Critical Theory and New Materialisms

Hartmut Rosa, Christoph Henning, Arthur Bueno, Hartmut Rosa, Christoph Henning, Arthur Bueno

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000400137
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Bringing together authors from two intellectual traditions that have, so far, generally developed independently of one another – critical theory and new materialism – this book addresses the fundamental differences and potential connections that exist between these two schools of thought. With a focus on some of the most pressing questions of contemporary philosophy and social theory – in particular, those concerning the status of long-standing and contested separations between matter and life, the biological and the symbolic, passivity and agency, affectivity and rationality – it shows that recent developments in both traditions point to important convergences between them and thus prepare the ground for a more direct confrontation and cross-fertilization. The first volume to promote a dialogue between critical theory and new materialism, this collection explores the implications for contemporary debates on ecology, gender, biopolitics, post-humanism, economics and aesthetics. As such, it will appeal to philosophers, social and political theorists, and sociologists with interests in contemporary critical theory and materialism.

1 Introduction

Critical Theory and New Materialisms – fit, strain or contradiction?

Hartmut Rosa , Christoph Henning and Arthur Bueno

This volume assembles contributions from authors of two intellectual currents that have, so far, mostly developed at a safe distance: Critical Theory and New Materialism. Its intention is to cover new ground and survey the terrain between these two schools of thought by addressing their fundamental differences as well as their potential connections. At the center of this debate are some of the most pressing questions of contemporary philosophy and social theory – in particular, those concerning the status of long-standing and contested separations between matter and life, the biological and the symbolic, passivity and agency, affectivity and rationality. While, at first sight, critical theorists and new materialists may seem to adopt completely different stances with regard to these issues, recent developments in both traditions point to important convergences between them and hence prepare the ground for a more direct confrontation and cross-fertilization.

Born out of the spirit of “old” historical materialism, Critical Theory has often, and quite paradoxically, been viewed as taking an excessive distance toward the physical and biological materiality of the world. By understanding itself as a post-metaphysical continuation of the “incomplete project” of Kantian Enlightenment, it has recently anchored its political horizon in intersubjective practices of rational communication (Jürgen Habermas), recognition (Axel Honneth) and justification (Rainer Forst). Despite their differences, these approaches have all been criticized for holding anthropocentric conceptions of nature and rationalist ideas of society, which ultimately derive from their reliance on the philosophical tradition of German idealism (Allen 2017). By consequence, critics argue, the material, vital and affective aspects of our world are glossed over or subordinated to intersubjective processes of normative reasoning (Vetlesen 2015). Such a view, however, has not remained uncontested. Recent works within Critical Theory have sought to overcome these limitations by resorting to other intellectual traditions and most notably by reopening the discussion on what can be called Romanticism’s “incomplete project”. Putting forward the concept of resonance – understood as a two-way responsive relationship of being moved by something external as well as being able to reach out and move someone or something “out there” – Hartmut Rosa (2019) has brought bodily activities and relations to nature more strongly back into Critical Theory, establishing a potential connection to lines of thought developed by the Romantics (cf. Taylor 2016; Löwy 2001; Gottlieb 2016; Goldstein 2017). Similarly, Martin Saar and Christoph Menke have opened new paths for Critical Theory by connecting it to philosophical arguments stemming from the Romantic tradition or bearing important affinities with it. Turning to Herder and Nietzsche, Menke (2013) has argued that human experience cannot be simply understood along the lines of a cognitivist theory of action, with its appeal to subjective faculties and capabilities, but must take into account the vital and unconscious dynamics of “force”. In dialogue with works not immediately associated with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, such as those of Gilles Deleuze, Antonio Negri and Étienne Balibar, Saar (2013) has claimed that Spinoza’s political ontology, with its emphasis on the material and affective dimensions of power, represents an alternative to restricted perspectives on modern Enlightenment and a crucial contribution to contemporary social critique.

These developments have resulted in internal tensions and a series of new debates within Critical Theory. Indeed, several advocates of Enlightenment’s “unfinished project” are worried that there might be something intrinsically conservative about such a distancing from the intersubjective dynamics of rational communication, recognition and justification. In their view, the enhanced emphasis on the corporeal, the vital and the affective runs the risk of depriving Critical Theory of the rational grounds it has established for social criticism. From this perspective, the new tendencies within this field resemble the poststructuralist theories criticized by Habermas in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1990). A major stake in this debate is whether such an orientation beyond rationality leads to an unavoidable conservatism or whether it might result in an even more radical view and critique of modern life. In this regard, the reproachful parallel between the “neo-Romantic” turn in Critical Theory and poststructuralist theories might not be inconsistent and even prove to be a productive one for the approaches under critique.

A similar shift toward nature, life and affect has taken place in poststructuralist, feminist, and science and technology debates in the second half of the 1990s, involving a number of theories that Rosi Braidotti (1994) and Manuel DeLanda (1996) were the first to designate as “new materialism” or “neo-materialism” (cf. Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012; Goll, Keil and Telios 2013). Such endeavors were marked by a clear attempt – parallel to the efforts of contemporary critical theorists in relation to their own field – to move further beyond the limits of the “linguistic turn”. A defining feature of those works is, above all, the problematization of dualisms that strands of modern thought, especially those identified with the Enlightenment, have advanced in rather restrictive and hierarchical terms: matter versus life, biological versus symbolic life, passivity versus agency, affectivity versus rationality. Confronting these dualistic conceptions, Karen Barad (2007) set out to reframe the relations between human and nonhuman beings as “intra-actions” (cf. Merten 2021), Jane Bennett (2010) has questioned the fundamental distinction between matter and life by proposing a “critical vitalist” perspective (see also Delitz 2015), and Elizabeth Grosz (2011) has questioned the boundaries between biological and symbolical life (see also Blencowe 2012). A further consequence of this overlap between domains generally regarded as separate is that the post-humanist potentials raised by new technological developments can be considered – in both their negative and positive effects – in continuity with matter, life and affect and not simply in opposition to them (Braidotti 2013; Braidotti and Dolphijn 2017).

Recent developments within Critical Theory and New Materialism thus point to a potential convergence between these two intellectual currents. Despite their different origins, they have both been attempting to put into question and overcome the limitations of anthropocentric rationalism. However, there remain important differences in the way each of these currents proceeds in this regard. While contemporary critical theorists mostly understand their task as one of complementing or enlarging the boundaries of Enlightenment thought through the recourse to other traditions, new materialists seek to develop a more radical questioning of modern thought and a more direct engagement with the entangled nature of matter, life, affect and technology. By consequence, those working in the field of Critical Theory often appear to the advocates of New Materialism as too much caught up within an anthropocentric and language-based perspective, whereas the latter are frequently seen by the former as too readily abandoning important distinctions between human and nonhuman nature, being and appearance, epistemology and ontology. Hence, the fact that these two intellectual fields share an underlying commitment to move beyond anthropocentric rationalism, but carry out such a project with very distinct intellectual strategies, provides the grounds for highly consequential debates in contemporary philosophy and social theory.

Yet, surprisingly, so far there has been no serious attempt to engage in such a discussion. Part of the reason for this lies precisely in the different strategies employed by these two intellectual currents in their common effort to go beyond the limits of the project of enlightened modernity. Although they agree in the goal, the paths adopted by each of them are fundamentally different. While it is true that both Critical Theory and New Materialism are marked by internal dissensions, at the basis of each of them lies a distinctive set of epistemological, ontological and practical presuppositions. These are, indeed, some of the dimensions in which Critical Theory and New Materialism can be seen as adopting divergent or even diametrically opposed positions, and which therefore shape the debates presented in this book. The core of their disagreements in these regards, as well as the locus of their potential convergences, can be identified in their differing conceptions of nature.

Critical Theory and the problem of nature

For Critical Theory, “nature” is the name of a problem. For a long time in history, the oppression and exploitation of the poor, of women, of workers and minorities, as well as the clashes between political powers that brought destruction and misery onto so many, seemed to be natural facts. These phenomena had been addressed by political economy – from Hobbes to Malthus and beyond – as explicable by means of “natural laws”. The economic system blamed for the class society was evolving with iron and merciless necessity, as if carried out by human lemmings controlled by natural instincts, so that it, too, appeared as a part of nature (and salvation could only come from above, by messianic intervention, which early socialism as well as later scholars like Walter Benjamin conceived in religious terms). Accordingly, sciences dealing with these “natural” processes were deemed natural sciences: either formulating irrevocable laws (as political economy did) or gathering social phenomena as if they were things (as in positivist social sciences). Yet even more harmful for the vulnerable segments of the population than the liberal naturalization of the modern state, society and economy were social Darwinist conceptions posed against liberalism from the late 19th century onward. These relied on ideas of nature that appeared even more cruel and heartless than the liberal ones (though there are many who later addressed their continuities). Natural selection was ultimately interpreted as a “racial conflict”, so that segregation by color and “race” or even genocide could appear as natural phenomena. In such a context, the task of Critical Theory was seen to consist in the undoing or de-naturalization of the “natural” fixity of established beliefs, authoritarian habits, sexual and racial norms, and so on.

Under these circumstances, progressive thinking often assumed that in order to make room for freedom and emancipation the realm of nature had to be curtailed. While in practice this led to its domination by science-driven technology and the exploitation and expropriation of natural “resources” (see Gümplová in this volume), in theory this meant to de-naturalize the driving forces of such processes, that is, to demystify them and to uncover their real “nature” – which was no longer natural. For critical theories, behind those dynamics was often non-nature, something more humane and social, more plastic and changeable: Reason, in the Kantian case, or Spirit, in the Hegelian variant, or even – only a small change from this perspective – culture and society. How “spiritualized” this anti-naturalist vision of society was can be seen from the strong focus on normativity and reason in recent debates within Critical Theory (cf. Henning 2014; Thompson 2016). In short, for the most part of the 20th century, to criticize was to de-naturalize, and to be critically minded meant to be a nonnaturalist.

What binds together these various approaches to nature’s other (reason, spirit, culture or society) is that only in the latter the “realm of freedom” could be grounded. Only in most radical versions of these philosophies was the realm of freedom extended to cover nature as well (e.g., in Fichte’s constructivism or Schelling’s early speculations). However, as long as this spiritual form of freedom is not fully realized, we end up with (at least) two entities: nature and society, or first and second nature. And in fact, as Bruno Latour (2004) has rightly perceived with dark humor, Critical Theory in the 20th century can partly be interpreted as a “purification” game: all the naturalized sides of society (state and economy, classes and racial stereotypes, gender roles and behavioral norms) must be de-naturalized and de-materialized to “free” them from the curse of determinism and oppression. The impetus seems clear: against nature (cf. Vogel 1996; Morton 2009, Daston 2018). This mindset is evident from Hegel to Marx, from Lukács to Adorno and from Foucault to Judith Butler, and it has become hegemonic in many sociological theories of the past decades and until today. As a consequence, the realm of nature became ever more irrelevant in theory – almost as a mirror image of the ongoing process of capitalist enclosures and ecological destruction in the “great outdoors” (Quentin Meillassoux). A crucial implication of this process is that the resulting strands of Critical Theory had surprisingly little to say on the ecological crisis (cf. Vetlesen in this volume), unless they could show that such a crisis is not “natural” but rather “normative”. What interested Habermas in the green movement, for instance, was the movement and not the “green” thinking it developed.

As ecological problems became more and more pressing throughout the 20th century, many theories came to express and to address ecological concerns, among them feminist studies (Merchant 1980; Mies and Shiva 1993) and even Marxist approaches (Foster 2000). The mainstream of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, however, has not substantially changed its course; one can say it has centered even more on norms. Over time it became clear that, in order to actualize Critical Theory and enable it to cope with the current crisis, it needed to be refurbished and to come to terms with more “earthly matters” (see Rosa in this volume). It is at this point that a dialogue with New Materialisms becomes relevant.

New Materialism has evolved in writings mainly from poststructuralist feminism, but it is also inspired by approaches in the field of Science and Technology Studies (see Alaimo and Heckman 2008; Coole and Frost 2010; Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012). Its aim has been to leave behind intellectual traditions bounded by what appears as “dualisms” between epistemology and ontology, as well as between different areas of being such as nature and culture, mind and matter, or life and technology. It is aspiring for a new, decentered worldview that is no longer anthropocentric...