New Materialisms

Overall, the volume makes a convincing case for the renewal of materialism, in terms of both its theoretical purchase and its radical political potential. It shows, in ways that are often exemplary, that there are rich, and sometimes surprising, resources in the philosophical tradition for renewing materialisms. - Keith Ansell Pearson, Radical Philosophy New materialisms offer democratic theory an important opportunity to regard its own parameters and function what can be hoped for and why. And Coole and Frosts volume offers a new view of the human (and the thing) that are well worth regarding. . . . - Andrew Poe, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy New Materialisms is an extraordinary and in fact interdisciplinary collection in its own right. . . . [T]he work coming out of the material turn is mind-blowing work, both in scholarly and in artistic research, and in art. - Iris van der Tuin, Womens Studies International Forum The essays collected hereauthored by leading political theorists and feminist and cultural criticsexamine the choreographies of becoming and move beyond constructivism and humanism to track processes of de- and re-materialization. The effect is to scramble habitual categories of thoughtactive versus passive, inert versus animate, political versus ontological, causality versus spontaneityand force us to think materiality. As the editors put it, materiality is always something more than mere matter: an excess, force, vitality, relationality, or difference that renders matter active, self-creative, productive, unpredictable.Bonnie Honig, author of Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy This is a strong and timely collection, one that could very well direct future discussions of the new materialisms toward an experimental, process-oriented, and politically-engaged new ontology.Ellen Rooney, Brown University New Materialisms is an extraordinary and in fact interdisciplinary collection in its own right. . . . [T]he work coming out of the material turn is mind-blowing work, both in scholarly and in artistic research, and in art. -- Iris van der Tuin * Women's Studies International Forum * New materialisms offer democratic theory an important opportunity to regard its own parameters and function what can be hoped for and why. And Coole and Frosts volume offers a new view of the human (and the thing) that are well worth regarding. . . . -- Andrew Poe * Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy * Overall, the volume makes a convincing case for the renewal of materialism, in terms of both its theoretical purchase and its radical political potential. It shows, in ways that are often exemplary, that there are rich, and sometimes surprising, resources in the philosophical tradition for renewing materialisms. -- Keith Ansell Pearson * Radical Philosophy *

Diana Coole is Professor of Political and Social Theory at Birkbeck College, University of London, England. She is the author, most recently, of Merleau-Ponty and Modern Politics after Anti-Humanism. She is a Leverhulme Research Fellow, 201013. Samantha Frost is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, the Gender and Womens Studies Program, and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of Lessons from a Materialist Thinker: Hobbesian Reflections on Ethics and Politics.

Acknowledgments ix Introducing the New Materialisms / Diana Coole and Samantha Frost 1 The Force of Materiality A Vitalist Stopover on the Way to a New Materialism / Jane Bennett 47 Nondialectical Materialism / Pheng Cheah 70 The Inertia of Matter and the Generativity of Flesh / Diana Coole 92 Impersonal Matter / Melissa A. Orlie 116 Political Matters Feminism, Materialism, and Freedom / Elizabeth Grosz 139 Fear and the Illusion of Autonomy / Samantha Frost 158 Materialities of Experience / William E. Connolly 178 The Politics of "Life Itself" and New Ways of Dying / Rosi Braidotti 201 Economies of Disruption The Elusive Material: What the Dog Doesn't Understand / Rey Chow 221 Orientations Matter / Sara Ahmed 234 Simon de Beauvoir: Engaging Discrepant Materialisms / Sonia Kruks 258 The Materialism of Historical Materialism / Jason Edwards 281 Bibliography 299 Contributors 319 Index 323