Simon Mussell
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526105707
- eISBN:
- 9781526132253
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526105707.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Chapter 1 sets out the theoretical terrain on which the wider project is based. It begins by revisiting some of the founding tenets of critical theory in the context of the establishment of the ...
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Chapter 1 sets out the theoretical terrain on which the wider project is based. It begins by revisiting some of the founding tenets of critical theory in the context of the establishment of the Institute for Social Research in the early twentieth century. The chapter then discusses contemporary theories of affect that have emerged in the past couple of decades as part of the so-called ‘new materialisms’. Taking on board some of the key findings of this recent work on affect, the author also highlights the potential political deficiencies that accompany such accounts, particularly within a growing ‘post-critical’ context. The chapter closes with suggestions as to how early critical theory – read through an affective lens – might provide the social and political grounding that affect theory often lacks, while at the same time noting how theories of affect are invaluable in shedding light on the efficacy of the pre- or extra-rational, so often sacrificed on the altar of political philosophy.Less
Chapter 1 sets out the theoretical terrain on which the wider project is based. It begins by revisiting some of the founding tenets of critical theory in the context of the establishment of the Institute for Social Research in the early twentieth century. The chapter then discusses contemporary theories of affect that have emerged in the past couple of decades as part of the so-called ‘new materialisms’. Taking on board some of the key findings of this recent work on affect, the author also highlights the potential political deficiencies that accompany such accounts, particularly within a growing ‘post-critical’ context. The chapter closes with suggestions as to how early critical theory – read through an affective lens – might provide the social and political grounding that affect theory often lacks, while at the same time noting how theories of affect are invaluable in shedding light on the efficacy of the pre- or extra-rational, so often sacrificed on the altar of political philosophy.
Norie Neumark
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036139
- eISBN:
- 9780262339834
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036139.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This chapter establishes the theoretical underpinnings of the book, introducing theories of voice, new materialism, posthumanism, carnal and situated knowledge, and affect. It discusses the unusual ...
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This chapter establishes the theoretical underpinnings of the book, introducing theories of voice, new materialism, posthumanism, carnal and situated knowledge, and affect. It discusses the unusual writing voice that a new materialist book about voice calls for. Presenting the implications of a new materialist approach to voice, the author discusses why she listens to this as voice particularly, rather than sound in general. Listening and conversations as the modes and methodologies are introduced. There is further discussion of voicetracks as the way through the book’s diverse works and transversal or inter-disciplinary theories. This chapter also introduces the engagement with the author’s own sound and media work which has shaped her apprehension of voice and the assemblages with/in which it speaks.Less
This chapter establishes the theoretical underpinnings of the book, introducing theories of voice, new materialism, posthumanism, carnal and situated knowledge, and affect. It discusses the unusual writing voice that a new materialist book about voice calls for. Presenting the implications of a new materialist approach to voice, the author discusses why she listens to this as voice particularly, rather than sound in general. Listening and conversations as the modes and methodologies are introduced. There is further discussion of voicetracks as the way through the book’s diverse works and transversal or inter-disciplinary theories. This chapter also introduces the engagement with the author’s own sound and media work which has shaped her apprehension of voice and the assemblages with/in which it speaks.
S. Scott Graham
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226264059
- eISBN:
- 9780226264196
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226264196.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The introduction to the Politics of Pain traces the recent history of simultaneous efforts in pain science as well as rhetoric of science and science and technology studies to develop new integrated ...
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The introduction to the Politics of Pain traces the recent history of simultaneous efforts in pain science as well as rhetoric of science and science and technology studies to develop new integrated non-dualist approaches to inquiry and practice. Specifically, this section introduces readers to the calls for a biopsychosocial approach to pain medicine and a nonmodern or new materialist approach to rhetoric of science and science and technology studies. In so doing, the introduction argues that the time is right for renewed inquiry into pain from a hybrid rhetorical-ontological perspective. Such an approach offers great potential for reciprocal engagement between the differing areas’ overlapping calls for new foundations for inquiry and practice.Less
The introduction to the Politics of Pain traces the recent history of simultaneous efforts in pain science as well as rhetoric of science and science and technology studies to develop new integrated non-dualist approaches to inquiry and practice. Specifically, this section introduces readers to the calls for a biopsychosocial approach to pain medicine and a nonmodern or new materialist approach to rhetoric of science and science and technology studies. In so doing, the introduction argues that the time is right for renewed inquiry into pain from a hybrid rhetorical-ontological perspective. Such an approach offers great potential for reciprocal engagement between the differing areas’ overlapping calls for new foundations for inquiry and practice.
Catherine Keller
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823276455
- eISBN:
- 9780823277094
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823276455.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This chapter considers a bodily becoming neither human nor divine but entangled in both. In conversation with Karen Barad, quantum entanglement discloses the relational ontology—the “agential ...
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This chapter considers a bodily becoming neither human nor divine but entangled in both. In conversation with Karen Barad, quantum entanglement discloses the relational ontology—the “agential intra-activity”—of which every body in the universe is woven. The chapter demonstrates the proximity of Barad's to Alfred North Whitehead's responsive materiality. Here, intercarnation might have turned to intra-carnation. But then there might seem to be a single mega-body inside which all enfleshment takes place. The point, however, is that creatures, micro- or macro-, do not pre-exist their relationships. The chapter examines what kind of theology might materialize in conversation with the so-called new materialism and what sort of theology might already identify itself as a Christian materialism.Less
This chapter considers a bodily becoming neither human nor divine but entangled in both. In conversation with Karen Barad, quantum entanglement discloses the relational ontology—the “agential intra-activity”—of which every body in the universe is woven. The chapter demonstrates the proximity of Barad's to Alfred North Whitehead's responsive materiality. Here, intercarnation might have turned to intra-carnation. But then there might seem to be a single mega-body inside which all enfleshment takes place. The point, however, is that creatures, micro- or macro-, do not pre-exist their relationships. The chapter examines what kind of theology might materialize in conversation with the so-called new materialism and what sort of theology might already identify itself as a Christian materialism.
Catherine Keller and Mary-Jane Rubenstein
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823276219
- eISBN:
- 9780823277049
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823276219.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
It is not just that we are entangled in matter—we subjects who read, write, and ruminate on what “we” are. We are materializations entangled in other materializations; we happen in our mattering. ...
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It is not just that we are entangled in matter—we subjects who read, write, and ruminate on what “we” are. We are materializations entangled in other materializations; we happen in our mattering. What matters in our ethics, our politics, our worlds entangles us in and as new materializations. And at this juncture, it entangles scholarship in retrievals and rethinkings of matter itself. Even disciplines that struggle with long histories of disembodied transcendence are registering the effects.Less
It is not just that we are entangled in matter—we subjects who read, write, and ruminate on what “we” are. We are materializations entangled in other materializations; we happen in our mattering. What matters in our ethics, our politics, our worlds entangles us in and as new materializations. And at this juncture, it entangles scholarship in retrievals and rethinkings of matter itself. Even disciplines that struggle with long histories of disembodied transcendence are registering the effects.
Deboleena Roy and Banu Subramaniam
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781479833498
- eISBN:
- 9781479842308
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479833498.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
In recent years, key debates in feminist theory have emphasized questions regarding the status of matter and materiality of the body. While these questions have lead to increased attention to ...
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In recent years, key debates in feminist theory have emphasized questions regarding the status of matter and materiality of the body. While these questions have lead to increased attention to scientific research, particularly in biology, this chapter suggests that in many cases, there is a decontextualized quality to these engagements. We argue that while distinct encounters with “matter” have occurred through feminist critiques of science, new materialisms, and postcolonial science studies, no one approach is sufficient on its own. By placing these fields into conversation, the chapter develops a critical mode of analysis that examines the situatedness, local effects, and contact zones of empire expressed in matter and material bodies. Keeping different kinds and levels of matter in mind, connections are made from molecules and interstitial cellularity to organisms and multispecies engagements in global and local political, economic and social contexts – all spaces where matter resides, enacts, and evolves.Less
In recent years, key debates in feminist theory have emphasized questions regarding the status of matter and materiality of the body. While these questions have lead to increased attention to scientific research, particularly in biology, this chapter suggests that in many cases, there is a decontextualized quality to these engagements. We argue that while distinct encounters with “matter” have occurred through feminist critiques of science, new materialisms, and postcolonial science studies, no one approach is sufficient on its own. By placing these fields into conversation, the chapter develops a critical mode of analysis that examines the situatedness, local effects, and contact zones of empire expressed in matter and material bodies. Keeping different kinds and levels of matter in mind, connections are made from molecules and interstitial cellularity to organisms and multispecies engagements in global and local political, economic and social contexts – all spaces where matter resides, enacts, and evolves.
Hanna Meißner
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781479833498
- eISBN:
- 9781479842308
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479833498.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
This chapter explores possibilities of productively confronting new materialism’s critique of the anthropocentric notion of agency as a human privilege with historical materialism’s social ontology ...
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This chapter explores possibilities of productively confronting new materialism’s critique of the anthropocentric notion of agency as a human privilege with historical materialism’s social ontology committed to emancipatory human subjectivity. Borrowing from the work of Karen Barad, I propose a diffractive reading that allows an engagement with these two ‘perspectives’ in terms of different (theoretical) apparatuses visualizing different, even oppositional, realities: New materialism focuses on the processes of becoming and the potentiality of their openness, historical materialism takes into account specific, socially constituted, limits that configure the possibilities of becoming. Rather than concluding that a confrontation of these oppositional perspectives calls for resolution, I argue that it is more promising to be attentive to what Etienne Balibar calls their points of heresy. The focus is thus on the specific tensions of their common discursive space, which operates with fundamental binaries (such as meaning/matter, form/content). Both perspectives share the assumption that it is impossible to regard the two terms as separate entities. Both, however, resolve the tension by focusing on one of the two terms. Historical materialism is committed to visualizing the conditioned possibilities of human agency to transform the material world. New materialism is committed to visualizing materiality that cannot be attributed to this formative power. Read with attention to these heretical tensions, both perspectives have valuable insights to offer for emancipatory projects as historically situated endeavors committed to finding and fashioning new, less violent, ways of relating to ourselves and to others.Less
This chapter explores possibilities of productively confronting new materialism’s critique of the anthropocentric notion of agency as a human privilege with historical materialism’s social ontology committed to emancipatory human subjectivity. Borrowing from the work of Karen Barad, I propose a diffractive reading that allows an engagement with these two ‘perspectives’ in terms of different (theoretical) apparatuses visualizing different, even oppositional, realities: New materialism focuses on the processes of becoming and the potentiality of their openness, historical materialism takes into account specific, socially constituted, limits that configure the possibilities of becoming. Rather than concluding that a confrontation of these oppositional perspectives calls for resolution, I argue that it is more promising to be attentive to what Etienne Balibar calls their points of heresy. The focus is thus on the specific tensions of their common discursive space, which operates with fundamental binaries (such as meaning/matter, form/content). Both perspectives share the assumption that it is impossible to regard the two terms as separate entities. Both, however, resolve the tension by focusing on one of the two terms. Historical materialism is committed to visualizing the conditioned possibilities of human agency to transform the material world. New materialism is committed to visualizing materiality that cannot be attributed to this formative power. Read with attention to these heretical tensions, both perspectives have valuable insights to offer for emancipatory projects as historically situated endeavors committed to finding and fashioning new, less violent, ways of relating to ourselves and to others.
Thomas Nail
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- July 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197526477
- eISBN:
- 9780197526514
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197526477.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General, Political Philosophy
This book reads Marx as a philosopher of movement and motion, inspired by his earliest writings in his dissertation. From this unique perspective, the book argues that Marx was not a historical ...
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This book reads Marx as a philosopher of movement and motion, inspired by his earliest writings in his dissertation. From this unique perspective, the book argues that Marx was not a historical determinist, reductionist materialist, anthropocentric humanist, or structuralist and did not hold a labor theory of value. These bold claims strike at the heart of well-trod interpretations of Marx and motivate this book’s rereading of him as a more process-oriented theorist of motion. The aim of this introduction is to contextualize this intervention and introduce the theses, methods, and consequences of this project.Less
This book reads Marx as a philosopher of movement and motion, inspired by his earliest writings in his dissertation. From this unique perspective, the book argues that Marx was not a historical determinist, reductionist materialist, anthropocentric humanist, or structuralist and did not hold a labor theory of value. These bold claims strike at the heart of well-trod interpretations of Marx and motivate this book’s rereading of him as a more process-oriented theorist of motion. The aim of this introduction is to contextualize this intervention and introduce the theses, methods, and consequences of this project.
S. Scott Graham
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226264059
- eISBN:
- 9780226264196
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226264196.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter introduces readers to the Midwest Pain Group, an interdisciplinary organization of pain management specialists devoted to the establishment of a new pain ontology, grounded in an ...
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This chapter introduces readers to the Midwest Pain Group, an interdisciplinary organization of pain management specialists devoted to the establishment of a new pain ontology, grounded in an integrated biopsychosocial theory of health and medicine. In so doing, this chapter explores the rhetorical-ontological methods whereby one might conduct an inquiry into what Mol dubs “calibration”—the discursive efforts to adjudicate among and or link multiple ontologies. In presenting the Midwest Pain Group as a space of calibration, this chapter argues for the development of methodological tools for a praxiogrpahy of representation.Less
This chapter introduces readers to the Midwest Pain Group, an interdisciplinary organization of pain management specialists devoted to the establishment of a new pain ontology, grounded in an integrated biopsychosocial theory of health and medicine. In so doing, this chapter explores the rhetorical-ontological methods whereby one might conduct an inquiry into what Mol dubs “calibration”—the discursive efforts to adjudicate among and or link multiple ontologies. In presenting the Midwest Pain Group as a space of calibration, this chapter argues for the development of methodological tools for a praxiogrpahy of representation.
Victoria Pitts-Taylor (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781479833498
- eISBN:
- 9781479842308
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479833498.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
21st Century feminists are re-imagining nature, biology, and matter in feminist thought and critically addressing new developments in biology, physics, neuroscience, epigenetics and other scientific ...
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21st Century feminists are re-imagining nature, biology, and matter in feminist thought and critically addressing new developments in biology, physics, neuroscience, epigenetics and other scientific disciplines. This volume presents contemporary feminist perspectives on the materialist or ‘naturalizing’ turn in feminist theory, and also represents the newest wave of feminist engagement with science. The volume addresses the relationship between human corporeality and subjectivity, questions and redefines the boundaries of human/non-human and nature/culture, elaborates on the entanglements of matter, knowledge, and practice, and addresses biological materialization as a complex and open process. This volume insists that feminist theory can take matter and biology seriously while also accounting for power. The authors take materialism as a point of departure to rethink key feminist issues, such as intersectionality, representation, performativity, methodology, post-colonialism, and biopolitics. The authors also apply concepts in contemporary materialist feminism to examine an array of topics in science, biotechnology, biopolitics, and bioethics. These include neural plasticity and the brain-machine interface; the use of biometrical identification technologies for transnational border control; epigenetics and the intergenerational transmission of the health effects of social stigma; ADHD and neuropharmacology; and randomized controlled trials of HIV drugs. They also address the histories of toxicology and neuroenhancement, and the use of neuropsychiatric drugs in prisons. The volume presents in grounded, concrete terms the need for rethinking disciplinary boundaries and research methodologies in light of the shifts in feminist theorizing.Less
21st Century feminists are re-imagining nature, biology, and matter in feminist thought and critically addressing new developments in biology, physics, neuroscience, epigenetics and other scientific disciplines. This volume presents contemporary feminist perspectives on the materialist or ‘naturalizing’ turn in feminist theory, and also represents the newest wave of feminist engagement with science. The volume addresses the relationship between human corporeality and subjectivity, questions and redefines the boundaries of human/non-human and nature/culture, elaborates on the entanglements of matter, knowledge, and practice, and addresses biological materialization as a complex and open process. This volume insists that feminist theory can take matter and biology seriously while also accounting for power. The authors take materialism as a point of departure to rethink key feminist issues, such as intersectionality, representation, performativity, methodology, post-colonialism, and biopolitics. The authors also apply concepts in contemporary materialist feminism to examine an array of topics in science, biotechnology, biopolitics, and bioethics. These include neural plasticity and the brain-machine interface; the use of biometrical identification technologies for transnational border control; epigenetics and the intergenerational transmission of the health effects of social stigma; ADHD and neuropharmacology; and randomized controlled trials of HIV drugs. They also address the histories of toxicology and neuroenhancement, and the use of neuropsychiatric drugs in prisons. The volume presents in grounded, concrete terms the need for rethinking disciplinary boundaries and research methodologies in light of the shifts in feminist theorizing.
Catherine Keller and Mary-Jane Rubenstein (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823276219
- eISBN:
- 9780823277049
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823276219.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Historically speaking, theology can be said to operate “materiaphobically.” Protestant Christianity in particular has bestowed upon theology a privilege of the soul over the body and belief over ...
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Historically speaking, theology can be said to operate “materiaphobically.” Protestant Christianity in particular has bestowed upon theology a privilege of the soul over the body and belief over practice, in line with the distinction between a disembodied God and the inanimate world “He” created. Like all other human, social, and natural sciences, religious studies imported these theological dualisms into a purportedly secular modernity, mapping them furthermore onto the distinction between a rational, “enlightened” Europe on the one hand and a variously emotional, “primitive,” and “animist” non-Europe on the other. The “new materialisms” currently coursing through cultural, feminist, political, and queer theories seek to displace human privilege by attending to the agency of matter itself. Far from being passive or inert, they show us that matter acts, creates, destroys, and transforms—and, as such, is more of a process than a thing. Entangled Worlds examines the intersections of religion and new and old materialisms. Calling upon an interdisciplinary throng of scholars in science studies, religious studies, and theology, it assembles a multiplicity of experimental perspectives on materiality: What is matter, how does it materialize, and what sorts of worlds are enacted in its varied entanglements with divinity? While both theology and religious studies have over the past few decades come to prioritize the material contexts and bodily ecologies of more-than-human life, Entangled Worlds sets forth the first multivocal conversation between religious studies, theology, and the body of “the new materialism.” Here disciplines and traditions touch, transgress, and contaminate one another across their several carefully specified contexts. And in the responsiveness of this mutual touching of science, religion, philosophy, and theology, the growing complexity of our entanglements takes on a consistent ethical texture of urgency.Less
Historically speaking, theology can be said to operate “materiaphobically.” Protestant Christianity in particular has bestowed upon theology a privilege of the soul over the body and belief over practice, in line with the distinction between a disembodied God and the inanimate world “He” created. Like all other human, social, and natural sciences, religious studies imported these theological dualisms into a purportedly secular modernity, mapping them furthermore onto the distinction between a rational, “enlightened” Europe on the one hand and a variously emotional, “primitive,” and “animist” non-Europe on the other. The “new materialisms” currently coursing through cultural, feminist, political, and queer theories seek to displace human privilege by attending to the agency of matter itself. Far from being passive or inert, they show us that matter acts, creates, destroys, and transforms—and, as such, is more of a process than a thing. Entangled Worlds examines the intersections of religion and new and old materialisms. Calling upon an interdisciplinary throng of scholars in science studies, religious studies, and theology, it assembles a multiplicity of experimental perspectives on materiality: What is matter, how does it materialize, and what sorts of worlds are enacted in its varied entanglements with divinity? While both theology and religious studies have over the past few decades come to prioritize the material contexts and bodily ecologies of more-than-human life, Entangled Worlds sets forth the first multivocal conversation between religious studies, theology, and the body of “the new materialism.” Here disciplines and traditions touch, transgress, and contaminate one another across their several carefully specified contexts. And in the responsiveness of this mutual touching of science, religion, philosophy, and theology, the growing complexity of our entanglements takes on a consistent ethical texture of urgency.
Kate Lockwood Harris
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- April 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190876920
- eISBN:
- 9780190876968
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190876920.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
Two sets of assumptions—ones about communication and ones about agency—shape debates over the violence–organization relationship. When scholars and laypersons suggest that words are mere symbols that ...
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Two sets of assumptions—ones about communication and ones about agency—shape debates over the violence–organization relationship. When scholars and laypersons suggest that words are mere symbols that represent the world and correspond to things in it, communication remains a way to describe violence. Under this representationalist line of thinking, communication is split from the material world and cannot do harm. Similarly, when people assume that agency is a human’s intentional decision about how to act, the broader processes that inform action fade from view. An individual perpetrator becomes the sole violent actor. Both sets of assumptions make it difficult to conceptualize an organization’s role in violence. This chapter relies on feminist new materialism to problematize these assumptions. After providing an overview of the theory’s distinctive features, the chapter shows its resonances with existing scholarship on communication, agency, and organizations. These resonances provide a framework for understanding organizations to be more than mere sites for violence.Less
Two sets of assumptions—ones about communication and ones about agency—shape debates over the violence–organization relationship. When scholars and laypersons suggest that words are mere symbols that represent the world and correspond to things in it, communication remains a way to describe violence. Under this representationalist line of thinking, communication is split from the material world and cannot do harm. Similarly, when people assume that agency is a human’s intentional decision about how to act, the broader processes that inform action fade from view. An individual perpetrator becomes the sole violent actor. Both sets of assumptions make it difficult to conceptualize an organization’s role in violence. This chapter relies on feminist new materialism to problematize these assumptions. After providing an overview of the theory’s distinctive features, the chapter shows its resonances with existing scholarship on communication, agency, and organizations. These resonances provide a framework for understanding organizations to be more than mere sites for violence.
John M. Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780262028905
- eISBN:
- 9780262327107
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262028905.003.0003
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Environmental Studies
The role and position of materiality is — perhaps surprisingly — deeply divisive among both scholars and activists concerned with environmental sustainability. On the one hand is an account – often ...
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The role and position of materiality is — perhaps surprisingly — deeply divisive among both scholars and activists concerned with environmental sustainability. On the one hand is an account – often rooted in Ronald Inglehart’s postmaterialist values thesis but also reflected in the “eco-modernism” of authors including Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus – that minimizes the role of “objective” material conditions and practices in favor of “subjective” values. On the other hand is an account that reverses this relationship. This chapter argues for a conception of materiality and material practices that rejects this subjective/objective divide as a lens for understanding contemporary environmental politics. “New materialism” offers promising resources for this pursuit of a new understanding of environmental politics, but also contains potential pitfalls identified in this chapter.Less
The role and position of materiality is — perhaps surprisingly — deeply divisive among both scholars and activists concerned with environmental sustainability. On the one hand is an account – often rooted in Ronald Inglehart’s postmaterialist values thesis but also reflected in the “eco-modernism” of authors including Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus – that minimizes the role of “objective” material conditions and practices in favor of “subjective” values. On the other hand is an account that reverses this relationship. This chapter argues for a conception of materiality and material practices that rejects this subjective/objective divide as a lens for understanding contemporary environmental politics. “New materialism” offers promising resources for this pursuit of a new understanding of environmental politics, but also contains potential pitfalls identified in this chapter.
Norie Neumark
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036139
- eISBN:
- 9780262339834
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036139.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
Moved by Aboriginal or Indigenous understandings of tracks, Norie Neumark’s Voicetracks seeks to deepen understandings of voice through listening to a variety of media and contemporary art works from ...
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Moved by Aboriginal or Indigenous understandings of tracks, Norie Neumark’s Voicetracks seeks to deepen understandings of voice through listening to a variety of media and contemporary art works from Australia, Europe, and the United States. The author aims to bring voice studies into conversation with new materialism to broaden thinking within both. Through a methodology based in listening, she brings theories of affect and carnal and situated knowledge into conversation with her examples and the theories she works with. Through her examples, Neumark engages with artists working with animal sounds and voices; voices of place, placed voices in installation works; voices of technology; and “unvoicing,” disturbances in the image/voice relationship and in the idea of what voice is. Neumark evokes both the literal—the actual voices within the works with which she engages—and the metaphorical—in a new materialist exploration of voice encompassing humans, animals, things, and assemblages. Not content with the often dry tone of academic writing, the author engages a “wayfaring” process that brings together theories from sound, animal, and posthuman studies in order to change the ways we think about and act with and within the assemblages of living creatures, things, places and histories around us. Finally, she considers ethics and politics, and describes how her own work has shaped her understandings and apprehensions of voice.Less
Moved by Aboriginal or Indigenous understandings of tracks, Norie Neumark’s Voicetracks seeks to deepen understandings of voice through listening to a variety of media and contemporary art works from Australia, Europe, and the United States. The author aims to bring voice studies into conversation with new materialism to broaden thinking within both. Through a methodology based in listening, she brings theories of affect and carnal and situated knowledge into conversation with her examples and the theories she works with. Through her examples, Neumark engages with artists working with animal sounds and voices; voices of place, placed voices in installation works; voices of technology; and “unvoicing,” disturbances in the image/voice relationship and in the idea of what voice is. Neumark evokes both the literal—the actual voices within the works with which she engages—and the metaphorical—in a new materialist exploration of voice encompassing humans, animals, things, and assemblages. Not content with the often dry tone of academic writing, the author engages a “wayfaring” process that brings together theories from sound, animal, and posthuman studies in order to change the ways we think about and act with and within the assemblages of living creatures, things, places and histories around us. Finally, she considers ethics and politics, and describes how her own work has shaped her understandings and apprehensions of voice.
Amanda Jo Goldstein
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226458441
- eISBN:
- 9780226458588
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226458588.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
Each of the book’s chapters differently argues for a Romantic poetic conjunction, through the problem of natural “life,” between materialisms of nature associated with Enlightenment science and the ...
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Each of the book’s chapters differently argues for a Romantic poetic conjunction, through the problem of natural “life,” between materialisms of nature associated with Enlightenment science and the coming nineteenth-century science of historical materialism. The Coda resituates Marx in this Romantic tradition, uncovering (with help from Althusser and Deleuze) the ecological and poetic intelligence of the “sensuous science” he elaborated in his dissertation on Epicurus and Lucretius. While the newness in most “new materialist” ontologies is meant to break with both the Marxian materiality of history and the deconstructive materiality of the letter, the Coda argues that Marx was operating in a mode of counterdisciplinary materialism that deployed figural matter as a substance fit to articulate terrestrial rhetoric, history, and biology together. Attaining to such materialist semiotics might help historical materialist criticism rise to the now ecologically pressing task of writing for social justice in the idiom of natural history.Less
Each of the book’s chapters differently argues for a Romantic poetic conjunction, through the problem of natural “life,” between materialisms of nature associated with Enlightenment science and the coming nineteenth-century science of historical materialism. The Coda resituates Marx in this Romantic tradition, uncovering (with help from Althusser and Deleuze) the ecological and poetic intelligence of the “sensuous science” he elaborated in his dissertation on Epicurus and Lucretius. While the newness in most “new materialist” ontologies is meant to break with both the Marxian materiality of history and the deconstructive materiality of the letter, the Coda argues that Marx was operating in a mode of counterdisciplinary materialism that deployed figural matter as a substance fit to articulate terrestrial rhetoric, history, and biology together. Attaining to such materialist semiotics might help historical materialist criticism rise to the now ecologically pressing task of writing for social justice in the idiom of natural history.
Derek Ryan
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748676439
- eISBN:
- 9780748684359
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748676439.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This introduction clarifies the book’s use of the terms ‘materiality’ and ‘theory’ and outlines why the relationship between them is important for Woolf studies. It begins with a discussion of ...
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This introduction clarifies the book’s use of the terms ‘materiality’ and ‘theory’ and outlines why the relationship between them is important for Woolf studies. It begins with a discussion of Woolf’s famous ‘philosophy’ passage from ‘Sketch of the Past’ which lays the groundwork for her materially embedded model of theorising, and goes on to situate the book’s approach within both Woolf criticism and also this ‘new materialist’ turn in theory. The introduction therefore outlines this book’s departure from the poststructuralist and postmodernist readings of Woolf that were influential in the 80s and early 90s (and which centred on psychoanalytical models of subjectivity and questions of language and discourse). It discusses the stakes involved in reading Woolf in the context of emerging theories of materiality, focusing in particular on the links between Woolf and Deleuze.Less
This introduction clarifies the book’s use of the terms ‘materiality’ and ‘theory’ and outlines why the relationship between them is important for Woolf studies. It begins with a discussion of Woolf’s famous ‘philosophy’ passage from ‘Sketch of the Past’ which lays the groundwork for her materially embedded model of theorising, and goes on to situate the book’s approach within both Woolf criticism and also this ‘new materialist’ turn in theory. The introduction therefore outlines this book’s departure from the poststructuralist and postmodernist readings of Woolf that were influential in the 80s and early 90s (and which centred on psychoanalytical models of subjectivity and questions of language and discourse). It discusses the stakes involved in reading Woolf in the context of emerging theories of materiality, focusing in particular on the links between Woolf and Deleuze.
Danielle Sands
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474439039
- eISBN:
- 9781474476881
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474439039.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter puts the novels of Jim Crace in conversation with Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Philosophy. Beginning with a discussion of the development of OOP in contradistinction to Bruno Latour’s ...
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This chapter puts the novels of Jim Crace in conversation with Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Philosophy. Beginning with a discussion of the development of OOP in contradistinction to Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory, it assesses the claims made by Harman for the superiority of OOP over contemporary relational ontologies such as that espoused by Jane Bennett. Turning to Crace, the chapter argues that his fiction enacts a sustained movement away from anthropocentrism, demonstrating the collaborative nature of storytelling and absenting the human from a variety of different landscapes. It argues that, in their examination of the ‘allure’ of objects, these novels espouse a position closer to Harman than Bennett. Finally, the chapter interrogates Harman’s presentation of aesthetics as first philosophy, arguing that the clear alignment between Crace’s fiction and Harman’s work reinforces the claim that aesthetics gives access to the ontological, and demands a reconsideration of agency.Less
This chapter puts the novels of Jim Crace in conversation with Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Philosophy. Beginning with a discussion of the development of OOP in contradistinction to Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory, it assesses the claims made by Harman for the superiority of OOP over contemporary relational ontologies such as that espoused by Jane Bennett. Turning to Crace, the chapter argues that his fiction enacts a sustained movement away from anthropocentrism, demonstrating the collaborative nature of storytelling and absenting the human from a variety of different landscapes. It argues that, in their examination of the ‘allure’ of objects, these novels espouse a position closer to Harman than Bennett. Finally, the chapter interrogates Harman’s presentation of aesthetics as first philosophy, arguing that the clear alignment between Crace’s fiction and Harman’s work reinforces the claim that aesthetics gives access to the ontological, and demands a reconsideration of agency.
Gary Hall
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262034401
- eISBN:
- 9780262332217
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262034401.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
What forms might critical theory take when the focus is not only on what a theorist writes, but also on the theory he or she acts out and performs? Chapter 4 addresses this question by means of a ...
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What forms might critical theory take when the focus is not only on what a theorist writes, but also on the theory he or she acts out and performs? Chapter 4 addresses this question by means of a rigorous “piratical” reading of RosiBraidotti’s The Posthuman. Since the focus of this chapter is on how theorists act, it also explains the philosophy Hall is endeavoring to perform in some of the projects and actions he is involved with. Chapter 4 looks at two such projects in particular. The first is Open Humanities Press (OHP), a non-profit open access publisher Hall co-founded in 2006. The project covered in most detail however is a series of books Hall co-edits as part of OHP called Living Books About Life.Less
What forms might critical theory take when the focus is not only on what a theorist writes, but also on the theory he or she acts out and performs? Chapter 4 addresses this question by means of a rigorous “piratical” reading of RosiBraidotti’s The Posthuman. Since the focus of this chapter is on how theorists act, it also explains the philosophy Hall is endeavoring to perform in some of the projects and actions he is involved with. Chapter 4 looks at two such projects in particular. The first is Open Humanities Press (OHP), a non-profit open access publisher Hall co-founded in 2006. The project covered in most detail however is a series of books Hall co-edits as part of OHP called Living Books About Life.
David Wood
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823281367
- eISBN:
- 9780823286010
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823281367.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Post-humanism throws up deep questions about agency and responsibility at a point in human and terrestrial history at which we most urgently need answers. Do new materialists—a cluster of ...
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Post-humanism throws up deep questions about agency and responsibility at a point in human and terrestrial history at which we most urgently need answers. Do new materialists—a cluster of contemporary thinkers influenced by Spinoza, Deleuze, and feminism—help us with such answers? Is it enough to speak of the agency of things? Or a hybrid model in which humans share agency with natural forces? Or to rethink agents not as independent beings but essentially relational, assemblages? Is new materialism any better than the old one? It offers ways of thinking and talking that attempt to overcome or displace patterns of thought that generate blind repetitions of empty formulae. Following Deleuze, new materialism attempts to overcome the ways in which we are caught up in reactive forces, which has a direct impact on how we respond to climate change. But it is less plausible as ontology, often falling into performative self-contradiction, and more significant as discursive innovation. It opens the world in new ways, refiguring matter with new words, new concepts. It wants to point to the resistance, recalcitrance, and powers of things, but much of the work takes place in transforming our discursive inheritance.Less
Post-humanism throws up deep questions about agency and responsibility at a point in human and terrestrial history at which we most urgently need answers. Do new materialists—a cluster of contemporary thinkers influenced by Spinoza, Deleuze, and feminism—help us with such answers? Is it enough to speak of the agency of things? Or a hybrid model in which humans share agency with natural forces? Or to rethink agents not as independent beings but essentially relational, assemblages? Is new materialism any better than the old one? It offers ways of thinking and talking that attempt to overcome or displace patterns of thought that generate blind repetitions of empty formulae. Following Deleuze, new materialism attempts to overcome the ways in which we are caught up in reactive forces, which has a direct impact on how we respond to climate change. But it is less plausible as ontology, often falling into performative self-contradiction, and more significant as discursive innovation. It opens the world in new ways, refiguring matter with new words, new concepts. It wants to point to the resistance, recalcitrance, and powers of things, but much of the work takes place in transforming our discursive inheritance.
Gavin Flood
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198836124
- eISBN:
- 9780191873478
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198836124.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This chapter takes up more explicitly the problem concerning the relationship between life understood as a system or process and life in relation to the person. This is to re-tell the story of the ...
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This chapter takes up more explicitly the problem concerning the relationship between life understood as a system or process and life in relation to the person. This is to re-tell the story of the relation of life to the living from a different perspective of twentieth-century philosophy. There is a tension between the living system rooted in a materialist metaphysics and the lived reality of persons, between system and lifeworld. This chapter traces the development of the phenomenology of life focused on human experience, juxtaposing this with a new materialism that emphasizes the objective constancy of life itself as material reality beyond the human. This involves delineating the contours of the discussion to show how this debate is relevant to some contemporary religious understandings of the person.Less
This chapter takes up more explicitly the problem concerning the relationship between life understood as a system or process and life in relation to the person. This is to re-tell the story of the relation of life to the living from a different perspective of twentieth-century philosophy. There is a tension between the living system rooted in a materialist metaphysics and the lived reality of persons, between system and lifeworld. This chapter traces the development of the phenomenology of life focused on human experience, juxtaposing this with a new materialism that emphasizes the objective constancy of life itself as material reality beyond the human. This involves delineating the contours of the discussion to show how this debate is relevant to some contemporary religious understandings of the person.
