Peter Gratton and Graham Harman have a few interesting posts up about how the term “materialism” is used in continental philosophy (here, here, and here). As Peter writes:
It just so happens I did an edit on an article I wrote on Adrian Johnston’s Badiou, Zizek, and Political Transformations today, then turned my attention to reading Malabou’s Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing, and then a couple of chapters of Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter, and each claim to be a materialist. Bennett can lay the easiest claim, since she’s a self-described monist, but Johnston and Malabou are formalists in the strict sense. In fact, Malabou’s whole project centers around her claim that form has been too quickly written off as “metaphysical” by Derrida, Heidegger, et al. And Johnston offers what he calls a “transcendental materialism.” Malabou and Johnston are writing a book together, so maybe they’ll hash out this better, but I think the term is really just a place holder for “I’m not an idealist.” And I just don’t know what explanatory power “materialism” has any more.
I confess that I’m equally baffled by the varied uses of the term “materialism”. Perhaps I’m particularly wooden on this issue, but for me, in order for a position to count as materialist it has to pass what I call “The Lucretius Test”. Lucretius is a genuine materialist because he is making a genuine claim about what exists, regardless of whether it has anything to do with humans, and this stuff is matter. In this respect, Bennett would be a genuine materialist because she is analyzing material things and their powers. Likewise with DeLanda. While they all differ as to what matter is (a proper ontological dispute), there’s no doubt that all of these thinkers pass the Lucretius test.
By contrast, when I turn to Zizek, Badiou, Johnston, and Meillassoux I have a difficult time discerning what is materialist about these orientations of thought. In The Parallex View Zizek claims that the core thesis of materialism is that “the whole is not”. While I don’t find the thesis that the whole is not objectionable, I fail to see what it has to do with materialism or how it might pass the Lucretius Test. These other variants of Marxist thought seem to run something like this: Idealism privileges mind, thought, and reason in the construction of reality. We focus on human practices such as production, discourses, language, etc. in the construction of reality. Therefore idealism consists in a focus on mind and thought while materialism focuses on human practice. However, in my book this conclusion doesn’t follow at all. A position is no less idealist because it focuses on, say, practices of discourse or language games as opposed to categories and cognitions. No, that position is still every bit as idealist because it still has humans constructing reality. Therefore it doesn’t pass the Lucretius Test.
Marx is somewhat off the hook here because he does speak of humans working with nonhuman matter in processes of production. The problem is that the role played by nonhuman and natural things really gets short shrift in Marx. The focus is on how humans transform these matters into something else, not the role these matters themselves play in transforming humans and each other. Here you’d need something like a communism of objects, where humans are among objects, not in a necessary and inexorable relation with all objects. Such positions still privilege the human-world relation, to the detriment of all other relations. “Transcendental materialism”, for example, only makes sense to me if you’re talking about something like DeLanda’s conception of the virtual where attractors haunt actualized objects, regardless of whether or not humans are involved. I don’t see anything like this in Badiou’s transcendental (his transcendental still strikes me as being social in character, and this is borne out by all the examples he uses in Logics of Worlds) or in Johnston’s transcendental which is thoroughly Kantian. By contrast, DeLanda’s attractors have nothing human about them. They’re there in the things themselves. Now Lucretius had all sorts of interesting things to say about the human-world relation, but the key point is that his ontology was, in no way, restricted to that relation. Lucretius had all sorts of interesting things to say about interactions among atoms that have nothing to do with the human, and there’s no sense in which Lucretius requires humans to exist for substantially differentiated and active beings to exist. Thus, while Lucretius is an underminer of objects in Harman’s vocabulary, he certainly is a genuine realist. And moreover, as Graham likes to say, if you only ever find yourself talking about the human-world relation then you’re a correlationist. If your philosophy has nothing significant to say about the relation between a rock and soil, you’re a correlationist. At any rate, it seems to me that we’ve begun to use these terms very loosely.
Larval Subjects . 
February 21, 2010 at 8:08 pm
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February 21, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Levi,
Thanks so much for this post. I recently wrote an email to Graham on this topic, who very kindly responded with a quite clarifying answer, and this has only compounded his very helpful response. I had a couple of thoughts, questions, that this has helped refine for me. I hope you don’t mind if I air them.
I must admit I’ve been somewhat torn as to whether idealism and correlationism are, indeed, interchangeables. Or allies, if not subterranean duplicates. If materialism remains idealist while it still insists upon humans constructing reality, what becomes of human reality? Is the argument for an ontology of human reality itself correlationist, like a redundancy? These are neither critical or rhetorical questions but asked out of genuine curiosity. See, in my own studies, I’ve tended to follow a distinctly political and literary bent and many aspects of OOO have presented a lot of profoundly interrogative (and I must also say profoundly exciting) questions for me about whether (or what) sort of compatibility exists between philosophy as an ontological inquiry and the more pressingly immediate and ostensibly ‘human’ realms of arts (not aesthetics) and politics. In particular, I’ve wondered a lot about the anti-humanist philosophies – Georges Bataille is a special interest of mine – and whether they simply now fall under the broad umbrella of correlate idealism and are now to be morphed into a type of humanism that did not know itself. Extrapolations like this (which, mind you, I’m extrapolating myself here, I don’t mean to impute to you any position) trouble me as they seem to deflate the real ontological acuity of many claims from thinkers I admire that are nonetheless not object-oriented by any straightforward lights. They are all too human, as it were.
If humans must be held to be among objects in the sense of the totality of objects, not in a necessary and inexorable relation with all objects, to be realist and non-correlative, are humans no longer thereby in a necessary and inexorable relation with the objects that they in relation with? Is the human-world correlation a fantasy or a misprision or a delimited focus? Is your sense that there is a way to be focused on the human without being idealist, humanist or correlationist – or no? Is it that one can be focused on the human overwhelmingly – but not only?
I know you’ve said before (and forgive me if I misstate your position in my paraphrase, or remove nuance from it) that aspects of the human relation to reality need not be taken as the exact equivalent under a flat ontology, so that there is no possibility for specificity of objects. Instead, a flat ontology would also be bumpy – insofar as it would posit key ontological operations that cut across objects, their orientations and their interactions, but which would not thereby mean horses must be able to play chess or humans must be able to eat hay. It would not enclose objects into a symmetry of manifestation or properties all and everywhere. From that, however, I have wondered whether the human ontological focus, even if delimited to humans, does not pertain to broader ontological relations anyhow – precisely because those broader relations apply to humans as much as to any other object else. That is to say, could so-called ‘correlationist’ philosophers that avoid absolute idealism have said things about ontology that do apply in a realist frame which incorporates relations between non-human objects exactly because their insight is into operations that take place as much for humans as objects as for any object-object relation? Or would the issue of confusing specific properties for ontological principle simply make this impossible?
This is not really to argue that Kant is not a correlationist or even Zizek. I honestly am still unsure, or still trying to get a grip on what OOO involves as its tenets of admission in many respects. But in wondering whether human-world thought can produce thought that is insightful about the non-human world ontologically since humans have always been objects among objects in that world (whether they knew it or not) and so the principles of that world apply as much to them as any other, my point is precisely not to say that all objects are determined by the human relation (whatever it may), as it remains only a relation amongst other object relations – even in the case of objects which humans interact with. Nor for that matter is it to say humans cannot know the world beyond the epistemological quadrant they inhabit in discourse or thought or even production. Rather, I wonder whether humans are defined by the object relations they are in relation in a sense that renders even their correlationism complexly realist?
If so, I was thinking that materialism, in the sense Malabou and Johnston mean it, might be thought of as an ontology which does not allow for sheer substitution of any other object in any given object’s place by human will. That is to say, if mind, thought and reason is the province of idealism, the province of materialism is the matter-of-fact. Meaning that materialism is still a practice of reading out a specificity of human being to the world, yes, and makes general ontological claim via that prism, but to mine the ontological matter of human facticity. In that regard, I would argue there is a strong sense in which materialisms would not be crypto-idealism, but rather non-idealist ontologies of the human that posit principles that must involve the ontology of all objects precisely in the effort to analyse humans as objects, whether those efforts are ultimately correlated or not. For example, as you say on Zizek’s definition of materialism that holds “the whole is not”, that thesis in itself is not one that you object to. And as an ontological claim, it could theoretically apply to genes, stars, hats, cornflakes, sand and feces as much as to humans. The point I do take from yourself and from Graham is that Zizek is deriving the basis of his ontological claim from humans only and not applying it beyond them. But I’m wondering what to make of the claim in itself. True enough, for the purposes of engaging Zizek as a philosopher only (which he is not, though he is that too), we could now write him off as a correlationist and be done with it. Still, if his thesis may have non-correlative application, would this mean that his ideas are only idealist?
In his email to me, Graham made the really interesting point that one problem with the case for seeing a Zizek or a Badiou as non-idealist (even if one concede they are still correlationist) is precisely that there is no accounting for interaction between different parts of the non-human world in their philosophies. That’s certainly true. But I suppose in a sense I’ve derived Graham’s thought into my own speculation about whether humans, as parts of an ontology that applies everywhere, might not be able to derive non-correlative thought even when engaging in considerations of a human-world reality only. Which ultimately brings me back to my question above: does OOO, for you, argue there is no such thing as a human-world reality at all? Has this been a myth? If so, is there no sense in which those who postulate a human-world reality as objects of ontology can still think it in a realist sense, if unwittingly? And finally, do you think one is able to philosophise about humans alone and not be a correlationist? Or can correlationism think its exterior by virtue of humans as beings being in the encompassing operation of a flat ontolgy itself?
Thank you again for this post. I realise I’ve asked a number of involved questions here that would no doubt take some time to answer so please only reply if or when you are able. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, though. If you happen to read this too, Graham, and are able to offer follow-up thoughts of your own, I’d also be really grateful. But again only if you can. (I’m a little nervous about coming across as a grey vampire…)
All my very best.
David
February 21, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Levi,
you say, quoting Harman, that ‘if you only ever find yourself talking about the human-world relation then you’re a correlationist’. This of course means if you only ever find yourself talking about the human-world relation *when spelling out your ontological commitments* then you’re a correlationist’. Right?
If I agree that to be concerned with practices rather than cognition does not make you a non-correlationist materialist, I still wonder when and how a non-correlationist ontologist *can* talk about practice, social change, production, labour etc. I guess that would be when you delineate the principles of what you call a ‘communism of objects’? This of course ends up in the usual issue of OOP and ethics…
February 22, 2010 at 12:07 am
Fabio,
I’m not sure I understand. Nothing prevents the materialist from talking about practices. Rather, it’s just that talk of practice is not sufficient to make one a materialist. Additionally, in all these questions about politics and ethics a key question would be whether or not a beaker or an automobile can be a genuine actant. If not, if only humans are the actants, then one is probably a correlationist. Take Zizek’s famous analysis of toilets at the beginning of Plague of Fantasies. One might wish to argue that Zizek here makes the American, French, and German toilets genuine actors in ideology. But nothing could be further from the truth as Zizek’s toilets are nothing but passive screens for human categories or ideologies, they are not genuine actants in themselves. I suppose there would thus be OOO’s way of talking about practices and a correlationist’s way of talking about practices. For OOO humans would certainly be actants in these assemblages, but so would the tools, lakes, weather patterns, animals, gamma ray bursts, and so on. The correlationist will tend to only talk about the human actants, treating any other actants mentioned as screens for human categories.
February 22, 2010 at 12:54 am
Materialisms…
The Stuff of Things is Many…
February 22, 2010 at 11:14 am
Levi,
I find this to be a very fair and sharply formulated post, but I do think that you elide one dialectical turn – or the dialectical turn – in the position that you’re critiquing: namely, that for post-marxian materialists working in the German philosophical tradition an analysis of matter as such – and admittedly, everything hangs on this as such – is idealistic through and through; the object of the idealism has changed, but the form of thought and the status of conceptuality remain unchanged. It seems to me there is a simple fork in the road here: one either accepts that Marxian materialism is an antihumanist radicalization of German idealism – to speak very quickly – and that a correlationism pushed to its sublime limit is the only materialist position, inasmuch as a metaphysical materialism always turns out to be a surreptitious idealism OR one sees this a philosophical cop-out and takes the risk of a speculative, metaphysical materialism. Ironically though, Harman’s emphasis on philosophical eros, with the argument that philosophy strives after objects that always exceed our descriptions of them is not so far removed at all from late dialectics or late correlationism. Otherwise, Harman’s realism wouldn’t be so “weird,” as he likes to put it. The problem is thus not so much one of reduction – everything is really x,y, or z – but of how exactly one de-centers the human – either by emphasizing the limits of conceptuality and consciousness or by focusing on non-human objects. Except that in practice the either/or is not so stark – one can both address non-human objects and emphasize the way consciousness de-forms or limits our knowledge of these objects.
February 22, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Levi,
yes, that is pretty clear to me, and I think it is a sound argument. Perhaps I’m the one being wooden, but this was my chain of thoughts.
I don’t doubt at all that a proper (Lucretian-Latourian) materialist will be able to talk about practices that imply the interaction of humans and nonhumans. It is enough to look at Latour and his work with the *practice* of science.
Yet what concerns me about political action as different from other actions is that the practice is meant to bring about some change which is not random, but a change ‘in favour of’ the human. The difference between a scientific theory and a political one is that the former can be limited to an epistemological interest of describing the world while the latter (to paraphrase Marx) has the goal to ‘change it’. Where change is not ‘from random configuration of actors 1 to random configurations of actors 2’ but is to change the configuration in order to achieve and maximise a number of desired (by me, the human actor) outcomes.
You recognize this point when you write that
‘The problem is that the role played by nonhuman and natural things really gets short shrift in Marx. The focus is on how humans transform these matters into something else, not the role these matters themselves play in transforming humans and each other’
and you propose a ‘communism of objects’ which would be more careful to recognize that
‘humans are among objects, not in a necessary and inexorable relation with all objects’
I guess that my question is really: how would this corrected worldview at the base of a communism of objects be able to face the issue of the implicit priority, in any political project, of the betterment of (at least some) humans?
It just occurred to me to go back to your ethics posts, and actually you make the same point there:
‘we will have to ask ourselves do we have the fortitude to formulate the possibility of a communism of human and nonhuman beings, or will we remain in the rut of human emancipation alone, pretending that the human, even in the face of Althusser’s protestations of a process without a subject, is nonetheless the exclusive domain of a modernist human emancipation?’
[So yes, that’s why I guess that it ends up with the question of the implicit value of the human, and that the answer must consider a radical ontological reconfiguration of what this ‘human’ is.]
In another recent post you restate the point that OOO upholds a pluralistic position, a ‘promiscuous or slutty’ ontology (btw, if I may, I like ‘promiscuous’ but I think ‘slutty’ carries implicit and undesired sexist overtones). I think that is great, but this causes ethico-political problems because I fail to see how you can build a ‘promiscuous ethico-political program’ (given the caveat above that it would always imply a desired, human-oriented, goal). Stated differently, an OOO can avoid to reduce things to *one* kind of being that makes all the difference. Can an ethico-political theory avoid to think about *one* thing that makes all the difference?
I probably started being murky again, tell me if I’m making sense.
February 22, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Here’s a funny webcomic.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1797
February 23, 2010 at 6:33 am
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