Speed, demon! Accelerationism’s rhetoric of weird, mystical, cosmic love

Accelerationism offers a theoretical stance towards capitalism that takes shape in various rhetorical guises. In general, these writings attempt to push through the boundaries imposed by capital while speeding off into unknown possible futures. While some articulations of this philosophy rely on traditional scholarly argumentation, others proceed along more obscure paths to envision a post-capitalist (and usually post-human) future. In this article, I focus on the latter approach by examining how some accelerationist works embrace occult poetics and subsequently align with what Brad Baumgartner identifies as a communicative praxis of Weird Mysticism . In contrast to more pragmatic approaches, Weird Mysticism provides a worthwhile rhetorical perspective for contemplating accelerationist works that embrace a nihilistic inclination to imagine a world without us.