Apocalypse and the Algorithm: Muslim Spiritual Cultivation as Critique

Abstract

In this thesis, I advance a Muslim way to think about politics, ground it in an ethics, and then consider what aesthetics accompany that political-ethical orientation. In response to a totalizing and intertwining set of injustices, and the methods of reflexive simulation by which it perpetuates itself (an assemblage I call the Algorithm) I develop apocalyptic ethics rooted in intersubjective networks. First, in “Chapter 1: Experimental Politics” I present a political logic of God-consciousness. Then, in “Chapter 2: Apocalyptic Ethics,” I develop an ethical basis for the subject who develops taqwa, the “I” that forms itself in critical relationship to the Algorithm. This “I” finds its only permanence in the Day of Judgement, in which its body gives account of its deeds to God. In dyadic relationship to the Algorithm, however, the “I” is dynamic and contingent. Finally, in “Chapter 3: Dream Aesthetics,” I develop a psychedelic approach to the changes in consciousness that make subversive politics in the Algorithm possible.