Why Is New Materialism Not the Answer? Approaching Hyper-Matter, Reinventing the Sense of Critique Beyond ‘Theory’

Abstract

The article offers a new model of materialist philosophical critique (general technocritique or digital critique) as a critical response to new materialism(s). Drawing on the reinterpretation of the legacy of European philosophies and works by Bernard Stiegler, the article strives to elaborate authentically new theoretical account of matter, notably in relation to the techno-logical mode of its organisation. The critique of new materialism(s) is positioned within the unprecedented crisis of the theoretical model of knowledge. What it is possible to discover by the end of the second decade of the 21st century is that humanities scholars have not managed to confront the central issue for their viable future: the whole theoretical and methodological model, which has so far provided fuel for the contemporary humanities and shaped our social class, postcolonial, gender, queer and other sensibilities, is plunging into a deep epistemological crisis, for having lost its efficient and final cause. In a nutshell, the modelof “doing theory,” is no longer valid, inasmuch as “theory” strangely misrecognized the revolutionary developments in cybernetics, which occurred in the 1950s and radically changed the very nature of knowledge. Therefore, a new epistēmē has to be formed in this new digital condition. However, the formation of this new epistēmē requires for us to radically transform what is referred to as “theory” or “critical theory” and to take into account the developments in the sciences and technology (not necessarily in the methodological framework offered by what is defined as STS) in order to lay the foundations under a new critique of political economy in the hyper-material era.