Extra-Capitalist Thought

Karen Dewart McEwen, The University of Western Ontario

Abstract

This thesis addresses the question of extra-capitalist thought, asking how capitalism maintains and expands its own borders by appropriating and diverting attempts to create concepts outside of the reality of global capitalism. Our study begins with an explanation of Deleuze and Guattari’s characterization of capitalism as a process of machinic appropriation. We then turn to Deleuze’s epistemology-ontology relation, arguing that it undermines his politics of ‘outside-thinking’. The second chapter builds from the work of Reza Negarestani, focusing primarily on his ontology of decay and epistemology as navigation in order to theorize a politics that exploits and infects capitalist thought from within. The final chapter explores the potential of a Negarestanian politics through an analysis of clothing and (or, as) wearable technology, arguing that its position in relation to (non)human thought within the network of capital makes wearable technology an ideal site for manipulating and infecting capitalist thought from within.