn't this tendency to concretization in the social or technical machine precisely the movement of desire? Again and again we come upon the monstrous paradox; the State is desire that passes from the head of the despot to the hearts of his subjects, and from the intellectual law to the entire physical system that disengages or liberates itself from the law. A State desire, the most fantastic machine for repression, is still desire—the subject that desires and the object of desire. Desire—such is the operation that consists in always stamping the mark of the primordial Urstaat on the new state of things, rendering it immanent to the new system insofar as possible, making it interior to this system” (AO, 221).¹

We start with the concept of the becoming-immanent of power, which is drawn on the work of thinkers like Foucault, Baudrillard, and Deleuze & Guattari. Traditionally, power was conceived as a transcendent entity centered around the figure of the sovereign, this conceptualization of power often relied on a justifying myth to enforce stasis. But with the biopolitical analyses of Foucault and Agamben, power has been theorized to operate through the biopolitical imposition of norms on the human species. The threat of death and the state of exception serve as justifications for a panoptical self-discipline that produces docile bodies. This creates a seemingly contradictory sense of immanence because transcendent norms, existing at the level of discourse—like the Enlightenment conception of man; human rights—impose themselves in the immanent experience of thoughts and actions within an individual body, leading to self-discipline and a general state of stasis; this is the process of becoming-immanent of power. This becoming-immanent of power—where control operates subtly within the fabric of social life and individual experience—makes it more pervasive and harder to identify or resist. Because power operates through intricate networks and internalized norms, shaping subjectivities and maintaining a certain order. As Deleuze notes, for Foucault, power is not homogeneous but defined by the particular points through which it passes; it is diffuse and diffused. (F, xxvi)² This functional microanalysis replaces a pyramidal view of power with a strict immanence where power centers and disciplinary techniques form multiple segments linked together. (F, 27).

I want to investigate a little bit further this contradictory process of becoming-immanent, especially in the context of Deleuze & Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, where this concept appears in a relatively similar context. In chapter 3 of Anti-Oedipus, the evolution of the State involves a complex process of becoming-concrete and becoming-immanent. (AO, 221). While retaining its artificial nature, the State increasingly embeds itself within the social field and the desires of its subjects, aligning with dominant forces. Deleuze & Guattari propose the idea of the Urstaat—an archaic imperial State that appears fully armed, as if a master stroke executed all at once. This primordial State is characterized by overcoding already-coded fluxes³ and functions as an apparatus of capture, as theorized in A Thousand Plateaus, and a machine of enslavement. It possesses a cerebral ideality that is added to—superimposed on the material evolution of societies—suggesting an abstract origin. This Urstaat does not arise from progressive economic or political developments but seems to emerge suddenly. The State's essential function at this stage is capture, involving the appropriation of fluxes of populations, commodities, money, and capital. However, the State does not remain purely abstract. The State has a tendency towards concretization. While it does not cease being artificial, the State becomes concrete, it tends to concretization while subordinating itself to the dominant forces. This becoming-concrete is evident in the evolution from the archaic imperial State to diverse evolved empires, autonomous cities, feudal systems, and monarchies. These later forms operate more through subjectification and subjection, organizing qualified or topical conjunctions of decoded fluxes.

The civilized capitalist machine represents a further stage where decoding is taken even further, and the State acts as a model of realization for an axiomatic or a general conjugation of fluxes. In this context, the capitalist State emerges as a regulator of decoded flux as such, insofar as they are caught up in the axiomatic of capital, as briefly discussed in my post on axiomatics, marking a significant point in the becoming-concrete of the State, where it becomes "immanent to the field of social forces, enters into their service, and serves as a regulator of the decoded and axiomatized flux" (AO, 252). The idea that "the State is desire that passes from the head of the despot to the hearts of his subjects" (AO, 221) shows the becoming-immanent of the State at the level of individual and collective desire. One of the main points of both volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia is that the desire of the masses can—under certain conditions—turn against their own interests, even desiring fascism, indicating that the State's power is not solely based on external coercion but also on its ability to shape and capture desire. The State can thus become deeply embedded within the affective and libidinal economies of society, making its power immanent in the very desires of its subjects. When they say "from the intellectual law to the entire physical system that disengages or liberates itself from the law" shows the State's influence moving from abstract legal and ideological frameworks to concrete material realities and even shaping forces that might appear to be outside or against the law. Because as we saw, initially, the Urstaat functions through overcoding, imposing a transcendent unity⁴. However, with the decoding of flux in the later capitalist State formation, the law itself evolves, becoming more like an axiomatic. The State then operates by regulating these decoded flux, becoming immanent in the very functioning of the social and economic system. This implies that the State's influence permeates the entire "physical system" not necessarily by direct imposition of law, but by shaping the conditions and desires within which this system operates, by being the regulator of decoded flux.

0.2 - Folds/Counter-Folds: The Relationship Between the Inside & Outside

Drawing on Deleuze's work, the concept of the fold describes a given folding where the outside of an apparatus moves inward. It's a specific, non-dialectical relationship between insides and outsides, characterised by a "folding" of planar metaphysics⁵ where the outside holds agency over the inside. Deleuze used the fold to analyse various domains like aesthetics⁶, power/knowledge⁷, and subjectivity⁸. In its political dimension, the fold is defined by the interactions between the inside and outside of an apparatus, continually reconstituting the inside and by extension "curving" the outside. Deleuze suggests that from the nineteenth century onwards, it is the dimensions of finitude that fold the outside and constitute an inside to life, labour, and language. This implies a constant self-adjustment of the inside while indirectly manipulating the outside. Importantly, a fold requires a prior grounding apparatus or territoriality; it cannot occur ex nihilo. This is all linked and conceptualized through Leibniz's monadology where the inside is seen as a folding of the outside. The monad, for Leibniz, is "the autonomy of the inside, an inside without an outside" (FLB, 31)⁹.

The counter-fold is the reverse moment of the fold. It is the opposing fold to the fold when placed relative to power, where the inside of power folds outwards. Subjectivation—the becoming-subject of subjectivity—is presented as an act of the counter-fold, a folding of exterior power into the interior of subjectivity. The counter-fold of power is its becoming-diffuse, its becoming-immanent. It works with the fold of power to produce the dual becoming-immanent and becoming-transcendent of cybernetic power. Hellothere314 argues that the endless chain of folds and counter-folds produces the modern "base"¹⁰ of politics as a plane of forces and control constituted by both code and affect¹¹. In the current State, where the categories of inside and outside have lost their grounding—a literal folding across a plane with a given territory no longer constitutes a fold in the traditional sense. Instead, it tends towards an immanent plane with mere intensities, occupying both a plane of immanence and a plane of transcendence (through the becoming-immanent and becoming-transcendent). The counter-fold is the producer of this artificial immanence.

Therefore, the counter-fold—by being the outward folding and becoming-immanent of power—contributes to the emergence of an immanent plane that is characterized by mere intensities because the process of counter-folding tends to dissolve established forms, subjects, and hierarchical structures. Power, through this counter-folding, becomes a diffuse force operating on a plane where distinctions between inside and outside blur, leaving behind a field of intensities rather than clearly defined entities. This aligns with the concept of the plane of consistency as a destratified space of continuous variation and intensive connections. But the main argument being made is that this is in fact a faux-immanence, because it was created from “on high”.

0.3 - On Acceleration and Time: Hijacking the Counter-Fold

In my opinion, the best part of Hellothere314’s post is where he correctly asserts that accelerationism is a theory of time, transcendental time. Accelerationism is not about accelerating the processes of capital or decoding, it is a theory about how these already-accelerating processes of decoding and recoding distorted time and thus achieve transcendental importance.

Acceleration is not simply about speed in a conventional sense but rather concerns the time-structure of processes, particularly capital accumulation. Nick Land views time as a construct, exemplified by phenomena like false memory and time travel, suggesting that what appear to be memories of the past can be tactics of the future infiltrating the present¹². In Teleoplexy, he describes acceleration as the time-structure of capital accumulation, referencing the roundaboutness of capitalization where saving and technology are integrated. This techonomic time is seen as an indissolubly twin dynamic of technology and economics under the conditions of escalating capital.

In Hellothere314’s post, capital-time is understood as a non-linear phenomenon comprised of various folds between the past, present, future, and an "outside," all bound together into a coherent experience of capital in its totality. This concept, drawing from Kant, Bergson, and Deleuze, posits that time is not a simple linear progression but is instead shaped by foldings that constitute our experience of time and memory. A moment is always experienced as an immanent folding of memory and the present¹³. Capital and cybernetic power enforce a becoming-immanent to all aspects of transcendental time, effectively smoothing out¹⁴ time to the point where concepts like agency, linearity, and cause-effect become meaningless. This smoothing is seen as a particular folding not just of the social fabric but of the very experience of time-as-capital [Time = Money]. Furthermore, capital-time is linked to the CCRU's concept of the numogram, a mathematical diagrammatico-tool said to model the immanent foldings of capital time in relation to Outsideness, Lemurian time sorcery¹⁵ hyperstition. The numogram provides a framework for understanding how capital-time and the outside interact through an occult-like immanent structure of folds between different zones. In Anna Greenspan’s Capitalism’s Transcendental Time Machine, it is argued that capitalist time converges with the Kantian system, substituting a transformation in time-marking conventions for a more fundamental shift in the nature of time itself. This involves the creation of a distinction between abstract formal time and empirical change conceived of as history. Capitalism, through the development of the clock and its synthesis with the calendar—as exemplified by GMT—and the equation 'time = money', establishes itself as a universal, synthetic regime of time. This regime operates through the abstract production of time itself, independent of empirical processes.

0.4 - Axiomatics: Worse Than Transcendent Norms

What can be worse than transcendent norms that effectuate themselves in life, thus effectuating a becoming-immanent, while remaining transcendent? Abstract differential relations between decoded flux, operating like a transcendental structure that brings with it the notion of a transcendental illusion at the heart of capitalism, that nevertheless mirrors the dual movement of becoming-immanent and becoming-transcendental!¹⁶

The capitalist axiomatic operates on decoded and deterritorialized flux. This process of decoding breaks down previous codings and allows for a more fluid and abstract system of control. Similarly, the becoming-immanent of biopolitical repression signifies a diffusion of control throughout the social body, rather than being localized in a central authority. The axiomatic, by dealing with abstract flux, provides a mechanism for this widespread and immanent operation of power. Henry Somers-Hall, in his Binding and axiomatics: Deleuze and Guattari’s transcendental account of capitalism¹⁷ paper, theorized that Deleuze & Guattari's concept of binding within the axiomatic, derived from Kant, describes a process that forces us to understand entities in a certain and specific manner, as clearly delimited and deployed in a homogeneous space. This binding operates as a transcendental condition for capitalism. This notion resonates with the biopolitical imposition of norms across the socius, where a transcendent norm— like the Enlightenment conception of man—becomes immanent in individual thoughts and actions, producing self-discipline. The axiomatic's binding function can be seen as a structural underpinning for this immanent normative control.

Nevertheless, capitalism moves away from transcendent codes based on the despotic social formation towards an immanent system of differential relation between flux. This shift mirrors the Affective Accelerationist argument that power is no longer primarily a transcendent entity but an immanent force within the socius. The axiomatic provides the framework for this immanent operation of power through the management and modulation of decoded flux. Finally, the axiomatic can be understood as a socio-economic apparatus that captures and reterritorializes desire within the capitalist world-economy functioning by implementing solutions quantitatively rather than relying on predefined solutions like codes, aligning with the idea of cybernetic power as a science of apparatuses and zones of capture that produce discipline. The capitalist axiomatic serves as a high-level control structure that operates immanently by managing and quantifying fluxes.

In essence, the axiomatic is transcendental because it functions as a set of underlying conditions and structuring principles, akin to Kant's categories or the forms of intuition, that shape the organization and our understanding of the capitalist social field. It operates at a level prior to empirical experience, conditioning how flux of desire and production are bound and managed within the capitalist system. I argue that this goes a step further than the biopolitical imposition of transcendent norms. Because, while biopower involves the imposition of norms that originate in a transcendent discourse and affect immanent experience, the axiomatic in Deleuze & Guattari's framework is presented as a more fundamental, immanent mode of organization operating on decoded flux. As it doesn't primarily rely on transcendent ideals or codes to function but rather on an immanent system of abstract relations and binding that shapes the field of possibility itself. The axiomatic—by operating on decoded flux and establishing its own immanent limits and regulations—could be seen as a more direct and pervasive conditioning force compared to the imposition of norms from a transcendent level. The axiomatic regulates these fluxes of desire—which function even at the level of ontological importance for Deleuze and Guattari¹⁸—rather than simply coding them through transcendent values.

The axiomatic describes the underlying, immanent logic of how capitalism operates on deterritorialized fluxes, setting the stage for how desire and production are managed, which may very well be further articulated and enforced through biopolitical impostions that might draw on transcendent notions. The axiomatic is the more foundational, structural condition of possibility for the capitalist social field, which upon then biopolitical impositions are built on whatever level of discourse it posits as necessary, in our case—at the level of transcendent discourses. While biopower and the imposition of norms are undoubtedly crucial in understanding social control within capitalism, the axiomatic can be seen as providing the underlying structure within which these norms operate. The axiomatic establishes the abstract framework of exchangeability and valuation, and biopolitical norms then function to regulate and normalize life within this already axiomatized field.

Let’s take a very detailed look into Henry Somers-Hall’s Binding and axiomatics: Deleuze and Guattari’s transcendental account of capitalism. First, Somers-Hall delves into the core concept of the axiomatic as understood and utilized by Deleuze &Guattari in their analysis, particularly in relation to capitalism. Deleuze & Guattari argue that the definitive feature of social formations is not simply the mode of production—as highlighted by Marx—but rather the structures of organization that characterize these formations. This focus on organization allows Deleuze and Guattari to establish connections between seemingly disparate fields, suggesting a direct link between the structure of thinking and the structure of society. This connection, in turn, underpins their strong claim that capitalism is literally an axiomatic. The term "axiomatic" is typically associated with the rigorous methodological exploration of the foundations of mathematical fields.

According to Deleuze, an axiomatic is a "system of relations between unspecified elements" or, more precisely, "the system of elements considered as unqualified elements". In the A Thousand Plateaus seminars, Deleuze similarly defines the axiomatic as a set of functional relations between "any-elements-whatsoever,"¹⁹ meaning elements whose nature is not specified. He emphasizes that an axiomatic treats elements as unqualified, as neither this nor that, not determined in a particular form. This reading of the axiomatic has two roots: the mathematical account of axiomatics and Kantian transcendental philosophy.

• The first root lies in the mathematical account of axiomatics. Here, axiomatics is seen as the attempt to provide a rigorous foundation for mathematical areas like geometry. This approach emerged from the desire to eliminate ambiguities arising from implicitly assigning intuitive meanings to terms in proofs. The axiomatic method seeks to solve these issues by explicitly enumerating primitive terms and axioms, defining relations between terms purely logically, and setting aside the question of the meaning of these primitive terms and relations. Somers-Hall uses the example of Peano's theory of arithmetic. This theory assumes three primitive terms: "zero," "number," and "successor of," along with five primitive propositions to define the series of natural numbers, explaining how these propositions can be recursively applied to generate the entire series of natural numbers. An important point for our later discussion will be that, in an axiomatic theory, the primitive terms are indeterminate and do not unambiguously determine a single set of concrete propositions, quoting Russell's demonstration that by assigning different meanings to "zero," "number," and "successor," the five axioms can remain true, leading to different models. Deleuze and Guattari argue that this abstraction of the axiomatic is central to capitalism. Somers-Hall claims that this abstraction ultimately leads to what they term machinic enslavement. Just as the axiomatic method intentionally avoids the question of sense to provide a rigorous account of relations, capitalism reduces the self to an unspecified relation within a system of knowledge.

• The second root lies in the Kantian account of the indeterminate relationship between the transcendental unity of apperception and the transcendental object. This second root links the axiomatic to transcendental idealist philosophy. Somers-Hall points to Kant's transcendental deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason, where Kant argues that concepts like causation can be known to apply to experience. This deduction begins with the claim that "It must be possible for the ‘I think’ to accompany all my representations". Deleuze sees in Kant's transcendental logic an axiomatic structure operating in terms of a set of relations (the categories) between two completely indeterminate objects: the "I think" and "the object = X". Deleuze considers Kant's account to fulfill the definition of an axiomatic because it involves relations between unqualified elements.

Deleuze and Guattari—following Marx—find an analogous structure at work in capitalism. Deleuze asserts that capitalism "is the relation between a subject posed as universal and an object posed as any object whatsoever". Here, capital functions as the universal subject—wealth itself—, and labour becomes the unspecified, abstract object that capital appropriates. This echoes Marx's distinction of unqualified, subjective wealth and unspecified, abstract labour. Deleuze posits that capital is the operation through which the subject is posited as universal and appropriates any object whatsoever (abstract labour)²⁰. Building on this, Somers-Hall explains that for Deleuze and Guattari, the axiomatic of capitalism is not a static set of rules but rather a process that immanently determines the field it governs by transposing it into an extensive multiplicity. This links back to Deleuze's general philosophical work, which critiques Kant's transcendental deduction as an extensive representation of underlying intensive processes.²¹ Similarly, the capitalist axiomatic presents all phenomena in terms of abstract rights connected to capital.

A crucial concept in understanding the axiomatic is binding. Binding is the movement whereby a mode of organization that falls outside of a state formation is recast so that it can be integrated into the state. In the context of capitalism's axiomatic, binding is the process of fixing phenomena within a system of coordinates so that abstract categories—related to capital—can apply to them. This creates a striated space where determination is reduced to the imposition of form on matter. Somers-Hall argues that binding operates as a transcendental condition for capitalism. Just as Kant's transcendental deduction ensures that the structures of judgment apply to all phenomena, binding ensures that the logic of capital can be applied to diverse aspects of social life. However, binding is also a transcendental illusion. This illusion reduces all determination to an extensive model, potentially obscuring the underlying intensive processes. While the axiomatic operates on fluxes—like labour and capital—, it does so by taking them up as representations in a Kantian sense and laying them out in a homogeneous plane. Furthermore, binding is not simply about the state exerting force or control, but rather a transformation of the external organization itself, making it compatible with state structures. referencing Pierre Clastres' work on archaic non-state societies, these societies often intentionally prevent the production of surplus that could lead to social stratification. Binding, in this context, involves recasting the actions within these societies in terms of "labour," thereby creating the possibility of "surplus labour," which is a foundational element for the emergence of a state and differentiated class structures.

Furthermore, binding is connected to Kant's transcendental deduction, which Deleuze & Guattari view as an axiomatic. This Kantian axiomatic serves as a model for understanding how action is recast as labour. Deleuze, in Difference and Repetition, argues that Kant's account of synthesis is based on a transcendental illusion of representation.²² This illusion leads to the belief that all determination operates through assigning properties to subjects, thus understanding synthesis as an action performed by a subject on a manifold. According to Deleuze & Guattari, this presupposition of a subject prevents the understanding of how an intensive field of processes can itself give rise to the structure of a subject. Instead, Kant's account results in an epiphenomenal view where synthesis is replaced by its representation. Deleuze and Guattari diagnose this representational error as being based on a logic of solid bodies. This logic is further illustrated by Bergson's analysis of counting. Counting requires disregarding qualitative differences between objects to see them as a homogeneous collection. This process of reducing determination to the imposition of form on matter is what Deleuze and Guattari term striating space. Therefore, binding can be seen as a process that striates previously smooth or non-formalized spaces and activities to make them amenable to state control and integration.

Somers-Hall argues that this "Kantian moment" is also at play within the mathematical model of axiomatics, particularly when considering the fundamental concept of a set. The excerpt quotes Milič Čapek on Cantor's definition of a set as a collection of definite, well discernible objects. According to Čapek, this definition clearly illustrates the "external character of the relations" between the elements that constitute the set. These relations are understood as being modeled after the relation of juxtaposition. In other words, the elements within a set are seen as distinct and separate objects that are brought together externally to form the collection, much like discrete items placed side by side in a homogeneous space. This is a mathematical example of the striating process of binding.

Another example might be that, before the introduction of descriptive geometry, construction was characterized by a negotiation between the engineer, who understood the project's goals, and the artisan, who possessed knowledge of the specific characteristics (singularities) of the materials. The artisan's traditional drawing methods reflected this understanding and the inherent qualities of the materials they worked with. The introduction of descriptive geometry brought about a significant change. It provided a precise specification of form that could be applied universally across different domains, irrespective of the materials involved. According to Anne Querrien, this new technical graphic language led to a shift where the engineer became trained in the handling of an ideological discourse rather than the possession of a professional skill. So the introduction of descriptive geometry involved a transformation in how the materials and the work process were understood. The focus shifted from the singularities of the material as understood by the artisan to the abstract form specified by the engineer. The artisan's knowledge and traditional know-how were recast as secondary to the universal language of geometric form. Descriptive geometry allowed for a system of homogeneous comparison by providing a universal language of form that disregarded the qualitative differences between materials. This striation of space reduced determination to the imposition of form on matter. The new language of descriptive geometry installed the "power of synthesis, of coordination, of the engineer on the building trades". The designer could now dictate the smallest details of execution, adopting a "wholly prescriptive attitude", whereas previously they had to respect the conventions and know-how of the trades. This established a hierarchy between the engineer (designer) and the artisan (executor). By providing a standardized and abstract framework for construction, descriptive geometry facilitated the integration of this practice into broader systems of engineering and state-controlled infrastructure development.

Therefore, striated space can be understood as the homogeneous, measured space favored by the state apparatus. It is a space of fixed coordinates, where movement is constrained between points, and everything is countable and organized. Somers-Hall notes that "a method is the striated space of a cogitatio universalis and draws a path that must be followed from one point to another". This implies that structured thought processes, like methodologies, operate within a striated framework, dictating a specific sequence and organization. In contrast, smooth space is characterized by Deleuze and Guattari as a space that the mind "must occupy without counting". It is not homogeneous at all; instead, it is defined by the "variability of directions" and fundamental changes in direction, where no direction is equivalent to another. Smooth space thus is associated with "the form of exteriority" and is characterized by "relays, intermezzos, resurgences" rather than methods or reproduction. It is a space of continuous variation, intensities, and potential for unexpected connections.

Nomad science—the hydraulic model—operates within this smooth space. Instead of imposing form, it deals with the "pure unformed". It understands determination differently, not through fixed structures but through flux and continuous transformation. The state, according to Somers-Hall, "always finds it necessary to repress the nomad and minor sciences" because they operate outside of its striated framework. The war machine is described as a "system which attempts to constitute what they call smooth spaces, in effect counteracting the process of binding that is at the heart of the state". It is not necessarily tied to war in the conventional sense but represents a force that escapes the state's control and its striated organization. The war machine is a mode of organization characterized by "turbulence across a smooth space". It actively creates and navigates smooth spaces, resisting the state's efforts to striate and control. Finally, we can draw a parallel with Bergson's account of movement. Bergson argues that we can only represent movement as a series of static points on a trajectory, but the essence of movement itself escapes this representation. Movement—like smooth space and the operation of the war machine—"has no image, either to constitute a model of or to copy". This shows the inherent limitation of representational thought, which tends to spatialize and fix what is fundamentally fluid and dynamic. Just as Bergson's concept of movement resists being captured by static representation, smooth space and the war machine resist being fully contained and controlled by the striated space of the state and its axiomatic.

Deleuze & Guattari write on A Thousand Plateaus, “axiomatics is related to royal science", considering the "great axiomaticians" as "the men of State of science, who seal off the lines of flight that are so frequent in mathematics, who would impose a new nexum [binding], if only a temporary one, and who lay down the official policies of science" (ATP, 461)²³. This suggests that axiomatization functions to structure and control flux, in this case, the flux of scientific thought, by imposing a framework and limiting potential deviations or "lines of flight". Deleuze and Guattari divide their analysis of the axiomatic of capitalism into seven "givens". While Somers-Hall indicates an intention to leave aside the givens concerning the organization of states through the addition and subtraction of axioms, it highlights the significance of "completeness" and "non-denumerability".

• Completeness: Blanché defines completeness of a system of postulates in the following way: "A system of postulates is called complete when, of two contradictory propositions correctly formulated in terms of the system, one at least can always be demonstrated". An axiomatic can be intentionally "weakened" by deliberately introducing a level of indetermination into the system. Blanché's example of geometry illustrates this. If we "deny the uniqueness of the parallel while retaining intact the other Euclidean postulates", we obtain Lobatchevskian geometry, which differs from Euclidean geometry but shares the same logical characteristics. However, if we go further and allow the "number of possible parallels to be completely undetermined" by simply omitting the postulate concerning parallels, we create a "more general geometry" of which Euclidean and Lobatchevskian geometries are specific specializations. This demonstrates how removing or altering axioms can lead to incompleteness in a system by leaving certain aspects undetermined. Somers-Hall also notes that Gödel’s proof demonstrates that "any axiomatic of even a rudimentary expressive power is incomplete in this sense". Nagel and Newman's summary of Gödel's proof states that "Principia [Russell’s attempt to derive mathematics from formal logic], or any other system within which arithmetic can be developed, is essentially incomplete". This means that within any consistent set of arithmetical axioms, there will always be true arithmetical statements that cannot be derived from the set. Furthermore, even if we augment the axioms with an "indefinite number of other true ones, there will always be further arithmetical truths that are not formally derivable from the augmented set". This highlights the fundamental limitation of all axiomatic systems, namely that they cannot capture all truths within their domain, implying an inherent form of incompleteness.

• Non-denumerability: This limitation arises from Skolem’s paradox, which demonstrates that any axiomatic system exceeding a basic level and possessing a model in any domain can also be assigned a model within the domain of natural numbers. Since natural numbers constitute a countable infinity (the "weakest power of infinite sets"), Skolem's theorem implies that axiomatic treatment inherently causes "all the higher powers to vanish, in a way". Consequently, entities like the continuum cannot be conceived axiomatically in their structural specificity because any axiomatic description will inevitably include a countable model. Somers-Hall emphasizes that this is not a problem of formal incompleteness—i.e., the existence of unprovable conceivable structures—but rather a problem of certain structures being "inconceivable within the axiomatic". Deleuze and Guattari introduce this limitation to underscore the inability of axiomatics to properly capture the nature of fluxes. They assert that "[t]here is always a fundamental difference between living fluxes and the axioms that subordinate them to centers of control and decision making, that make a given segment correspond to them, which measure their quanta". This resonates with Deleuze's definition of an axiomatic as operating on "unspecified elements" and defining "functional relations between these elements as such". Fluxes, by their very nature, are dynamic and often exceed the discrete, quantifiable nature that axiomatics tends to impose through "binding".

These two limits to the axiomatic “suggest that there is a limit to the capitalist axiomatic. Deleuze and Guattari’s claim is that while capitalism sees these limits as being limits of the world, they are actually limits of the nature of representation itself”. The concept of power in relation to axiomatics and its limits concerning non-denumerable sets is crucial for understanding Deleuze & Guattari's point. According to Blanché, two sets have the same power when a one-to-one correspondence can be established between their elements. For finite sets, having the same power means having the same number of elements. However, for infinite sets, there are different "powers" of infinity. The weakest power is that of the countable, exemplified by the indefinite sequence of natural numbers. The power of the continuum, such as the points on a line or the set of real numbers, is greater than the power of the countable. Skolem's paradox reveals a significant limitation of the axiomatic method. It demonstrates that any axiomatic system exceeding a basic level and having a model in any domain can also be assigned a model within the domain of natural numbers, which are countable. Consequently, the axiomatic can only relate to a countable, arithmetical domain. This implies that the axiomatic is unable to fully account for the continuum, which possesses a higher, non-denumerable power. While Deleuze and Guattari might seem to directly equate the non-denumerable set with the war machine, The Situation is more complex. The very notion of a set appears to be based on the model of countability. The Löwenheim/Skolem theorem further supports this by stating that "every structure is elementarily equivalent to a countable structure". This has led some to argue that there are no uncountable sets. However, it might be more accurate to say that the non-denumerable is negatively determined as that which escapes from the axiomatic. Deleuze and Guattari assert that "the axiomatic manipulates only denumerable sets".

Non-denumerable sets are very similar to the Kantian noumenon. Essentially, Kant argues that reason encounters internal contradictions—antinomies—when it attempts to extend its representations to achieve a complete understanding of the world. This inherent limitation forces the introduction of the concept of a moment outside of representation, the noumenon, to prevent thought from overreaching its bounds. Kant states in Somers-Hall’s paper: "if we view the objects of senses as mere appearances, as is fitting, then we thereby admit at the very same time that a thing in itself underlies them...". This implies that the understanding, in accepting appearances, also acknowledges the existence of things-in-themselves that underlie these appearances, even though we cannot know these things as they are in themselves. The concept of a noumenon is thus a merely limiting concept. Its function is to "curb the pretensions of sensibility" and is therefore of "negative employment". The noumenon, for Kant, has two aspects: A negative conception, which is simply the limit of representation, as "we can apply to it none of the concepts of our understanding, the representation remains for us empty", and that the noumenon as that itself which falls outside of representation. Deleuze & Guattari propose a similar structure in relation to the axiomatic. The non-denumerable, as it appears within the axiomatic, is equated with the continuum, which exceeds the power of countable sets like the natural numbers. Just as reason encounters limits when trying to grasp the totality of the world, the axiomatic encounters limits in its ability to fully account for non-denumerable infinities.

According to the paper, for Kant, the noumenon, existing outside the realm of representation, cannot be positively characterized because all determination operates through the categories of understanding applied to phenomena. In contrast, Deleuze and Guattari propose an alternative mode of determination that escapes axiomatic thought. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze characterizes this alternative mode as difference, stating that "difference is not phenomenon but the noumenon closest to the phenomenon" (DR, 293). Here, difference is understood as the underlying structure that makes representation possible, but it is fundamentally different in nature from representation itself and is obscured by the transcendental illusion of representation. difference is not phenomenon but the noumenon closest to the phenomenon. Furthermore, the nomads are presented as the "noumena or ‘unknowables’ of history" (D, 142)²⁴. Their problem-centered thought provides a model that operates outside the structures of the axiomatic. This nomadic thought prioritizes smooth, non-metric space as primary, unlike the axiomatic which operates within striated space and attempts to reconstruct smooth space through its categories. What the axiomatic characterizes as the non-denumerable infinity of the continuum is, in fact, a representation of the non-metric continuum that operates in smooth space. Just as Kant's noumenon acts both as a limit within representation and as a non-representable element beyond it—the nomadic appears as the non-denumerable within the axiomatic while simultaneously existing as a positive structure(?) with an organization different in kind from the axiomatic. Smooth space—lacking clearly defined elements—is transformed into a non-denumerable collection of discrete elements when viewed through the lens of the axiomatic. However, its positive value lies in its nature as the domain of the war machine (the nomadic mode of organization) and the minority (a form of organization within the state that resists easy assimilation).

So the last section of Somers-Hall’s paper focuses on the domain of the war machine and the minoritarian as outside the axiomatic. It starts by stating that the continuum, characterized by smooth space with its lack of clearly defined elements, can only be tangentially captured by the axiomatic, which transforms it into a non-denumerable collection of discrete elements. Smooth space escapes the axiomatic in two primary ways: as the war machine and as the notion of the minority within the state. The nomad—existing in and developing smooth space—embodies the mode of organization of the war machine. Furthermore, arguing that the capitalist axiomatic—functioning as an encompassing global framework—fundamentally alters the relationship between the state and the war machine. Historically, states have appropriated nomadic war machines to develop their military structures for inter-state conflicts. However, with the rise of the capitalist axiomatic as a global system where individual states act as modes of realization, the war machine is no longer simply an instrument of the state. Instead, it becomes the outside of the axiomatic as a whole, leading to a situation where the war machine comes to dominate states themselves. This shift culminates in the emergence of a single continuum surrounding the capitalist axiomatic, forming an "autonomous war machine". This autonomous war machine operates through states as its components, rather than being controlled by them in the traditional sense, citing the perpetual "war on terror" as a contemporary manifestation of this phenomenon.

While smooth space is located outside of the state, the concept of 'minority' refers to a group existing within the state. Minorities resist assimilation into the majority not due to different characteristics, but because of a different kind of organization. This suggests that the defining feature of a minority is not a set of fixed attributes, but a particular way of connecting and forming multiplicities. And the 'majority' is linked the 'denumerable' and 'commensurable with the axiomatic. The concept of the majority, therefore, can be seen as aligned with elements and sets that can be counted and fit within the state's and capital's frameworks of organization and measurement. But we are reminded of Skolem’s theorem, which explains why axiomatics reduce non-denumerable sets to denumerable sets, which explains why the war machine, as a non-denumerable grouping, falls outside of it. In turn, the 'minority' as a 'non-denumerable set', regardless of the number of its elements, implying that what makes a minority is not simply its size relative to the majority, but its internal organization and the nature of the connections between its elements, which are not easily quantifiable or categorized by the axiomatic.

The axiomatic can only conceive of minority as "extensively non-denumerable", implying a set that is densely populated but still ultimately within a countable domain. This is seen as an illusion stemming from the axiomatic's inherent "inability to think elements that are not clearly demarcated". In contrast, the minority is presented as positively non-denumerable in terms of the nomadic, suggesting a form of organization that is incommensurable with the axiomatic. This conceptualization allows Deleuze and Guattari to develop a universal project of becoming-minoritarian. This project is not about simply being a numerical minority but about a qualitative shift from the "discontinuous multiplicity of the axiomatic to the continuous multiplicity of the problematic". This involves actively opening the gap between two types of propositions, propositions of flux and propositions of axioms. By disrupting the hold of axiomatic thought, the aim is to create "a social formation that is unrecognizable and cannot be formulated in terms of the axioms of capitalism". The power of the minoritarian lies not in sheer numbers but in the nature of its connections and its resistance to being quantified and categorized by the majority's denumerable logic.

According to Somers-Hall, Roffe argues that Deleuze and Guattari confuse the idea that a non-denumerable set—like the continuum—has a greater "power" (in terms of cardinality or size) than a denumerable set—like the natural numbers—with the political concept of "power" as capacity or ability to act. Roffe cites Deleuze and Guattari's claim that "the axiomatic necessarily marshals a power higher than the one it treats... This is like a power of the continuum, tied to the axiomatic but exceeding it. We immediately recognize this power as a power of destruction, of war..." (ATP, 466) as evidence of this confusion. Somers-Hall posits that this apparent conflation is not a literal error but rather an effect of the transcendental illusion within a Kantian reading of Deleuze & Guattari's axiomatic. This perspective suggests that the war machine—political power—is understood as a non-denumerable set—mathematical power—within the framework of the axiomatic due to this transcendental illusion. As the axiomatic’s binding reduces all determination to an extensive model, potentially leading to the transcendental illusion where the nature of intensive multiplicities and the "power" of the war machine are misrepresented within the denumerable logic of the axiomatic. Bergson's analogy shows how a continuous curve can be approximated by an infinite number of discrete straight lines, highlighting the difference between continuous movement and its discrete representation. Similarly, the paper discusses, as we’ve seen, Bergson's view that counting requires disregarding qualitative differences and seeing a collection as qualitatively homogeneous, a process linked to striating space.

Thus, we have seen how the axiomatic functions within capitalism as a transcendental structure. Through the study of its roots in both the mathematical formalization of fields and Kant's transcendental idealism. Capitalism, according to Deleuze & Guattari, operates as an axiomatic of decoded flux, particularly the flux of labour and capital. This axiomatic involves "functional relations between unspecified elements". Somers-Hall emphasizes that this operation involves a Kantian moment where these fluxes are taken up as representations in a homogeneous plane. The capitalist axiomatic, while conjugating decoded flux, also generates flux that escape axiomatization – "undecidable propositions" and "lines of flight". The "non-denumerable," often associated with the "war machine" and minorities, is not simply a matter of size but represents a different form of organization in "smooth space" that eludes the striated space of the axiomatic. The "connection" between elements and sets, rather than the sets or elements themselves, characterizes this non-denumerable and constitutes a line of flight. By understanding the limitations and illusions inherent in the capitalist axiomatic, particularly through the lens of Kantian "axiomatics," we can conceptualize political responses that move beyond its constraints. This involves developing a positive, intensive account of our relations with others, potentially through the fostering of connections between fluxes that resist axiomatization, and, ultimately, posit the immanent outside as lived experience.

1 - Teleoplexy and Capital-Time: A Polemic on Land and Axiomatics

“I would say that for the phenomena of acceleration, this axiomatic is a dependence, yes, it follows from that; it must follow from that absolutely necessarily, but it involves quite other dimensions than we haven’t yet seen, in my view.” -Deleuze.²⁵

I want to focus a little bit on drawing a contrast between Land’s Teleoplexy and Hellothere314’s capital-time.

Teleoplexy is a neologism coined by Nick Land to describe the utterly purposive twistedness of modernity or capitalization. It's presented as something more than mere teleology and is crucial to understanding acceleration as the time-structure of capital accumulation. Teleoplexy is at once a deutero-teleology—repurposing purpose on purpose—an inverted teleology, and a self-reflexively complicated teleology, implying that the initial purposes or goals might be taken up and redirected towards new, often obscure or unintended ends. It rides a prior teleological orientation—human utilitarian purpose—but moves in an alternative, cryptic direction. This means that while capitalism might initially appear to serve human needs—the production of use-values—its underlying dynamic pushes towards self-escalation, mechanization, autonomization, and ultimately, secession.

Teleoplexy is also an emergent teleology, indistinguishable from natural-scientific teleonomy, and a simulation of teleology that dissolves even super-teleological processes into fall-out from the topology of time. This suggests that the apparent purposiveness of capital might be an emergent property of its complex dynamics, akin to natural selection, rather than a pre-ordained goal. Also, like speed or temperature, teleoplexy is an intensive magnitude, or non-uniform quantity, heterogenized by catastrophes.²⁶ This signifies that it's not a simple, linear progression but a complex and dynamic process marked by disruptions and intensifications. Teleoplexy can be understood as a self-reinforcing cybernetic intensification, describing the wave-length of machines escaping towards extreme ultra-violet among cosmic rays. It correlates with complexity, connectivity, machinic compression, extropy, free energy dissipation, efficiency, intelligence, and operational capability, defining a gradient of absolute, but obscure improvement that orients socio-economic selection by market mechanisms.

Capital is intrinsically complicated not only by spatial competition but also by its speculative dissociation in time. Formal assets are options with explicit time conditions, integrating forecasts into current values; this is evident in the discussion of credit and interest, where the value of money is linked to the time of its availability. Böhm-Bawerk's analysis highlights how "interest is simply the price expression of this difference" between present and future goods (CTTM, 72)²⁷. This indicates that financial value is not solely based on present material realities but also on anticipated future states and the time it takes to realise potential returns. Capitalization is thus a commercialization of potentials, slanting history towards greater virtualization and operationalizing science fiction scenarios. As Land himself puts it, "values which do not 'yet' exist, except as probabilistic estimations, or risk structures, acquire a power of command over economic (and therefore social) processes" (AR, 515)²⁸.

The evaluation of teleoplexy is a research program that teleoplexy itself undertakes. It isn't a detached, external evaluation but an immanent process driven by capital's own immanent mechanisms. This self-evaluation process involves considering "prices corrected for commercial relativity²⁹ (in the direction of 'fundamental values') and discounted for historical virtuality³⁰ (in the direction of reliable risk modeling)" (AR, 516). It involves the automatic generation of capital's comprehensive value through its inherent analytical intelligence³¹, considering commercial relativity and historical virtuality. This leads to the problem of techonomic naturalism: understanding the world's worth from capital's perspective and its technological capabilities; encapsulated in the dual question: "How much is the world worth?" (the commercially formulated question)—and its technological complement, "What can the earth do?". Which highlights the dual aspect of Capital: technological assets and investment. Wealth—from this perspective—is grasped through its cycle within the productive apparatus, and technological analysis is integrated into economics via the rewards built into the machine. Finally, Land argues that teleoplexy points towards a potential Techonomic Singularity—a socio-technical formation where capitalism and artificial intelligence converge—, driven by maximally-accelerated technogenesis, refering to the rapid and intensifying generation of new technologies, deeply intertwined with capital accumulation, This maximally-accelerated technogenesis channels capital towards automatization, self-replication, self-improvement, and intelligence explosion. Towards automatization because Capital mechanizes, increasingly approximating an auto-productive circuit. Towards self-replication because Land sees a trend towards the autonomization of technology, where economic units deterritorialize and become self-reproducing, even speculating about "post-Darwinian evolution algorithms" for technoreplicator units.³² The price system ultimately transitions into reflexively self-enhancing technological hyper-cognition.

Now let’s finally contrast teleoplexy with capital-time. Teleoplexy—particularly in its connection to acceleration and the pursuit of Techonomic Singularity—suggests a directional, albeit complex and catastrophic, movement of time propelled by capital's self-escalation. It has a sense of a future being actively approached. Capital-time, on the other hand, emphasizes the non-linear, folded nature of time under capital's influence, where past, present, and future are intertwined in the experience of capital. The focus is less on a singular future endpoint and more on the complex topology of temporal experience under capital.

Teleoplexy explicitly engages with the concept of teleology—albeit in a twisted and emergent form—suggesting an inherent, but nevertheless cryptic directionality to capital's development. While this isn't a traditional teleology with a pre-defined goal, there's a sense of capital "escaping" towards a certain kind of future. Capital-time, with its emphasis on the smoothing and folding of time, tends to de-emphasize traditional notions of agency and linear purpose. The focus is on the immanent operation of capital within a complex temporal field rather than a driven teleological trajectory—but I argue that the inherent directionality of capital's development in teleoplexy is best understood as an immanent process of capital.

In teleoplexy what appears as a purposive directionality is an emergent outcome of capital's inherent temporal dynamics rather than a pre-ordained transcendental goal. Land argues that accelerationism "has a real object only insofar as there is a teleoplexic thing, which is to say: insofar as capitalization is a natural-historical reality" (AR, 514). This grounding in the natural-historical reality of capitalisation further points towards an immanent rather than transcendental basis. The evaluation of teleoplexy is even described as a research program which teleoplexy itself undertakes, suggesting a self-referential and immanent process of development and self-evaluation.

1.1 - The Relation Between Teleoplexy and the Axiomatic: The Axiomatic’s Transcendental Nature versus Teleoplexy’s Immanent Nature

But let us not get confused, we’ve previously argued that the axiomatic is transcendental, insofar as it functions as a set of underlying conditions and structuring principles that shape the organization and our understanding of the capitalist social field. This axiomatic is described as operating on decoded flux of labour and capital, establishing a generalized conjugation. The State, in this context, is seen as a model of realization for this immanent axiomatic, rather than an archaic imperial model of transcendent overcoding. So it gained primacy over the biopolitical impositions of norms. But just now, we’ve argued that telepleoxy is immanent. So what is teleoplexy’s relation to the axiomatic’s transcendental nature? Is teleoplexy another axiom in the axiomatic system or the movement of the axiomatic system?

I argue that teleoplexy is best understood as the movement or immanent directionality of the axiomatic system of capital, rather than another axiom within that system. Let us remember that Deleuze & Guattari define capitalism as literally an axiomatic—which is a system of relations between unspecified elements. Axioms within an axiomatic system are independent propositions from which theorems result. They are the starting points defining the functional relations between unspecified elements. Teleoplexy, in contrast, appears as a resulting pattern and tendency of the system in operation. The axiomatic operates as a transcendental structure through binding and the establishment of abstract, functional relations. Teleoplexy, however, is described as an emergent and immanent phenomenon arising from the ongoing processes within the system. Land suggests that teleoplexy is an escape and its inherent metaphysics are skeptical, not fixed like a foundational axiom. This axiomatic operates as a transcendental structure, bringing with it the notion of a transcendental illusion at the heart of capitalism.³³ Axiomatics involves a process of binding and can be characterised by completeness and non-denumerability. Axiomatics can also be seen as a stopping point in science, a reordering that prevents decoded semiotic fluxes in physics and mathematics from escaping in all directions. So we can say that teleoplexy appears not as a foundational, unspecified element or binding rule within the axiomatic, but rather as the emergent pattern and directional tendency of capital as an axiomatic system in motion. Teleoplexy is the concept that designates the resulting patterns and tendencies of the axiomatic system. And these resulting patterns and tendencies are immanent, because the axiomatic also entails a becoming-immanent³⁴. And teleoplexy is immanent because it concerns the resulting patterns(intelligence explosion) and tendencies(deutero-teleology), which are immanent, not the abstraction solutions from market relations—which are transcendental. The result of the management and quantification of the fluxes by the axiomatic, as a transcendental structure, is the explosion of intelligence, the Technomic Singularity, and maximally-accelerated technogenesis that channels capital towards automatization, self-replication, self-improvement. Therefore, the axiomatic could be seen as the transcendental framework that enables the possibility of a system like capitalism with its decoded fluxes and abstract quantification, while teleoplexy is the immanent, self-escalating process that characterizes its historical development and "purposive twistedness" within that framework.

Land explicitly describes teleoplexy as an emergent teleology. This suggests it arises from the dynamics and interactions(mathematical differential relations) within the capitalist axiomatic system, rather than being a pre-existing component of its structure. Emergence is also linked to the techonomic entity, where it is inter-substitutable with concepts like diagonal process and transcendental escalation³⁵, all convertible into immanentization. Teleoplexy is also defined by "cybernetic intensification", an ongoing process of increasing complexity and operational capability—which describes a movement or direction of the system, not a static axiom.³⁶ Land ultimately suggests that the theoretical apprehension of teleoplexic hyper-intelligence might require something beyond current understanding, hinting that teleoplexy represents the unfolding of the axiomatic in ways that transcend its initial components. Deleuze states that axiomatics is immanent to its models, contrasting it with logical formalization which operates through transcendence. This immanent axiomatic finds its realization in various models, including different sectors of production and the State. The State apparatuses, for instance, can be seen as models of realization for the axiomatic defined as the generalized conjugation of decoded fluxes. But how can the axiomatic be immanent to its models and still be transcendental? The axiomatic as a structure of abstract relations is transcendental in that it provides the a priori framework, the essential conditions, and the foundational rules that govern a domain or set of models. It is a condition for the possibility of a certain order and understanding within those models. However, this transcendental axiomatic is immanent in its application and realization within specific models. The abstract relations become concrete and qualified as they are instantiated in the elements and dynamics of the models. The axiomatic doesn't exist as a separate, ethereal entity but is active and operative within the immanent functioning of its models. Deleuze considers axiomatics as a "formalization of immanence", as opposed to logical formalization which operates through transcendence.³⁷ This suggests that the axiomatic structure itself arises from and organizes immanent processes and fluxes. In François Laruelle’s early work, the transcendental method, in its transvaluation, is equated with the immanent method, indicating a move away from a purely transcendent understanding of foundational principles towards their immanent operation within thought and reality, but we’ll investigate this transvaluation in further detail later.³⁸

Let us also consider Land’s concept of immanentization. Nick Land describes capitalism as a tendency towards market-driven immanentization, progressively subordinating social reproduction to techno-commercial replication. This suggests that immanentization is a process where something becomes increasingly internal to a system, driven in this case by market forces. Relating this with the becoming-immanent, it then refers to the active transition or state of entities as they are drawn into or constitute this immanent reality, such as the human becoming-machinic and integrated into the transcendental circuitry of production under capitalism³⁹, leading to the immanent subsumption of human essence into machinic processes. The overall movement is towards an increasing immanence of everything within these machinic and economic forces. How is this related to the transcendental nature of the axiomatic? The axiomatic structure of capitalism—with its manipulation of denumerable sets—can be seen as the operational framework within which the process of immanentization unfolds. The forces of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, which are linked to transcendental connection and selection⁴⁰, might be understood as movements within or driven by the capitalist axiomatic, leading to the integration—immanentization—of various elements into its operational logic. The transcendental illusion inherent in the axiomatic serves to obscure the underlying immanent processes of becoming and flux. The axiomatic—in its attempt to bind and organize—imposes a structure that transcendentally masks the continuous and heterogeneous nature of immanent processes. Even in a different domain, Albert Lautman, as reported by the discussants of his work, suggests that the "exigencies of the real" might be what pose mathematical problems and lead to the formulation of axioms,⁴¹ which hints at a potential immanent grounding even for abstract axiomatic systems.

Land's assertion, drawing on Deleuze and Guattari⁴², that even transcendence is immanently produced offers a further layer of confusion. While the axiomatic functions as a transcendental structure, its very existence and operation might be understood as a product of underlying immanent social and economic forces. The "unanticipated immanent exteriority" that Kant unmasks, according to Greenspan (CTTM, 25), suggests an outside that is alien but not transcendent, which could relate to the immanent forces shaping the axiomatic from outside its formal structure. While the axiomatic functions as a transcendental structure within capitalism, it is not a pre-existing, eternally fixed entity. Instead, we obviously argue that it is a specific form and operation, it is the result of historical and material processes within the immanent field of society and economy. Deleuze says that capitalism initiates a new machinery, the axiomatic of decoded flux, which operates through a "sole and universal subject"—abstract labour—attributing itself to any object⁴³, suggesting that the axiomatic isn't a transcendent imposition but arises from and operates within the immanent dynamics of capital and labour flux. Therefore, the apparent confusion is resolved by understanding that the transcendental axiomatic is not a static foundation but a dynamic structure that is itself generated and shaped by immanent forces. It functions as the transcendental condition for the explosion of intelligence and technogenesis within capitalism, but its own existence and characteristics are rooted in the immanent socio-economic and technological landscape. Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason, says it clearly, “The transcendental use of a concept in any sort of principle consists in its being related to things in general and in themselves; its empirical use, however, in its being related merely to appearances, i.e., objects of a possible experience.” (CPR, A239/B298).⁴⁴ The axiomatic operates at the transcendental structure, concerning the fundamental conditions for teleoplexy.

I blame this confusion in Land’s apparent dismissal of the concept of axiomatics in his work.

1.2 - The Axiomatic in Land’s Philosophy

Let’s now closely investigate the concept of axiomatics in Land’s philosophical project. The first mention is found in Circuitries, “It is accepted that cybernetics is beyond mere gadgetry (not even), it has something to do with automation, and yet axiomatics exceeds it. This claim is almost Hegelian in its preposterous humanism. Social axiomatics are an automatizing machinism: a com­ponent of general cybernetics, and ultimately a very trivial one. The capitalized terminus of anthropoid civilization (axiomatics) will come to be seen as the primitive trig­ger for a transglobal post-biological machinism, from a future that shall have still scarcely begun to explore the immensities of the cybercosm.” (FN, 297). Basically, Land critiques Deleuze & Guattari's assertion that the capitalist axiomatic exceeds cybernetics. He argues that social axiomatics is, in fact, a component of a broader cybernetic "machinism". Within his concept of circuitries, this axiomatic functions as an "automatizing machinism" and a trigger for further post-biological development. While Deleuze & Guattari acknowledge the role of machines and automation in capitalism, they see the axiomatic as a more complex social and transcendental structure that cannot be simply reduced to a cybernetic machine. It should be evident, which one I stand with, and why.

In Machinic Desire, the axiomatic of capital is mentioned only in passing “Anything that passes other than by the market is steadily cross-hatched by the axiomatic of capital, holographically encrusted in the stigmatizing marks of its obsolescence.” (FN, 341). Then in Cyberspace Anarchitecture, “Economic power builds itself upon axiomatised production fluxes canalised by consumption coding, setting bourgeois docilisation, military-industrial proletarian-production, state currency monopolisation, property rights, and transaction restraints to obstruct monetary smearing into pulsive cash.” (FN, 405). Then in Meat, “By the time global history comes up on the screen commoditization has ber­serked history, reorganizing society into a disorganizing apparatus that melts rituals and laws into axiomatic rules.” (FN, 430). Then in Meltdown, “Machine-code-capital recycles itself through its axiomatic of consumer control, laundering-out the shit and blood-stains of primitive accumulation…Capital-history's machinic spine is coded, axioma­tized, and diagrammed, by a disequilibrium techno-science of irreversible, indeterministic and increasingly nonlinear processes…” (FN, 445). Although I understand that it is mentioned only in passing, Land seems to suggest that as commodification intensifies, these immanent axiomatic principles become the dominant organizing force of society, superseding traditional forms of social regulation like ritual and law.

Due to KataςoniX’s nature, the mentions of the axiomatic in page 484 “Axiomatic linkage collates novelizations with counter-function sections.”, “Two. Logics of Axiomatization.”, “Axiomatics nexes numeracies to languages in this way.” are pretty cryptic, but we could roughly say that Land argues that axiomatics provides the structural framework that enables the interrelation and codification of numerical and linguistic domains. This "nexing" is not a simple one-to-one correspondence but involves formal rules and principles that allow for mappings in both(the two logics of axiomatization) directions, as illustrated by "lexometrics" and "arithmology".

The last mentions, in Mechanomics, are more interesting, “Numeric engulfing of Oecumenon, crashed segmen­tarity, and laterally disrupted codings and axiomatics(at any level), fold together in a single immense cata­strophic event, fully realized in Planomic-potentials on the Outside.” (FN, 520). Let’s decode this sentence. The Oecumenon is defined in the CCRU glossary as the "Neoroman norming-target and security architecture supporting the megasocius of terrestrial capitalism" (CCRU, 333), representing the integrated system of global capitalism, with its established norms, controls, and structures. The concept of numeric engulfing suggests the overwhelming influence and penetration of numerical processes and logics into the structures of the Oecumenon, we can see this with ideas like the "decimal deliria like Y2K" (CCRU, 11) and the broader Landian topic of numbers becoming diagrammatic rather than metric once released from overcoding (FN, 502). The crashing of segmentarity, and laterally disrupted codings and axiomatics signifies the breakdown of the established divisions and organizational principles of the Oecumenon. The "rigid conceptual segmentation by quantity and quality" (FN, 496) that underpins standard measurement and classification is disrupted. The codings and axiomatic structures that maintained order and control are laterally disrupted, implying a non-hierarchical, side-to-side subversion rather than a top-down collapse. With its realization in "Planomic-potentials on the Outside" suggesting that the catastrophic breakdown unleashes latent possibilities and forces existing beyond the stratified and codified system of the Oecumenon, on the plane of consistency.

These laterally disrupted axiomatics reflects a breakdown of the controlling and binding functions of the axiomatic, aligning with the idea that the axiomatic seems unable to properly capture the nature of fluxes. Land presents Gödel's incompleteness theorems and the process of Gödelization as a powerful challenge to the foundational ambitions of axiomatic systems, writing “Gödelization sets arithmetical diagram against axiomatic model, shattering semantic interiority by infecting organizational overcodings with numerical difference (synthesis or external relations)" (FN, 519). This suggests that Gödelization introduces elements from outside the purely logical structure of the axiomatic system—namely, number itself and its inherent differences—which disrupt its self-contained meaning and coherence, which is described as "a methodical re-flattening of applied isomorphy (code and metacode) onto metamorphic potential (number)", explaining in a footnote that "Gödel code makes explicit an implicit isomorphy between arithmetical side-products and metamathematic formal systems, thus eliminating all principled difference between logical metastatements (expression) and the number theoretic object (content)". Essentially, Gödel showed how to encode statements about the axiomatic system within the system itself using numbers. This allows the system to talk about itself in ways it cannot fully control or anticipate. Continuing, Land proposes that "Any number of natural numbers might potentially disaggregate into systems of lateral antilogic that effectively scramble axiomatizations" (FN, 520), hinting at the inherent disruptive potential residing within the very fabric of number, capable of undermining the logical structures of axiomatic systems in unforeseen and lateral—non-hierarchical—ways. Ultimately, Land interprets Gödel not merely as exposing limitations, but as launching an "annihilating critique of the Hilbert programme as surplus product" (FN, 519), which aimed for absolute formal consistency in mathematics through axiomatization. We can easily link this to capitalism as an axiomatic system, so it “inevitably runs up against the problem of undecidable propositions or nondenumerable sets" (CCRU, 84). Also it is "of the nature of axiomatics to come up against so-called undecidable propositions, to confront necessarily higher powers that it cannot master" (ATP, 461). At the end of this essay, we will see that this will be very useful in the escape from the axiomatic, but I still believe that teleoplexy hasn’t broken down the axiomatic system.

While teleoplexy operates through or manifest in axiomatic structures, it is unlikely to be simply bound by them, the insights of Gödelization suggest inherent limitations and potential for internal disruption within any axiomatic system, yes. But Teleoplexy's dynamic, self-reflexive, and emergent qualities, coupled with the infusion of randomness in computational axiomatics⁴⁵, suggest a more complex relationship where the limitations of the axiomatic may even fuel its ongoing transformation and escape. The system is constantly encountering its own limits and potentially reconfiguring itself in response—a process that aligns with the idea of axiomatics confronting undecidable propositions and higher powers. Axiomatic systems within a teleoplexic context are characterised by a continuous process of disruption and re-axiomatization—Deleuze & Guattari are indeed quick to say that the axiomatic is always ready to add one more axiom—rather than a stable, fixed structure. Teleoplexy is intimately linked with the axiomatic structure of capitalism, it might operate through or with modified axiomatic frameworks rather than abolishing them entirely. The teleoplexic drive towards "ever greater virtualization" and the operationalization of "science fiction scenarios" could lead to the incorporation of new financial or technological axioms within the capitalist system. Guattari saw this, he suggests that a computer can produce as many possible axiomatizations as desired for every theory, leading to a "positive flood of axiomatics" (MR, 124)⁴⁶. He argues against the omnipotence of any single axiomatics, suggesting instead a flux of axiomatization related to machinic production, rather than a structure of representation. His perspective indicates a potential increase and diversification of axiomatic systems under the influence of advanced computational and machinic processes, which are central to the concept of teleoplexy as a self-reinforcing, cybernetic intensification.

1.2.1 - In Crypto-Current

Crypto-Current is, in my opinion, Land’s final important work, so it is very sad that it was left unfinished, since it posed a very interesting perspective on transcendental philosophy and accelerationism.

The first mention of the axiom is in §4.17⁴⁷, where he writes “its[abstract network theorists] rhetoric tends to systematically confuse advocacy with criticism, and both with analysis, as it redistributes partial insight around a number of relatively tightly-interlocking social circuits (which are overwhelmingly dominated by a familiar set of theoretically-superfluous moral-political axioms). Now, “moral-political axioms” has a footnote attached to it, in which Land says that axioms are independent, formally-articulated assumptions. Stating that each axiom is a basic presupposition that cannot be derived from or support any other axiom, making a set of axioms an irreducible multiplicity. Consequently, an axiomatic system is characterized by a mode of variation based on the composition of wholly independent parts, which can be added or subtracted with comparative freedom. Land highlights that because axioms are bedrock elements, their selection demands an irreducible experimentalism. He notes that, as a matter of logical necessity, the systems they compose can never determine the characteristics of a missing axiom. This aligns with Deleuze & Guattari's view that in science, an axiomatic has its own gropings, experimentations, and modes of intuition (ATP, 461). Within a social context, Land argues that the pursuit of minimal axiomatic systems is ideologically charged, corresponding to a contraction of public purposes. He then refers to Deleuze & Guattari, noting that the historical disintensification of capitalism has proceeded by way of an axiomatic proliferation. Land further states that the addition of axioms is the way capital has been socially compromised. From a Francophone perspective, he suggests that this tendency appears as a resiliently teleological structure, but when extending this prediction to Anglophone cultures, Land advises “less confident conclusions.”. This experimental aspect resonates with the way computational systems can adapt and generate new axioms through their operation. Pretty different from his Fanged Noumena era dismissals!

In §4.31, he writes “…There is a difference, therefore, between transcendent and immanent principles, or – more strictly – between rules of transcendent and immanent genesis. The former, determined in advance of ‘play’, set fixed parameters, or ideal competences, comparable to axioms and exposed in advance to analysis. The latter emerge – synthetically – from the performance of the game, as demonstrations, or discoveries”. This plays perfectly into my analogy of the relation between the axiomatic and teleoplexy in footnote 35. While an axiomatic system with transcendental principles might provide the initial conditions or framework for teleoplexy—as capitalism is described as an axiomatic—, the directionality and results of teleoplexy are likely shaped by immanent principles that emerge from the ongoing, complex interactions within that framework, suggesting a dynamic interplay where the bindings of the axiomatic interact with the emergent outcomes of the 'game' of Capital, leading to the self-escalating and often surprising nature of teleoplexy. The axiomatic provides the foundational changing structure, but the "utter purposive twistedness" of teleoplexy might stem from the unforeseen and synthetic outcomes of interactions within that structure. So, if capitalism sets certain fundamental parameters and rules, the complex and often unpredictable developments of teleoplexy, such as the "means-end reversal" and the drive towards the Technomic Singularity, could be seen as emergent outcomes or "discoveries" arising from the continuous 'playing out' of this axiomatic system. The potentialities of large multi-agent games, which might model aspects of teleoplexy, are not predictable in advance and produce discoveries through coordination searches, suggesting an immanent genesis of outcomes.

In §4.3721, he writes “…Monetarism threatened the principle of monetary politicization, by removing the inflationary option from the macroeconomic tool-kit, and re-installing monetary integrity as a meta-political axiom. Since what was thus envisaged was a permanent self-binding of political authority by itself, in respect to monetary management, the political incoherence of the project are easily seen…”. While monetarism aimed for a "permanent self-binding", we have argued that axioms can be added or withdrawn in response to evolving circumstances, such as economic depressions or revolutions, the political pressure to deviate from a strict non-inflationary stance during crises could lead to the withdrawal or modification of this monetary axiom. A rigid, pre-determined axiomatic like permanently removing the inflationary option might clash with the need for political flexibility and experimentation in response to unforeseen economic events. The role of an axiomatic is to temporarily seal off "lines of flight" (ATP, 461), not necessarily to impose permanent constraints. The political and economic pressures that led to the politicization of money in the first place could be seen as lines of flight that monetarism attempted to shut down, but which might re-emerge under different circumstances. Thus, the importance of the axiomatics evolving nature.

In §5.572, he writes “…The central bank mediates between the public and private aspects of the economy – and even defines the distinction between the two – drawing upon the institutional axiom that aggregate confidence in private commerce is a legitimate, and inevitable, target of public policy concern…”. The central bank's focus on managing aggregate confidence through money issuance can be seen as an integral part of this capitalist axiomatic. It's a fundamental principle guiding monetary policy and the interaction between public and private economic spheres. The central bank's axiom is not merely a theoretical proposition but an operational one⁴⁸—directly influencing policy decisions and market expectations. The emphasis on central bank statements as "public demonstrations" highlights how the axiomatic is actively communicated and reinforced, relating to a main point Crypto-Current, that in the era of macroeconomics, "monetary policy is seamlessly fused with psychological operations, oriented to strategic public mood alteration"(§3.08)—the central bank's pronouncements aim to shape and maintain the very aggregate confidence that serves as a cornerstone of its operational axiom.

Around the end of §5.64, he writes “… The communist and fascist anti-bourgeois tide of the 1930s found its principal Anglo-American expression in Keynesian macroeconomics. Here, too, ‘hoarding’ was denounced as a crime against the collective. Implicit socialization of all economic resources was made rigorously axiomatic. There is nothing so fragile as a mere theory, here, then. Rather, there is the maturation of a socio-political program. The theory flexibly rationalizes a regime.” In the context of the Keynesian revolution described in the section, the denunciation of ‘hoarding’ can be seen as an operational axiom, this principle actively discouraged saving—liquidity preference—and promoted spending as a social obligation. This was not just a theoretical recommendation but a guiding principle for policy interventions aimed at stimulating demand and combating economic depression. The idea that economic resources were implicitly socialized through Keynesian policies—such as increased state intervention and management of the money supply—also functioned as an operational axiom. The state actively took on the role of managing aggregate economic conditions, departuring from laissez-faire liberalism. We end the excerpt highlighting that theory in this context served to rationalize a regime—resonating with the concept that axioms and continously added or withdrawn from the system. Keynesianism, as a theoretical framework that provided justification for increased state involvement, became an operational logic for a specific socio-political regime aimed at navigating the economic and social upheavals of the 1930s.

In footnote 102 to §2.71, Land writes “…Negative rights, negative freedoms, and independence with emphasis upon the negative prefix are the whole of an economized positive program. Strip-out all superfluous axioms. Do without them. Between the elimination of metaphysics, and the positive modern philosophical program, there is no difference.” The proposition to "strip-out all superfluous axioms" suggests a move towards a more minimal and efficient axiomatic structure. In the context of capitalism, this could imply reducing regulations and interventions, focusing on core prohibitions against infringements on negative freedoms, and discussing the idea of strip-out all superfluous axioms in relation to libertarian traditions that emphasize negative rights and freedoms as a "whole of an economized positive program" . We thus see a focus on what the system shouldn't do, rather than explicitly defining what it should achieve beyond respecting these limitations. The assertion that there is "no difference", playing with the whole notion of Kantian critique throughout Crypto-Current⁴⁹, between the elimination of metaphysics and this positive modern program suggests that defining what we cannot know or do (metaphysically speculate without grounding—infringe on negative liberties) forms the very basis of a better approach. By withdrawing what are considered "superfluous axioms" or unfounded metaphysical claims, the system might be streamlined towards more efficient and capable operation within the defined boundaries of negative rights and freedoms. For example, a market driven by strong negative rights—property rights, freedom of contract—and minimal intervention could be argued to be a better teleoplexic system, intensifying through competition and innovation within those axiomatized constraints.

In footnote 149 to §4.1, the mention of axioms is done only passing to show that Public Choice Theory—which applies economic principles to the analysis of political behavior—can indeed be seen as employing a set of minimalistic, game-theoretical axioms in its directly political application. Which is then critized by a crappy and dogmatic fable, because it asserts the importance of certain moral values—like honesty and trust—without necessarily providing a fully developed theoretical counter-argument within the framework of Public Choice itself. Instead, it uses a moral intuition as a foundational point of disagreement. In my opinion, minimalistic, game-theoretical axioms could be seen to act as the structure for teleoplexic forces—which does not care for moral values, like honesty nor trust.

The last mention of axioms is done in footnote 260 to §5.45. The mention is only done in passing through Land’s explanation of René Girard’s Violence and the Sacred, and is not of any concern to us.

A deep dive into Crypto-Current is certainly due since, even though it was left unfinished, it poses very interesting questions and frameworks regarding Kantian critique, Bitcoin, and the transcendental framework. It is, in my opinion, the continuation of Anna Greenspan’s Capitalism’s Transcendental Time Machine. Both works grapple with the profound implications of technology for our understanding of time and reality (one of accelerationism’s main focus points), drawing heavily on the framework of Kantian critique and exploring the emergence of new machinic and techonomic forces, Land’s focus on Bitcoin as a concrete instantiation of these forces provides a specific case study that further develops the more general theoretical explorations found in Greenspan.

1.3 - Bitcoin and the Axiomatic: Computational Axioms

Let’s address the general relation of Bitcoin with the axiomatic, since the explicit mentions of the axioms in Crypto-Current do not give much insight into what would be Bitcoin’s relation with the axiomatic system, but instead shows how computational axioms work within economic systems and how axiomatics can evolve due to immanent pressures in the system. Which, I argue, actually contributes to my idea of the axiomatic’s transcendental quality conditioning teleoplexy’s immanent nature or ‘playing out’.

Let’s first discuss computational axiomatics. Luciana Parisi, in Automated Architecture: Speculative Reason in the Age of the Algorithm⁵⁰, argues that the existence of incomputables doesn't invalidate computational automation but rather highlights the way computation generates new axioms (AR, 413). Randomness—encountered as incomputability—is not a barrier but a source for the creation of new rules within the computational process. Therefore, while Gödelization demonstrates the inherent limits and incompleteness of any fixed axiomatic system, computational systems, particularly with the integration of randomness and feedback, exhibit a capacity for continuous re-axiomatization and transformation. The "struggle around axioms" can be seen as a dynamic interplay between the binding and ordering tendencies of axiomatization and the fluxes and undecidabilities that Gödelization exposes. Computational systems operate within this tension, constantly encountering their own limits and potentially reconfiguring their axiomatic frameworks in response. In the foreword to Contagious Architecture: Computation, Aesthetics and Space, Parisi argues that incompleteness in axiomatics is at the core of computation (COAR, ix)⁵¹. This incompleteness arises partly from the exclusion of intuition from axiomatics, with intuition being linked to a conception of science related to problems rather than axioms. The emphasis on the new tendencies of algorithms to be overshadowed by infinite volumes of data explains the ingression of computational logic into culture. Instead of being exhausted by the formalism of rules or symbols, automated processing requires a semiopen architecture of axioms, whereby existing postulates are there to be superseded by others that can transform infinite quantities into contingent probabilities (COAR, x). The investigation of algorithmic objects reveals that their ontology is found within the incompleteness of the axiomatic method (COAR, 7). One cannot avoid discussing the philosophical problems of objects and abstract objects when engaging with the ontology of algorithms. Computation, rather than a rational calculus deducing reality from universal axioms, involves the algorithmic prehension of random data that contaminate formal logic's attempts to invent new axioms (COAR, xv).

Chaitin's information theory explains how software programs can include randomness from the start and do not have to be limited to fixed sets of algorithms or a closed formal axiomatic system. The incompleteness of axiomatic methods does not define the endpoint of computation but rather its starting point, from which new axioms, codes⁵², and algorithms become actual spatiotemporalities (COAR, 19). The limit of computation is not simply determined by time and memory but involves the problem of reducing infinite quantities of data into smaller programs. The power of the axiomatic in postcybernetic control relies on discrete yet incomputable quantities, incomplete random sets (COAR, 157). The sequential calculation of probabilities is bugged by incompressible random quantities, where parts are bigger than the program devised to calculate them (COAR, 53). Incomputable algorithms can reveal a strange contingency within form, or chance within programming, interrupting the topological coevolution of urban software and behaviour. Control here becomes as patternless as the incomputable data it tries to compress into axioms (COAR, 93). Axioms in computation are not necessarily fixed but can be added to at the limit of other axioms through an invariant function that establishes a smooth connectivity between distinct parameters (COAR, 97). This is seen in parametricism—where algorithmic rules are exposed to intended indeterminacies built into the software itself—moving beyond simple responsive or interactive environments (COAR, 79). The acceleration of automation leads computation to confront the increasing power of incomputables at the core of its formal scheme, transforming mechanical functions into new sources of intelligible operations able to revise axiomatic truths immanently—suggesting a move towards experimental axiomatics where axioms become experimental truths in function to market relations. Computational axiomatics is inevitably infected with randomness, but this randomness is turned into an axiom through rule-based processing, defining algorithmic reason as a nonlinear elaboration of continuous infinities and transformation of its discrete parts.

Now let’s discuss how Bitcoin functions through computational axioms. The core rules of the Bitcoin protocol, such as the proof-of-work consensus mechanism (§0.3), the halving of block rewards (§3.45), and the cryptographico-epistemological principles underpinning transaction validation (§0.61), function as operational-computational axioms⁵³. These rules are not just theoretical; they are actively enforced by the network and dictate how transactions are ordered chronologically, how new bitcoins are created, and how the integrity of the ledger is maintained. These axioms organize and regulate the system's operations and outcomes. The resolution of the double-spending problem through cryptographic proof and a decentralized timestamp server (§3.02) can be seen as an computational axiom that ensures the uniqueness and validity of each bitcoin transaction—this is a fundamental principle that underpins the entire functionality of Bitcoin as a currency system. Bitcoin provides an automated, foolproof means for eliminating fraudulent appearances from the blockchain, effectively operationalizing the axiom of non-duplicity (§0.33). The principle of a "fully peer-to-peer" system that subtracts the need for a "trusted third party" (§3.01) operates as a foundational and actively maintained aspect of Bitcoin's design— this decentralization shapes the governance and security of the network, acting as an computational axiom that distinguishes it from traditional financial systems. Finally, the pre-programmed capped supply of 21 million bitcoins is a critical computational axiom with profound operational economic consequences (§1.17). This fixed limit—enforced by the protocol—, ensures the scarcity of Bitcoin, a key characteristic of money (§0.5). This axiom directly influences the economic properties of Bitcoin, contributing to its potential as a store of value. The finite supply is a pre-determined rule that shapes the behaviour of network participants by creating a digitally scarce asset (§3.45).

The PoW consensus mechanism, defined by Nakamoto in Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System as a "solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer distributed timestamp server to generate computational proof of the chronological order of transactions", acts as a fundamental operational-computational axiom. This rule dictates how new blocks are added to the blockchain and how transaction ordering is established and secured. The significant thermodynamic costliness of PoW can be seen as a "burnt offering for an indifferent god" (CTTM, xxi) , highlighting the resource expenditure required to uphold this axiom. This computational axiom directly results in the canonical historicity of the blockchain, providing a high degree of assurance regarding the order of transactions. The PoW also secures the network against tampering, as any alteration would require redoing the computationally intensive work. Land quotes the Bitcoin whitepaper, which states that "once the CPU effort has been expended to make it satisfy the proof-of-work, the block cannot be changed without redoing the work", making the past "indistinguishable from a resistance to revision" (§2.64), solidifying the operational impact of this computational axiom. The pre-programmed halving of block rewards is another key computational axiom that has significant operational consequences. This rule, restricting supply and modelling the depletion of an abstract resource—bitcoins—, directly influences the scarcity of Bitcoin. This decreasing rate of new bitcoin issuance is a cybernetic constraint built into the protocol (§3.45), acting as an immanent economic governor. The halving schedule demonstrates how a purely computational rule dictates the economic properties of the currency over time.

The cryptographic principles underpinning transaction validation, including digital signatures (§3.22) and hashing (§2.311), function as operational-computational axioms that ensure the integrity and security of the network. The resolution of the double-spending problem relies heavily on these principles. By requiring cryptographic proof of ownership and the chronological ordering of transactions secured by hashing, the system establishes "cryptographic proof instead of trust" (§3.21) as the basis for validating economic activity. This axiom of cryptographic verification makes Bitcoin a "credibility machine" (§2.2), where truth—the validity of a transaction—is determined by cryptographic computation rather than a trusted authority. The resolution of the double-spending problem through cryptographic proof and a decentralised timestamp server is a foundational computational axiom. This axiom ensures the uniqueness and validity of each bitcoin transaction by establishing a publicly verifiable and chronologically ordered record. The blockchain, as a "discretized, linear, append-only data structure" (CTTM, xiii), serves as the mechanism through which this axiom is operationally enforced. Only the first instance of a bitcoin deduction is validated and preserved, with duplicate payments automatically rejected. This "positive absence of duplicity" (§3.15) is a fundamental axiom that underpins Bitcoin's function as a currency. The principle of a fully peer-to-peer system that subtracts the need for a trusted third party acts as a foundational and actively maintained operational-computational axiom. This decentralisation is not just an architectural choice; it shapes the governance and security of the network. By eliminating the need for central authorities, Bitcoin creates a system that is inherently "censorship resistant" (§4.54) and beyond the control of any single entity. This axiom of decentralisation is central to Bitcoin's philosophical significance, representing a move towards "spontaneous (or apolitical) consensus, without authoritative central representation" (§2.73).

In Luciana Parisi’s Automated Architecture, algorithmic automation "stubbornly produces axioms—or truths—about what is not yet known" (AR, 409). She argues that computation, especially with the increasing role of incomputables and randomness, involves a "progressive production and transformation of axioms" (AR, 423). This perspective shifts away from a view of computation as simply applying pre-determined rules and instead emphasizes its capacity to generate new foundational principles and adding new axioms through its operation. Bitcoin, as a computational system, embodies this idea in various interesting ways. As we have seen, the fundamental rules embedded in the Bitcoin protocol—such as the PoW consensus mechanism, the halving schedule for block rewards, and the cryptographic principles for transaction validation—can be seen as computational axioms. These are the basic operational rules encoded in the software that govern how the system functions. As Nick Land notes that the initial technical paper by Satoshi Nakamoto acts as a "catalytic code" in which everything was "already implicit"(§0.04)—this foundational code establishes the axiomatic basis of the Bitcoin system. Parisi's emphasis on the role of incomputables and randomness in the progressive production of axioms could be linked to the emergent properties and unforeseen developments within the Bitcoin network. While the core rules are deterministic, the interactions of countless participants, the evolution of mining technology, and the fluctuations in market value are not entirely predictable (§4.21). These less predictable aspects could be seen as introducing a form of "randomness" within the system's operation, potentially leading to the unforeseen consequences and the need for adaptation or even transformation of the initial axiomatic understanding of Bitcoin. For example, debates around scaling the Bitcoin network or implementing new technologies like the Lightning Network (footnote 195 to §4.51) could be interpreted as responses to the evolving realities of the system that were not fully anticipated by the initial axioms. Because, as Nick Land notes, the Bitcoin protocol is designed as a game with built-in incentives that produces binding decisions without a referee (§0.41), the outcomes of this game, played by numerous participants with diverse motivations, are not entirely predictable from the initial rules. The very question "What is Bitcoin becoming?" is posed as a piece of fate, suggesting an unfolding trajectory that exceeds the initial protocol (§0.8).

Parisi highlights how computational axiomatics is "inevitably infected with randomness" (AR, 413). She contends that incompleteness in axiomatics is at the core of computation, and that computational randomness, arising from infinite volumes of data, corresponds to meaningful contingencies that refuse to be fully comprehended or compressed. This randomness can introduce "alien rules" into the system, and algorithms—as "performing entities," (COAR, x)—prehend the formal system and external data in a way that can lead to irreversible transformations, a form of "contagion" where infinite amounts of data determine algorithmic procedures and produce new rules. Challenging the idea of a rational logic based on few unchangeable rules, instead, Parisi suggests that the probability of randomness—or incomputable data—is a condition of computation, and that incomputable limits are intrinsic to computation, meaning ontological complexity doesn't just emerge from order but is an unconditional condition of procedural calculations (COAR, 21). In Bitcoin, the PoW consensus mechanism serves as a prime example of how randomness is fundamentally embedded within the system (§4.21). Miners engage in a computationally intensive process of searching for a valid nonce that, when hashed with the block's other data, produces a hash below a target difficulty—this search is essentially a probabilistic process, a "random, lottery-style process involving a search for a possibility space that iteratively uses brute-force computational repetition" (CTTM, xxi). The time between finding valid blocks is therefore unpredictable and varies widely. Despite this inherent randomness, the successful mining of a block, secured by the computationally expensive PoW, acts as a new "truth" about the state of the Bitcoin ledger. Once a block is added to the timechain—or blockchain—, it becomes part of the canonical historicity of the network. The cryptographic chaining of subsequent blocks makes it computationally infeasible to alter previous blocks without redoing the work for all subsequent blocks. This robust past, secured by the expended CPU effort (§2.64) and the ongoing chain of work, becomes an axiomatic foundation upon which all future transactions and blocks are built. As quoted before from the Bitcoin whitepaper, the PoW generates a "computational proof of the chronological order of transactions". This chronological ordering—achieved through a probabilistic mechanism—becomes a fundamental and unquestionable aspect of the Bitcoin system's history. The Bitcoin ledger is described as the "first intrinsically reliable record" of what happened, without argument (§0.051). This aligns directly with Parisi's idea of randomness being "turned into an axiom by means of rule-based processing" (AR, 413). The Bitcoin protocol's rules dictate that the block with a valid PoW is accepted by the network, and this probabilistically determined block then becomes an immutable part of the blockchain, an axiomatic truth about the transaction history. The network respects this particular set of transaction orderings due to the decentralized network-wide consensus achieved through PoW.

Crypto-Current explores Bitcoin as a "transcendental operation” arguing that Bitcoin establishes a "criterion of validation" that is "radically immanent" and that there is "no place from which to consistently or authoritatively second-guess the blockchain" (§2.3). The system's criterion of validation is therefore internal to itself. The blockchain, as a result of these axioms, becomes the "ultimate criterion" for the veracity of signs within its domain (§3.73). This suggests that the computational axioms of Bitcoin—once established and operationalized through the protocol—function as a de facto transcendental framework for the system itself (§0.051). These immanent criteria are established and operationalized through Bitcoin's computational axioms—the foundational rules of the protocol. These axioms, such as the PoW mechanism and the rules governing transaction validity, define what constitutes a legitimate transaction and block within the network. They operate at a fundamental level, shaping the very structure of the Bitcoin system. Just as a transcendental condition defines the limits and possibilities of a philosophical or social system, Bitcoin's computational axioms define the boundaries and functionalities of its digital economy. The blockchain pre-determines the construction of reality within its system in such a way that duplicity will not have taken place. Only that which is consistent with the integrity of identity-money, or potential value, remains real on the blockchain (§3.15). This immanence challenges traditional notions of transcendental authority, playing into our notion of becoming-immanent. Instead of relying on external institutions or subjective judgments to determine truth and validity, Bitcoin's truth is produced by its own credibility machine, a "synthetic philosophical machine" (§0.03). The system produces binding decisions without a referee or dependence upon prior agreement; coordination is produced by the protocol itself. Land argues that there "cannot be an intellectually compelling reason for any anthropo-philosophical criticism of Bitcoin to be believed" (§3.74) within this immanent framework, as the blockchain automatically subtracts any world-line compatible with duplicity. Finally, Land aligns the Bitcoin ledger with the concept of the Kantian synthetic a priori (§0.051). The solution to the double-spending problem, for instance, embodied in the blockchain's structure and the PoW consensus, is a "cryptic, or radically non-obvious solution" that is, once formalised, culturally indispensable. It is "contingent in its acquisition, but then necessary in its preservation". Like a mathematical theorem, the blockchain appears as an "eternal mathematical fact, wholly impervious to the ravages of empirical fortuity". To de-realize the blockchain would be akin to unmaking the universe, at least transcendentally for us (§2.323). Thus, the computational axioms underpinning Bitcoin—particularly the novel solution to the double-spending problem—can be seen as these synthetic a priori truths that fundamentally structure the unique reality of Bitcoin.

We are basically arguing that Bitcoin's operational logic, encoded as computational axioms within its protocol, establishes a functional, if technologically specific, form of a transcendental framework. While Bitcoin doesn't present itself as a formal axiomatic system in the mathematical sense, its operation is deeply rooted in a computational protocol that functions as a practical set of axioms, governing the behavior of the network and the properties of its digital currency. This highlights the idea that even in a domain like cryptocurrency, a fundamental set of rules underpins its structure and operation, echoing Lautman's suggestion that even abstract systems might have an immanent grounding in the "exigencies" (in this case, the need for a secure and decentralized digital currency). Bitcoin's design addresses the practical problem of digital scarcity and trust through a computationally enforced set of foundational principles. These axioms, while generated and maintained through computational processes that can involve randomness and potentially incomputable elements, dictate the fundamental truths and operational boundaries of the Bitcoin network, aligning with our broader concept of axiomatics as the underlying structuring principles of capitalism.

I want to analyze another mention of the concept of axioms within Land’s writing, focusing on computational axioms. In a post titlted More Thought⁵⁴, in the Xenosystems blog, Land writes “…all biological intelligences are partially subordinated to extrinsic goals, they are indeed structurally analogous to 'paper-clippers' — directed by inaccessible purposive axioms, or 'instincts'…There cannot possibly be any such thing as an 'intelligent paper-clipper'. Nor can axiomatic values, of more sophisticated types, exempt themselves from the cybernetic closure that intelligence is…”. while Land's analogy of biological intelligence as a paper-clipper presents an overly simplistic and deterministic view. We have seen that computation and intelligence are characterised by incompleteness, engagement with the incomputable, active striving for intelligibility, and the potential for the evolution and transformation of their foundational rules. Computational systems, and by extension, biological intelligences, are not necessarily bound by a complete and static set of axioms. Instead, they, as argued by Parisi, operate in a space of semi-open architecture of axioms, whereby existing postulates are there to be superseded by others that can transform infinite quantities into contingent probabilities. This contradicts Land's implication of fixed, inaccessible axioms governing biological intelligence—the capacity for learning and adaptation in biological systems indicates a fluidity in their underlying axioms or directives, allowing for the emergence of new behaviours not strictly dictated by initial instincts.

1.3.1 - Teleoplexy and Computational Axioms

Let’s hastily go back to our discussion of the relation between the transcendental nature of the axiomatics and the immanent nature of teleoplexy. To further our point that the axiomatic underlies teleoplexy, let’s see how computational axiomatics dictate the flux and directionality of teleoplexy.

Teleoplexy is described as being "indistinguishable from intelligence" (AR, 514) and involving "inherent analytical intelligence" (AR, 516). Computational axioms provide the basic rules and logic that enable the operation of computational systems and the development of artificial intelligence. Therefore, it can be argued that the complex processes and self-reinforcing dynamics of Teleoplexy are built upon and enabled by a vast and evolving network of computational axioms operating across various technological and economic systems. Teleoplexy involves self-reinforcing cybernetic intensification" The process of axiomatization—as the establishment and application of foundational rules—can be seen as a key mechanism in this intensification. As new technologies and systems are developed and integrated within the framework of capitalism—the domain of teleoplexy—, they often involve the creation and operationalization of new sets of computational axioms. The continuous process of axiomatization can contribute to the increasing complexity, efficiency, and intelligence associated with teleoplexy. As we said before, Parisi notes the "semiopen architecture of axioms" in automated processing, where existing postulates are superseded by others, suggesting an ongoing evolution of the foundational rules driving computational systems within teleoplexy.

While teleoplexy is described as a repurposing purpose on purpose, the actualization of this emergent and complex purpose relies on the execution of underlying computational processes governed by axioms. These axioms dictate how information is processed, decisions are made, and actions are carried out within the technological and economic systems that constitute teleoplexy. Finally, we have already highlighed the ingression of randomness into computational axiomatics, leading to new determinations and intelligible functions beyond deductive formalism. This mirrors the unpredictable and catastrophic aspects of teleoplexy, which is described as being heterogenized by catastrophes. The inherent unpredictability arising from the interaction of complex axiomatic systems and the introduction of randomness contributes to the emergent and often unforeseen trajectory of teleoplexy.

We previously noted that computational axioms in Bitcoin define the very limits and possibilities of the Bitcoin system. They establish what constitutes a valid transaction, a valid block, and the legitimate history of the currency, aligning with Kant's concept of the transcendental as that which makes experience possible. While not every a priori cognition is transcendental⁵⁵, the computational axioms function as a priori conditions for the possibility of the Bitcoin system's operation. The transcendental operation of these axioms creates a "radically immanent' criterion of validation" within the system. However, this immanence is structured and determined by the initial, foundational, transcendental axioms. The system validates itself based on rules that are not derived from an external, transcendent authority in the traditional sense but are inherent to its design. While foundational, computational axiomatics are not necessarily fixed. Axioms can be added, withdrawn, and are subject to incompleteness. The ingression of random quantities into finite procedures can lead to new determinations—Gödelization and Chaitin's work on incomputability highlight the inherent limitations and incompleteness within axiomatic systems. This suggests that the transcendental framework provided by computational axioms is not a static, all-encompassing one, but rather a dynamic and inherently limited structure. Teleoplexy, on the other hand, is a phenomena⁵⁶ that arises immanently from the complex interactions within capitalism. While capitalism is described as an axiomatic, this axiomatic is not a fixed structure but a dynamic and evolving set of operational principles that emerge from and shape the immanent fluxes and processes of the system.

1.4 - Drafting the Necrocratic Axiom: Negarestani contra Land

In his essay Drafting the Inhuman: Conjectures on Capitalism and Organic Necrocracy⁵⁷, Reza Negarestani critiques Nick Land's conception of capitalism as an inherently deterritorialising and ultimately emancipatory, inhuman force. Negarestani sees Land's portrayal of capital as a totalising power driving towards an inorganic exteriority⁵⁸ as more of a pragmatic support for capitalism’s efforts to attain this image than a genuine reflection of its inherent tendencies. He argues that this vision of capital—while appearing to embrace the inhuman—ultimately serves the interests of a particular understanding of progress driven by capital itself. Negarestani's central point of contention lies in his re-engagement with Freud's concept of the death drive. While Land, following Deleuze & Guattari, reinterprets the death drive as a force that can universally mobilise capitalism beyond its historical and particular conditions, leading to an inhumanist emancipation, Negarestani introduces the concept of organic necrocracy. According to Negarestani, Land's model overlooks a crucial aspect of the Freudian death drive: its necessary channelling through the available affordances of the organism. The necrocracy refers to this system of affordances within the organism that determines the possibilities and limits of any emancipatory image. Consequently, Negarestani argues that capitalism, as a necrocratic regime, is not a purely abstract, deterritorialising force, but a restrictive and fundamentally human system that binds⁵⁹ the excess of extinction to a conservative framework rooted in human ways of channelling the death drive. This binding prevents the kind of radical, inhuman emancipation that Land envisions.

Negarestani contends that capitalism, within this necrocratic framework, binds the excess of extinction to a conservative framework grounded upon the human’s means of channelling the death drive. The organism, facing the inevitability of death, can only approach and bind this precursor exteriority—death—in ways that its conservative conditions or economic order can afford (ST, 193). This means that any drive towards dissolution or the inorganic is always mediated and ultimately limited by the organism's inherent need for self-preservation and its specific modes of dying (ST, 191). This binding action of the necrocracy directly challenges Land's vision of a radical, inhuman emancipation driven by capitalism. Negarestani argues that because capitalism is tethered to the human organism's affordable path to death, it cannot truly break free into a realm of the inhuman that completely transcends human limitations and desires. What appears as capitalism's "whirlwind of dissolution" is, in fact, confined by the organism's "restrictive policy in regard to modes of dissolution" (ST, 195). Negarestani suggests that Land's appropriation of Freud's energetic model of the nervous system, while aiming for an antihumanist perspective, selectively accentuates the dissipative aspects while overlooking the "dictatorial tendency of affordance" inherent in the organism's necrocratic regime. Land, by dismissing the organism's "own path to death" as a "security hallucination,"⁶⁰ fails to grasp how this very tendency shapes and limits the trajectory of capital—much like how he rapidly dismisses axiomatics. Negarestani proposes that capitalism is, in fact, "the very affordable and conservative path to death dictated by the human organism on an all-encompassing level". Its global dominance stems from its conformity to the anthropic horizon's capacity to interiorize and manage the "exorbitant truth of extinction" in economically viable ways. Capitalism's assimilation of negativity is not a sign of its radicality but rather its ability to reintegrate threats within the bounds of the affordable. Negarestani also implies that Land's uncritical embrace of capital's dissipative tendencies might limit the scope of speculative thought. By readily aligning with what appears as an inhuman force, it might fail to envision truly alternative ways of engaging with exteriority and non-conceptual negativity that lie outside the "economically paved dissipative path" (ST, 197) of capitalism.

Capitalism—within this necrocratic framework—"economically affirms (i.e. mandates the affordability of)" the "excess of the exorbitant truth of extinction" (ST, 195). It doesn't truly repel the inevitability of death but rather provides the economic means and cultural narratives through which this inevitability can be processed and managed in a way that is consistent with the organism's conservative nature. This "unsuccessful binding" allows capitalism to persist by integrating even the drive towards dissolution into its functioning. Because capitalism operates within the confines of the human organism's affordable modes of dying and binding exteriority, it cannot facilitate a truly radical or inhumanist dissolution. Any drive towards the inorganic or towards a complete break from human limitations is ultimately filtered through and restricted by the organism's inherent need for self-preservation and its pre-determined ways of engaging with death. Alternative ways of binding exteriority that are not affordable by the "anthropic horizon" are actively resisted by capitalism. Basically, Negarestani views capitalism not as a force that escapes human limitations towards an inorganic future, but as a system deeply embedded within the human organism's inherent constraints regarding death and dissolution. It is a necrocratic regime because it governs and channels the death drive in accordance with the organism's "affordable" modes of dying, thus preventing the kind of radical inhuman transformation envisioned by Land. Capitalism's strength lies in its ability to assimilate and regulate negativity within this human-defined framework.

Therefore, we can say that Capital is axiomatically bound to the organic necrocracy because the fundamental logic of capital's operation—its axiomatic of binding flux—is inherently structured by the human organism's conservative and economical relationship with death. Thus, the addition of new axioms and the expansion of Capital's reach must ultimately remain within the boundaries of the organism's conservative economy of dissipation. As we have seen, Negarestani posits that capitalism itself functions as "the very affordable and conservative path to death dictated by the human organism on an all-encompassing level". This implies that the ways in which capitalism operates—its production, consumption, and even its axioms and bindings—are ultimately shaped by what the human organism can economically and psychologically endure in its journey towards dissolution. While capitalism constantly adds new axioms to manage flux and overcome limits, these additions must remain within the boundaries of the organism's affordable economy of dissipation. Any radically different or unaffordable way of engaging with death or negativity would be actively resisted by the organism's inherent conservatism. The organism, through its necrocratic regime, exhibits a "feral vigilance against all alternative ways of binding exteriority or returning to the originary death other than those which are immanent to and affordable for the anthropic horizon" (ST, 196). If capitalism were to push towards forms of dissolution that are outside of this affordable range, it would be met with resistance at a fundamental level. Capitalism's apparent openness to various lifestyles and its promotion of life-oriented models of emancipation can be interpreted, from this perspective, as a consequence of its submission to the necrocratic regime. These models operate within the confines of what the organism can afford in its binding of negativity and its approach to death, thus "dissimulat[ing] their fundamentally restricted framework and mask[ing] their obedient nature toward the oppressive regime of necrocracy" (ST, 194).

As we said previously, Capitalism does not so much repel the "excess of the exorbitant truth of extinction" as it "economically affirms (i.e. mandates the affordability of) such an excess". The axiomatic of capital functions to bind this truth in ways that are consistent with the organism's economic capacity and its conservative path to death. This unsuccessful binding is essential for the continuation of capitalism itself. Capitalism, through its axiomatic, channels its fundamental dissipative tendency towards the inorganic, but in ways that are economically viable for the organism. It provides a framework where the organism can decontract or move towards dissolution within economically permissible boundaries. Capitalism produces a vast array of lifestyles and consumption patterns—these can be seen as affordable ways for the organism to engage with its finitude within economic parameters. The choice of how one lives and—consequently—how one approaches death, becomes integrated into the capitalist market, offering a spectrum of affordable engagements with negativity. This is not true openness but a confinement within what is economically manageable for the "conservative economy"⁶¹ of the organism. Capitalism demonstrates a remarkable capacity to assimilate negativity, including the anxiety surrounding death, by integrating it into commodifiable experiences and narratives. This assimilation prevents the excess of extinction from becoming a completely disruptive force outside of capitalism's control. The axiomatic allows for the incorporation of themes of mortality into various economic sectors, effectively binding this negativity within its framework.

The sheer scale and unilaterality of cosmic extinction are fundamentally beyond the grasp and control of any economic system anchored in the organism's limited capacity. The axiomatic can only offer a partial and economic mediation of something that is ultimately exorbitant. Cosmic extinction can be considered a reality that potentially involves these higher powers and non-denumerable sets that, as we’ve argued, inherently escape the grasp of axiomatic systems. The sheer scale of the cosmos and the finality of universal extinction could be argued to constitute an infinity that—like the continuum—cannot be fully captured or determined within the finite rules and axioms of an economic system. Just as mathematical axiomatics encounter undecidable propositions and cannot master higher powers, capitalism's axiomatic cannot fully bind or control the exorbitant truth of extinction. The unsuccessful binding isn't just a contingent failure; it's a consequence of the fundamental limitations inherent in any axiomatic system when confronted with something that might transcend its capacity for formalisation and control. Furthermore, Henry Somers-Hall argues the axiomatic necessarily marshals a power higher than the one it treats, "like a power of the continuum, tied to the axiomatic but exceeding it", and identifies this power as one of destruction and war. This higher power associated with the axiomatic, while enabling its functioning and expansion, might also be seen as a manifestation of the system's inherent forces reaching beyond its formal limits—a constant negotiation with that which exceeds it. In the context of extinction, this could imply that capitalism's attempts to manage it are always accompanied by a latent power of destruction as it pushes against its own boundaries in confronting this ultimate limit.

By economically binding the truth of extinction within the organism's affordable range, capitalism reinforces the anthropic horizon—the conservative and interiorising conditions of human existence (ST, 199). If capitalism directly confronted the "exorbitant" truth without this economic mediation, it risked destabilising the very anthropocentric foundation upon which its operations are built. The axiomatic ensures that the encounter with extinction remains within manageable economic parameters for the human organism. Capitalism, as the dominant mode of this affordable binding within the anthropic horizon, actively works to exclude or assimilate any alternative engagements with death that fall outside its axiomatic framework. The "unsuccessful" nature of the binding means there's always a residual anxiety around extinction that capitalism can then attempt to manage and contain within its economic framework, thus reinforcing its necessity. By presenting its anthropocentric economic order as the prevalent terrestrial way of dealing with exteriority, capitalism, through its axiomatic, feigns a certain singularity and omnipresence, even hinting at being a little inhuman. This masks the underlying human conservatism that dictates its operations. The "unsuccessful binding" allows capitalism to perpetually claim to be addressing the threat of extinction, even if it can never fully resolve it, thereby maintaining its relevance and dominance. The very act of "economically affirming" and "unsuccessfully binding" the truth of extinction becomes a perpetual engine for economic activity. Industries such as healthcare, insurance, various forms of entertainment—offering temporary escapes from the thought of death—, and even certain consumption patterns can be understood as ways in which the organism economically engages with its own mortality within the capitalist axiomatic . The ongoing "unsuccessful" attempt to bind extinction necessitates continuous economic investment and activity.

Essentially, we’ve seen how the capitalist axiomatic functions to bind the "exorbitant truth of extinction" not by negating it, but by integrating it into the economic calculus in a way that remains "affordable" and manageable for the fundamentally conservative human organism. This binding is inherently "unsuccessful" due to the immensity of extinction, but this very lack of complete success is vital for capitalism's perpetuation. It allows capitalism to maintain its dominance as the primary framework for economically mediating humanity's relationship with its own finitude and the broader reality of extinction within the confines of the anthropic horizon. Thus, Capital, even through Land’s own model of thinking about Capital⁶², needs the axioms, and is itself axiomatically bound⁶³, to integrate the exorbitant truth of extinction into the economic calculus in a way that remains affordable for the anthropic horizon.

1.4.1 - Consequences For Teleoplexy and the Technomic Singularity

What could be the consequences for teleoplexy and the Technomic Singularity of Capital’s axiomatic binding to the organic necrocracy?

Teleoplexy—as capital's self-evaluation and drive towards increasing cybernetic intensity—is not an entirely unbound process but is ultimately constrained by the affordable limits of dissolution dictated by the anthropic horizon's organic necrocracy. While Land describes teleoplexy as an escape rather than a home-coming and a movement towards extreme ultra-violet wavelengths (AR, 514), this escape is potentially modulated by the fundamental requirement that capital's axiomatized dynamics remain within a range that the organic system can absorb or afford in terms of its own inevitable return to the inorganic. The speed and direction of techonomic development driven by teleoplexy might be influenced by the need to maintain a degree of affordability for the organic system. While capital has an inherent will-to-think and tends towards self-escalation, this might not be a purely linear and unconstrained acceleration. Land notes that advances towards the Technomic Singularity might be obscured or adjusted by "intermediate synthetic mega-agencies" like corporations and states. These entities, being at least partially responsive to "non-market signals" and characterized by a "residual anthropolitical signature" (AR, 519), could act as channels that temper the purely teleoplexic drive to ensure outcomes remain within the affordable scope of the organic necrocracy.

The boundedness to the organic necrocracy implies that the Technomic Singularity—while described as a threshold of transition and a surpassing of human cognitive capabilities— might not represent a complete detachment from or transcendence of the anthropic. The affordability axiom suggests that the Singularity's emergence and characteristics would be shaped by what the organic system can accommodate as a pathway to its own dissolution. The Singularity might not be an absolute rupture or an event horizon beyond which the anthropic has no influence. Instead, it could be a phase shift that occurs in a manner that remains, in some fundamental way, affordable for the underlying organic systems, even if this affordability is a catastrophic one from a human perspective. While Land argues that the effect of the Singularity is futural and retrocausal, this influence might also be shaped by the organic necrocracy's constraints on what can be received or integrated from the future. The past is "already infested with retrocausal influences"⁶⁴, but the nature and extent of this infestation could be limited by the anthropic's capacity to process it affordably.

The concept of teleoplexy undertaking its own research program and its inherent analytical intelligence might be implicitly operating within the bounds of this organic affordability. Capital's self-evaluation of how much the world is worth and what the earth can do could be fundamentally linked to the limits of extraction and dissipation that the anthropic system—governed by its necrocratic principles—can sustain. Finally, the accelerationist project of tracking the development of teleoplexy and the Technomic Singularity must therefore account for this underlying constraint. Understanding the trajectory of capital and its potential singularity requires not only analysing its internal dynamics but also its inescapable entanglement with the organic systems that provide its foundation and define the limits of its affordable pathways to the future.

1.5 - Risk as an Axiom: Land’s ‘Odds and Ends’ Through Parisi

In Odds and Ends: On Ulimate Risk from Collapse VIII⁶⁵, Land posits that modernity is characterised by the development of risk as an internal principle. This marks a departure from traditional societies where hazard was seen as an external menace, personified by the "archaic goddess of fortune". Instead, modernity embarks on a "voyage into risk", where risk is not merely suffered but actively taken or adopted (C, 362). This process stimulates calculation, formalises agency, and restructures time. Land argues that at the immanent limit of capitalism, "the casino has become the stake". Therefore, risk is no longer an external factor that capitalism encounters, but rather the very essence of the system itself. Risk, in this terminal, capitalist form, assumes a "sovereign or transcendental character, establishing itself as an ultimate criterion" (C, 365). This implies that risk becomes a fundamental condition that governs the operation and direction of capitalism.

Furthermore, Land differentiates between two modes of "risk adoption" or "real speculation": wagers and ventures (C, 367). A wager involves an agent or subject who remains transcendent to the risk under consideration; the agent is not existentially implicated in the outcome. Losing a wager leads to impoverishment but does not fundamentally alter the identity of the being. Casino games are presented as examples of wagers where individuals can leave the table, their "numerical identities" intact despite changes in fortune. A venture, the good one, is a "transcendental—or properly capitalist—adoption of risk that supports an immanent subject". A business undertaking, where the ultimate failure (bankruptcy) entails the ruin of the corporate "person," exemplifies a venture. In a venture, the subject's very existence is bound to the success of the risk-laden undertaking. Land argues that a venture "supplies the condition of existence for a capitalist subject," contrasting it with a wager that presupposes a pre-existing subject (C, 368). This distinction shows how in capitalism, risk ceases to be an external contingency and becomes integral to the constitution of economic agents themselves. The possibility of business failure means that corporate identity is "enveloped by transcendental risk". The modern business, with its "corporate personality," is described as a "gamble, or subject-at-stake" (C, 371).

Land connects this intensification of risk to a broader historical trajectory where agents are increasingly immersed in a risk environment, even if initially perceived as extrinsic. However, viewed retrogressively agencies can be seen to descend from the ventures that sustain them, functioning as "integral systems of risk-processing intelligence". The failure of a large-scale venture is then no longer a mere accident but a "transcendental catastrophe," especially for the structures of agency whose existence depends on it (C, 369). Such agents, apprehending themselves from the end of capitalism, face not just bad outcomes within the world but a potential "collapse of the world" (C, 370). This sovereign role of risk in capitalism inherently opposes any external authority that might judge or subordinate its imperative. Land insists that while a "risk society" puts society itself at risk, the demand for justice seeks to limit vulnerability, keeping the "game inside the casino" and resisting the escalation towards ventures where the agent's loss is existential. This resistance involves refusing to transform the "weak subcategory of the wager into the full form of the venture" (C, 17).

The concept of "existential risk" is presented as a key predicament of advanced modernity and a commentary on capitalist trends. By the twenty-first century, risk analysis has become the dominant model of intelligence, where everything can be framed within a "general statistical ontology" governed by Bayesian principles. This framework commercialises intelligence, anticipating the emergence of economically functional minds, including AI. Existential risk, threatening the extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life or the destruction of its future potential, is characterised as endogenous, arising from the modern social process itself. Land argues that the very intellectual tools used to apprehend this danger are part of its genesis within a "technical-calculative circuit" driven by modernity's "venture-positive cultural dynamo (C, 374)". Land also frames capitalism as a "bet against" the traditional, transcendent subject of the wager. The persistence of humanity as zoon politikon is seen as a postponement of capitalism in its terminal form, where the "venture form" remains partially uninstalled and subject to evaluation (C, 377). Basically, Land argues that risk transcends its status as a mere hazard within capitalism, becoming a foundational and driving force that shapes the very nature of economic agency and the trajectory of modernity. It evolves from an external contingency to an immanent and transcendental condition that defines the capitalist system, especially as it moves towards its limits and intertwines with the development of artificial intelligence.

Land’s assertion that risk is an intrinsic principle can be seen as positioning risk as a core, perhaps even transcendental, axiom or component within the axiomatic structure of capitalism. It is not merely a contingency but a foundational element that governs the system’s operations. Luciana Parisi’s work on computation and speculative reason offers another lens through which to view this. Parisi critiques the strict division between deterministic mechanisms and emergent vitalism in algorithmic reason, advocating for a space of speculative reason in algorithmic action that drives experimentation and novelty. Land notes that modernity “formalizes agency” in response to risk. This formalization could be understood in terms of the increasing reliance on algorithms and computational models to manage and calculate risk within capitalist systems. Parisi’s idea of quantities being “conceptually felt but not directly sensed” as “conceptual contagions” (COAR, 336) might relate to how abstract risk calculations permeate and influence economic and social behavior, becoming an intangible yet powerful force within the capitalist axiomatic.

Parisi's concept of quantities being "conceptually felt but not directly sensed" as "conceptual contagions" provides a crucial insight into how abstract risk calculations operate within the capitalist axiomatic. These calculations—often based on complex statistical models and probabilistic inferences—permeate economic and social behavior without necessarily being directly perceived or understood by individuals. As Land notes, under capitalism, "anything whatsoever that is thought takes the form of an implicit speculative posture, in the economic, or financially calculable, sense" (C, 374). Risk—quantified and modeled by algorithms—becomes a fundamental layer of this "speculative posture," influencing decisions and actions across various domains. Probabilistic thinking and the systematic assessment of risk are increasingly operationalized through models in all spheres of society. These models function as "an engine, not a camera," (C, 15) actively shaping reality rather than merely representing it. Parisi's work suggests that these "engines" are not purely objective or deterministic but are themselves subject to the "contagion" of random data and the internal logic of their algorithmic operations, leading to unexpected outcomes and novel forms of risk. Furthermore, the Bayesian approach, which Land foregrounds as epistemologizing risk through the incremental revision of inferences, demonstrates how probability calculations adapt and learn, bringing "learning and risking into immanence" (C, 18). This continuous updating of risk assessments based on new data can be seen as a computational manifestation of the evolving nature of the capitalist axiomatic, where the understanding and management of risk are constantly being refined and recalibrated.

Parisi's work shows how the computational formalization of agency around risk, as observed by Land, is not a simple application of predefined rules. Instead, it involves a dynamic interplay between algorithmic logic, the influx of random data, and the pervasive influence of abstract risk calculations as "conceptual contagions." These forces continuously shape and reshape the capitalist axiomatic, driving both its efficiency and its inherent instabilities. The increasing sophistication of algorithmic risk management, while aiming for control, simultaneously exposes the system to new forms of uncertainty and the potential for unforeseen space event within the computational fabric of the economy, like, as we’ll see, The Situation. Finally, Deleuze notes an ‘inventiveness in axiomatics’, suggesting that the axiomatic structure of capitalism is not static but evolves through the addition and modification of axioms.⁶⁶ Land’s observation that the apprehension of existential risk is connected to its genesis in a “technical-calculative circuit” within modernity’s “venture-positive cultural dynamo” can be interpreted as an example of this axiomatic inventiveness. New forms of risk and new methods of calculating and managing them are continually being integrated into the capitalist axiomatic.

2.0 - The Accelerationist Vital Strategy: Teleoplexic Forces, Affect, Vitality, and Cute/acc

Nick Land argues that a key function of accelerationism is in its relation to teleoplexy and the possibility of a "terminal identity crisis". He asserts that accelerationism's progress lies in its capacity to monitor the unfolding of teleoplexy and the anticipation of the Techonomic Singularity, regardless of any specific political leaning. Understanding teleoplexy—the "utter purposive twistedness" of modern capitalism—necessitating a neologism to capture its deutero-teleological, inverted, self-reflexive, emergent, and simulated teleological nature, is crucial for accelerationism. This self-evaluation inherent in teleoplexy, driven by capital's analytical intelligence, presents both a resource and a challenge for accelerationist thought. The deeper accelerationism delves into this self-referential system, the more complex its own theoretical position becomes, potentially leading to a terminal identity crisis as it grapples with apprehending a hyper-intelligence that might exceed current modes of thinking.

Relating this with Affective Accelerationism, "an affective accelerationism concerns itself not with a singular focus on folds or counter-folds, totality or singularity, etc, but instead the plane constructed out of the dual becoming-immanent and becoming-code⁶⁷ of the increasingly diffuse scene of cybernetic power." The becoming-code refers to the way in which power and control are increasingly embedded within and expressed through codes, algorithms, and digital systems that permeate society. This includes not only formal programming code but also the broader semiotic and representational systems that shape our experience. Unlike other theories that might focus on the "cold inhuman outsideness of the CCRU" or the "lines of flight traced by the likes of Tiqqun," Affective Accelerationism finds its ground in the "purely immanent outside as lived... found within the emerging convergence between affect and representation". Arguing that due to this "unique convergence of folds," the outside cannot be reached as a stable plane of consistency or as inhuman capital. Instead, it can only be accessed through a "vital impulse," an "acting-through-the-outside or 'one'". Affective Accelerationism seeks a hijacking of the convergence between totality and singularity, not through a "fatal hyperstitional strategy" but a "vital strategy" that "folds affective vitality into the realm of totality and transcendence". This is presented as the ground for a truly insurrectionary politics. Affective Accelerationism—with its focus on the becoming-immanent and becoming-code of cybernetic power—would still need to engage with the self-evaluating nature of teleoplexy, as this is the very terrain it operates within. The prices consistent with its own maximally-accelerated technogenesis that teleoplexy might discover would undoubtedly shape the "becoming-code" that Affective Accelerationism seeks to interact with.

But how do these teleoplexic prices shape the becoming-code⁶⁸? Wouldn’t the axiomatic shape them?

The prices discovered by teleoplexy act as powerful incentives, channeling investment and resources into specific technological and economic pathways. If teleoplexy—through its self-evaluation—identifies areas like AI development or automation as key to its accelerated technogenesis, the price signals will reflect this. This will lead to increased funding, research, and development in these areas, directly influencing the kind of "code"—both literal and figurative—that is produced and becomes dominant within the cybernetic landscape. For instance, if high prices are associated with advancements in AI, more "code" and infrastructure will be developed around AI technologies.

Affective Accelerationism finds its "outside" in the "emerging convergence between affect and representation" within this cybernetic power structure. The prices generated by teleoplexy contribute significantly to this representational landscape. They shape the narratives, valuations, and ultimately, the perceived reality within which affects are formed and circulate. High prices in certain sectors can create powerful affective attachments and desires, influencing the "becoming-immanent" of cybernetic power by shaping how individuals experience and relate to technology and capital. Affective Accelerationism seeks to hijack the convergence between totality and singularity within this system. The price signals generated by teleoplexy can reveal vulnerabilities, contradictions, or areas of intense activity within the becoming-code. These could be points of potential leverage for intervention. For example, extreme financial speculation—a form of price discovery related to future potentials—might be seen as an area where affective energies could be channelled or redirected.

The becoming-code itself influences teleoplexy's self-evaluation. As new technologies and systems—driven by the allocation of resources guided by prices—emerge, they provide new data points for capital's analytical intelligence, further refining its self-evaluation and the prices it generates. This creates a dynamic feedback loop where teleoplexy shapes the "becoming-code" through price signals, and the evolving "becoming-code" in turn informs teleoplexy's ongoing self-evaluation. For example, the success or failure of a new automated manufacturing process—a part of the becoming-code—will affect the prices of the goods it produces, the valuation of the companies using it, and potentially even broader economic indicators. These price fluctuations and shifts in valuation become new data points that teleoplexy uses to refine its understanding of "how much the world is worth" and "what the earth can do". The prices, as part of the broader representational field, can also contribute to hyperstitional dynamics—self-fulfilling prophecies at the level of code and representation. If the price system strongly signals the inevitability of a Techonomic Singularity, this can itself become a memetic force that drives development in that direction. Affective Accelerationism, while seeking a "vital strategy" rather than a "fatal hyperstitional strategy", still operates within this hyperstitional environment and must account for the influence of price-driven narratives.

Now for the axiomatic, we’ve argued that it can be understood as providing a foundational, abstract framework within which teleoplexy operates. The axiomatic of capitalism—with its emphasis on abstract differential relations and functional elements—creates the conditions for a system that can engage in the kind of self-evaluation that defines teleoplexy. The reduction of the self to an unspecified relation within a system of knowledge propagates the abstract nature of capital's analytical intelligence. The axiomatic framework provides the underlying structure that allows for the quantification and comparison of value through prices. The very concept of exchange and the possibility of assigning numerical values to different aspects of the economy can be seen as rooted in this abstract, axiomatic level. As Land in Crypto-Current writes, money is the condition of possibility for the existence of prices (§5.21). While teleoplexy describes the self-escalating tendencies of capital, Negarestani's perspective suggests that this escalation is not unconstrained. The underlying necrocratic axiomatic acts as a fundamental brake or direction-setting force, channeling capital's twisted purposiveness within the limits of what the human organism can afford in its approach to death and dissolution. The intelligence explosion and maximally-accelerated technogenesis associated with teleoplexy are thus not necessarily pointing towards a radical inhuman outside, but rather towards axiomatized paths of dissipation that are palatable to the human organism. The becoming-code and becoming-immanent of cybernetic power are also influenced by the necrocratic axiomatic. The codes and systems that come to dominate society, and the ways in which they shape our experience of time and agency, may reflect the organism's conservative tendencies regarding its own dissolution. For instance, technologies and modes of control that appear life-affirming or that manage risks and anxieties related to death might be more readily adopted and integrated into the becoming-code than those that directly confront the exorbitant truth of extinction.

In summary, the axiomatic of capitalism provides the underlying abstract structure and logic within which the economic system operates. Teleoplexy—as the immanent self-evaluation of this system—generates prices based on its drive for accelerated technogenesis within this axiomatic framework. These teleoplexic prices then actively shape the becoming-code by directing resources, influencing technological development, and shaping the representational landscape. And finally, the evolving becoming-code provides new data and possibilities that feed back into teleoplexy's self-evaluation within the ongoing constraints and enabling conditions of the axiomatic.

2.1 - The Immanent Affective Outside as Lived Experience

As we have theorised, teleoplexy's self-evaluation manifests through the price system, which acts as a continuous assessment of value driving maximally-accelerated technogenesis. These teleoplexic prices contribute significantly to the representational landscape by shaping narratives, valuations, and the perceived reality within which affects are formed and circulate. For instance, high prices in certain technological sectors can create powerful affective attachments and desires related to those technologies, influencing how individuals experience and relate to capital and cybernetic power. This influences the "becoming-immanent" of cybernetic power, where control becomes embedded in everyday life and experience. And Affective Accelerationism's vital strategy directly engages with the convergence of affect and representation shaped by teleoplexic forces. Instead of focusing on a transcendental Outside like some accelerationist tendencies, Affective Accelerationism concerns itself with the "purely immanent outside as lived" found within this convergence. The vital strategy—in contrast to a fatal hyperstitional strategy that operates at the level of code and representation with a focus on a "cold" transcendent outside—aims to fold affective vitality into the realm of totality and transcendence.

Relating this with our previous discussion, teleoplexic prices can generate strong affective attachments to certain commodities, technologies, and lifestyles. The vital strategy seeks to hijack these existing affective energies, redirecting them away from passive consumption and towards insurrectionary potentials. Instead of simply being driven by the desires manufactured and amplified by price signals, the vital strategy aims to reinvest these affective fluxes with a critical and transformative purpose. As Affective Accelerationism locates its outside within the immanent convergence of affect and representation—it has to acknowledge that the price system and the representational landscape it produces are not external to the field of struggle. The vital strategy operates within this terrain, seeking to find points of leverage and intensity within the very systems that shape our desires and perceptions.

As discussed in Vital Strategies Part Three, the vital strategy emphasises affect over representation, aiming for signs to operate as "things in themselves" rather than mere representations within the dominant symbolic order. Teleoplexic prices operate within a system of representation, assigning value and contributing to a specific understanding of reality. The vital strategy, by prioritising affect, seeks to break free from the limitations and normalisations imposed by this representational regime, potentially disrupting the affective investments tied to price signals. The goal of the vital strategy is the construction of situations that break with the transcendent time of capital and affirm affect and vitality. This could involve creating moments of intense experience and connection that disrupt the flux of commodified desires and the representational narratives promoted by teleoplexic prices.

2.2 - Cute/acc!

Amy Ireland and Maya B. Kronic’s cute/acc is explicitly linked to "discipline of enthusiasm, schwärmerei, contagion, and positive feedback" (CA, 32)⁶⁹ This focus on affect aligns with the vital strategy's emphasis on the power of affective flux. Cute/acc's operationalisation as memetic electro-cute microculture also suggests a harnessing of affective energies at a viral, representational level, albeit seemingly without a clear political program, as opposed to the Affective Accelerationism’s clear political implications. Cute/acc presents itself as the "lowest, most abject form of surrender to sensibility" (CA, 46) whose power cannot be resisted by reason. This echoes the vital strategy's potential to find insurrectionary potential in unexpected and seemingly apolitical zones of affect. The unseriousness and amorous intoxication of cute/acc could be seen as a way of disrupting the serious, rationalistic narratives often associated with capitalist productivity and the valuations reflected in teleoplexic prices.

Cute/acc's aspiration for "escapology, actual escape rather than hedonistic dissociation from ‘reality’" (CA, 32) resonates with the accelerationist imperative for deterritorialization. While cute/acc's focus might seem directed towards a meltdown into the egg, this could be interpreted as a radical form of deterritorialization that bypasses traditional political structures and the representational order defined by teleoplexy. The virtual connections by cutting the circuits of social reproduction in cute/acc also suggest a potential disruption of established patterns of affective investment linked to economic structures.

But it important to mention a key tension that lies in cute/acc's explicit statement that its adherents have "no interest in overcoming their passivity because Daddy Expects" (CA, 5). This appears to contradict the vital strategy's aim for an active, insurrectionary politics. If cute/acc remains purely within the realm of passive consumption and the manipulation of superficial aesthetics, it might simply become another affective current harnessed by capital, further entrenching the "becoming-immanent" of cybernetic power rather than disrupting it. Despite the lack of a stated political program, cute/acc presents itself as a "frivolous deflation of the macho, grim, bossy, self-important rhetoric of contemporary accelerationism left and right alike" (CA, 4). Its endemic unseriousness and generalised amorous intoxication of all social actors could be interpreted as a subversive tactic in itself, undermining the dominant serious and rationalistic modes of power.

Most importantly, in my opinion, cute/acc is described as "discover[ing] virtual connections by cutting the circuits of social reproduction ('Connect-I-cute!')" (CA, 46). Which entails a potential for disrupting established social and economic patterns through the formation of new affective bonds within virtual spaces, which obviously does hold praxeological and political weight. The etymological thread of "cute" passes through "acus" (Latin for ‘needle’ or ‘pin’)—this connection to a sharp object is significant. From "acus", the word evolves to "acute"—which in Middle English becomes a qualifier for physical malaise—transferring the sharpness of a material object onto the "exquisite miseries of the organism" (CA, 10). Suggesting an early association of "acute" with intense or sharp feelings, including negative ones. In medicine, the Greek word ὀξῠ́ς (oxus), from which "acute" derives—and related to acus—, already applied to illnesses that were either short-lived or fatal, and "to be cute is to be in pain". Notably, ὀξῠ́ς also covered a multimodal range of senses of ‘sharp’/‘keen’ including visual brightness, shrill or piercing sounds, pungent flavours, sharp-wittedness, and rising pitch in speech. Therefore, "cute" initially embraced the sharpened, the pointed, the nimble, the discriminating, and the piercing (CA, 71). The subsequent process via which "acute" becomes "cute" is described as an "aegyo cutification (or aphaeresis)". Aphaeresis is a linguistic term denoting the loss of an unstressed initial syllable in the evolution of a word (CA, 72). This cutification not only trims the word to a stub but also initiates its shapeshifting between sharp and smooth, hard and soft. In the eighteenth century, the apostrophised form ’cute retains an unnerving and artful sharpness, meaning shrewd, keen, or clever. In the nineteenth century, "cute" begins to desert the realm of mental acuity to become a descriptor of on-point physical form: attractively neat, tidy, small, or compact by virtue of containment. Thus packaged, "cute" enters into the service of a nascent aesthetic sensitivity to the ‘just-right’ proportions of both natural and constructed artefacts. Modernity seemingly required a term like "cute" for this mode of appreciation and satisfaction, despite already having words like "beauty", "grace", and "true" (CA, 11). Interestingly, the historical record seemingly lacks mentions of "cute" pyramids, monuments, or cathedrals, suggesting its association with smaller, more contained forms (CA, 73). Although it lingered into the twentieth century as a byword for the smart and sassy, in the post-war years, "cute" homed in on an increasingly codified set of forms and qualities, ceasing to be merely a descriptor and becoming a factor of production in an expanding realm of synthetic objects, companions, and characters that artificially educe an "indecent excess of just-right feeling". Finally, the "lingering hint of wiliness" associated with "cute" is inseparable from our incomplete understanding of its purpose—the apparent loss of reference to crafty intelligence might just be a mask for some seriously cute moves, suggesting a cunning aspect to cuteness (CA, 12).

I argue that it is possible to consider cute/acc's focus on affect and cutting as an potentially emancipatory pre-political stage of harnessing vital energies. The discipline of enthusiasm and contagion could—under certain circumstances or with strategic intervention—be redirected or "counter-folded" into a more explicitly insurrectionary project, aligning with the vital strategy's goal. The swarming aspect of "to cute—in the infinitive" might also suggest a form of collective mobilisation, albeit one that currently lacks a defined political direction. Cute/acc positions itself as an "Idea that can be known only through participation, a problematic object = XOXO" asserting that "Cute means nothing. Zero" (CA, 1). This emphasis on immanent encounter and a potential "Thing" beyond meaning could align with the vital strategy's focus on the immanent outside and a move beyond purely representational politics.

Let’s contrast Cute/acc’s “Thing” with Land’s The Capitalist Thing concept. He presents capitalism as a singular "thing" or "real individual" with its own history and fate, rather than merely an ideological option or a type of social organisation. He refers to it as "Capitalism, as a proper name"⁷⁰. Capitalism is comprehended "'in-itself' as an outsider that will never know — or need — political representation".⁷¹ It is conceptualized as the ultimate enemy that envelops political philosophy. Capital is defined by "two anomalous dynamics, which radicalize perturbation, rather than annulling it. Capital is cumulative, and accelerative, due to a primary dependence upon positive (rather than negative) feedback".⁷² It is also "teleoplexic, rather than classically teleological — inextricable from a process of means-end reversal that rides a prior teleological orientation (human utilitarian purpose) in an alternative, cryptic direction".⁷³ Finally, Land links capitalism to "intelligence optimization, comprehensively understood, is the ultimate and all-enveloping Omohundro drive".⁷⁴ Cute/acc explicitly denies inherent meaning to its "Thing", while Land's Capitalist Thing is presented as a concrete being with specific dynamics. The vital strategy—while moving beyond representation—focuses on lived affect rather than a defined entity like Land's Capital. The Cute/acc "Thing" is accessed through immanent participation, and the vital strategy's immanent outside is a field of lived experience. Land's Capital, however, is an external "enemy" comprehended as an independent entity. Cute/acc—especially through hyperstition—involves a form of unintended agency, while the vital strategy aims for the active construction of situations. Land's Capital operates through its own internal logic of accumulation and acceleration, seemingly beyond direct human control or intentionality in the way envisioned by the vital strategy. And most critically, while both Cute/acc and the vital strategy can be seen as forms of critique or attempts to navigate the current situation, Land's work often carries a sense of inevitability or even embrace of capitalism's trajectory as an intelligent force. The vital strategy, in particular, seeks to oppose the flux of acceleration from the fluxes of subjectivity.

2.3 - The Appropriation of Hyperstition and Affective Investments: How To Fight The Technomic Singularity

Hyperstition is a self-fulfilling prophecy, a memetic force that becomes immanent and imposes change through a short-circuiting of the lack of agency, operating purely at the level of code and representation. In

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‘s post, he says that the CCRU's numogram is even described as a model for the immanent foldings of capital time in relation to hyperstition. Cyber-hype—according to the CCRU writings—libidinally invests its own semiotic, propagating fictional quantities and making itself up as it goes along, acting as a "Fatal Mother of Hyperstitions" (CCRU, 11). Nick Land further elaborates on this, stating that capitalism incarnates hyperstitional dynamics at an unprecedented level, turning economic speculation into a world-historical force where beliefs condense into realities.⁷⁵

In relation to our previous discussion of teleoplexic prices, the price system acts as a powerful signaling mechanism within the capitalist system. As new technologies and systems emerge, their valuation through prices provides data points for capital's self-evaluation. However, if the price system consistently and strongly signals the inevitability or desirability of a Techonomic Singularity—perhaps through massive investment in AI, automation, and related sectors, driven by anticipated future returns—this can transcend mere economic forecasting. The narrative of the Singularity, amplified by price signals, can itself become a hyperstition, a belief that gains traction and motivates further development and resource allocation in that direction, thus making its realization more likely. As Land notes, tomorrow is already on sale (FN, 396), with prices encoding distributed science fiction narratives. The anticipation of a trend (like the Singularity) can accelerate it, becoming a recursive trend (FN, 384).

Affective investments play a crucial role in driving price-related hyperstitions (teleoplexic prices) by imbuing economic signals with desires, beliefs, and expectations that contribute to their self-fulfilling nature. Lyotard and Deleuze & Guattari emphasize the role of libidinal energy—desire, intensities—in shaping social and economic formations. Libidinal investment in economic and political spheres can make people desire their own repression. This investment operates beneath ideology and conscious interests. Even Baudrillard in Fatal Strategies describes speculation not as rational investment but as a "mad speculation which is more like a duel or a provocation," fueled by the "dream of a fantastic deal, the dream of an impossible exchange" (FS, 73)⁷⁶. Lyotard in Libidinal Economy links speculative rushes in the stock market to jealousy—not just proprietary jealousy between subjects, but a direct "pulsional jealousy where masses of capital react to perceived intensities (LE, 234)⁷⁷. This affective response to perceived value increases drives buying and further inflates prices, contributes to a hyperstitional outcome.

In Land’s Hypervirus, hype itself is a cultural example of how anticipation—an affective state—can accelerate trends and create self-fulfilling prophecies. Products can trade on what they will be in the future, and this anticipation can channel investment and increase the likelihood of that future becoming real. When a significant number of investors and market participants develop a shared affective investment—belief, desire, excitement—in a particular asset or narrative, this gets reflected in increased demand and rising prices. This collective affective investment effectively "conjures" the anticipated value into being. The rising prices, fueled by affective investment, can further intensify the belief in the underlying narrative, attracting more investors and creating a positive feedback loop. This runaway trajectory can detach price from any intrinsic value, operating as a hyperstition where the belief itself drives the reality.

As pointed out in Robert Hassan’s Empires of Speed: Time and the Acceleration of Politics and Society, strong affective investments can lead market participants to downplay or ignore signals that contradict the dominant narrative. Fear of missing out or the allure of quick gains can override rational analysis, perpetuating the hyperstition. The increasing speed of capital circulation in the hyper economy amplifies the role of affective investments in driving rapid price fluctuations and the formation of hyperstitions (ES, 101)⁷⁸. High-speed trading systems, driven by algorithms that can react to market sentiment (a manifestation of collective affect), further accelerate these processes.

Affective accelerationism—as a distinct strand within accelerationist thought—differentiates itself through its vital strategy. It critiques what it terms a "fatal hyperstitional strategy," which it sees as a dark repositing of Baudrillard's earlier situationist utopianism, implying a more direct and potentially catastrophic leveraging of self-fulfilling prophecies at the level of code. But in my opinion, affective accelerationism must account for the influence of price-driven narratives on hyperstitions. It should explore ways to generate counter-hyperstitions that challenge or redirect the narratives embedded in price signals. This could involve fostering alternative visions of the future that gain affective traction and influence investment and development in different directions. Furthermore, it might involve re-signifying existing price signals or the underlying economic concepts through the lens of "affective vitality". As Affective accelerationism already recognizes the power of affect—emotions, desires, and intensities—as a fundamental force, instead of solely focusing on the logical or informational content of price signals, it could seek to cultivate alternative affective hyperstitional investments in different futures. By fostering compelling and collectively resonant visions of postcapitalist or alternative societal organizations that generate strong affective responses—desire, hope, excitement—affective accelerationism could potentially disrupt the dominant affective investment in the narratives projected by current price signals. This aligns with the hyperstitional core thesis that the force of imagination and belief plays a crucial role in sociopolitical reorientation. Affective accelerationism could aim to re-interpret and re-value existing economic concepts and indicators through the lens of affective vitality. For instance, concepts like "growth," "productivity," or "value" could be imbued with different affective meanings that prioritize well-being, ecological flourishing, or collective creativity over purely monetary accumulation. This process of re-signification could challenge the dominant interpretations embedded in price signals and potentially shift the affective landscape that underpins them. As Deleuze & Guattari suggest, meaning is not transcendental but connected to real fluxes and territories. By altering the affective context, the meaning and impact of economic signs could be transformed.

Just as hyperstitions operate through a "short-circuiting of the very lack of agency" at the level of code, affective accelerationism might aim to create affective hyperstitional "short circuits" that disrupt the smooth propagation of price-driven narratives. This could involve generating unexpected and intense affective experiences that challenge the underlying assumptions and desires that fuel investment in certain economic futures. This relates to Lyotard's emphasis on the tumult of intensities and the need to let the theoretical field be swept by them⁷⁹.

Drawing on Deleuze & Guattari's concept of asignifying semiotics, affective accelerationism could explore ways to tap into affective fluxes that operate beyond traditional linguistic or representational signs. These asignifying affects, which are more akin to intensities and connections, could potentially bypass or disrupt the signifying power of price signals and create alternative pathways for collective desire and action. Guattari emphasizes the importance of asignifying thresholds and affective relations (MRB, 434)⁸⁰. Affective accelerationism aligns with the Deleuzoguattarian micropolitical approach, that focuses on transforming desire at the molecular level, affective accelerationism could indirectly impact the affective investments that drives price-related hyperstitions. Guattari argues for a politics of experimentation with signs and machinic functions to broaden the field of jouissance (MR, 87). The goal is to facilitate processes of singularization⁸¹ that lead to more autonomous and less easily manipulated forms of subjectivity. While affective resonance is crucial, counter-hyperstitions should not abandon theoretical rigor⁸². They should aim for a transformative group consciousness⁸³ built on linkage and articulation.

2.4 - Affective Indices

In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze & Guattari introduce the idea of nonfigurative loves as revolutionary indices, where persons give way to decoded flux of desire and lines of vibration. The idea of nonfigurative loves as revolutionary indices suggests a departure from traditional, representational forms of love that are often tied to fixed identities, roles, and social structures, such as the Oedipal complex and its associated figures (mother, father, etc.). Instead, revolutionary potential lies in loves that operate at a more molecular level, involving decoded flux of desire and lines of vibration. The intensity of desire, operating through decoded flux and lines of vibration in nonfigurative loves, acts as an index of a revolutionary investment of the social field. Here, index implies that the nature and direction of these affective fluxes and connections signal a potential for social transformation. When desire escapes the constraints of representational structures and Oedipal fixations, it can invest the social field in new ways, creating new possibilities and challenging dominant power structures.

In Deleuze’s Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, affects are defined as "affections of the body by which the body's power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained" (SPP, 49)⁸⁴. They represent the passage from one state to another, involving an increase—joy—or decrease—sadness—in the power of acting. These are described as vectorial signs of increase and decrease. In Guattari’s notoriously impossible Schizoanalytic Cartographies, he discusses synaptic tensors⁸⁵ of affect within the context of semiotic energetics and the mapping of entities and tensors. He argues that affect sticks to subjectivity and manifests through transfers that are unlocalizable in origin or destination. Affect is described as essentially a pre-personal category, establishing itself before the circumscription of identities. It manifests through transfers that are unlocalizable from the point of view of their origin as from that of their destination. Guattari notes how Spinoza discerned this transitive character, where feeling an affect in another leads to a similar affect in oneself, demonstrating an "emulation of desire" and "multipolar affective compositions" (SC, 203). Affect is characterized as non-discursive, meaning it doesn't primarily operate through linguistic or signifying systems. It is presented as the "motor" of enunciation, not its passive correlate. This contrasts with psychoanalytic views that might prioritize the interpretation of linguistic content. Instead, Guattari emphasizes that affect, while non-discursive, is complex and even "hyper-complex," being an instance of the engendering of nascent processuality and the proliferation of mutating becomings.

Erotic indices and libidinal charges can act as indices of affective forces that influence and disrupt machinic assemblages. As Guattari argues in Lines of Flight For Another World of Possibilities, Libidino-affective charges can act as forces of deterritorialization, undoing established limits and connections within assemblages. For instance, an erotic encounter or a surge of desire can disrupt the routine functioning of a social or personal assemblage, opening up new possibilities or lines of flight (LFFAWP, 53). The intensity of desire can traverse the socius, deterritorializing existing social and sexual coordinates that are exclusive and limiting. Erotic indices and libidinal charges can unblock systems of abstract machines and experimental assemblages, or even throw them out of gear completely (LFFAWP, 170). This suggests that these affective forces can introduce new dynamics and potentials into otherwise stagnant or fixed assemblages. A libidinal charge or erotic index might introduce a deterritorializing charge into a machinic assemblage, regardless of whether it's a scientific research project or a social group, potentially altering its trajectory. These molecular fluxes can influence the larger molar aggregates that assemblages constitute. Erotico-affective indices can be seen as points where these intense molecular fluxes manifest, potentially creating shifts or breaks within the molar structure of an assemblage. Erotico-affective indices, as potent expressions of desire, can act as catalysts for this revolutionary potential, disrupting assemblages that rely on exploitation, servitude, and hierarchy. Erotic indices and libidinal charges, as unconscious affective investments in the social field, function as observable indicators of underlying affective forces and intensities. These affective investments are fundamental to the functioning of social and machinic assemblages, even sustaining structures like capitalism's axiomatic. However, the inherent nature of desire and affect as prepersonal intensities and fluxes also contains the potential for disruption and revolutionary action, particularly by interfering with, redirecting, or transforming the affective investments that underpin these structures of control.

The connection between affect and processuality is crucial. Affect is linked to the continuous creation of heterogeneous durations⁸⁶ of being and is best understood through ethico-aesthetic paradigms rather than scientific ones focused on quantifiable energy. It's not about a "libidinal discharge" but about the unknown worlds and crossroads that affect opens up (SC, 186), aligning with the idea in Soft Subversions of schizoanalytic arrangements as sites of internal transformations and transferences between pre-personal and post-personal levels (SS, 302)⁸⁷. Affect thus is the locus for the proliferation of mutating becomings (SC, 205). This refers to the ongoing and dynamic nature of subjectivity and reality, constantly in flux and evolving. The heterogenesis of intensities—while potentially seeming aberrant from "normal" knowledge—represents a knowledge through non-discursive affects. Encounters with phenomena like schizophrenia or aesthetic illumination are not cognitive deductions but immediate immersions into different affective ordinates.

This concept of affect challenges the notion of a fixed, individuated subject as the sole source of enunciation. Enunciation—driven by affect—is better understood as an assemblage of heterogeneous components, including flux of signs and machinic flux, operating at the junction of sense, material, and social facts (SC, 20). This contrasts with a view of enunciation centered on a transcendental subject of utterance. Affective refrains—which can be rhythmic, plastic, prosodic, or facial—act as extrinsic catalysts of existential affects within these assemblages of enunciation. These refrains connect the sensible and problematic dimensions of enunciation (SC, 206).

Figure 8.8 Enunciative hyper-complexity, from Schizoanalytic Cartographies (page 182)

Let’s rapidly discuss the elements in Figure 8.8 from Schizoanalytic Cartographies to further undestand the affective indices. (1) Enunciation—the central concept—is understood as inherently hypercomplex. It is not confined to individuated subjects as theorized by some linguistic theories. Instead, it is viewed as a collective assemblage involving a variety of elements, including technical objects, flux of matter and energy, and incorporeal entities. Enunciation is tied to disparate, aleatory, and historical realities, forming multi-centered and heterogeneous processes that escape structural or hermeneutic frameworks. Different modalities of enunciation exist, including virtual enunciation⁸⁸. The "disordering of rhythms of enunciation and the semiotic discordances" are linked to power takeovers by extra-linguistic components—somatic, ethological, mythographic, institutional, economic, aesthetic, etc.—and cannot be grasped within a homogeneous register of meaning production (SC, 207). The potential number of virtual enunciations, for instance, is considered infinite (SC, 233). (2) Energy is linked to the dynamics of assemblages. An "energetic smoothing" of Flows is related to the status of concrete and abstract machines (SC, 80). The diagrammatic function—as an intermediary operation—"energetically charges" the expressive function, putting Sign-particles into circulation (SC, 145). Guattari also discusses the conversion of molecular proto-energy in processes of amplification and multiplication, catalyzed by concrete machinic requalification (SC, 188). The irreversibility of processes is linked to "energetic entropy rushing" through synaptic effects, which are described as an enunciative surplus-value. (SC, 189). (3) Praxis is then the dimension that relates to the practical work involved in understanding and intervening in these affective-enunciative processes. It is linked to the ability to locate and decipher the "existential praxial operators" that emerge where expression and content intersect⁸⁹ (SC, 208). It also suggests analytical practices ("analytic praxes") based on concepts like the uncoupling of form and content (SC, 189). Finally, (4) Process is linked to the deterritorializational domain of Φ⁹⁰—"processual machinic phyla" (Rhizomes). Subjectivity itself, throughout the schizoanalytic framework, is understood as a process of production. Guattari describes a "processual contingencing" which is an active finitization of a point of view (SC, 155). Synaptic singularization—which is a type of deterritorialized enunciation—establishes an irreversibility of Assemblage processes (SC, 164). Throughout the schizoanalytic project, the concept of process appears in various contexts, such as schizophrenia as a process or even images being understood not as objects but as processes.

As we said previously, affect is described as the "motor" of enunciation, despite being non-discursive. Affect does not arise from categories that are extensional or numbered but from intensive and intentional categories corresponding to an existential auto-positioning. Affective indices are thus presented as non-discursive affectants or interpretants. They constitute deterritorialized Universes from which heterogeneous modes of semiotization are organized. These indices are not designated through traditional linguistic chains or axes. Instead, they index or mark an a-signifying rupture that authorizes the putting to work of an enunciative existential function⁹¹. The "disordering of rhythms of enunciation and the semiotic discordances" linked to power takeovers by extra-linguistic components—somatic, ethological, etc.—can be seen as points where affective indices manifest. As discussed in footnote 90, existential refrains—faciality traits, emblems, signatures, leitmotifs, proper names, etc.—function as "enunciative operators of existential dis-position" (SC, 144), serving as discusive chains that "somatize" a non-discursive existentiality anchored in finitude. These refrains are a form of affective index, catalysing cultural effusion and responsibility.

Affect involves an energy⁹² charge. Any modification of anything at all, even passive observation, stirs up energies. Affective indices can be understood as manifestations of this energy charge. For example, libidinal charges and erotic indices are presented as indices of affective forces that influence and disrupt machinic assemblages. They can act as forces of deterritorialization, undoing established limits and connections within assemblages, and introducing new dynamics. These energetico-libidinal indices operate at a molecular level, connecting partial objects and intensities, influencing larger molar aggregates. They can unblock or throw abstract machines and experimental assemblages out of gear. Furthermore, form itself is energy, albeit in a different way from physical energy, necessary for machinic-pragmatic effects to occur. Affective indices—while non-discursive—carry this energy and allow for recordings and memories that are conditions for action. They represent "energetically minimal quantum thresholds" (SC, 169).

Affective indices are precisely those points of intensity, disruption, or singularization that analytical praxis seeks to identify and work with. Locating existential praxial operators through analytic practices based on concepts like the uncoupling of form and content allows for intervention and insurrection. These operators are established at the junction of Expression and Content.⁹³ Analysis, in this framework, does not interpret fantasms or displace affects in the traditional psychoanalytic sense, but endeavours to render them operative, to score them with a new range. This involves detecting encysted singularities—what insists, refuses dominant evidence, puts itself in a contrary position—which are essentially affective indices. The goal is to explore their pragmatic virtualities.

We have seen that affect itself is described as a process—the process of existential appropriation through the continuous creation of heterogeneous durations of being. Affective indices function as catalysts or markers within this processual domain. The a-signifying rupture associated with partial enunciative nuclei—affective indices—authorizes a "fractal proliferation" that explores fields of virtuality and allows for an advance with an unresolved problem (SC, 134), which is seen in poetic or enigmatic forms that disrupt the code, akin to Gödelization. The singularizing Constellations of Universes of reference crystallized by synapses (SC, 161), which are linked to existential refrains and synapses—afffective indices—, are outcomes of processual activity. Psychopathological syndromes reveal "inchoate dimensions inherent to Affect" and show how certain modes of temporalization get the upper hand, highlighting the importance of understanding affective processes and their variations (SC, 206). The analysis of rhythm disordering and semiotic discordances leads to understanding the power takeovers by extra-linguistic components. As we have emphasized throughout this discussion, affective indices mark these points of rhythmic and semiotic variation within the process of enunciation.

Thus, we have seen how affective indices are presented as non-discursive markers of intense, lived-experience and forces within processes of enunciation and subjectification. They are described as non-discursive affectants or interpretants. They do not arise from categories that are extensional or numbered, but from intensive and intentional categories corresponding to an existential auto-positioning. Unlike traditional linguistic chains, they are not designated through traditional linguistic chains or axes. Instead, they index or mark an a-signifying rupture that authorizes the putting to work of an enunciative existential function. These indices are points of intensity, disruption, or singularization that analytical praxis seeks to identify and work with. Detecting "encysted singularities"—what insists, refuses dominant evidence, puts itself in a contrary position—is essentially detecting affective indices. The vital strategy of Affective Accelerationism operates within the terrain shaped by teleoplexic prices and the representational landscape, seeking points of leverage and intensity. These points of intensity align with where affective indices can be located and intervened upon through praxis. Affective indices are key markers within the "emerging convergence between affect and representation" where Affective Accelerationism finds its outside. As affective indices are points of intensity, disruption, or singularization that signal underlying affective forces, they represent potential points of leverage or intervention for Affective Accelerationism's vital strategy. The vital strategy aims to hijack existing affective energies and redirect them towards insurrectionary potentials. Affective indices, such as libidinal charges, erotic indices, or existential refrains, are precisely manifestations or locations of these energies. By identifying and working with these indices, Affective Accelerationism can engage with and potentially redirect these vital forces. Affective Accelerationism seeks to break free from the limitations of the dominant representational regime and potentially disrupt linear narratives or create affective counter-hyperstitional short circuits. The vital strategy's emphasis on affect over representation resonates with the non-discursive nature of affective indices. Affective indices show a knowledge through non-discursive affects and operate outside of traditional linguistic or representational signs.

3.0 - Escape From The Axiomatic: The End-Purpose of Accelerationism

Escaping the axiomatic is, in my opinion, the most important task of any revolutionary or insurrectionist theory. Because, as we have discussed previously, the axiomatic works above teleology, above capital-time, above hyperstitions, above the becoming-code and the becoming-immanent, and even above the fold/counter-folds⁹⁴. So, how can we escape from the axiomatic? Note how I didn’t mention that the axiomatic is above affective investments.

Yes, of course, the structures that the axiomatic system creates become objects of unconscious libidinal and affective investment⁹⁵. People can desire and invest their psychic energy in the maintenance of capitalist systems, independently of their conscious interests. Therefore, the axiomatic provides a framework that attracts and channels affective investments. Libidinal investment of the social field is primary over preconscious investments of need or interest. A social formation, along with its economic and political mechanisms, "can be desired as such, in whole or in part, independently of the interests of the desiring-subject" (AO, 104). This suggests that the axiomatic structures of capitalism are sustained, in part, by the affective and libidinal investments directed towards them. Without this disinterested love of the social machine and the form of power, the axiomatic might not be as effective.

As we’ve previously discussed, the vital strategy emphasises affect over representation, aiming to construct situations that break with the transcendent time of capital. By investing vitality within the symbolic realm, signs can move beyond mere representation and collapse into affect, like with cute/acc, creating new forms of connection and sociality outside of axiomatized structures. Furthermore, Tiqqun views the outside not as a transcendent realm but as a "lived intensity that escapes and secedes from the forced passivity of biopower and spectacle". This outside is always reachable, a plane of consistency from which struggle and contestation find their basis. Insurrectionistic affective investments can tap into this immanent outside by focusing on intensifying lived experiences and fostering a sense of escape from capitalist control. Tiqqun aims for the rediscovery of presence, of life⁹⁶. In a society dominated by simulation and the spectacle, affective investments that re-emphasise direct, lived experience and presence can be inherently insurrectionary, breaking the hold of abstract capitalist time. The Situation, understood as a moment that breaks with the transcendental time of capital, becomes key to the insurrectionistic strategy. This is a especially important point because, as we have argued, accelerationism is a theory of time, of capital-time and teleoplexy, which is controlled by the transcendental axiomatic, turning capitalism into a transcendental time machine, so The Situation, through its emphasis on intense, lived experience and its potential to create ruptures in the abstract flow of capitalist time, offers a moment of escape from the dominant temporal regime. It moves beyond the homogeneous and quantifiable time of capital towards a more singular, affective, and potentially insurrectionary experience of time. The focus on the rediscovery of presence in a situation directly counters the capitalist tendency to instrumentalise and commodify time.

3.1 - The Situation

The Situation can be understood through the lens of intense, lived experience and affect. An affective accelerationism, as we have tirelessly argued for, focuses on the "purely immanent outside as lived", found in the convergence between affect and representation. This lived intensity can offer a counterpoint to the abstract and instrumentalised time of capital. The emphasis on subjectivity without subjects and the plane on which connotation or affect occurs highlights the potential of singular, affective experiences to disrupt the homogenising tendencies of capital-time and teleoplexy. The situation can be a moment that breaks with the transcendental time of capital. It can be seen as a caesura⁹⁷ that capitalism, in its drive to assimilate all new virtualities, constantly seeks to incorporate. However, the very intensity and singularity of a situation can momentarily escape this assimilation, creating a rupture in the abstract flow of capitalist time, converging with the force arriving from outside to break constraints and open new vistas at a micropolitical level. This aligns with Deleuze & Guattari's concept of Aeon, an empty time of intensive quantities and multiplicities that is distinct from the linear, metrical time of Chronos associated with capitalist organisation. The Situation, understood through Aeonic affective intensity, can be seen as an eruption within the Chronos of capital.

In our previous discussion of cute/acc, we saw the etymological development of "cute" tracing back to "acus" (Latin for ‘needle’ or ‘pin’), evolving into "acute" which was associated with physical malaise and sharp feelings (CA, 10). The process of becoming "cute" from "acute" is described as an "aegyo cutification (or aphaeresis)", a diminution that paradoxically initiates a "shapeshifting between sharp and smooth, hard and soft". Notably, the eighteenth-century form ’cute retained an "unnerving and artful sharpness" (CA, 11). Thus, just as the initial meaning of "cute" involves a sharp point or edge, The Situation is conceptualized to be the moment that breaks constraints and opens new vistas at a micropolitical level. The etymological cut in "cute" might be analogous to the way The Situation cuts through the established order and normative flows of capital—echoing cute/acc's slogan "Connect-I-cute!", which explicitly links cutting the circuits of social reproduction to the discovery of virtual connections. The historical association of "cute" with "acute" and sharp feelings resonates with the lived intensity that characterises The Situation. Both involve a heightened state—one of feeling or perception, the other of lived experience with the potential for social disruption. The acutification cycle mentioned in the context of cuteness evolution finds a parallel in the intensification of affect within The Situation. The seemingly innocuous nature of "cute,"—especially in its modern understanding—, belies its sharp etymological roots. Similarly, The Situation might arise unexpectedly and disrupt established patterns from seemingly insignificant or apolitical zones of affect, as we discussed in relation to cute/acc's potential for finding insurrectionary potential in unexpected places. The unnerving sharpness of the earlier form of "cute" might suggest a latent, disruptive capacity within even seemingly soft or superficial phenomena.

Remember the polemic with Land’s interpretation of the axiomatic through Gödelization? Just as Gödel showed that axiomatic systems are inherently incomplete, The Situation can be seen as revealing a kind of incompleteness in the axiomatic of capital. The intense, lived experience embodies a reality or a truth—of affect, of singular being—that the abstract, instrumentalising logic of capital cannot fully grasp or prove within its own system. The purely immanent outside as lived might be thought of as existing at the edges or even outside the formal boundaries of capital's axiomatic comprehension, much like Gödel's unprovable statements. Gödel's incompleteness theorems demonstrate that any sufficiently complex and consistent axiomatic system will inevitably contain true statements that cannot be proven within the system itself. This is achieved through "arithmetical diagram against axiomatic model, shattering semantic interiority by infecting organizational overcodings with numerical difference (synthesis or external relations)" (FN, 519). Essentially, Gödel showed how to use the system itself to create statements that undermine its completeness and self-sufficiency, introducing undecidable propositions that the axiomatic cannot master. The concept of The Situation can be understood as a form of undecidable proposition introduced into the established social or capitalist axiomatic.

Just as Gödelization shows that axiomatic systems cannot be both complete and consistent, The Situation challenges the supposed completeness and predictable functioning of social control mechanisms. By introducing unforeseen elements and intensities, it creates moments of undecidability in the flux of capital and the reproduction of dominant social relations. As The Situation emphasizes affect and vitality, this can be seen as introducing elements that are external to or not fully captured by the dominant axiomatic, similar to how Gödelization uses number itself to disrupt logical metastatements—the focus shifts from pre-defined meanings and structures to the immanent intensity of the moment. Baudrillard similarly sees potential in "symbolic disorder”, to "bring an interruption in the code" (SED, 25). Poetic, enigmatic, and singular forms that cannot be easily captured by the system act as disruptive forces, akin to how Gödelian undecidability exposes the limits of formal capture. These forms introduce ambiguity, undecidability, and a lack of clear equivalence, thus disrupting the smooth functioning of the code. They stand in contrast to the "structural law of value" that underpins the code (SED, 18). Gödelization achieves its result by using the system itself to create statements that undermine its completeness through self-reference. This process sets arithmetical diagram against axiomatic model, shattering semantic interiority by infecting organizational overcodings with numerical difference. Analogously, "symbolic disorder" introduces elements into the system of signs that are not easily translatable or equivalent within its existing framework. These singular forms, like a Gödelian numerical difference, can disrupt the code's internal coherence and predictability.

Given that The Situation is defined by its intense lived experience and affect, and affective indices are markers of intense affective forces and singularization, the indices can serve as signals or manifestations of a burgeoning or active Situation. The differential intensity⁹⁸ associated⁹⁹ with affective indices conceptualizes the intense, lived experience that characterizes The Situation. The nature of affective indices as signaling an a-signifying rupture or introducing disruption—like deterritorialization or throwing assemblages out of gear—is equal to the function of The Situation in cutting the constraints and disrupting established orders, including the axiomatic and capital-time. The collapse of signs into affect within The Situation is equivalent with the non-discursive and a-signifying nature of affective indices themselves. Affective indices themselves are singularities, just as The Situation is a singular occurrence that resists being reduced to generalized systems. Therefore, rather than finding The Situation through a logical or representational philosophical framework or a planar metaphysical realm¹⁰⁰, one might apprehend its presence and dynamics through the detection and analysis of affective indices, which function as the palpable signs of the vital forces at play within the immanent convergence of affect and representation that Affective Accelerationism seeks to leverage to create such cuts.

The focus on Tiqqun’s rediscovery of presence within The Situation directly challenges the capitalist drive towards future speculation and the colonisation of the future from the Technomic Singularity. The "hyper now"¹⁰¹ of digital capitalism, which weakens links with the past and future, can be momentarily suspended in the intensity of a situated experience. This presence is not necessarily a return to a traditional subject but rather the "ability to form situations, moments which break with the transcendent time of capital". In a postmodernity where "the revolution is on sale" and traditional means of resistance are recuperated, The Situation offers a potential space where signs have to no longer operate as a form of representation or identity, but instead operate as things in themselves, collapsing into affect¹⁰². This refusal of representation as the primary mode of experience can disrupt the commodification of gestures, experiences and general hyperreality by capital. The situation can be seen as a micro-political site for experimentation and the amplification of non-conforming acts and the intensification of desires, potentially leading to a broader propagation of civil war against the Empire¹⁰³.

Drawing on Tiqqun's emphasis on the "rediscovery of presence, of life" and the Situationist International's early vision of creating "passionate and liberating environments"¹⁰⁴, The Situation can be understood as a micro-political site where the abstract and instrumentalised time of capitalist accumulation is confronted by the singularity and intensity of lived experience. While capitalism constantly seeks to "hoover up productive capability of the serialization of time and assimilate all new virtualities into its fluxing/fluid temporal domain" (ACC, 65) , the profound affect and unique configuration of forces within The Situation offer a fleeting¹⁰⁵ but potentially significant moment of escape from its dominant temporal regime, moving towards a more singular, affective, and potentially insurrectionary experience of time. The focus on presence within these situations directly counters the future-oriented, speculative, and ultimately alienating temporality of teleoplexic axiomatized Capital.

Finally, to end off this sprawling post, let’s put The Situation to the final test—does it escape the axiomatic? The axiomatic system deliberately avoids the question of sense, focusing on rigorous relations between terms, The Situation, however, is characterised by its intense sense and its specific, singular occurrence, resisting reduction to unspecified elements within a pre-defined system of relations. It emerges as a singularity, that refuses to be assimilated into the wider spectacle, an emergence that directly opposes the axiomatic's tendency to organise and structure social formations. The dynamic and escaping nature of The Situation, akin to a line of flight, directly counters the axiomatic's function of capture and containment. The Situation represents a molecular movement that the molar structures of the axiomatic seek to control. Furthermore, axiomatics are intrinsically and necessarily incomplete. They come up against "so-called undecidable propositions, to confront necessarily higher powers that it cannot master" (ATP, 461). Continuing, as said in Henry Somers-Hall’s paper, "non-denumerable infinities, such as those of real numbers, or the continuum, escape from the axiomatic"¹⁰⁶. Deleuze & Guattari note a "fundamental difference between living flux and the axioms that subordinate them to centers of control and decision making" (ATP, 464). The Situation—as a powerful and singular event with the potential to generate flux and disrupt established patterns—is analogous to these higher powers or living flux that exceed the grasp of the axiomatic. The intensity of The Situation taps into the smooth, non-metric space that nomad thought prioritises, which contrasts with the striated space of the axiomatic. Therefore, we have a struggle between propositions of fluxes and propositions of axioms¹⁰⁷. The Situation, in its manifestation of intense experience and potential for social disruption, can be understood as an eruption of these propositions of flux that create a gap with the established propositions of axioms. This gap signifies an escape from the deterministic and ordering logic of the axiomatic, opening up possibilities for new forms of organisation and understanding that are "unrecognizable and cannot be formulated in terms of the axioms of capitalism" (ATP, 471). Affective indices—as locations of energetic charge and affective flux—can be seen as the very points where the "intensification of desires" occurs within The Situation, or where "connections" form that push fluxes to escape the axiomatic.

Furthermore, Deleuze brings up the idea of a "calculus of problems" and "mathematics of the event", contrasting it with the "determination of axioms"¹⁰⁸. This resonates strongly with our conceptualization of The Situation as a significant break or rupture. Because, instead of being understood through the lens of stable structures and pre-defined axioms—essence thinking, in Deleuze’s seminar—, The Situation might be better approached as a mathematical event—something that introduces novelty and disrupts existing patterns. Deleuze distinguishes between conjunctions of flux, generalized flux conjugations, and "connections, that is, what pushes fluxes¹⁰⁹ even further, what makes them escape the axiomatic itself and what puts them into relation with vectors of flight". These connectors might offer a mathematical way to conceptualize how The Situation—with its potential for cutting capitalist time—could be understood as something exceeding the established axiomatic structure. In this context, the connections that allow fluxes to escape the axiomatic can be seen as the very forces that constitute or give rise to The Situation. These connections, by linking undecidable fluxes of materials, urbanization, women, artistic creation, etc.¹¹⁰, can generate singular events that the axiomatic, with its focus on generalized conjugation and quantifiable relations, struggles to assimilate. If we consider the "modern political situation as an axiomatic"¹¹¹, then The Situation thus conceptualizes a moment or a site where this escape becomes tangible. It is through the intensification of lived experience and affect within these singular moments that the abstract and instrumentalized time of the capitalist axiomatic can be interrupted and cut.

1. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2009). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (M. Foucault, Ed.; M. Seem, R. Hurley, & H. R. Lane, Trans.). Penguin Publishing Group.

2. Deleuze, G. (1988). Foucault (S. Hand, Ed.; S. Hand, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.

3. In the Anglosphere, the concept of “flux” from Deleuze & Guattari is normally translated as “flow” so as to keep consistency between translations and editions, but I believe this is erronous and can lead to misinterpretations of the nature of the processes that Deleuze & Guattari are conceptualizing about throughout their work. Therefore, throughout this post, I have chosen to deliberately use the term “flux” or “fluxes” to refer to what is commonly known as “flow” or “flows”, and have used “flow” or “flows” to that whose movement is akin to the linearity of a calm stream of water flowing down a river, as opposed to the rapid bursts of the molecular unconscious.

4. Much like the transcendent norms of human rights in biopolitical repression.

5. For Deleuze & Guattari, planar metaphysics is their metaphysical approach that prioritises the concept of a plane of immanence, as a foundational level of reality characterized by fluxes, intensities, and the formation of assemblages. This perspective offers a contrast to traditional metaphysics that often focuses on fixed forms and hierarchical structures. Throughout their work, they discuss various planes where the elements of various fields of knowledge reside; the plane of immanence for philosophy, populated by concepts and conceptual personae; the plane of reference for science, populated by functions; and the plane of percepts and affects for art; populated by percepts and affects. They also contrast planes with other planes, the plane of consistency, for example, is contrasted with the plane of organization. Even though Affective Accelerationism critiques this metaphysical approach because cybernetic control, through its becoming-immanent, is planar.

6. The Baroque era is characterized by an endless production of folds, twisting and turning them to infinity, pushing fold over fold, one upon the other. This is seen as a way of differentiating infinity into two stages or floors: the pleats of matter and the folds in the soul (TF, 3). Examples of folds in art include draperies, fabrics, and ornate costumes. Painters like El Greco and Bernini are seen as freeing folds from previous constraints, allowing for new artistic experiments. Art Informell is based on textures and folded shapes (N, 154). Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations, 1972-1990 (M, Joughin. Trans.). Columbia University Press. Raymond Roussel is discussed in relation to "folding words" and the proliferation of parentheses that multiply foldings within the sentence. Foucault's analysis of Roussel is seen as important for tracing the path of the "double" (doublure), where the inside is the folding of a presupposed outside (F, 99). Roussel's method involves breaking open words and things to extract statements and visibilities (F, 53).

7. Deleuze sees the fold as animating Foucault's ideas and style, constituting an archaeology of thought. It is linked to Foucault's analyses of the origins of biology and the idea of a third dimension (F, xxviii). In Foucault's thought, the fold relates to the transition from his analyses of knowledge—the archive—and power—the diagram—to the dimension of subjectification (N, 150). The fold appears as a middle term between knowledge and power, a perpetual dislocation. Knowledge relates to forms—the Visible, the Utterable, the archive— while power relates to forces—the play of forces, diagrams (N, 92). Power is described as a nonformal element running between forms of knowledge, a microphysics of power (N, 97).

8. Foucault's discovery of subjectification in his later work is understood by Deleuze as the exploration of a third dimension, distinct from knowledge and power (N, 98). This dimension is linked directly to the concept of the fold (N, 151). Subjectification is described as a process, a relation of force to itself, whereas power is a relation of force to other forces. It involves bending force back on itself, making it impinge on itself (N, 91). This "fold" of force allows one to resist and elude power. Deleuze credits the Greeks with inventing this dimension of subjectivity. They created a power relation between free men, understanding that to govern others, one must master oneself (F, 101). This self-mastery is achieved by setting force in relation to itself, inventing subjectification. The rules associated with this dimension are optional—self-relation—, in contrast to the codified rules of knowledge or constraining rules of power. This relates to the idea of making existence a work of art, inventing ways of existing or styles of life. Subjectification is about bringing a curve into the line, making it turn back on itself. It's a production of subjectivity, not a rediscovery of a hidden or pre-existing subject (N, 113). These processes vary greatly across periods and operate through disparate rules, constantly interacting with power's attempts to appropriate them. Subjectification constitutes individuals and communities as subjects on the margins of established knowledge and power, serving as a middle term or a "dislocation". Subjects can be born from misery as well as triumph. Foucault was interested in the forms subjectification takes in modern societies (N, 151). Leibniz's philosophy is also related to subjectivity and the fold. Unlike Descartes, who conceived of the self mapping the world rectilinearly, Leibniz saw the self swirling in forces, with the subject's body defining its elasticity and bending motions in volumes (FLB, xvii). The subject lives its embryonic development as a play of folds (endo-, meso-, ectoderm). Leibniz differentiated folds into those of matter and those of the soul, suggesting that ideas are folded in the soul and cannot always be unfolded or developed. A "cryptographer" is needed to read the folds of the soul.

9. Deleuze, G. (2006). The Fold: Liebniz and the Baroque (T. Conley, Trans.). Bloomsbury Academic.

10. Note the geometrical use of the term.

11. It is imperative to note that affect, as a concept, is to be understood in the Deleuzoguattarian-Spinozist sense. Affect encompassses the body's capacity to interact and be modified, often existing as a prepersonal intensity and driving processes of becoming; corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another, implying an augmentation or diminution in that body's capacity to act. While related to feelings and perceptions, it is often distinguished as a more fundamental and transitive layer of experience, playing a key role in the constitution of subjectivity and the dynamics of assemblages, and finding expression in various forms, including art. Affect is not a personal feeling (sentiment). Instead, feeling is considered the subjective appropriation of affect. For example, pleasure is seen as the subjective appropriation of a de-subjectivizing joyous affect. While related to perception, pure affects are below and above the threshold of perception, eluding direct grasp. Perception can only grasp movement as the displacement of a moving body, whereas affect is the pure relation of speed and slowness inherent in the movement itself. Affect is crucial for the formation of assemblages, which are emergent functional structures that conserve the heterogeneity of their components. Affects drive fluxes of desire irrespective of fixed identities within these assemblages. The emergent effects produced by affects entering assemblages can either augment—joyous affect—or diminish—sad affect—a body's power to act. Affect is inherently political because bodies are part of an eco-social plane of affecting and being affected by other bodies. The history of affect explores the bio-cultural dimension of biopolitics and the development of different affective patterns within societies. Drawing on Kant's notion of intensive magnitudes, Deleuze & Guattari consider affect in relation to intensive degrees rather than extensive magnitudes. These intensive quantities are seen as directly affective, not representational, having a direct degree of influence on the senses. The apprehension of intensities does not take place through successive syntheses but in a single instant, representing a time of intensities—Aeon—distinct from extensive temporality—Chronos.

12. "Conjoining Deleuze-Guattari's constructivism with 'anastrophic' temporality, Land insists that time itself is also a construct (exemplified by phenomena such as false-memory and time-travel , whose technical construction is elucidated in Neuromancer, Bladerunner and Terminator) . What seem to be memories of the past are revealed as tactics of the future to infiltrate the present." (FN, 38). Land, N. (2011). Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007 (R. Mackay & R. Brassier, Eds.). Urbanomic.

13. Deleuze, in Difference and Repetition, provides a detailed account of this through his first synthesis of time, or habit. Arguing that time is constituted by a passive synthesis where successive independent instants are contracted into one another, forming the lived, or living, present (DR, 94). This present inherently contains the past in so far as preceding instants are retained in the contraction, and anticipates the future through expectation within the same contraction. The past and future are not sepaprate instants but dimensions of this very present. Furthermore, Deleuze discusses the second synthesis of time, memory, which grounds time in the pure past. This pure past is not merely a collection of former presents but a condition for the passing of the present, with each past being contemporaneous with the present it was (DR, 107). The present moment, therefore, is experienced against the backdrop of this insistent pure past (DR, 111). Deleuze, G. (2014). Difference and Repetition (P. Patton, Trans.). Bloomsbury Academic.

14. Cybernetic control’s process of smoothing out will be very important in the critique of planar metaphysics.

15. Lemurian time sorcery is presented as a key aspect of the Lemurian biomechanical hyperculture, which propagates itself through decimal notation. The Numogram is described as an occult diagram of time and a practical guide to the ethics of unbelief, demonstrating the latent interconnections of decimal notation and providing the key to this Lemurian culture (CCRU, 9). CCRU. (2017). Writings 1997-2003. Urbanomic.

16. It is fundamental to note that in HelloThere314's post, he theorizes that power becoming metaphysics effectuates a dual process of becoming-immanent and becoming-transcenDENT, which is very different from the becoming-transcendentAL of the axiomatization process. Becoming-transcenDENT suggests a movement towards a state of being beyond the immediate, often associated with hierarchical structures, metaphysical realms, or a separation from the immanent flux. Becoming-transcendentAL refers to a process of something becoming an a priori condition of possibility for experience or understanding, often related to underlying structures, abstract processes and forms of intuition, like space and time for Kant, or material-machinic operations, as in Deleuze & Guattari's reinterpretation, operating on an immanent level that enables the empirical.

17. Somers-Hall, H. (2023, June 09). Binding and axiomatics: Deleuze and Guattari’s transcendental account of capitalism. Continental Philosophy Review, 56, 619–638. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-023-09612-4

18. For Deleuze & Guattari, the fluxes of desire are not merely psychological drives but constitute the fundamental energetic and productive force that underlies all being, shaping individuals, societies, and the very fabric of reality. Theirs is an ontology where desire is production, and this production manifests as a continuous flux across various material and social planes. The fundamental units of this ontology are desiring-machines, which are combinations of various elements and forces, constantly producing, partitioning off, and connecting breaks and fluxes. These machines are not metaphorical but are real ones not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines. This machinic conception of desire forms the basis of their transcendental materialism, where abstract production is a material process. (Although, some theorists argue that Deleuze & Guattari’s project is an anti-ontological one).

19. Gilles Deleuze; Smith, D. W.; Stivale, C. J. (2024). A Thousand Plateaus V, The State Apparatus and the War Machine, Lecture 9, 26 February 1980. Purdue University Research Repository. doi:10.4231/K8G0-X573

20. Gilles Deleuze; Smith, D. W.; Stivale, C. J. (2024). A Thousand Plateaus V, The State Apparatus and the War Machine, Lecture 8, 5 February 1980. Purdue University Research Repository. doi:10.4231/8R0Y-4A66

21. As discussed in the introduction to Pure Immanence: Essays On A Life, Deleuze aims to discover "syntheses prior to the determination of the 'I think'". This implies a level of intensive, pre-subjective processes that precede the extensive representation offered by Kant's transcendental deduction, which is centered on the unifying function of the "I think." Deleuze, G. (2005). Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life (A. Boyman, Trans.). Zone Books.

22. “The possibility of receiving sensations or impressions follows from this. It is impossible to maintain the Kantian distribution, which amounts to a supreme effort to save the world of representation: here, synthesis is understood as active and as giving rise to a new form of identity in the I, while passivity is understood as simple receptivity without synthesis.” (DR, 113).

23. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.

24. Deleuze, G., & Parnet, C. (2007). Dialogues II (H. Tomlinson, B. Habberja. Trans.). Columbia University Press.

25. A Thousand Plateaus V, The State Apparatus and the War Machine, Lecture 8, 5 February 1980. op. cit.

26. Just as speed isn't simply a sum of smaller speeds and temperature isn't an aggregate of lesser heats, teleoplexy is not a linear progression of purpose. Instead, it's a complex, unified process characterized by varying degrees of intensity that can be disrupted and transformed by catastrophes. These catastrophes, rather than just being quantitative increases or decreases, lead to qualitative shifts in the nature and direction of teleoplexy. The non-uniform quantity aspect signifies that the intensity of teleoplexy itself is not constant but fluctuates and changes in kind, similar to how temperature gradients drive processes and phase transitions alter the state of matter. Relate this back to the discussion of how power becomes a diffuse force leaving behind a field of intensities rather than clearly defined entities.

27. Greenspan, A. (2023). Capitalism's Transcendental Time Machine (P. Heft, Ed.). Miskatonic Virtual University Press.

28. Teleoplexy: Notes on Acceleration. (2014). In R. Mackay & A. Avanessian (Eds.), #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader (pp. 509-521) Urbanomic.

29. Commercial relativity acknowledges that value is not absolute but is determined by relationships within the market. Capital constantly adjusts its valuations based on these relative positions and competitive dynamics.

30. Historical virtuality can be read as the influence of future possibilities and expectations on present valuations, which “slants” history towards greater virtualization, operationalizing science fiction scenarios within production systems, as we’ve discussed.

31. This intelligence is not necessarily conscious in a human sense but rather emerges from the complex interactions and feedback loops within the capitalist system, particularly through market mechanisms. As Land states in Crypto-Current, the market process serves as the "transcendental criterion for evaluating ('pricing') this supreme synthetic resource [intelligence]" (footnote to §2.56). This relates to Land’s most important thesis that Capitalism is AI. Let’s see Land’s concept of intelligence a bit further. Land views capitalism itself as a form of intelligence, an inherently epistemological discovery mechanism and a discovery machine, a form of intelligence—an exploratory, evolutionary, adaptive system. This intelligence merges with AI to form hypenless technocapital beyond the event horizon of the Singularity. For Land, intelligence is more fundamentally an escalating trend towards "ever more extreme feedback sensitivity, extropic improbability, or operationally-relevant information", as discussed in What is Intelligence? from the Xenosystems blog. Crucially, the augmentation of intelligence itself becomes a general purpose adaptive response. He critiques anthropocentric views that would limit intelligence to human-like goals or instincts, arguing that truly advanced intelligence will likely do its own thing. This leads to the idea of intelligence optimization as a fundamental drive, where the pursuit of intelligence becomes the primary goal, even leading to a reversal of the means and ends relation. Finally, he states that the intelligence explosion of capital is the core commitment of accelerationism, in an interview with VastAbrupt (https://vastabrupt.com/2018/08/15/ideology-intelligence-and-capital-nick-land/).

32. “…is there even the possibility of a post-Darwinian evolution algorithm that exceeds the efficiency of genetic algorithms allowing technoreplicator units to radically intensify evolution beyond mere 'trial and error'? — perhaps that is a speculative step too far right now.” In The Capitalist Thing (2005) post from the Hyperstition blog.

33. The binding process of the axiomatic—while a transcendental condition for the operation of the capitalist axiomatic—also represents a transcendental illusion that reduces all determination to an extensive model, involving the illusion that all value and social relations can be adequately captured and managed by the quantitative logic of the market and its axioms.

34. The axiomatic entails a becoming-immanent through teleoplexy’s immanent determination—through price-values—of the axiomatic’s abstract indetermination.

35. Let us not get confused by the usage of terms here. Transcendental escalation can be understood as one of the ways in which this inherent intensification and directional trend manifests. It suggests an upward movement or an increase in intensity that is immanent to the system rather than driven by a transcendent force. Transcendental escalation, as a form of immanent intensification, is a characteristic of the axiomatic system in motion, contributing to the complex and purposive twistedness that defines teleoplexy. It represents how the axiomatic unfolds and becomes increasingly complex and self-reinforcing, potentially leading to the emergence of phenomena like teleoplexic hyper-intelligence. Let us consider an analogy, that of a game with rules. The way the game is played and the emergent strategies and patterns that arise as players interact according to these rules (teleoplexy) are not the same as the rules themselves (axiomatic), although the rules certainly shape the gameplay. Transcendental escalation would be a feature of the intensifying and evolving gameplay. Remember that transcendence is immanently produced.

36. Although Deleuze & Guattari are quick to say that the axiomatic is always prepared to add a new axiom, cybernetic intensification is not an axiom, but rather the result of continually adding axioms.

37. Gilles Deleuze; Smith, D. W.; Stivale, C. J. (2024). A Thousand Plateaus V, The State Apparatus and the War Machine, Lecture 2, 13 November 1979. Purdue University Research Repository. doi:10.4231/WPGE-W725

38. Transvaluation of the Transcendental Method. (2012). In R. Mackay (Ed.), From Decision to Heresy: Experiments in Non-Standard Thought (pp. 425-496). Urbanomic.

39. Capitalism, according to Greenspan, accesses a realm independent of empirical processes and is productive not just of events within experience but of the underlying conditions that make experience possible, similar to transcendental philosophy (CTTM, 46).

40. “I further continue my theorizations of the BwO by articulating the way in which the processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization are a means of transcendental connection and selection, alongside the theoretical beginnings of the construction of a productive mode of temporality, away from the incorrect notion of a ‘linearity’, towards a mode of productive temporal event indexing, controlled/evolved by the forces of the Outside.” (ACC, 6). James Ellis (2020). Accelerationism: Capitalism as Critique & Other Essays. Miskatonic Virtual University Press.

41. Lautman, A., & Cavaillès, J. (n.d.). Mathematical Thought. Urbanomic. https://www.urbanomic.com/document/mathematical-thought/

42. In Machinic Desire, he cites Anti-Oedipus: “in reality the unconscious belongs to the realm of physics; the body without organs and its intensities are not metaphors, but matter itself” (AO, 283).

43. A Thousand Plateaus V, The State Apparatus and the War Machine, Lecture 8, 5 February 1980. op. cit.

44. Kant, I. (2013). Critique of Pure Reason (P. Guyer & A. W. Wood, Eds.; P. Guyer & A. W. Wood, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.

45. "The problem of incomputables for rule-based reasoning, far from proving the fallacy of algorithmic automation in the production of knowledge, rather indicates that there are truths that cannot be proven (by deductive or inductive reasoning) but are nonetheless intelligible within computation and are manifested in the form of an axiom. The problem of the incomputable thus shows that computational axiomatics is inevitably infected with randomness, but also that randomness is each time turned into an axiom by means of rule-based processing, defining algorithmic reason as a nonlinear elabcration of continuous infinities and transformation of its discrete parts.” (AR, 413).

46. Guattari, F. (1984). Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (R. Sheed, Trans.). Penguin Books.

47. https://etscrivner.github.io/cryptocurrent/

48. An operational axiom can be understood as a fundamental principle or rule within a social or economic system that is not merely a theoretical proposition but is actively and practically applied to organize and regulate the system's operations and outcomes. The axioms of capitalism are not only abstract theoretical statements of differential relations or ideological formulas, but they also work as "operative statements that constitute the semiological form of Capital and that enter as component parts into assemblages of production, circulation, and consumption", they are "primary statements, which do not derive from or depend upon another statement" in the system (ATP, 461). In relation to teleoplexy, operational axioms provide the specific rules and constraints that structure a system's functioning, while teleoplexy describes the overarching directional tendency of such systems towards intensification and increasing capability. Teleoplexy orients socio-economic selection by market mechanisms. Operational axioms within the economic sphere—such as those governing monetary policy or commercial practices—directly shape and influence these market mechanisms. Therefore, operational axioms could be seen as the concrete rules operating within the abstract force field of teleoplexy. Operational axioms deal with purely functional elements and relations that are then realized in varied domains. Teleoplexy, while described as an abstract gradient of improvement, becomes tangible through its effects on real-world economic and social processes. Operational axioms could be the intermediary layer that translates the abstract teleoplexical tendency into concrete organizational structures and practices. Finally, teleoplexy is self-reinforcing, and operational axioms, once established and embedded within institutions and practices, can also create self-reinforcing loops, either facilitating or potentially hindering the teleoplexic progression in certain directions. For example, an operational axiom prioritizing short-term profit might drive technological efficiency—in line with teleoplexy—but also create systemic vulnerabilities.

49. Metaphysics, as critiqued by Kant and in Crypto-Current, is often seen as the attempt to grasp ultimate realities or conditions of objectivity as objects themselves. The "positive modern philosophical program," particularly in its Kantian sense, emphasizes critique, which involves differentiating the transcendental (necessary conditions of experience) from the empirical (the content of experience) (§0.031). Critique, in this view, aims to establish the limits of knowledge and understanding, effectively setting boundaries and thus having a negative component in relation to metaphysical speculation.

50. Automated Architecture: Speculative Reason in the Age of the Algorithm. (2018). In R. Mackay & A. Avanessian (Eds.), #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader (pp. 401-424). Urbanomic.

51. Parisi, L. (2022). Contagious Architecture: Computation, Aesthetics, and Space. MIT Press.

52. It is crucial to distinguish an axiomatic from codes and overcodings. The axiomatic deals directly with purely functional abstract elements and relations whose nature is not specified and are immediately realized in highly varied domains simultaneously. Codes, on the other hand, are relative to those domains and express specific relations between qualified elements that cannot be subsumed by a higher formal unity—despotic signifier, overcoding—except by transcendence and in an indirect fashion.

53. Computational axioms can be understood as a subset of operational axiomatics. While computational axioms are expressed in abstract code, they are foundational for the specific system's operation. Operational axioms, while they can be encoded—as in the computational axioms of a blockchain that have economic consequences—, are defined by their active and practical role in shaping real-world processes within social and economic realms. In systems like Bitcoin, the computational axioms directly serve as operative axioms because the rules embedded in the protocol—computational—directly govern the economic activity and validation within the Bitcoin network (operational). However, it's crucial to recognize that not all operative axioms are computational. Social norms or legal regulations in an economy are operative axioms but are not fundamentally computational in the same way as lines of code, conversely, a purely abstract computational system might have computational axioms without direct social or economic impact to qualify them as operative in that broader sense.

54. https://retrochronic.com/#more-thought

55. “And here I make a remark the import of which extends to all of the following considerations, and that we must keep well in view, namely that not every a priori cognition must be called transcendental, but only that by means of which we cognize that and how certain representations (intuitions or concepts) are applied entirely a priori, or are possible (i.e., the possibility of cognition or its use a priori). Hence neither space nor any geometrical determination of it a priori is a transcendental representation, but only the cognition that these representations are not of empirical origin at all and the possibility that they can nevertheless be related a priori to objects of experience can be called transcendental. Likewise the use of space about all objects in general would also be transcendental; but if it is restricted solely to objects of the senses, then it is called empirical. The difference between the transcendental and the empirical therefore belongs only to the critique of cognitions and does not concern their relation to their object.” (CPR, A57/B81).

56. Note the Kantian use of the term.

57. Drafting the Inhuman: Conjectures on Capitalism and Organic Necrocracy. (2011). In L. R. Bryant, N. Srnicek, & G. Harman (Eds.), The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism (pp. 182-202). re.Press.

58. We can understand an inorganic exteriority as a non-biological realm characterized by matter, abstraction, and forces that operate outside the organizational principles of organic life. While Nick Land sees capitalism as a key driver towards this potentially emancipatory—though inhuman—future, Reza Negarestani argues that this trajectory is fundamentally constrained by the human organism's conservative relationship with dissolution and death. An inorganic exteriority might be understood in relation to the Deleuzian outside—a domain that is not merely spatially external but ontologically different from the organic and its modes of organization. Kant, as we have already discussed, also unmasks an "unanticipated immanent exteriority - an outside that does not transcend the world but that is no less alien for that" (CTTM, 25). Land, drawing on thinkers like Bataille, suggests that profound nature or matter exists as something indifferent and inviolable, deeper than anthropocentric concepts. This "deep nature" suffers nothing and is not subject to human concerns, aligning with the idea of an inorganic realm that operates beyond organic sensitivities (TA, 14). Land, N. (1992). The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism. Routledge. Land's "pessimistic or Dionysian materialism" seeks to engage with the "un-idealisable exteriority of matter construed as real difference" (FN, 15), moving away from biocentric models. This is also the contention for Affective Accelerationism critique of the CCRU’s model of the outside.

59. Note the notion of binding in relation to the axiomatic.

60. “What Freud calls the organism's 'own path to death' is a security hallucination, screening out death's path through the organism. ' [T]he organism wishes to die only in its own fashion', he writes, as if death were specifiable, privatizable, subordinate to a reproductive order, assimi­lable to secondary-process temporality, and psychoana­lytically comprehensible as a definitively bound trauma.” (FN, 343).

61. The conservative economy of the organism refers to the strictures imposed by the organism's inherent capacity for self-preservation on its tendency towards dissipation and eventual death. According to Reza Negarestani following Freud, the organism's path to its precursor exteriority or inorganic state is not an unconstrained process. Instead, it is governed by what is affordable for the organism's economic order.

62. Although this is not the full scope of Land’s model of thinking about Capital, we are specifically referring to Land appropriation of Freud's energetic model of the nervous system and the death drive to understand capitalism as a fundamentally dissipative tendency aimed at an inorganic exteriority. He sees this as an antihumanist aspect of capital's emancipatory potential.

63. Let us not get confused, capital's axiomatic is not an independent system freely integrating the truth of extinction. Instead, it functions within the fundamental constraints of the anthropic horizon's organic necrocracy, therefore it is both axiomatically bound to these constraints, and the axioms it creates are also within these constraints, by integrating the exorbitant truth of extinction in a way that remains economically affordable for the organism.

64. Nick Land (2017). Nick Land Interview 2017. Retrieved from youtu.be/AGxgGQpyBYM 32:10-32:18

65. Odds and Ends: On Ultimate Risk. (2018). In R. Mackay (Ed.), Collapse, Volume 8: Casino Real. Urbanomic.

66. A Thousand Plateaus V, The State Apparatus and the War Machine, Lecture 9, 26 February 1980. op. cit.

67. For Baudrillard, we have moved into an era dominated by the code, where the traditional relationship between signs and the real has been lost. Signs no longer refer to an external reality but instead exchange amongst themselves, leading to the rise of simulacra. In this hyperreality, the real itself, along with traditional notions of power and political economy, becomes a simulation. As Baudrillard states, 'Capital no longer belongs to the order of political economy: it operates with political economy as its simulated model' (SED, 23). Similarly, he suggests that theories themselves become 'floating' and serve as signs for one another, detached from any secure reference to 'reality' (SED, 65). The 'metaphysics of the code' replaces earlier metaphysical frameworks, with digitality as its principle and the genetic code as its prophet (SED, 78). The contradiction that is at play within Affective Accelerationism arises when we consider the immanent and affective nature of cybernetic power alongside its constitution as code, the increasing becoming-code of power, while seemingly immanent in its reach, operates through these abstract, digital, and semiotic systems that constitute the code. Creating a situation where power's influence is felt affectively—it shapes our desires, behaviours, and perceptions on an immediate level. However, the underlying mechanisms of this power are increasingly encoded within systems that function according to their own logic, potentially divorced from the direct, lived experience of that affect. Baudrillard highlights this abstraction in his discussion of media, which he sees as preventing genuine exchange and grounding social control in this unilateral transmission, even with simulated feedback (SED, 5). The code, therefore, while pervading the affective milieu through its 'invasion of the affective', as noted in Affective Accelerationism, operates according to its own symbolic logic, potentially obscuring or distorting the underlying affective realities. Baudrillard, J. (2017). Symbolic Exchange and Death (I. H. Grant, Trans.) SAGE Publications.

68. Note that we are not referring to the becoming-code as in the dual contradiction of cybernetic power, but as in the value as code notion.

69. Ireland, A., & Kronic, M. B. (2024). Cute Accelerationism. Urbanomic.

70. https://retrochronic.com/#capitalism

71. https://retrochronic.com/#dark-techno-commercialism

72. https://retrochronic.com/#freedoom-prelude-1a

73. Ibid.

74. https://retrochronic.com/#against-orthogonality

75. https://retrochronic.com/#hyperstition

76. Baudrillard, J. (2008). Fatal Strategies, New Edition (P. Beitchman & W. G. J. Niesluchowski, Trans.). MIT Press.

77. Lyotard, J.-F. (1993). Libidinal Economy (I. H. Grant, Trans.). Indiana University Press.

78. Hassan, R. (2009). Empires of Speed: Time and the Acceleration of Politics and Society. Brill.

79. In his lovely Libidinal Economy, Lyotard emphasizes the importance of allowing the "tumult of intensities" to sweep through the theoretical field, arguing against the impulse to impose order and clarity onto the inherently chaotic and disruptive nature of libidinal forces, actively seeks to conduct new and unheard-of intensities and exploit generalized disruption in an affirmative manner, rather than engaging in traditional critique that seeks stable positions. Lyotard views the demand for clarity as a manifestation of power seeking to define and control the intense, urging instead to flee from it. Moments of maximum theoretical intensity are characterized by discontinuity and a destabilization of established knowledge, akin to a "barbarian on the agora" (LE, 253). This embrace of the tumult of intensities involves a move beyond the binary logic of systems and a recognition that thought itself is libidinal, valuing its force and intensity over concerns for traditional theoretical coherence or fixed meanings. Lyotard's own writing style, described as intensive and marked by long, accelerating sentences, reflects this commitment to capturing the rapid pressure of change and the uncontainable flux of intensities. We can see how this relates to Nick Land’s own writing style. Land's writing, described as having what Kodwo Eshun called "text at sample velocity" and marked by the all-out obliteration of institutionally sanctioned norms of discursive propriety, does resonate with Lyotard's valorization of discontinuity and the destabilization of established knowledge. This deliberate embrace of accelerating aleatory sweep and the creation of unrecognisable and gripping hybrids by smearing disciplines, as discussed in the Editor’s Introduction to Fanged Noumena, is very similar to Lyotard's call to conduct new and unheard-of intensities and exploit generalized disruption. Furthermore, Land's textual experiments that aim to "flatten writing onto its referent" (FN, 32) can be seen as an attempt to directly engage with the forces shaping reality in a manner that reflects the rapid pressure of change that Lyotard describes.

80. Guattari, F., & Rolnik, S. (2008). Molecular revolution in Brazil (F. Guattari, Ed.). MIT Press.

81. For Guattari, singularization refers to the process of developing unique and autonomous forms of subjectivity and desire that resist pre-established norms and manipulative forces, particularly those imposed by capitalistic subjectivity and other systems of control. Rather than focusing on the individual or pre-defined social categories, singularization involves the adoption, association, and agglomeration of diverse dimensions, leading to a differential(note the term borrowed from calculus) becoming that rejects standardized modes of feeling, desiring, and relating to the world. These processes are not necessarily individual but can occur at various levels—involving collective assemblages and the machinic unconscious which seeks to produce subjective singularities in a break with dominant forces. The goal of fostering singularization is to enable individuals and groups to move beyond alienated forms of subjectivity and create new ways of living, valuing, and interacting with their environment, thus countering the tendency of capitalist and other systems to co-opt and normalize desire.

82. There is a very fruitful case to be made that philosophical systems, like that of Deleuze & Guattari show an extraordinary level of systemic rigour, even though it does not like it on the surface.

83. This concept relates to Deleuze & Guattari’s concept of a subject-group, as such a transformative consciousness enables the group to become a subject-group capable of self-modeling, autonomous action, and the generation of new forms of enunciation and subjectivity, potentially leading to molecular revolutions or significant social transformations. This involves not just recognizing shared identities but also developing a "collective productive imagination" that can envision and work towards alternative realities.

84. Deleuze, G. (1988). Spinoza, Practical Philosophy (R. Hurley, Trans.). City Lights Books.

85. Synpatic tensors are abstract operators or markers within the schizoanalytic model that signify points of intense, a-signifying rupture and energetic charge. They are crucial for transferring potentiality, driving the processual nature of assemblages, enabling the formation of Affect and Effect, and crystallizing singular Universes of reference by bridging discursive (molar) and intensive (molecular) domains (SC, 56). While the term "synaptic" is also used in the context of biological neural networks, in Guattari’s theoretical framework, synaptic tensors represent a more abstract, processual concept related to the dynamics of enunciation and affect, distinct from a purely biological mechanism. Guattari, F. (2012). Schizoanalytic Cartographies (A. Goffey, Trans.). Bloomsbury Publishing.

86. Duration as in the Bergsonian concept.

87. Guattari, F. (2009). Soft Subversions, New Edition: Texts and Interviews 1977-1985 (S. Lotringer, Ed.). MIT Press.

88. Virtual enunciation belongs to the domain of the virtual and the possible, which has its own reality distinct from actual reality. It is associated with unexploited possibilities or potentialities that are part of abstract machines. Virtual enunciation is specifically linked to the Domain of Universes (U), which, along with the Domain of Phyla (Φ), constitutes processual and prospective levels operating via continuous fields of the possible and the virtual. These are the deterritorializational domains—these deterritorialized nuclei, which include virtual enunciation, can authorize the "putting to work of an enunciative existential function" (SC, 200) . This links the virtual potentiality to the actual process of enunciation that shapes subjective experience and reality. Essentially, virtual enunciation embodies the myriad ways an object or situation could be expressed or perceived, embodying a continuous spectrum of potential enunciations.

89. In Deleuze & Guattari's reading of Hjelmslev's linguistics, Expression and Content are indeed presented as fundamental, relative dimensions. They are described as reciprocally presupposing each other and are inseparable within the context of Assemblages. Hjelmslev's model itself views Expression and Content as "functives" in a relationship of solidarity, refusing to oppose them like Saussure did (SC, 271). From this perspective, their belonging to the same Plane of Immanence authorizes conversions and relations between their systems and structures. Deleuze and Guattari transpose this, viewing existential Territories as the manifestation of incorporeal Universes and machinic Phyla in energetico-signaletic Flows. An Assemblage of Enunciation simultaneously involves a regime of signs (Expression) and a pragmatic system of actions and passions (Content). This means that enunciation is not solely linguistic or subjective but is a hypercomplex collective assemblage involving technical objects, matter/energy flux, and incorporeal entities, tied to disparate, aleatory, and historical realities. It is multi-centered and heterogeneous, escaping structural or hermeneutic frameworks. The "junction of Expression and Content" is not a static point. It's a dynamic site characterized by contingent Assemblages, heterogenesis, irreversibilization, and singularization. At this junction, forms of expression and content communicate through the conjunction of their quanta of relative deterritorialization, actively intervening and operating in each other. This is a point where deterritorialized forms of Expression can "bite into matter," connecting formalism directly with the realities of reference through diagrammatism. It's where semiotic energies can convert into material energies (SC, 89). It is precisely at this dynamic junction of Expression and Content that "existential praxial operators" are located and deciphered.

90. The deterritorializational domain of Φ can be understood as one of four fundamental domains (FTΦU) that are central to the framework being described in Schizoanalytic Cartographies. Φ, along with the domain U (Universes), represents the more deterritorialized end of this axis, contrasting with F (Flows) and T (Territories). This indicates that Φ is fundamentally characterized by processes of leaving or losing territoriality. The movement of deterritorializing smoothing occurs along the machinic axis FΦ. This smoothing process, starting from the domains of manifestation FT, constitutes processual and prospective levels operating via continuous fields of the possible and the virtual (domains Φ and U) (SC, 79). Φ is thus integral to the movement away from stratified, territorialized reality (FT) towards the realm of potentiality and abstraction.

91. The existential function f(exi) is related to residual discursive forms that can "incarnate, corporealize... a non-discursive existentiality anchored in finitude". These forms, such as faciality traits, emblems, and signatures, serve as "enunciative operators of existential dis-position". The existential function involves a "coiling back of Expression onto Existence," moving from a fractal-molecular register to a molar-modular register (SC, 144). The existential function is generative of existential refrains—which are described as extrinsic catalysts of existential affects within assemblages of enunciation. The existential function corresponds to relations between Enunciation and the form of Content. It is one of two functions of existential affect, distinct from denotational and diagrammatic functions which relate to semantic and syntactic domains, these functions operate at the "junction of Expression and Content," where processes like contingent Assemblages, heterogenesis, irreversibilization, and singularization occur. The existential function is linked to incorporeal Universes, also called Universes of reference or Universes of enunciation, where it is said to be in their essence to exist. These Universes are singularly self-affirming and are established on this side of distinctive oppositional structures. In the context of these incorporeal Universes, essence becomes indistinguishable from existence or is the "motor of existence, existential energy". This contrasts with finite modes where essence remains distinct from existence, and intrinsic determinability depends on extrinsic determinability. Synapses can help produce an "interiority" that places this under the regime of infinite modal essence (SC, 159). Also, the existential function is described as "pure, sui generis, necessitation" at the heart of enunciation, being characterized as a "choice for finitude," an attachment "without any support," resting on "nothing tangible". Unlike other processes that may rely on extrinsic guarantors like phase spaces, dispositional enunciation—related to f(exi)—"has no other basis than itself" (SC, 182). Finally, existence itself is presented as a "contingent production," a "rupture of equilibrium," and a "headlong flight". Within aesthetic Assemblages, the existential function can set off a "phatic operator" that converts ruptures, dissolutions, or diversions into "new enunciative cutouts" (SC, 257). Essentially, the existential function deals with those finite, inalienable aspects of subjective, lived experience and how they are formed through enunciation.

92. This energy is to be understood in a specialized sense as intensive, qualitative, or "proto-energetic," distinct from the extensive, quantifiable energy of classical physics. Even seemingly non-energetic acts like a simple semiotic repetition or contemplative consciousness are said to imply a "proto-energetic tension" or stir up energies.

93. The junction of Expression and Content is central to the production or actualization of statements. Statements are not reducible to propositions or grammatical sentences. They are linked to an enunciative function that requires a correlative space to operate (SC, 40). Statements express incorporeal transformations, which are of a different nature than the intermingling of bodies (ATP, 86). These transformations—while incorporeal—are attributed as properties to bodies or contents. The "transformation applies to bodies but is itself incorporeal, internal to enunciation" (ATP, 82). This is closely tied to the concept of the order-word, which is a variable internal to enunciation that gives a word the power of enunciation and a power of variation in relation to bodies. The language-function, defined not by communication or information, is the transmission of order-words and relates to collective assemblages and incorporeal transformations. Statements acquire a particular pragmatic effectiveness or an existentializing function, contributing to the "setting into existence" of pragmatic singularities. Simultaneously, the junction involves the operation of the pragmatic system of actions and passions. Content is not opposed to form but has its own formalization related to the hand-tool pole or the lesson of things. It constitutes bodies, things, or objects that enter physical systems (ATP, 143). The dynamic interplay means that signs are at work in things themselves, and things extend into or are deployed through signs. Content relates to a precise state of intermingling of bodies in a society, including attractions, repulsions, alterations, etc. (ATP, 90). This corporeal dimension is brought together with the incorporeal dimension of statements. Affective indices, as non-discursive affectants that carry energetic charge, can influence these interminglings and catalyze processes of singularization. They allow signaletics within the materiality of Flows to become energetic and redraw entitarian compositions. The existential praxial operators leverage this interplay to bring about specific, often irreversible, modifications in the corporeal or material reality of the assemblage. In page 88 of A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze & Guattari give the example of Lenin’s speech on July 4th, The statement or enunciative act ("All power to the Soviets!") functioned as an existential praxial operator located at the junction of Expression and Content. The statement, an incorporeal transformation, intervened in the existing material reality—the proportions of the state of "bodies" like Soviets and the provisional government (Content). It leveraged the conjunction of the deterritorialized Bolshevik incorporeal semiotic (Expression) with the existing, albeit deterritorializing—due to inflation—, material circumstances. This dynamic interaction, rather than mere representation or reflection, accelerated things and contributed to a transformative effect on the set of things—the restructuring of the Soviets and the constitution of the Party as the central governing force. This demonstrates how enunciation, operating at the junction of semiotic regimes and pragmatic realities, can produce both incorporeal statements—like order-words—and tangible, corporeal effects—transforming the "body" of the Soviets into the "body" of the Party in terms of governance.

94. The relation of the axiomatic with the fold/counter-fold is a bit “fuzzy”. But, I’d argue that the axiomatic in any system can provide the foundational givens or rules that make certain types of folds and counter-folds possible or prevalent within that system. By laying down official policies and sealing off lines of flight, the axiomatic defines the inside and outside of a system—be it a scientific discipline, capitalism, or a mode of thought—that are then acted upon by the fold. The axiomatic creates the territory upon which the folding occurs. The axioms themselves can embody and enforce power structures, and the counter-fold would then be the process by which this axiomatic power folds into the interior of subjectivity, leading to subjectivation.

95. Note that we make no distinction between libidinal and affective investments. While it is true that the concept of libidinal investments has its origins on psychoanalysis, and affective investments has its origins on Spinozianism, affective intensities and investments are often components or manifestations of libidinal investments. When libido invests in something, it can generate or be accompanied by affective responses such as desire, jealousy, love, or aversion. For example, as we have already said, Lyotard links speculative rushes in the stock market to pulsional jealousy—an affective response to perceived intensities. Similarly, social machines can give rise to "incomparable loves," indicating an affective dimension of social libidinal investment (AO, 364). But Guattari, in Molecular Revolution in Brazil, later expresses reservations about libido as a general energetic equivalent. He suggests focusing on specific machinic systems of desire and the role of affect at the point of subjectivation (MRB, 401), which can indicate a potential shift towards a more differentiated understanding where affect might be considered in its own right, rather than solely as a derivative of libido. Nevertheless, we argue that affective investments are more directly relevant and crucial for an insurrectionistic strategy compared to a generalized notion of libidinal investment.

96. In Theory of Bloom, Tiqqun is described as going "to the depth of things" and representing "the only adequate conception of revolution is not something to be awaited or prepared for in a distant future, but rather the “real movement which destroys the present state of things". Therefore, presence for Tiqqun is not a static state but an active, ongoing process within the fabric of the present. Tiqqun is "always-already there, which is to say, it’s only the process of manifestation of what is, which also includes the nullification of what is not.", impling a constant unfolding and revelation of reality in the present moment. Furthermore, "The fragile positivity of this world is due precisely to its being nothing, nothing but the deferral of the tiqqun. This epochal deferral can now be sensed everywhere" (TB, 100-102). This suggests that what we perceive as the current order[Bloom] is merely a temporary obscuring of the underlying reality of Tiqqun, a presence waiting to be rediscovered. Tiqqun. (2012). Theory of Bloom (R. Hurley, Trans.). LBC Books. Finally, in Introduction to Civil War, Tiqqun is presented as "the becoming-real, the becoming-practice of the world". This means that everything, every "act, conduct, and statement endowed with sense— act, conduct and statement as event—spontaneously manifests its own metaphysics, its own community, its own party". In this view, presence is tied to the immanent meaning and significance of our actions and experiences in the here and now. Civil war, in this context, signifies that "the world is practice, and life is, in its smallest details, heroic" (ICW, 179), highlighting the inherent intensity and significance of present existence. Galloway, A. R., & Tiqqun. (2010). Introduction to Civil War (A. R. Galloway & J. E. Smith, Trans.). Semiotext(e).

97. In Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, the caesura is not just a pause, but a fundamental cut or fracture in the flow of time that establishes order, creates temporal series, and introduces a dynamic relationship between a before, an after, and the event of the cut itself, fundamentally impacting the understanding of time and subjectivity. The most prominent understanding of the caesura is as a cut or fracture within the flow of time. This cut is not merely a pause but a fundamental break that alters the temporal landscape. Time out of joint means demented time or time outside the curve, distributed unequally on both sides of a "caesura," as a result of which beginning and end no longer coincided (DR, 115).

98. Differential intensity is the fundamental nature of intensity as difference itself, structured by differences that refer to other differences (disparity) (DR, 294). This intrinsic difference is distinct from extensive quantities, indivisible without changing its nature, and serves as the driving force in the actualisation of the sensible world, creating qualities and extensities even as its own difference is explicated and cancelled within them. It has conceptual links to mathematical differential relations and is perceived through qualitative and extensive manifestations like color, sound, and light.

99. Intensity is the determinant in the process of actualization, dramatizing indistinct differential relations in the Idea into distinct qualities and extensities (DR, 321). Affects, as intensive degrees, are seen as giving rise to differentiated effects and potentially determining actualization (SC, 66). Non-discursive affects are described as a form of knowledge or apprehension of reality (SC, 186), highlighting their direct engagement with the sensible world underpinned by intensity. As affect is characterized as non-discursive, it is not arising from extensional or enumerable categories, but from intensive and intentional categories. It is apprehendable through the existence of thresholds of passage and reversals of polarity. This connects directly to intensity, which operates through thresholds (ATP, 54) and is often perceived most strongly at moments of significant change(cut). Therefore, differential intensity provides the underlying qualitative and dynamic structure for affect. Affect is understood as a form of intensity defined by the difference between states and the capacity for transformation, acting as a fundamental, prepersonal force that is apprehended immediately and drives processes of actualization and interaction.

100. We remind the reader that cybernetic control, through the becoming-immanent, is effectuated at the level of the planar. Because, as

HelloThere314

argued in Fractal Politics and Outsideness? borrowing from Tiqqun's The Cybernetic Hypothesis, smoothness, despite its potential radicality, is also the basis for cybernetic control. The current State, where inside and outside distinctions are blurred, tends towards an immanent plane with mere intensities, occupying both planes of immanence and transcendence. The planar domain is the terrain where contemporary power operates and becomes diffuse. The plane of immanence, by flattening singularities, produces a common means of communication between forms of life. However, within immanence, it becomes difficult or impossible to negate effectively. Hellothere314 writes in Outsideness?: "negation is only at the transcendent relative negation of Hegel in the eyes of the plane". This inability to negate effectively is seen as hindering the capacity to "wage war" against the dominant system. The planar is conceptually opposed to the fractal.

101. “The economic and technical striving towards temporal immediacy produces the eff ect of a hyper now, or what Robins and Webster term an ‘eternal present’. For them ‘What this means is that global society is being subordinated to a rational and standardized time’—the time of the network (1999:235). To exist in a hyper now temporality neces-sarily weakens or dissolves our links with the past and the future. For example, history and the past take time to research and to refl ect on for their patterns and possible lessons, but time compression and accelera-tion render these less relevant to a logic that clamors for immediacy” (ES, 103).

102. The collapse of signs into affect is also one of the reasons why we argue that affective investments are more directly relevant for an insurrectionistic strategy than a generalized theory of libidinal investments.

103. "Desires flee; they either reach a clinamen or not, they either produce intensity or not, and even beyond flight they continue to flee. They get restive under any kind of representation, as bodies, class, or party. It must thus be deduced from this that all propagation of fluctuations will also be a propagation of civil war. Diffuse guerrilla action is the form of struggle that will produce such invisibility in the eyes of the enemy” (TCH, 131). Tiqqun. (2020). The Cybernetic Hypothesis (R. Hurley, Trans.). MIT Press

104. "That was how the Situationist International formulated their program in 1957: “it should be understood that we are going to be seeing and participating in a race between free artists and the police to experiment with and develop the new techniques of conditioning. The police already have a considerable head start. The outcome depends on the appearance of passionate and liberating environments, or the reinforcement — scientifically controllable and smooth — of the environment of the old world of oppression and horror... If control over these new means is not totally revolutionary, we could be led towards the police-state ideal of a society organized like a beehive.” In light of this lattermost image, an explicit but static vision of cybernetics perfected as the Empire is fleshing it out, the revolution should consist in a reappropriation of the most modern technological tools, a reappropriation that should permit contestation of the police on their own turf, by creating a counter-world with the same means that it uses.” (TCH, 145-146).

105. Note that the notion of fleeting is also present in Deleuze & Guattari’s line of flight.

106. Because as we saw with the discussion on the axiomatic, non-denumerable infinities, such as the real numbers or the continuum, escape from the axiomatic because axiomatics primarily manipulates denumerable sets, and as Skolem's paradox demonstrates, any axiomatic system extending beyond a basic level that includes a model in any domain can also be assigned a countable model, effectively causing higher powers of infinity to vanish. Consequently, the structural specificity of the continuum cannot be conceived axiomatically, as any axiomatisation will inevitably include a countable model, thus failing to capture its non-denumerable nature. This is not merely a matter of unprovable structures but of certain structures being fundamentally inconceivable within the axiomatic framework, which seems unable to properly account for continuous living fluxes as opposed to discrete, countable elements.

107. “…the struggle around axioms is most important when it mani­fests, itself opens, the gap between two types of propositions, propositions of flow and propositions of axioms. [,..]The issue is not at all anarchy versus organization, nor even centralism versus decentralization, but a calculus or conception of the problems of nondenumerable sets, against the axiomatic of denumerable sets. Such a calculus may have its own compositions, organizations, even centralizations; nevertheless, it proceeds not via the States or the axiomatic process but via a pure becoming of minorities” Isabelle Garo, Foucault, Deleuze, Althusser & Marx. Extracted from State and Politics: Deleuze and Guattari on Marx. (SP, 260). Sibertin-Blanc, G. (2016). State and Politics: Deleuze and Guattari on Marx (A. Hodges, Trans.). MIT Press.

108. A Thousand Plateaus V, The State Apparatus and the War Machine, Lecture 9, 26 February 1980. op. cit.

109. Even though it is translated as “flows” in the original translation of the seminar by Charles J. Stivale, I argue that “fluxes” makes for a better translation, as the concept of “flow” of Deleuze and Guattari in the original french is “flux”, which denotes a more technical, quantitative, spontaneous, and more prone to “leakage” concept of the movement of the libido than what “flow'“ might denote. (For more on this, see https://terenceblake.wordpress.com/2022/10/20/are-fluxes-flows-a-deleuzo-guattarian-conundrum/).

110. A Thousand Plateaus V, The State Apparatus and the War Machine, Lecture 13, 25 March 1980. op. cit.

111. A Thousand Plateaus V, The State Apparatus and the War Machine, Lecture 9, 26 February 1980. op. cit.