{"id":729,"date":"2018-05-29T08:37:17","date_gmt":"2018-05-29T08:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=729"},"modified":"2018-05-28T13:58:47","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T13:58:47","slug":"the-unbearable-whiteness-of-informationalist-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=729","title":{"rendered":"The (Un)bearable Whiteness of Informationalist Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Syed Mustafa Ali, School of Computing and Communications, The Open University<\/em><\/p>\n

This post continues the exploration of the \u2018entanglement\u2019 of race, religion and informational phenomena presented in my earlier work (see the bibliography at the end of the post). Following the lead of critical race and decolonial theorists, I understand \u2018race\u2019 as a global systemic\/structural power formation, \u2018religion\u2019 as a tradition involving discursive and embodied practices (following the lead of anthropologist Talal Asad), and \u2018information\u2019 as \u201ca difference that makes a difference\u201d (following the cyberneticist Gregory Bateson<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Here, I want to focus on exploring Transhumanism and technological Posthumanism in relation to broader \u2018informationalist\u2019 currents associated with New Religious Movements (NRMs) emerging within \u2018Western\u2019 societies. By \u2018informationalism\u2019, I mean a paradigm (or worldview) in which all phenomena are held to be informational or computational in some sense<\/em>. My concern is to interrogate both the what<\/em> and how<\/em> (that is, beliefs and practices) as well as the who<\/em> and where<\/em> (that is, the socio-political marking and location\/situatedness) of proponents of informationalist religion(s).<\/p>\n

\"I:<\/a><\/p>\n

To this end, we might begin by exploring Transhumanist and Posthumanist calls for embracing technological enhancement at various scales \u2013 individual, collective and cosmological \u2013 with a view to unpacking various tacit \u2018religious\u2019 and occult influences informing their discourses. Leading Transhumanist thinkers such as Nick Bostrom<\/a>, Hans Moravec<\/a>, Ray Kurzweil<\/a>, Frank Tipler<\/a>, and others, clearly demonstrate influences from \u00a0Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, Masonism, Kabbalah and Christian Millennialism. These influences are even clearer in the beliefs and practices of explicitly informationalist religions, such as Anthony Levandowski\u2019s \u2018Way of the Future\u2019<\/a>, Martine Rothblatt\u2019s cosmist \u2018Terasem\u2019 movement<\/a>, Giulio Prisco\u2019s \u2018Turing Church<\/a>\u2019, and Bard and Jan S\u00f6derqvist\u2019s \u2018Syntheism<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

Having established the \u2018what\u2019 and \u2018how\u2019 of such informationalist religions, we can consider their \u2018who\u2019 and \u2018where\u2019. Transhumanists, technological Posthumanists and proponents of informationalist religion tend to be wealthy white males located in \u2018the West\u2019, and the few notable exceptions only serve to confirm the rule. This is firmly supported by demographic surveys of Transhumanists, where we also find a concomitant overwhelming dismissal of the relevance of \u2018race\u2019 in their responses to questions about ethnicity and related matters.<\/p>\n

I want to conclude by offering some critical race-theoretical and decolonial speculations as to the significance of these findings vis-\u00e0-vis contemporary socio-political developments, including the rise of the \u2018alt-Right\u2019 in the US and the \u2018far right\u2019 in Europe in the context of what human geographer Alistair Bonnett has referred to as the phenomenon of \u2018White Crisis\u2019. I suggest that an (un)bearably white informationalism needs to be understood against the backdrop of a long dur\u00e9e Western hegemony that is increasingly being subjected to contestation from various quarters. I further suggest that the discourse on \u2018existential risk\u2019 associated with artificial intelligence (AI) might usefully be understood as a form of \u2018White Crisis\u2019 literature, \u2018entangled\u2019 with various strands of apocalyptic thought. I will develop this thesis further in an article in a forthcoming special issue of the journal Zygon<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This post <\/em>is based on a presentations delivered at the Contemporary Religion in Historical Perspective: Publics and Performances (19-21 February 2018) at The Open University, and at the \u2018AI and Apocalypse\u2019 conference which took place on 5-6 April 2018 at the Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements (CenSAMM) at the Panacea Gardens in Bedford, UK, viz. \u201c\u2018White Crisis\u2019 and\/as \u2018Existential Risk\u2019: The Entangled Apocalypticism of Artificial Intelligence\u201d, a recording of which is available here<\/a><\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

REFERENCES<\/p>\n

Ali, S.M. (Forthcoming) \u2018White Crisis\u2019 and\/as \u2018Existential Risk\u2019: The Entangled Apocalypticism of Artificial Intelligence. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Ali, S.M. (2017a) Transhumanism and\/as Whiteness. Transhumanism \u2013 The Proper Guide to a Posthuman Condition or a Dangerous Idea? Workshop<\/em>. In: IS4IS Summit Gothenburg 2017 \u2013 Digitalisation for a Sustainable Society, 12-16 June, Gothenburg, Sweden. Proceedings<\/em> 2017<\/strong>, 1<\/em>(3), 244; doi:10.3390\/IS4SI-2017-03985<\/p>\n

Ali, S.M. (2017b) Decolonizing Information Narratives: Entangled Apocalyptics, Algorithmic Racism and the Myths of History. DTMD 2017: 6th International Conference<\/em>. In: IS4IS Summit Gothenburg 2017 \u2013 Digitalisation for a Sustainable Society, 12-16 June, Gothenburg, Sweden. Proceedings <\/em>2017, 1<\/em>, 50; doi:10.3390\/IS4SI-2017-03910<\/p>\n

Ali, S.M. (2016) Algorithmic Racism: A Decolonial Critique. 10th International Society for the Study of religion, Nature and Culture Conference: Religion, Science and The Future<\/em>. University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, January 14-17.<\/p>\n

Ali, S.M. (2015) Orientalism and\/as Information: The Indifference That Makes a Difference. DTMD 2015: 3rd International Conference<\/em>. In: IS4IS Summit Vienna 2015 \u2013 The Information Society at the Crossroads, 3 \u2013 7 June, Vienna, Austria. http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.3390\/isis-summit-vienna-2015-S1005.<\/p>\n

Ali, S.M. (2013) Race: The Difference That Makes a Difference. tripleC <\/em>11 (1): 93-106.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Syed Mustafa Ali, School of Computing and Communications, The Open University This post continues the exploration of the \u2018entanglement\u2019 of race, religion and informational phenomena presented in my earlier work (see the bibliography at the end of the post). Following the lead of critical race and decolonial theorists, I understand \u2018race\u2019 as a global systemic\/structural […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":730,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[229,230,231,66,228,227,226],"class_list":["post-729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contemporary-religion-in-historical-perspective-2","tag-information","tag-informationalist","tag-mustafa-ali","tag-new-religious-movements","tag-postcolonial","tag-race","tag-transhumanism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":731,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions\/731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}