scholarly journals A Questionnaire on Materialisms

October ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 155 ◽  
pp. 3-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Apter ◽  
Ed Atkins ◽  
Armen Avanessian ◽  
Bill Brown ◽  
Giuliana Bruno ◽  
...  

Recent philosophical tendencies of “Actor-Network Theory,” “Object-Oriented Ontology,” and “Speculative Realism” have profoundly challenged the centrality of subjectivity in the humanities, and many artists and curators, particularly in the UK, Germany, and the United States, appear deeply influenced by this shift from epistemology to ontology. October editors asked artists, historians, and philosophers invested in these projects—from Graham Harman and Alexander R. Galloway to Armen Avanessian and Patricia Falguières to Ed Atkins and Amie Siegel—to explore what the rewards and risks of assigning agency to objects may be, and how, or if, such new materialisms can be productive for making and thinking about art today.

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-123
Author(s):  
Russell Sbriglia

Abstract This article mounts a defense of my and Slavoj Žižek’s co-edited anthology, Subject Lessons: Hegel, Lacan, and the Future of Materialism, against the two main criticisms of it made throughout Graham Harman’s article “The Battle of Objects and Subjects”: (1) that we and our fellow contributors are guilty of gross overgeneralization when we classify thinkers from various schools of thought – among them New Materialism, object-oriented ontology, speculative realism, and actor–network theory – under the broad rubric of the “new materialisms”; and (2) that despite our pretensions to the mantle of materialism, our Lacano-Hegelian position is actually a full-blown idealism. In responding to and attempting to refute these criticisms, I make the case that our Lacano-Hegelian model of dialectical materialism is an “extimate materialism.”


Author(s):  
Manon Schladen ◽  
Amanda Rounds ◽  
Terrence McManus ◽  
Alexander Bennewith ◽  
Henry Claypool ◽  
...  

A narrow interpretation of “medical necessity” can result in poorer health as well as a more restricted life for people with disabilities. We examined the impact of US policy on reimbursement of intermittent catheters (ICs) on the lives of people with neurogenic bladder (NB) who require catheters to urinate. We conducted in-depth, longitudinal interviews with nine stakeholders. Actor-Network Theory was used to describe interactions among human agents, IC products, and policies in the reimbursement arena. Restrictions on the type and quantities of ICs reimbursed emerged as the most potent inhibitor to health and wellbeing among consumers with NB. IC suppliers, due to the large number of other stakeholders with whom they interact in the reimbursement process, emerged as strong enablers of preferred IC use among people with NB. Lack of an impartial central clearinghouse on IC products and coverage impeded consumers’ ability to make informed decisions.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Tummons

The problematisation of the professional standards for teachers in the UK lifelong learning sector tends to focus on the discourses that the standards embody: discourses that are posited as being based on a restricted or technicist model of professionalism, that fail sufficiently to recognise the lived experiences of teachers within the sector both in terms of professional knowledge and competences, and professional development. This paper takes a different approach, drawing on a branch of material semiotics – actor-network theory – in order to shift the locus of problematisation away from what the standards might mean, to how the standards are physically assembled or instantiated. The paper concludes by suggesting that a first point of problematisation rests not in the discourses that the standards embody, but in the inherent fragilities of any material artefact that has the intention of carrying meaning across spatial, institutional or temporal boundaries.


Author(s):  
Lisa Disch

Is ecological democracy possible? If so, what would it entail? This chapter first reviews the literature based in deliberative democracy that proposes to extend communicative competence to non-humans, and then traces an alternative constructivist line of environmental political thinking from its beginnings in the strand of science and technology studies pioneered by Bruno Latour and others known as actor-network theory, through two actor-network theory-inspired approaches to political theory, “object-oriented democracy” and “material politics/participation.” Whereas this alternative approach solves some of the conundrums to which the communicative model gives rise, it is neither as radical a departure from politics as it is “normally understood,” nor aspoliticalas its proponents claim.


2019 ◽  
pp. 96-125
Author(s):  
Danielle Sands

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.


Author(s):  
Graham Harman

This article summarizes the author's 2016 book Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory, outlining the book's five criticisms of actor-network theory (ANT) and its fifteen provisional rules of object-oriented method in social theory. The article also considers Bruno Latour's criticism of Immaterialism, in particular his view that such terms as “symbiosis” and “decadence” rely too heavily on an inappropriate “biological” metaphor that has no place in discussion objects in a wider sense. In response, the authors claims that the primary meaning of the symbiosis and decadence is not biological, but biographical.


Author(s):  
JOERY SHRIVERS

We offer an introductory article to the translation of Dutch philosopher Joery Schreivers’ work Phenomenologists and Anarchism, which deals with the reception of current foreign trajectories of phenomenological and akratic reflexions from the perspective of contemporary Russian academic discourse. In the light of this, an attempt is made to assess the significance and originality of J. Shrivers’ study, focused on the conceptual juxtaposition of two philosophical traditions: phenomenology and the philosophy of anarchism. The value of the author’s stated perspective, which provides an opportunity to revise the classical phenomenological texts, is articulated as being related to its methodological novelty—not only for the Russian-speaking space, but also for foreign philosophy; a review and analysis of the central theses of the article, related to the key figures of the line of succession of acrical reflection in the phenomenological tradition, which is outlined by the author, is given, including: M.Heidegger, R. Schürmann, E.Levinas, J.Derrida, J.-L.Nancy, J.-I.Lacoste, C.Romano and J.-L.Marion. The article also builds theoretical connections between the anarchist foundations of a number of phenomenological reflections identified by J. Schreivers and the ontological accoutrements of other current philosophical trends—for example, the actor-network theory and the polyphony of new materialisms.


Author(s):  
MARIA RAKHMANINOVA ◽  

We offer an introductory article to the translation of Dutch philosopher Joery Schreivers’ work Phenomenologists and Anarchism, which deals with the reception of current foreign trajectories of phenomenological and akratic reflexions from the perspective of contemporary Russian academic discourse. In the light of this, an attempt is made to assess the significance and originality of J. Shrivers’ study, focused on the conceptual juxtaposition of two philosophical traditions: phenomenology and the philosophy of anarchism. The value of the author’s stated perspective, which provides an opportunity to revise the classical phenomenological texts, is articulated as being related to its methodological novelty—not only for the Russian-speaking space, but also for foreign philosophy; a review and analysis of the central theses of the article, related to the key figures of the line of succession of acrical reflection in the phenomenological tradition, which is outlined by the author, is given, including: M.Heidegger, R. Schürmann, E.Levinas, J.Derrida, J.-L.Nancy, J.-I.Lacoste, C.Romano and J.-L.Marion. The article also builds theoretical connections between the anarchist foundations of a number of phenomenological reflections identified by J. Schreivers and the ontological accoutrements of other current philosophical trends—for example, the actor-network theory and the polyphony of new materialisms.


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