Does New Materialism have a neoliberal problem? — Part 3
In the first two parts of this series (1 & 2) I briefly outlined Jeffrey Nealon’s argument that we are now living in a performative era that is more concerned with becoming than being.
Nealon sketches out our long search for the unplumbable depths and invisible inner spaces of human life, and finds evidence of it in approaches as diverse as critical theory, deconstruction, phenomenology, and pragmatism.
But the problem with these approaches, he argues, is that they see matter as the dead, static backdrop of human life. Enter new materialism.
What sets new materialism (NM) apart?
In Fates of the Performative, Nealon (2021) argues that the search for the vital, animating force that differentiates a living, breathing person from a cadaver is nothing new. In fact it’s been a feature of Western metaphysics for centuries. What makes NM so interesting, then, is that it seeks to extend this interest to all things.
(I’m assuming you already have a good understanding of what NM is. But if you’d like a refresher, the earlier series on posthumanism may be useful.)
NM is a river fed by a number of fast-flowing streams, including a dissatisfaction with the lack of progress made by established critical theory, the challenges being posed by artificial intelligence, the growing importance of quantum mechanics, and the failure to adequately explain the biophysical roots of (human) consciousness.
But at its heart is a feeling that the deadening effects of C20 disciplinary society have made us stale, cynical, disinterested, apathetic, lazy, disconnected, and indifferent to the beauty of the world. What we needed, NM advocates argue, is a turn towards the enchantment of the inner, hidden life that exists ‘beyond’ empirical observation and objective reason.
We needed less Tame and more Wild.
Reviving the C18 romantic era’s desire to once again bathe in the beauty of the world, NM researchers try to re-connect, re-entangle, and re-vitalise our interest in our collective flourishing.
‘Things’ are no longer seen as mute inert matter or the lifeless stuff of the world, but performatively lively; ‘seething with their own powers of excessive enchantment’ (Nealon, 2021, p. 69).
Entities are now characterised by their leaky excess, quasi-miraculous animate flow; the forceful flux that enlivens their intra-actions; by the active, self-creative, productive, unpredictable, entangled, vital, contingent, constant, and immanent movement that defines their endless becoming.
We have become enchanted by the ‘overflowing wonder of life within what we thought were inanimate objects’ (Nealon, 2021, p. 70).
’In sum, new materialists are rediscovering a materiality that materialises, evincing immanent modes of self-transformation’ (Coole & Frost, 2010, p. 9).
Problems?
There is no doubt that NM has tapped into a deep-seated frustration many people now have with contemporary scholarly thinking. Be it the lack of progress in addressing misogyny, racism, and homophobia, or our colletive passivity in the face of an impending climate catastrophe, ongoing genocide, or the death of democracy.
If nothing else, NM achieves the remarkable double-handed trick of reminding us that humans are both cosmically insignificant and yet disproportionately powerful.
But it is not without its detractors, and I have explored two of my own personal criticisms of NM elsewhere (Nicholls, 2018; 2019; 2022).
Chiefly, I’ve picked up the OOO argument that NM cannot explain creation and emergence (see, for example, Harman, 2016; 2018). Crudely put, if everything can be explained by relations and intra-actions (the capacity of an entity to affect or be affected by another — as advocates of NM, ANT and others claim), then there is no ‘surplus’ from which ‘the new’ can emerge. Everything is contained within the relation, so nothing can exceed it. Nothing new can emerge. NM can’t allow for a space of emergence to exist outside of the relation, because then the relation would not be enough to explain what’s going on.
But there are other criticisms, too.
Many readers have argued that NM looks a lot like the ‘old’ dialectic materialism Friedrich Engels developed in his uncompleted work Dielectics of Nature published in 1883 (pdf, web version), which proposed that;
’From ants to asteroids, the world is a dynamic complex of interlocking forces in which all phenomena are interrelated, nothing stands still, quantity converts into quality, no absolute standpoints are available, everything is perpetually on the point of turning into its opposite and reality evolves through the unity of conflicting powers’ (Eagleton, 2017, p. 7).
Puncturing a hole in any sense of self-congratulation we might feel for the shiny new materialist thing we’ve found, Eagleton reminds us that;
‘It is not clear what to make of the claim that everything is related to everything else. There seems little in common between the Pentagon and a sudden upsurge in sexual jealousy, other than the fact that neither can ride a bicycle’ (ibid).
So perhaps Nealon and others are right that, ‘The least-new thing about the new materialism is its founding commitment to making it new’ (Nealon, 2021, p. 89).
Perhaps more tellingly though, Nealon echoes an argument I made in the earlier series on posthumanism, arguing that NM is, paradoxically, deeply anthropocentric.
This is a hard argument to make, given NM’s aspiration to flatten our ontologies and equilibrate human relations with all things. But as Bennett and others have made clear, ’My aspiration is to articulate a vibrant materiality that runs alongside and inside humans to see how analysis of [human] political events might change if we gave the force of things more due’ (Bennett, 2009, p. viii, my emphasis and insertion).
NM’s goal is the semi-mystical human act of self-overcoming; the ‘vital, animal movements’ (Nealon, 2021, p. 74) of excessive desiring; of reaching ‘beyond’, of change and growth, endlessly transgressive human self-actualisation.
This is the reason, Nealon argues, for Bennett’s fascination with the writings and actions of Henry David Thoreau (Bennett, 2002; 2016), because his writings were about the necessity to ‘to locate and then regularly expose oneself to the Wild sites and sights, to maximise opportunity for shock and disorientation’ (Bennett, 2002, p. 3).
The subtext of NM is the desire to be surprised by what we see; jolted out of our torpor; enhanced by our sensuous engagement with the world; and to find a more authentic form of human individualism.
And you can see this repeatedly in the literature, especially in the recent health care literature. Search any recent edition of Qualitative Inquiry — the journal that has perhaps done the most to advance NM in healthcare research — and you will encounter studies that creatively rewild ecologies of health (Carless et al., 2024), develop new ‘capacious methodologies’ for an unravelling world (Germein et al., 2024), and explore approaches to ‘experiencing the eternal through swimming’ (Boyle, 2023). (Becoming watery does seem to be quite a popular thing here: Link and Link).
Nealon suggests that if we are fuelled by the ‘blooming buzzing confusion all around us’, then we will ‘likewise see that the universe is based on openness and welcoming of others, and that’ll make us better people’ (Nealon, 2021, pp. 83-84). The truth about the vitality of things will set you free, because the universe will bend towards justice, as Karen Barad has argued (Barad et al., 1996).
But as Nealon argues that we have known for some time that ‘What someone does can’t be indexed to or explained by what that person believes about the nature of things’ (Nealon, 2021, p. 87).
In fact, this is a point that NM openly acknowledges, and indeed uses this argument to advocate for an approach that no longer relies on a direct link between peoples’ values and actions (in critical theory, for instance). The ‘is’ and prescriptive ‘oughts’, NM argues, are no longer connected.
Bennett, for instance, makes it clear she is not interested in the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’. So what is the approach that NM believes will bring about the widespread structural change it yearns for?
Sadly, the trail goes a little cold here. Or at least a little overgrown and entangled. Bennett advocates for greater aesthetic consciousness, for developing a mood of sensuous enchantment, for more aesthetic effects, the ‘strange combination of delight and disturbance’, and a focus on quotidian everyday world and so on (Bennett, 2002).
But once again, is there anything particularly new here? Hasn’t this been a constant concern for the arts and humanities in the C20? And doesn’t this also sound a lot like Foucault’s concept of care of the self? Nealon thinks so.
‘Having reduced intensity to a special kind of feeling, practitioners of “affect studies” perform autoethnographies of the ineffable’ (Culp, 2016).
But this isn’t the biggest problem with NM for Nealon. That lies in its links to biopolitical neoliberalism. And perhaps, given the critique above, you can already see where Nealon is going here. But I’ll save the details of his argument here until next week and give more of the details then.
So, until next week, thanks again for reading and engaging with these ideas, and especially for those of you who posted comments. If you have any reflections or comments on these pieces, I’d love to read them.
Talk soon,
Dave
References
Barad, K., Nelson, L. H., & Nelson, J. (1996). Meeting the universe half way: Realism and social constructivism without contradiction. In L. H. Nelson & J. Nelson (Eds.), Feminism, science and the philosophy of science (pp. 161-194). Kluwer.
Bennett, J. (2002). Thoreau’s Nature: Ethics, Politics, and the Wild. Rowman & Littlefield. Retrieved from http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=IRWZtminrrUC&hl=&source=gbs_api
Bennett, J. (2009). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Duke University Press.
Bennett, J. (2016). The enchantment of modern life. Princeton University Press.
Boyle, E. (2023). The Oceanic Feeling: Experiencing the Eternal through Swimming. Theory, Culture & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764231199896
Carless, D., Douglas, K., Barnes, J., & Pineau, E. (2024). Sand in Sculpture: Creatively Rewilding Ecologies of Health. Qualitative Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004241229786
Coole, D., & Frost, S. (2010). Introducing the New Materialisms. In D. Coole & S. Frost (Eds.), New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, Politics (pp. 1-43). Duke.
Culp, A. (2016). Dark Deleuze. University of Minnesota Press.
Eagleton, T. (2017). Materialism. Yale University Press.
Germein, S., Adams, P., & Dollin, J. (2024). Capacious Methodologies for an Unravelling World: Three Research Ecologies. Qualitative Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004241229791
Harman, G. (2016). Immaterialism. Polity Press.
Harman, G. (2018). Object-Oriented Ontology: A new theory of everything. Pelican Books.
Nealon, J. T. (2021). Fates of the performative: From the linguistic turn to new materialism. University of Minnesota Press.
Nicholls, D. A. (2018). New materialism and physiotherapy (). In B. E. Gibson, D. A. Nicholls, K. Synne-Groven, & J. Setchell (Eds.), Manipulating practices: A critical physiotherapy reader (pp. 101-122). Cappelen Damm Forlag.
Nicholls, D. A. (2019). What’s real is immaterial: What are we doing with new materialism?. Aporia: The nursing journal, 11(2), 3-13. http://hdl.handle.net/10292/13056
Nicholls, D. A. (2022). How Do You Touch an Impossible Thing. Front Rehabil Sci, 3, 934698. https://doi.org/10.3389/fresc.2022.934698