A spectre is haunting #CaveTwitter — the spectre of patchwork. […]
Xenogothic is animating the conversation about patchwork in important ways lately, and I usually find nothing to complain about in his explorations and observations. Moreover, his clear and concise work on this concept/project/discourse is an enormous help with my own endeavors to bring theory into practice. This is confirmed in the following passage, which mirrors my own interest and reminds me that the notion is not just a fashionable concept, but a speculative and actionable opportunity:
Patchwork is… an idea that must linger in the mind of any unconditional accelerationist, as that which haunts the bourgeois class. Where it differs, perhaps, from the Communism of 1848, is that, today, everyone seems to fear fragmentation, on both the left and the right.
The right love their corporate monopolies. The left love their globalism — that diamond in the rough of the legacy of imperialism. The idea that both might be washed away is an idea that haunts both. It’s a project which, at this stage, necessitates a rethinking of our imposed realities at levels currently under-explored.
And that’s the crux of my interest in patchwork. That’s it.
via xenogothic
synthetic zerØ 
To me all these various labels and identifications and speculations about futures appeared to be like a snake chasing its own tail. Like the guy expresses in the post you have a link to there, It’s almost as if he doesn’t even know what he’s talking about anymore in responding to these various weird patchwork and stuff like that.
But the funny thing about this and, if it indeed is nested in a kind of accelerationism, When you read Deleuze, Who seems like the guy upon which this whole business is errected, he already tells us how it will go.
What’s funny is that the people who are discussing these things as if they’re attached to some sort of real significance in the world, is that they’re just replaying D’s metaphysics, and actually if you extend it out another 15 years or something, there really caught in the correlationalidmthat we just discovered five years ago.
I would submit that it is because despite all the radical this and that, no one really ever wants to get radical, if they just want to stay in the comfort of throwing around idealisms here and there and place titles on them is after getting somewhere. But I think the only place that they’re getting is either the sovereign corporate entity or the commune centered patchwork.
It’s like a divine irony because no one ever really has any reflection upon what is really occurring right in front of them as they are involved in it: they view their involvement as necessarily real and true reflecting how the universe actually is.
Just a thought. Thx
I feel the sentiment there, but I don’t think you can paint such broad strokes with all these folks. Many of us in the para-academic hinterlands are actually practicing professionals working in our community. For example, I work in public health where I do use a lot of speculative theory concepts in changing policy and implementing programs. I’m also involved with a lot community activism, and I work with the Green Party to lobby government for more long-term future-oriented urban planning. I’m also actively working to secure funding and workshop with people on creating a real functional ‘patch’ in a particular region. Also, Arran Crawford is an activist and psychiatric nurse, working to diagnose and elevate suffering in his socio-ecological milieu. Ed Berger is an activist. I think it’s all too easy to see all this stuff as merely “academic” while not knowing how some of us are translating it into everyday life. Patchwork is the type of concept and focus that can bridge theory and practice – be discussing and designing what is possible re: how we live.