Materialism and Politics

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.Edited by Bernardo Bianchi, Émilie Filion-Donato, Marlon Miguel, and Ay¿e Yuva, the volume contains contributions also by Chiara Bottici, Alex Demirovi¿, Mariana de Gainza, Christoph F. E. Holzhey, Ericka Marie Itokazu, Vittorio Morfino, Cornelia Möser, Catherine Perret, Marianna Poyares, Mauricio Rocha, Pascal Sévérac, Stefano Visentin, Elena Vogman, Frieder Otto Wolf.

From 'Materialism' towards 'Materialities' / The EditorsI. The Actuality of Spinoza's MaterialismIntroduction to Part I / Stefan HagemannMaterialist Variations on Spinoza: Theoretical Alliances and Political Strategies / Mariana de GainzaNon Defuit Materia: Freedom and Necessity in Spinoza's Democratic Theory / Stefano VisentinTemporality and History in Spinoza: The Refusal of Teleological Thought / Ericka Marie ItokazuSpinozist Moments in Deleuze: Materialism as Immanence / Mauricio RochaAre there One or Two Aleatory Materialisms? / Vittorio MorfinoII. The Materiality of the Milieu and the Materialist EducationIntroduction to Part II / Marlene Kienberger and Bruno PaceLanguage Follows Labour: Nikolai Marr's Materialist Palaeontology of Speech / Elena VogmanMaterialism and Capitalism Today: Zoo-aesthetics and a Critique of the Social Bond after Marcel Mauss and André Leroi-Gourhan / Catherine PerretThe Product of Circumstances: Towards a Materialist and Situated Pedagogy / Marlon MiguelIn the Labyrinth of Emancipation: An Inquiry into the Relationship between Knowledge and Politics / Bernardo BianchiA Materialist Education: Thinking with Spinoza / Pascal SévéracIII. Critical Materialities in Feminism and New MaterialismIntroduction to Part III / Alison SperlingMaterialism, Matter, Matrix, and Mater: Contesting Notions in Feminist and Gender Studies / Cornelia MöserAnarchafeminism & the Ontology of the Transindividual / Chiara BotticiPsychodynamism of Individuation and New Materialism: Possible Encounters / Émilie Filion-DonatoEmergence that Matters and Emergent Irrelevance: On the Political Use of Fundamental Physics / Christoph F. E. HolzheyIV. Towards a Renewed Historical MaterialismIntroduction to Part IV / Daniel LiuMaterialism against Materialism: Taking up Marx's Break with Reductionism / Frieder Otto WolfMaterialism, Politics, and the History of Philosophy: French, German, and Turkish Materialist Authors in the Nineteenth Century / Ayse YuvaThe Historicity of Materialism and the Critique of Politics / Alex DemirovicOn Populist Illusion: Impasses of Political Ontology, or How the Ordinary Matters / Facundo VegaTheory's Method?: Ethnography and Critical Theory / Marianna PoyaresReferencesNotes on the ContributorsIndex