By this point, I imagine that most people here have already encountered Torres and Gebru's infamous "TESCREAL bundle". However, the discourse about this accusation so far has mostly revolved whether it is fair to connect the different elements of the bundle, including EA, together, or to attribute the sort of techno-millenarian eschatological aspirations that they speak of to everyone involved in these movements. What has gone mostly unnoticed is that their rhetoric about millenarianism is actually itself rooted in a specific religious and philosophical perspective which is much narrower than most labels that the pair attach to themselves; almost everything that they say about "TESCREAL" is actually an echo of early-to-mid-20th-century theological and ideological discourse about determinism and Christian postmillenialism which has become an important-but-largely-unnoticed influence on the thinking of a lot of those who claim to be on the political "left". I think that this genealogy is worth a lot more attention than it has received so far--critiques of the "idea of progress" are a dime a dozen in academia, but almost never will you find someone attempting the same of its reverse.

This linked post is what I hope will be the start of a series exploring the history and component values of this ideological bundle, which I have named R9PRESENTATIONALism--it stands for the following:

Relational
9P
- Postcritical
- Personalist
- Praxeological
- Psychoanalytic
- Participatory
- Performative
- Particularist
- Processional
- Positive/Affirmationist
Reparative
Existentialist
Standpoint-theorist
Embodied
Narrativistic
Therapeutic
Anthropological
Traditionalist
Intersectional
Orate
Natalist
Activist
Localist

This is a bundle which originated out of anti-Calvinist polemics written by Catholic and royalist Anglican writers during the early modern period, was picked up by 19th century romantic reactionaries to build the foundation of the emerging Counter-Enlightenment, got carried into the 20th century by various counter-modern literary movements seeking a third way against both capitalism and socialism which could justify the continuing relevance of the traditional humanistic disciplines against the new challenge of the social and psychological sciences, transitioned from being primarily of the political right to the political left because of the ideological aftermaths of WW2 and 1968, and took on its modern form i...

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