The Matrix Ate My Homework: Accelerationist Aesthetics in an Age of Neoliberal Education

• In Event: 52.066 - Foucault, Postfoundations, and the Complexities of Contemporary Educational Experiences

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present an alternate response to neoliberal education reforms, in the form of accelerationism, that does not rely on a return to a primitivist localism or direct action (such as that of the Occupy movement). Briefly stated, accelerationism does not try to reform neoliberal tendencies by going around them or from “within”; rather, it argues for accelerating market forces so that we can go through the free-market system, and thereby arrive at a post-capitalist future. Employing an accelerationist aesthetics of speculative science fiction, this perspective allows us to see not just the tactics of neoliberalism, but to recover, repurpose, and speculate on the ends of a future democratic education and its pedagogies and technologies.

Author

• David W. Kupferman, University of Hawaii West Oahu