Fictionality in New Materialism: (Re)Inventing Matter

2020 ◽  
pp. 026327642096740
Author(s):  
Tobias Skiveren
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Common Interest ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Donna Haraway ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences

Throughout the last decade, calls for a return to materiality have reverberated within the humanities and social sciences. Few, however, have noticed that this return has also entailed a return to fiction, as the new theoretical writings on matter regularly include elements of storytelling, fabulation or other genres of invention. This article asks why this alliance between new materialism and fiction has come about: Why do scholars united by a common interest in ‘getting real’ consistently utilize a type of discourse defined precisely by not committing itself to reality? Examining works by Jane Bennett, Dominic Pettman, Stacy Alaimo, Astrida Neimanis, Donna Haraway, and Rebekah Sheldon, the article explores this question by tracing three modes of fictionality in new materialism distinguished by inventing non/human entanglements, scientific knowledge, and future societies respectively. Ultimately, the article argues that fictionality is a particularly attractive tool for attempts to transcend anthropocentric regimes of truth.

Beyond the Nature/Culture Division. Building Complementary Knowledge on Disease

2021 ◽  
pp. 105-131
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Derra
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Philosophy Of Biology ◽  
Biological Research ◽  
Feminist Studies ◽  
Research Results ◽  
Sociology Of Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Feminist Materialism

The aim of the article is to present successful instances of building complementary knowledge on disease which go beyond the traditional division between natural and socio-cultural sciences. I argue that this is partially possible due to the changes in biological narratives and feminism’s attitude towards biology, with reciprocal references. First, I describe selected trends in the philosophy of biology which reflect changes in biological research towards more non-reductionist approaches. Then, I present some important aspects of the recent current in feminist studies called ‘new feminist materialism,’ and underline its clear attempt at combining research results from physics, biology, humanities, and social sciences. Finally, I present some main facets of studies on disease: in feminist reflection, Ludwik Fleck’s psycho-sociology of scientific knowledge, and in the medical humanities approach.

scholarly journals Prospects for a Postsecular Heritage Practice: Convergences between Posthumanism and Popular Religious Practice in Asia

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 436
Author(s):  
Denis Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Conservation Management ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Popular Belief ◽  
Management Plans ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences

By failing to document popular belief in the supernatural attributes of religious sites and by drawing up conservation management plans that fail to attend to such beliefs, current heritage regimes effectively perform a secular translation of them. I argue that the posthuman turn in the humanities and social sciences, and in particular its openness to forms of agency, vibrancy and vitality in the object world, offers prospects for a kind of heritage practice newly comfortable with the vibrancy that belief in the supernatural lends to the things of popular religion. Focusing on the material heritage of popular religion in Asia—in particular in China and Southeast Asia—attitudes of devotees to the rebuilding of temples and shrines are examined. Practices of rebuilding and restoration come to be seen as a form of worship. While ontological differences between worshipers and heritage practitioners remain, it is possible to be positive about the prospects for a postsecular heritage practice precisely because the rationalist authority of established practice is so under challenge by the counter discourses of posthumanism, the new materialism, and related streams of thought.

scholarly journals Promises of Non/Living Monsters and Uncontainable Life

Somatechnics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marietta Radomska
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Organic Matter ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Biological Materials ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Theoretical Ground ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
A Current

In the Western cultural imaginaries the monstrous is defined – following Aristotelian categorisations – by its excess, deficiency or displacement of organic matter. These characteristics come to the fore in the field of bioart: a current in contemporary art that involves the use of biological materials (various kinds of soma: cells, tissues, organisms), and scientific procedures, technologies, protocols, and tools. Bioartistic projects and objects not only challenge the conventional ideas of embodiment and bodily boundaries, but also explore the relation between the living and non-living, organic and inorganic, human and nonhuman, as well as various thresholds of the living.By looking at select bioartworks, this paper argues that the analysed projects offer a different ontology of life. More specifically, they expose life as uncontainable, that is, as a power of differentiation that traverses the divide between the living and non-living, organic and inorganic, human and nonhuman, and, ultimately, life and death. In this way, they draw attention to excess, processuality and multiplicity at the very core of life itself. Thus understood, life always already surpasses preconceived material and conceptual limits.Finally, while taking Deleuzian feminisms and new materialism as its theoretical ground, the paper suggests that such a revision of the ontology of life may mobilise future conceptualisations of ethics that evade the anthropocentric logic dominant in the humanities and social sciences.

Thinking Religion Through Things

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 365-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Bräunlein
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences

In recent years, the “material turn” has gained prominence in the humanities and social sciences, and it has also stimulated a shift toward a rediscovery of materiality in the scientific study of religion\s. The material turn aims to dissolve conventional dichotomies and, by emphasizing the concept of assemblage, insists that humans and things are fundamentally co-constitutive. This “New Materialism” addresses ontological alterity, and it radically decenters static anthropocentric arrangements and the position of the human subject as such. The insider–outsider distinction, however, as well as the emic–etic categorization, are based on fundamental dichotomies between the researcher and the researched, and between descriptive and analytical understandings of human beings. This article discusses the possibility and significance of a non-anthropocentric approach to religion, and examines to what extent it is analytically helpful to apply the insider–outsider and emic–etic distinctions while pursuing the goal of dissolving hierarchical and binary thinking. It furthermore argues that these issues can be properly answered only with reference to their methodological implications.

Nano in Sight: Epistemology, Aesthetics, Comparisons and Public Perceptions of Images of Nanoscale Objects

Leonardo ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 461-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Toumey ◽  
Michael Cobb
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences

Images of atoms, molecules and other nanoscale objects constitute one of the principal ways of communicating scientific knowledge about nanotechnology, both within and beyond the scientific community. This paper reports on four kinds of insights from studies of nano images: (1) a critical epistemology of these images; (2) aesthetic interpretations intended to counterbalance problems identified in the epistemology; (3) comparisons with issues of visualization from other scientific areas; and (4) a consideration of how persons in the public interpret artistic pictures of nanobots. These insights demonstrate how the humanities and social sciences contribute to the understanding of nanotechnology.

RELEVANCE OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION TO CURRICULUM THEORY AND DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 256-261
Author(s):  
Zaka Rauf ◽  
MUSA YUSUF
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Educational System ◽  
National Curriculum ◽  
Philosophy Of Education ◽  
Curriculum Theory ◽  
Best Interest ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences

Attempts of undue separation of the philosophy of education and curriculum theory and development in the teaching of systematic functional education have been seriously criticized. This has been so because it is not in the best interest in the teaching of an intelligent and national curriculum which forms the bedrock to the development of a truly vibrant educational system in Nigeria. This paper, therefore, is an attempt to investigate the relevance of the philosophy of education to the development of an intelligent curriculum which is imperative to the teaching of functional education in the technical, the sciences, the humanities and social sciences towards the revitalization of the Nigerian educational sector. 

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document