New Materialisms

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, 2010–13.Samantha Frost is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, the Gender and Women’s 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 ixIntroducing the New Materialisms / Diana Coole and Samantha Frost 1The Force of Materiality A Vitalist Stopover on the Way to a New Materialism / Jane Bennett 47Nondialectical Materialism / Pheng Cheah 70The Inertia of Matter and the Generativity of Flesh / Diana Coole 92Impersonal Matter / Melissa A. Orlie 116Political Matters Feminism, Materialism, and Freedom / Elizabeth Grosz 139Fear and the Illusion of Autonomy / Samantha Frost 158Materialities of Experience / William E. Connolly 178The Politics of "Life Itself" and New Ways of Dying / Rosi Braidotti 201Economies of Disruption The Elusive Material: What the Dog Doesn't Understand / Rey Chow 221Orientations Matter / Sara Ahmed 234Simon de Beauvoir: Engaging Discrepant Materialisms / Sonia Kruks 258The Materialism of Historical Materialism / Jason Edwards 281Bibliography 299Contributors 319Index 323

“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 toregard its own parameters and function – what can be hoped for and why.And Coole and Frost’s volume offers a new view of the human (and thething) 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, Women’s Studies International Forum “The essays collected here-authored by leading political theorists and feminist and cultural critics-examine 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 thought-active versus passive, inert versus animate, political versus ontological, causality versus spontaneity-and 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 toregard its own parameters and function – what can be hoped for and why.And Coole and Frost’s volume offers a new view of the human (and thething) 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)