Materialist Ontology Research Articles

Why ontology matters? Understanding COVID19 pandemic

Why ontology matters? Understanding COVID19 pandemic

Ontology and Closeness in Human–Nature Relationships: Beyond Dualisms, Materialism and Posthumanism, by Neil H. Kessler

<i>Ontology and Closeness in Human–Nature Relationships: Beyond Dualisms, Materialism and Posthumanism</i>, by Neil H. Kessler

(Un)romantic Becomings

Popular culture and media often portray school balls and proms as romantic spaces and having a date is perceived as the norm. While gender(ed) and heterosexual discourses continue to shape young people’s experiences, girls’ understandings of the school ball do not necessarily conform to dominant ideas. In this article, I draw on a new materialist ontology of sexuality to explore the relations in-between girls, dates, and the school ball. I examine ball-girl-date encounters as sexuality-assemblages comprising bodies, spatial-material arrangements, practices, and imaginings. In this frame, sexuality is conceptualized as becoming via an array of material-discursive, human, and more-than-human forces. I consider how ball-girl capacities and desires become emergent and contingent, opening up ways of thinking about girls and the school ball beyond popular cultural constructions.

Signs of Life

This essay advances an audible semiotics (hearing and listening) by challenging James Williams’ concept of signs in his book A Process Philosophy of Signs (2016). In it, Williams proposes that a sign exists due to, and as, its own intensive life. That is, he decouples consciousness from the semiotic relation in order to advance a materialist ontology. Through this thesis, Williams aims to move semiotic relations outside the limits of visual and linguistic thinking. In doing so, however, he has conflated two distinct activities—life and signs. This positions the sign on material grounds and thereby strips away the creative and interpretive element of ambiguity, which is vital to any theory of signs. This essay shares Williams’ interest in loosening semiotics from its adherence to language and visual thinking. But it challenges his arguments by addressing the topic from an audible rather than material standpoint. Without experience and interpretation—human, animal, plant or otherwise—a sound is only a sound, a process of life, and not a sign. An audible semiotics retains the sensory to seek out other avenues of discovery and thought beyond language and vision. In audibility, a sign returns to its relational element of sensation—its processes of gathering and interpretation. A process philosophy of audible signs thereby affirms two propositions: (1) that “life” and “sign” are not the same; and (2) that the value of semiotics is not a concern over what is, but about how any form of life responds to and interprets a situation. More than review or criticism, the essay advances a positive theory of audible signs. To this end, it narratively deconstructs a “scene” that Williams offers in his own account: a deer’s footsteps on a snowy hillside. By critiquing these accounts cinematically and narratively, we can see how an audible semiotics reinvigorates the vital necessity of ambiguity in hearing and listening, which also points toward the possibilities of audible design in filmmaking. The methodology is discursive and analytical but non-dialectical. That is, situating audibility in a narrative framework offers an other way into the value of signs and semiotic studies across a wide range of disciplines. The central thesis argued, contra Williams, is that signs are not reducible to “life” (and vice-versa), and that only an audible regard for signs can reveal this fact. To situate its arguments, this essay incorporates key aspects of semiotics, psychology, and epistemology. Thinkers engaged, other than Williams, include William James, Wittgenstein, Saussure, Peirce, Barthes and Deleuze. Philosophical in approach, this essay will have resonance as a starting point for considering the possibilities of creative hearing and listening in audiovisual arts and epistemology.

New Materialism and the History of Agribusiness

New Materialism and the History of Agribusiness

Storytelling methods on the move

This article takes up multimedia storytelling and interference as methods on the move in and beyond critical Autism studies and considers their contributions to post and qualitative studies in education. We write as a collective of Autistic and non-Autistic researchers, kin, artists, and educators. We think generatively about the tensions of trying to do anti-normative research through a multimedia storytelling project about Autism justice in education within the confines of academic spaces across differing relationalities to Autism. We situate our method within new materialist ontology, homing in on the concept of “interference”—something we believe has not been done within critical Autism studies before—considering what interference as metaphor and method might offer our analytic approach that diffraction alone might miss. Through analyzing core tensions in the research process and in three films made by Autistic participant-storytellers, we show how Autism flows together and/or collides with storytelling and other post/qualitative methods to make new story forms and modes, and with these, new patterns for understanding Autism and justice in research and education. Our aim is transformative—to open space through post/qualitative research processes for Autistic perspectives and to release multiple stories of Autism into the world. In this we lean into interference and the tangle of research and relationality, power, and possibility for more innovative, just, and critically hopeful knowledge and practice.

Positive Atheism: Bayle, Meslier, d'Holbach, Diderot by Charles Devellennes

Reviewed by: Positive Atheism: Bayle, Meslier, d'Holbach, Diderot by Charles Devellennes Lloyd Strickland Charles Devellennes, Positive Atheism: Bayle, Meslier, d'Holbach, Diderot (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2021). Pp. 240. $105 cloth. How best to study the development of modern atheism? In Positive Atheism, Charles Devellennes argues that while others have sought to do so from the perspective of those who accused others of atheism, there is instead "an obvious alternative that has at least equal validity and coherence: starting with the atheists" (3). Accordingly, this book offers a study of eighteenth-century atheism from the perspective of atheists themselves. Or rather, from the perspective of four thinkers who took atheism to be a positive doctrine in its own right, with important social, ethical, and political implications. These implications are the beating heart of this book. Positive Atheism consists of an introduction followed by five chapters. Each of the first four chapters is devoted to one of the four thinkers named in the book's subtitle—Pierre Bayle, Jean Meslier, Baron d'Holbach, and Denis Diderot—while the final chapter concerns the state of atheism in France in 1789. Chapter 1 begins with Bayle's oft-made argument that since moral action stems from the passions rather than principles, it is possible for there to be virtuous atheists. That belief, coupled with his assertion that people should be free to follow their consciences, even if their consciences are wrong, culminates in a doctrine of toleration towards all, including atheists, even under the most extreme of provocations. Chapter 2 examines the atheist system of Meslier, and the "form of radical politics" (63) built thereon, specifically, his call to overthrow the tyranny and domination of both the church and the political rulers in favor of a more egalitarian society. Chapter 3 carefully maps out both the "virtue utilitarian" (117) ethical theory that d'Holbach derives from his materialist ontology and his attendant vision of political and legal structures capable of attaining the goal of material well-being for all. Chapter 4 begins with Diderot's religious journey from deism to skepticism about both theism and atheism, before turning to his political thought, in particular his social contract theory, his push for reforms to promote greater equality, and his desire to subject church to state. [End Page 413] The book is perhaps best characterized as an apology for the aforementioned four apologists of atheism, with Devellennes keen to present in as charitable light as possible the different visions of society painted by these apologists (though he does also point out some obvious weaknesses along the way, such as d'Holbach's under-motivated belief in natural justice, where virtue and vice are naturally rewarded and punished). As such, it is a successful work, as clear and rich in detail as it is erudite. In terms of reservations, I shall mention two. First, the title of the book, Positive Atheism, is apt to lead a potential reader to think that its focus will be squarely on the active denial of God, which is how the term "positive atheism" is normally understood, as Devellennes himself notes early on (7). However, as should be clear enough from the brief account of the first four chapters given above, the focus of the book is more on the social, ethical, and political implications of atheism than the actual rejection of God per se. The apparent discrepancy between book title and book content is removed halfway through the introduction, where Devellennes explains that he is recasting "positive atheism" as not merely a denial of God "but as a potentially independent mode of thought, seeking self-mastery and autonomy" (12). So construed, it becomes clear why so much space in the book is devoted to the social, ethical, and political thought of the four protagonists named in the title. But of course, one needs to have already started reading the book to know that Devellennes is operating with this novel understanding of "positive atheism." Those who base their expectations of a book's content on its title might well expect a greater focus on the four protagonists' actual denial of God than is to be found here. Devellennes' novel understanding...

Assemblages and Co-emergent Corpomaterialities in Postsecondary Education: Pedagogical Lessons from Somatic Psychology and Physical Cultures

Building on a new materialist ontology, this article explores the significance of viewing the postsecondary institution and learner as assemblages co-emerging in material relationality. Bodies of thought from social cognitive neuroscience, somatic psychotherapy, and physical cultural studies inform an analysis of the evaluation culture predominant in Western postsecondary education. These disciplines are used to interrogate representational performativity and point to new possibilities for material-inclusive learning. A new materialist pedagogy holds possibilities to reconfigure learning architectures to recognise and attend to the corpomaterialities of learners while allowing for new and creative lines of flight in education, as illustrated by physical cultural practices such as sport training, dance, and capoeira.

Ethical Issues on Musical Appropriation

Abstract This paper aims to shed light on the question of whether musical appropriation is ethically unobjectionable. James Young (2021) has recently advanced a position on this topic, according to which, whereas the appropriation of a whole work is uncontroversially non-permissible, the appropriation of parts of a work is usually permissible. He grounds this view in ontological matters and in a criterion of fair use in terms of economic harm to the source work’s composer. I argue that, pace Young, we cannot make general ethical claims about musical appropriation because their truth is sensitive to the musical genres that the involved works belong to. First, I clarify the scope of musical appropriation by means of considerations on musical practices and ontology. This will reveal that versions and covers are not genuine cases of musical appropriation. In a second step, I consider a specific kind of musical appropriation: using the first measures of a source work as the first measures of a secondary work. I show that, even if we assume Young’s ontological framework and his criterion on fair use, the instances of this kind of musical appropriation count as fair or unfair depending on the musical genres of the involved works due to their normative implications for the composition and appreciation of those works.

Urban political ecology: a critical reconfiguration

Urban political ecology now finds itself at a crossroads between gradual marginalization or renewed intellectual impetus. Despite some recent critical re-evaluations of the field, there remain a series of conceptual tensions that have only been partially explored. I consider six issues in particular: the uncertain relations between urban political ecology and the biophysical sciences; the emergence of extended conceptions of agency and subjectivity; the redefinition of space, scale, and the urban realm; renewed interest in urban epidemiology; the delineation of urban ecological imaginaries; and finally, the emergence of evidentiary materialism as an alternative posthuman configuration to new materialist ontologies. I conclude that a conceptually enriched urban political ecology could play an enhanced role in critical environmental research.

Feeling out alternatives within secularity

ABSTRACT This essay reassembles the fragments of secularity offered in the thematic issue ‘Anthropology Within and Without the Secular Condition.’ Understanding what secularism often affirms, such as a materialist ontology and an empiricist epistemology, makes it easier to recognize the vast diversity within the secular discursive tradition. Exploring this internal diversity is important for giving a better account of the secular condition and for finding alternatives to the most common ways of being secular, which have become worthy objects of critique. This essay then looks more closely at two aspects of the secular that are usually overlooked: a poetic language ideology and the locus of explanatory satisfaction. A better understanding of what it means to be secular, in all its variety, will help scholars better control for the ways in which secular discourse shapes their feelings and the knowledge they desire to produce.

How to True Psychology’s Objects

Psychology’s current crisis attends most visibly to perceived problems with statistical models, methods, publication practices, and career incentives. Rarely is close attention given to the objects of inquiry—to ontological matters—yet the crisis-related literature does features statements about the nature of psychology’s objects. Close analysis of the ontological claims reveals discrepant understandings: some researchers assume objects to be stable and singular while others posit them to be dynamic and complex. Nevertheless, both views presume the objects under scrutiny to be real. The analysis also finds each of these ontological claims to be associated not only with particular method prescriptions but also with distinct notions of the scientific self. Though both take the scientific self to be objective, one figures the scientist as not always a rational actor and, therefore, requiring some behavior regulation, while the other sees the scientist as largely capable of self-governing sustained through painstakingly acquired expertise and self-control. The fate of these prevalent assemblages of object, method, and scientific self remains to be determined, yet as conditions of possibility they portend quite different futures. Following description of the assemblages, the article ventures a futuristic portrayal of the scientific practices they each might engender.

The Routledge Comedy Studies Reader

The Routledge Comedy Studies Reader

The Routledge Comedy Studies Reader

The Routledge Comedy Studies Reader

Move, eat, sleep, repeat: Living by rhythm with proactive self-tracking technologies

Abstract Proactive self-tracking is a proliferating digital media practice that involves gathering data about the body and the self outside a clinical healthcare setting. Various studies have noted that self-tracking technologies affect people's everyday modes of thought and action and stick to their lifeworlds because these technologies seek to promote “improved” modes of behaviour. We investigate how the specific devices and interfaces involved in self-tracking attract and prescribe rhythmicity into everyday lives and elaborate on how human bodies and technical systems of self-tracking interact rhythmically. We draw from new materialist ontology, combining it with Henri Lefebvre's method of rhythmanalysis and his notion of dressage. We employ a collaborative autoethnographical approach and engage with both of our personal fieldwork experiences in living with self-tracking devices. We argue that rhythmicity and dressage are fruitful analytical tools to use in understanding human–technology attachments as well as a variety of everyday struggles inherent in self-tracking practices.

Making Kin With Plastic Through Aesthetic Experimentation

Recent scholarship in childhood studies has raised concerns about humancentric, singular discourses regarding human-plastic relations. As a result, questions of how to develop new forms of learning with materials in environmental education are now an important issue for researchers, educators, and policymakers. This paper activates a feminist new materialist ontology to position plastic as an active participant in the formation of knowledge. Drawing on visual imagery of children’s and artists’ aesthetic experimentations, we explore the intra-related and complex relationship between plastic, children, and the planet. Haraway’s concept of making kin is operationalized to highlight plastic’s multidimensional complexities as both a destructive and creative force, producing a novel framework for understanding and learning with plastic in early childhood education.

Introduction

Introduction

The return of metaphysics as a subject matter of historical ontology: analytical review (ending)

The second part of the article continues the analytical and historiographical overview of the problems that are substantively related to the question of the role, meaning and historical fate of metaphysics. The author focuses on the phenomenon of the return of metaphysics to the philosophy of our time. The author traces the gradual rehabilitation of metaphysical problems in post-positivist studies of sci-ence. An attempt is made to differentiate these studies from the viewpoint of the opposition between internalism and externalism. The author shows the limits of this differentia-tion and highlights the mixed type of re-search, which focuses on the interaction of “external” and “internal” determinants of knowledge. It is shown that the postpositivist idea of the background knowledge extends not only to scientific (empirical) knowledge, but also to its philosophical (theoretical) justification, which is recognized by many re-searchers as historically and culturally conditioned. This opens up the possibility of a historical critique of the ontological presuppositions of the epistemological (transcendental) justification of science. Such presuppositions are considered in relation to the dis-course of negative ontology, which prohibits the cognitive experience of transcendent be-ing. The author shows that the criticism of these assumptions is carried out in the form of a regressive transcendental argument, which, comparing them with a new, philo-sophically revised scientific ontology, reveals their historically limited character. Thus, the regressive transcendental argument allows us to go beyond the negative ontology of the transcendental justification of science. This leads to the replacement of historical epistemology, whose subject matter is limited to knowledge and its historically mobile structures, with historical ontology, which returns to the description and explanation of reality. The author considers the concepts of new re-alism in the context of historical ontology and traces the connection of the new realism with the post-metaphysical and metametaphysical discourses.

Cultural Evolutionary Theory and the Significance of the Biology-Culture Analogy

Throughout the literature on Cultural Evolutionary Theory (CET) attention is drawn to the existence and significance of an analogy between biological phenomena and socio-cultural phenomena (the “biology-culture analogy”). Mesoudi (2017) seems to argue that it is the accuracy of the analogy, and the magnitude of accurate instances of this analogy at work, which provides warrant for an evolutionary approach to the study of socio-cultural phenomena, and, thus, for CET. An implication of this is that if there is evidence to suggest that the analogy is not accurate, or that there aren’t many cases where it is accurate, this would constitute evidence to reject an evolutionary approach to the study of socio-cultural phenomena. As such, opponents of CET raise objections highlighting the weakness of the biology-culture analogy. These objections, in turn, have standard replies in the literature that serve to reinforce the realism of the biology-culture analogy. Curiously, this situation would appear to support a position in the philosophy of social science called “Ontology Matters” (Lauer 2019). It is the view that social ontology can contribute to the empirical success of the social sciences (among which I include CET) by providing an accurate account of what there is in the domain of the social world which can be used to generate better explanations and/or predictions of social phenomena. If ontology matters, in this sense, perhaps this can help to clarify and resolve the dispute regarding the realism of the biology-culture analogy. In turn, perhaps this can help us determine what warrant there is for CET. However, I think this situation is indicative of severe confusion and misunderstanding as to the significance of the biology-culture analogy. This confusion is caused by inattention to two things. First, the useful distinction between it’s methodological, epistemological, and ontological significance. Second, the abstract (ontologically minimalist) nature of Darwinian evolution by natural selection. By drawing attention to these two things, I hope to take the sting out of, and deflate the significance of, disputes regarding the accuracy of the analogy, for both proponents and opponents of CET, as well as to bring into contact a classical dispute in the philosophy of social science with some relevant aspects of theoretical biology.

Naked loan selfies: Becoming collateral, becoming pornography

Naked loan selfies are a Chinese Internet phenomenon in which naked selfies taken by young women are used as a form of collateral in peer-to-peer loaning systems. Despite being the subject of sensationalised media coverage in China, naked loan selfies have so far received only very limited academic attention. Drawing on the new materialist ontologies of Karen Barad and Annemarie Mol, this article investigates naked loan selfies as techno-social entities that are enacted through specific online networks and practices. The article uses text-based research and online walkthroughs to trace the way naked loan selfies are constituted first as collateral, and second as pornography. As well as providing insight into an under-researched online phenomenon, this article contributes to the growing body of work on selfies as networked, lively and agentic.