Materialism and Politics

Is materialism still relevant to critically think politics? Throughout modernity, the concept of materialism was associated with fatalism and naturalism, when it was not simply dismissed as heresy and atheism. In the nineteenth century, materialism evolved into a central concept of progressive politics, reappearing again in the past decades through renewed Marxist and Spinoza-based approaches, New Materialism, and feminist discourses. This volume inquires these contrasting uses from theoretical and historical perspectives.
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
From ‘Materialism’ towards ‘Materialities’ | THE EDITORS | 1-18
I. THE ACTUALITY OF SPINOZA’S MATERIALISM
Introduction to Part i | STEFAN HAGEMANN | 21-23
Materialist Variations on Spinoza: Theoretical Alliances and Political Strategies | MARIANA DE GAINZA | 25-37
Non Defuit Materia: Freedom and Necessity in Spinoza’s Democratic Theory | STEFANO VISENTIN | 39-54
Temporality and History in Spinoza: The Refusal of Teleological Thought | ERICKA MARIE ITOKAZU | 55-72
Spinozist Moments in Deleuze: Materialism as Immanence | MAURICIO ROCHA | 73-90
Are there One or Two Aleatory Materialisms? | VITTORIO MORFINO | 91-106
II. THE MATERIALITY OF THE MILIEU AND THE MATERIALIST EDUCATION
Introduction to Part ii | MARLENE KIENBERGER AND BRUNO PACE | 109-112
Language Follows Labour: Nikolai Marr’s Materialist Palaeontology of Speech | ELENA VOGMAN | 113-132
Materialism and Capitalism Today: Zoo-aesthetics and a Critique of the Social Bond after Marcel Mauss and André Leroi-Gourhan | CATHERINE PERRET | 133-144
The Product of Circumstances: Towards a Materialist and Situated Pedagogy | MARLON MIGUEL | 145-162
In the Labyrinth of Emancipation: An Inquiry into the Relationship between Knowledge and Politics | BERNARDO BIANCHI | 163-180
A Materialist Education: Thinking with Spinoza | PASCAL SÉVÉRAC | 181-196
III. CRITICAL MATERIALITIES IN FEMINISM AND NEW MATERIALISM
Introduction to Part iii | ALISON SPERLING | 199-202
Materialism, Matter, Matrix, and Mater: Contesting Notions in Feminist and Gender Studies | CORNELIA MÖSER | 203-214
Anarchafeminism & the Ontology of the Transindividual | CHIARA BOTTICI | 215-231
Psychodynamism of Individuation and New Materialism: Possible Encounters | ÉMILIE FILION-DONATO | 233-252
Emergence that Matters and Emergent Irrelevance: On the Political Use of Fundamental Physics | CHRISTOPH F. E. HOLZHEY | 253-268
IV. TOWARDS A RENEWED HISTORICAL MATERIALISM
Introduction to Part iv | DANIEL LIU | 271-276
Materialism against Materialism: Taking up Marx’s Break with Reductionism | FRIEDER OTTO WOLF | 277-292
Materialism, Politics, and the History of Philosophy: French, German, and Turkish Materialist Authors in the Nineteenth Century | AYŞE YUVA | 293-312
The Historicity of Materialism and the Critique of Politics | ALEX DEMIROVIĆ | 313-326
On Populist Illusion: Impasses of Political Ontology, or How the Ordinary Matters | FACUNDO VEGA | 327-343
Theory’s Method? Ethnography and Critical Theory | MARIANNA POYARES | 345-363
References
Notes on the Contributors
Index