Achim Szepanski - Böcker

Iconic Frankfurt techno and experimental label -Mille Plateaux-�returns with a new anthology of texts written by a collective of voices who assembled around the resurrection of the label, taking Ultrablack�as its organising principle. This volume features various forms of writing with and through - as opposed to about - music, including essays on quantum aesthetics, mythology, semiotics, experimental glitch literature, and macabre philofictions. As the primordial Ultrablack Noise fluctuates in intensity, it ruptures into sound and silence. Noise intensifies until it bursts over a limit; it erupts into our World through our ears. Silence comes after Noise, and only then can we arrive at Sound. What was that Noise? It was a Sound, a moment of Noise. Once you have two Sounds, you can have Rhythm. Once you have Rhythm, you have Code. Ultrablack is the Noise which escapes these dualisms: Noise/Silence, Noise/Sound, Noise/Rhythm, Noise/Code. It is the Noise that continuously exceeds the limits of its own sign, the Noise which keeps breaking until a Rhythm emerges from breaks - a break-beat - on-off, tick-tock. There is no positive, only double-negative, as Noise creates gaps within itself. Only where there is no sound, and no silence, can you hear the music of this infinite meta-rhythm, this rhythm-without-rhythm, this Noise-beyond-Noise. Featuring works from: Achim Szepanski, Eugene Thacker, Gary Shipley, Eldritch Priest, Fr�d�ric Neyrat, Jens Schr�ter, Obsolete Capitalism, Alessandro Sbordoni, Lain Iwakura, Giorgi Vachnadze, Palais Sinclaire, Darko Vuki?, Stefan Paulus, Alberto Ricca, Holger Schultz, Jan Heintz, Luigi Monteanni & Gabriele de Seta, Kenji Siratori, Ross Birdwise, and Andrea Taeggi.

The book’s central theme is to develop a new theory of speculative capital related to other forms of capital, the world market, and the state. Unlike most Marxist and heterodox theories, the book distinguishes credit and fictitious capital from speculative capital to show its hegemony today in the capital markets.

The book’s central theme is to develop a new theory of speculative capital related to other forms of capital, the world market, and the state. Unlike most Marxist and heterodox theories, the book distinguishes credit and fictitious capital from speculative capital to show its hegemony today in the capital markets.

This book analyses contemporary and future conditions of global finance and capitalism in an age of catastrophe. It illuminates the links between various crises that have beset the world economy in recent decades and sets these in philosophical context, drawing on the work of Marx, Bataille and Baudrillard to forge new understandings of the impact of capitalist hegemony on society and nature.The book introduces the concept of the ‘over’ as a lens through which to reflect on capitalist excess and its negative consequences, such as over-accumulation of goods, over-pollution of the environment, and over-speculation of capital. In particular, it shines a light on the trends of financialization and stagflation, with chapters examining increasingly embedded features of the world economy such as hyper-inflation, the dominance of advanced economy central banks, the phenomenon of repurchase agreements, new asset managers for the ultra-wealthy and index funds to show how capitalist structures continue to drive inequality, ecological breakdown, and geopolitical precarity on a global scale. With a rigorous philosophical and theoretical framework, this book will appeal to political economists, Marxist economists and scholars interested in theories of capitalism.