FOREWORD

The figure of the Other has held critical thought in its sway for decades, to the point that we now suffer from a surfeit of alterity. Whether it is thought under the sign of radical transcendence or radical immanence, its extremes are indistinguishable: an ineffably abstract and purportedly inexhaustible excess over reason, representation, and often concreteness as such. Awash in amorphous otherness, it is all too easy to fall back on familiar forms, disavowing every explicit universal while enforcing implicit universals, and thereby preserving assumptions about the “naturalness” of given modes of community, sexuality, and embodiment. The supposedly indescribable openness of the space of socio-cultural possibilities tends to conceal limits that have simply been supposed, rather than described.

Can the figure of the Alien offer us something better? This is the question that this special issue of Angelaki considers, by tracing the outlines, intersections, and problems of emergent vectors of thought coalescing around a renewed relationship to alienation. These vectors can be roughly traced to three interconnected articulations. Left-accelerationism strives to turn the emancipatory tendencies of modernity against the oppressive sociality of capitalism (cf. Williams and Srnicek, “#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics”), xenofeminism aims to harness the artificiality of identity by rejecting the givenness of material conditions (sex) and social forms (gender) alike (cf. Laboria Cuboniks, Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation), and rationalist inhumanism seeks to extract the functional core of humanism from its imbrication with the biological and historical contingencies of the human animal (cf. Negarestani, “The Labor of the Inhuman”). Their common thread is the embrace of alienation as a positive force: transforming our progressive exile from a series of Edenic harmonies – be they economic, sociological, or biological – into an esoteric genealogy of freedom.

There are clear dangers associated with these forms of thought. Appeals to alien forces can mask all-too-familiar prejudices, repackaging old assumptions in the language of sublime strangeness or harsh reality. Any universalism that discounts the myriad concrete differences within and between races, genders, and classes risks reinforcing the relations of domination predicated upon them. Any critique of authenticity that disregards the social context within which identity is constituted risks undermining crucial forms of solidarity. Any rationalism that ignores the historical role of Reason threatens to entrench traditional modes of epistemic authority and legitimise corresponding modes of ignorance. And in every case, focus on as yet unrealised futures can distract from more pressing problems and politics rooted in present struggles.

The papers in this issue seek to work through these issues outside of their initial formulations. They attempt to think politics, posthumanism, and alienation beyond and across the circuitry of thought that would otherwise enfold the Alien in its regressive and parochial trappings.

Issue images: © 2019 Luke Pendrell. Reproduced by kind permission.