Materialism and Politics
Published on 2. March 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
XII, 412 pages
978-3-96558-018-3 (ISBN)
Description
What remains of materialism's subversive potential - i.e., its ties with heresy or atheism and republicanism or communism - and to what extent does this concept still interpellate us politically and philosophically?
As neoliberal policies expanded far beyond the state, their mechanisms of control seeped into the materiality of social reproduction, solidifying a conception of matter as something inert, to be appropriated, manipulated, and exploited. If in this context the subversive nature of a reference to materiality is called into question, it has also provoked new forms of resistance, as well as fundamental reconsiderations of the political implications of the notion of 'matter'.
Against this background, the aim of this book is to show the diversity within continued engagements with materialism as a central concept for progressive politics, be it in the direction opened up by New Materialism, in renewed forms of Marxist and Spinozist based approaches, or in feminist analyses, each in their own terms, without excluding the possibility of alliances between them.
Finally, this volume insists that the study of materiality and materialist approaches does not amount to a renunciation of philosophy, but rather urges us to broaden the task of philosophical thought in order to reconsider the historical and, in every sense of the word, material situatedness of all philosophical problems. Against a reductive and ahistorical conception of materialism - the straightest way back to ideology -, this book offers an analysis of its diverse emancipatory potentialities.
Reviews / Votes
Stemming from a conference organized in Berlin in 2019, the edited volume titled Materialism and Politics undertakes a monumental task: mapping out the current discussions in the field of materialism and its relations to politics. I say that this is a monumental task because, as the articles and perspectives gathered in this volume attest, the field of 'materialism' is impossible to encompass. The effort of the editorial team is thus remarkable. Although they know that a totally exhaustive study on this issue is impossible, they have still managed to put together a collection of essays that provide the reader with a very wide-ranging panorama of the current reflections on the field of materialism. - Nicolas Lema Habash, 'Book Review: Materialism and Politics' , Thesis Eleven , 2024More details
Persons
Content
From 'Materialism' towards 'Materialities' / The Editors
I. The Actuality of Spinoza's Materialism
Introduction to Part I / Stefan Hagemann
Materialist Variations on Spinoza: Theoretical Alliances and Political Strategies / Mariana de Gainza
Non Defuit Materia: Freedom and Necessity in Spinoza's Democratic Theory / Stefano Visentin
Temporality and History in Spinoza: The Refusal of Teleological Thought / Ericka Marie Itokazu
Spinozist Moments in Deleuze: Materialism as Immanence / Mauricio Rocha
Are there One or Two Aleatory Materialisms? / Vittorio Morfino
II. The Materiality of the Milieu and the Materialist Education
Introduction to Part II / Marlene Kienberger and Bruno Pace
Language Follows Labour: Nikolai Marr's Materialist Palaeontology of Speech / Elena Vogman
Materialism and Capitalism Today: Zoo-aesthetics and a Critique of the Social Bond after Marcel Mauss and André Leroi-Gourhan / Catherine Perret
The Product of Circumstances: Towards a Materialist and Situated Pedagogy / Marlon Miguel
In the Labyrinth of Emancipation: An Inquiry into the Relationship between Knowledge and Politics / Bernardo Bianchi
A Materialist Education: Thinking with Spinoza / Pascal Sévérac
III. Critical Materialities in Feminism and New Materialism
Introduction to Part III / Alison Sperling
Materialism, Matter, Matrix, and Mater: Contesting Notions in Feminist and Gender Studies / Cornelia Möser
Anarchafeminism & the Ontology of the Transindividual / Chiara Bottici
Psychodynamism of Individuation and New Materialism: Possible Encounters / Émilie Filion-Donato
Emergence that Matters and Emergent Irrelevance: On the Political Use of Fundamental Physics / Christoph F. E. Holzhey
IV. Towards a Renewed Historical Materialism
Introduction to Part IV / Daniel Liu
Materialism against Materialism: Taking up Marx's Break with Reductionism / Frieder Otto Wolf
Materialism, Politics, and the History of Philosophy: French, German, and Turkish Materialist Authors in the Nineteenth Century / Ayse Yuva
The Historicity of Materialism and the Critique of Politics / Alex Demirovic
On Populist Illusion: Impasses of Political Ontology, or How the Ordinary Matters / Facundo Vega
Theory's Method?: Ethnography and Critical Theory / Marianna Poyares
References
Notes on the Contributors
Index