Graham \u2013 The subtitle of your final chapter runs as follows: \u201cWhy I am Not an Immanent Naturalist or Vital Materialist.\u201d Could you explain briefly what each of these terms means, and why neither of them fits you well? <\/p>\n
This question relates to your seventh question above, with \u201cimmanent naturalism\u201d and \u201cvital materialism\u201d being the labels for Connolly\u2019s and Bennett\u2019s significantly overlapping theoretical stances respectively.<\/p>\n
For reasons explained in ATM<\/em>, I identify both of these positions as neo-Spinozist (therefore, my answer to your sixth question about neo-Spinozism already partly explains \u201cwhy I am not an immanent naturalist or vital materialist\u201d).<\/p>\n My attention was drawn to Bennett by, roughly speaking, the speculative realist community\u2019s excitement about her 2010 book Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things<\/em>.<\/p>\n However, I stumbled upon Connolly independently, although this was bound to happen sooner or later given my own research at the intersection of the humanities and the life sciences. More specifically, a number of years ago, I came across Connolly\u2019s 2002 book Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed<\/em> and assigned it as part of a graduate seminar on \u201cbiopolitics\u201d broadly construed.<\/p>\n Connolly\u2019s immanent naturalism and Bennett\u2019s vital materialism both exhibit striking similarities to transcendental materialism: in particular, all three of these positions\u2019 willingness to draw on natural scientific resources and their shared conviction that these resources and reliance upon them does not result in any kind of mechanistic, deterministic dead-end.<\/p>\n Thus, pinpointing the differences that make for real differences between Connolly, Bennett, and me, despite these similarities, appeared to me to be important to do. Explaining to myself and others how and why transcendental materialism is distinctive vis-\u00e0-vis both immanent naturalism and vital materialism (i.e., \u201cwhy I am not an immanent naturalist or vital materialist\u201d) allowed me further to illuminate and sharpen the contours of my own stance. This is what motivates the twelfth and final chapter of ATM<\/em>.<\/p>\n In addition but related to my divergences from Bennett and Connolly paralleling the contemporary rift between neo-Hegelianism and neo-Spinozism (as I sketched this earlier in response to your sixth question), I voice reservations about their political visions in ATM<\/em>. I argue that their liquidations of conceptions of subjectivity as autonomous agency not only are theoretically contestable, but also practically problematic (I consider Marx\u2019s dual theoretical and practical criticisms of what he characterizes as \u201ccontemplative materialism\u201d in his \u201cTheses on Feuerbach\u201d as applying equally well to immanent naturalism and vital materialism).<\/p>\n Their neo-Spinozistic (and very Deleuzian) pictures of reality as consisting exclusively of teeming multitudes of asubjective assemblages cross-resonating in web-like networks are not, by my lights, conducive to the sorts of political thinking so urgently needed by today\u2019s Left (just as these same pictures arguably failed the Left during May 1968 and its aftermath).<\/p>\n Of course, neither Bennett nor Connolly embrace Marxism as someone like me does. But, taking Bennett\u2019s ecological agenda as an occasion for spelling out my objections here as an immanent (rather than purely external) critique, her vital materialist ontology is at least as likely to blunt (instead of intensify) the anxieties and worries that would galvanize political action apropos looming environmental threats; her \u201cpolitical ecology of things\u201d dovetails all-too-nicely with a spontaneous quotidian phenomenology mitigating against the outbreak of negative affects that might actually motivate what she considers to be desirable ecological efforts.<\/p>\n As for Connolly\u2019s political views, with his fidelity to a non-Marxist, Foucauldian-style micro-politics, they are underpinned by what I consider to be an unjustified faith in capitalo-parliamentarianism (to utilize Badiouian phrasing) and its reformability.<\/p>\n Bennett\u2019s and Connolly\u2019s joint reliances on a French philosophical background (a primarily Deleuzian-Foucauldian one) lop-sidedly highlighting dimensions involving tissues of micro-powers is a recipe for a non-radical reformism, namely, more of the same status quo business as usual, regardless of the speciously subversive-sounding rhetoric of certain political-theoretical discourses.<\/p>\n However, Connolly and Bennet, like \u017di\u017eek, Malabou, and H\u00e4gglund (as well as other dialogue partners featuring in ATM<\/em>) are productively \u201cextimate\u201d for me (as per Lacan\u2019s neologism for the intimately exterior). By this I mean that those whose work is close to the animating core of my own projects and yet, at the same time, whose orientations are crucially different from mine in certain respects are my most valued intellectual others.<\/p>\n On the basis of my own experiences, I have found that immanent critiques of those most proximate to one\u2019s own position are by far the most worthwhile and rewarding critical engagements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Graham \u2013 The subtitle of your final chapter runs as follows: \u201cWhy I am Not an Immanent Naturalist or Vital Materialist.\u201d Could you explain briefly what each of these terms means, and why neither of them fits you well?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dia-mat","category-subjectivity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12874"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12879,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12874\/revisions\/12879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}