We have been discussing a critical review of new materialism by Susanne Lettow: Turning the turn: New materialism, historical materialism and critical theory. Thesis 11 (2016), 1-16. We have also discussed the introduction (by the editors) to the volume "Material Feminisms" ed. Susan Alaimo and Susan Hekman, Indian UP, 2008.
The questions that have come out of this discussion are the following:
1. Do the authors just add a "big we" to previously available to "matter" - understood at best as a boundary object and at worst as a wobbly notion? Is it possible to make the accounts discussed her more concise?
2. Do they open up new conversations - and which ones?
3. Which new types of knowledge are produced?
4. If the apparent lack of conciseness is due to patriarchial exclusions of certain types of thinking that feminism, however, needs, what does feminist episteme / epistemology mean?
5. If new materialism provides a platform for theories that might be different or even (in terms of their basis philosophical presuppositions) incompatible, can feminist inquiry use this platform for common goals / research projects?
6. How could the discussion go on? (How) do we tackle traditional dichotomies like the nature/culture devide?
7. Does feminist materialism allow to (re)position the philosophical backbone of sciences/technologies in a specific historical/regional context?
correction to the first question: I meant to write:
Do the authors just add a "big we" to previously available concepst of "matter" ...
Thanks, Alaa Ali for finding this discussion on Research Gate and bringing it to my attention again. Feel free to propose answers to one or more of the questions. As for this one:
5. If new materialism provides a platform for theories that might be different or even (in terms of their basis philosophical presuppositions) incompatible, can feminist inquiry use this platform for common goals / research projects?
- my own attempts at re-thinking are circling around terms like "communities of critters" (using Haraway's terms) and "entanglements". Feminist philosophy should be multi-layered, trying out ways of juggling with different subject-positions. "Nature" and "culture", for example, are not distinct, but they are not "the same" either. "Women" stay subjects, although there are many different ways of living gender. This takes into account that feminist philosophy is not politics, but it is not apolitical either. This is what I like about Haraway.
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