Introduction

Abstract

This introduction balances between a general overview of the “material turn” and a concrete focus on the two primary currents of New Materialism and Object-Oriented Ontology. The first part generally explains the “material turn” in the humanities as a heightened awareness of how nonhuman forces shape and condition human realities and a reopening and expansion of the ways we intellectualise and imagine nature, culture, society, the subject, language, representation and so on. The second part moves on to introduce central post-anthropocentric concerns and key concepts within New Materialism and Object-Oriented Ontology (such as their ways of understanding reality, objects, nonhumans, agencies, language and representation and human-nonhuman relationships), highlighting their philosophical backdrops and interventions as well as their differences and similarities. Finally, the third part, presents an overview of how literature has been engaged in post-anthropocentric theory so far, by Bennett, Harman, Morton and others, before introducing the central themes and approaches of the new contributions in the current collection. The introduction ends with a brief outline of concerns and perspectives that cut across the various sections and chapters of the book.