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Course Post 11. "Accelerationist Aesthetics” & What to do With Beauty

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“Beauty in itself is inefficacious. But this also means that beauty is in and of itself utopian.” - Steven Shaviro

The second essay on “Aesthetics” in No Speed Limit got me thinking about the issue of beauty and accessibility (a line of inquiry also sparked by the above quote). My final project is still kind of up in the air in terms of the message that I want to deliver -- do I want to buy into the MAPO mask and try to sell the idea of it as a speculative artifact, or should I focus on how a product like this might ultimately fail?

Right now the MAPO mask will cost you around $200 dollars.

Shaviro defines Accelerationism as a “speculative movement that seeks to extrapolate the entire globalized neoliberal capitalist order” (9). What we can gather is that trying to do away with capitalism is futile, but rather we should look at ways to reconfigure or extend the possibilities of such an order. I turn to the future of the MAPO beauty mask and how this would fit into the larger market, as a source of competition. The MAPO mask will act as a jumping off point, but something bigger and better is bound to come along. This idea also recalls some of the earlier discussions we had about “completing the set” and how this is entirely impossible. I want to further explore the potentiality of MAPO as something more than an expensive beauty product that most people can’t afford (as of right now).

How do Aesthetics operate in the future? Much of the criticism around world-building we’ve discussed in class surrounds the hollowness beyond what’s there for looks or “cool factor”. Shaviro writes, “Aesthetics is never essential, but this is what allows it to be irreducible to the essential” (26). Maybe aestheticism in the future should be exploited because it’s there just for fun? I mean we could all live without the MAPO mask but is that what makes it so special? Is the MAPO’s only job to make us beautiful?

On the issue of necessity, I wonder about the portion of people who won’t benefit from the MAPO, or who will be left out of this speculative future. I want to keep my audience in mind when trying to build on the idea of MAPO. If “beauty presupposes a liberation from need” (26) than is the MAPO really all that progressive? Does privileged beauty still have a space in our future discourse?

#futureofsin #beauty #futureaesthetics