Artificial Intelligence & Techno-Fascism (2026)
Author: Frédéric Neyrat
Translator: 0nty
Editorial: Becoming Press (0nty, Claire)
Layout & Design: Becoming
Edition: 1st
Publication Date: December 2026
CatNO: (Becoming)018A
ISBN Print: 978-9925-647-15-6
ISBN eBook: 978-9925-647-16-3
Language: English
Format: Softcover
Binding: Sewn Binding
Dimensions: 12cm x 19cm
Pages: Approx. 200
Print run: 800
RRP: €16 (inc. VAT)
Printed by: Tallinn Book Printers, Estonia
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Are there too many machines?
Humanity is panicking, traumatized by the proliferation of AI, drones, automated decision making, and the general dissolution of institutions that act as pillars of the world we live in. This trauma, however, also extends to the capitalist machine—which appears to be disentangling itself, or becoming detached from reality—and is producing absurd objects in a state of distress.
“The machine,” as we know it, has no access to the world in such a way that would align with Freud’s understanding of trauma as the “white hole” at the heart of the unconscious. Yet, Frédéric Neyrat, going beyond Freud, grants the capacity for trauma to all beings—whether rocks, trees or animals—arguing that trauma is the very condition for existence, as taking a form comes at the cost of discarding everything else.
Perhaps the question is not “what must we add to AI for it to be conscious?” but rather “what must be taken away?” Calling it the amachine (l’amachine), Neyrat explores this idea of a machine that had undergone sufficient traumatization for it to constitute a form of intelligence, one which differentiates from human and mechanical, offering thusly a counter-image to the narratives of silicon valley. This is a machine that lacks.
Traumachine challenges both neo-Luddite and accelerationist inclinations, seeking out a different strategy vis-a-vis AI and other ontological generation machines: machines that produce and schematize reality. While resisting the call to merely “smash the machines,” Neyrat concedes no ground to the tech-accelerationist narratives of Musk and Thiel, warning us that completely giving over the tasks of thinking, imagining and communicating to automated processes risks the emergence of artificial fascism.
Having spent many years developing a method he calls exophilosophy—a synthesis of critical analysis and poetics—Neyrat uses cut-up prose, parables and micro-fictions to disrupt the language of AI at the level of grammar. In this case, Traumachine sets prophecy against prediction in the form of a book that is part political analysis, part philosophical fiction and in part a practical proposal for living with the machines we already have.
©2026, Berlin/Nicosia
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