Against New Materialisms

Abstract

This is the first collection to offer comprehensive scrutiny of the theories associated with new materialisms, including but not limited to: speculative realism, new materialism, object-oriented ontology and actor-network theory. One of the most influential trends in the humanities and social sciences in the last decades, new materialisms embody a critique of modernity and a pledge to regain immediate reality by focusing on the materiality of the world – human and nonhuman – rather than a post-structuralist focus upon texts. Collating its varied criticism in one go-to collection, the editors here uncover and examine the theoretical and practical problems connected with discarding modernity and the human subject from a number of interdisciplinary angles: from ontology and phenomenology to political theory, mythology and ecology. With contributions from international scholars, including Markus Gabriel, Andrew Cole, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, the essays here challenge the ability of this trend to provide solutions to current international crises, whilst also calling into question what the desire for such theories can tell us about the global situation today.