Over at New Apps there’s been an epic discussion about constructivism and materialism. Over the course of the discussion there’s been a lot of talk about Foucault, developmental systems theory, discursive practices, and materialism. It all started with an offhand remark by Catarina Dutilh Novaes about social constructivism. I asked what exactly is meant by social constructivism and suggested, as I have in the past, that we should just talk about constructivism. What’s the difference? Social constructivism places all the onus of construction on signs, signifiers, narratives, norms, categories, discursive practices (i.e., all that pertains to the human). Constructivism simpliciter includes all of this, but also includes nonhuman entities such as tools, microbes, weather events, materials like wood and metal, animals, etc., etc., etc.
One of the things I’ve found striking in this discussion is the tendency for people to call themselves “materialists” so long as they are committed to the claim that discursive practices are material. I guess the idea is that idealism focuses on ideas and thought, whereas materialism focuses on practices. I’m all for focusing on practices and I agree that they’re material, but I don’t think this is sufficient for claiming the title of “materialism”. I even had one respondent claim that discursive practices literally bring entities into existence. In other words, for this person no entities existed prior to discursive practices and no entities will exist after discursive practices. Wow! I fail to see how such a position can, in any possible universe, be called a materialism. Rather, to qualify as materialist I believe a position must be reject anthropocentrism and be posthumanist. The rejection of anthropocentrism refuses to grant humans any privileged place in assemblages. Humans are certainly important to humans and clearly we’ll be talking about humans quite a bit when we do social and political theory, but they enjoy no ontological privilege. The world or being exists apart from humans, existed before humans, and will exist after humans.
A posthumanist position is a position that refuses to make claims like “discursive practices bring beings into being.” Humans certainly perturb entities in all sorts of ways. Sometimes they even invent entities as in the case of technologies, social institutions, and the creation of new atomic elements in the lab. However, this is a far cry from the claim that humans bring all other beings into being through their discursive practices. A posthumanist orientation treats humans as one more interactant among a variety of other nonhuman interactants such as animals, atoms, quarks, stars, meteors, various material substances, microbes, etc., etc., etc. Humans are participants among other participants, not godlike entities upon which everything else depends and which bring everything else into existence.
For me construction takes place everywhere in the universe, regardless of whether or not humans are involved. The fox and the hare busily constructed one another and continue to construct one another over the course of evolutionary history. There’s nothing discursive about this process. Stars are busily constructing all sorts of heavier atomic elements. Moreover, construction works reciprocally. Just as human norms and categories construct other humans and entities in the world in all sorts of ways, all sorts of other entities such as the bubonic plague, Hurricane Katrina, the H1N1 virus, cows, the foods we eat, etc., are busily constructing humans in all sorts of ways. Construction is a general ontological feature of the world, not a feature restricted to the “social”.
Larval Subjects . 
July 4, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Hear hear to your point in the last paragraph. This relates to what I have been interested in terms of “new materialism” – although, immediately admitting it as a difficult term; probably a more strategic one , to point to some loose resonances across a range of approaches recently. Perhaps some of the perspectives in “affective labour”-direction are most closely related to the praxis-approach, and yet, with people like Tiziana Terranova, the wider context is open to the wider biopolitics of the posthuman perhaps in a manner as you flag. Indeed, constructivism as long as we see the world continuously being constructed anew; practices only as long as we would be able to see if the non-human is involved in praxis (that would be stretching a bit…) – or that the praxis is necessarily constituted of non-humans without who it would not exist; worlds of perception and sensation as long as the non-humans too are included in things/agencies that perceive…
July 4, 2011 at 7:32 pm
there are a number of (deleuzian-bent) feminists that it seems like you would benefit from reading and that “take the biological seriously.” elizabeth grosz being the best example
July 4, 2011 at 7:39 pm
Yep Kai, I’m a fan of her work and am working roughly in that tradition.
July 4, 2011 at 7:43 pm
indeed, the “material feminism” which is a core part of “new materialism” is a great reference point for this brand of work – in addition to Grosz, of course Braidotti etc., as well as the whole context of science studies…there are one or two nice review articles of these works around, and we are organizing something that is turning into a yearly conference series – last year Cambridge, this year Utrecht, next year in Linnköping…!
July 4, 2011 at 7:44 pm
awesome, i figured as much – just thought it might help in the context of this extended discussion…which i can’t believe i’m still reading…and still only halfway through
July 4, 2011 at 9:50 pm
I’m interested in how this works for the construction of history.
Levi, as a resident of Texas you are probably aware of the controversy last summer about the right-wing rewriting of US history and social studies textbooks by the Texas Board of Education. The new textbooks which come out later this year will be nothing short of propaganda. I’m working on a new project to create a wiki textbook that will let Texas high school students themselves research and write their own textbook with the collaboration of professional historians and amateur history buffs from around the world. You can see the beginnings of the project here:
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/A_supplement_to_the_Texas_US_history_textbook
I’m currently trying to write something for the wiki about the relationship how our own values and historical facts get tangled up together.
What I would like to say is that historical facts get embedded in a kind of material history of their own. For example, one of the outrageous things that the Texas Board of Education tried to do was get rid of the word slavery from the US history textbook (they want to replace it with the “Atlantic triangular trade” whatever that means).
But as a thought experiment we could imagine that the Texas Board of Education had one of those Men In Black memory whipping devices which erased everyone’s memory that the US practice slavery (I suppose they’d have to burn all books that mention slavery too). If history is ONLY socially constructed then that would be that, slavery really would be gone if none of us remembered it.But as a historical fact slavery would still be embedded in the vary fabric of the world.
A friend of mine likes to tell the story of growing up in a city that had a giant winding river running through it that disrupted the clean grid of the city streets. He couldn’t figure out why the river made such a swooping bend, why not just go in a direct line? He asked his school teacher who told him that there used to be a mountain range where the city was and that the river wound through the valley between the mountains. During the last ice age glaciers sheared off the these mountains over millions of years but left the riverbed below. Even though the mountains are no longer there the entire city is built around them, the perfect grid of the city streets needs to account for diagonal and winding roads that follow the curve of the river, etc.
Likewise even if we all collectively got brainwashed by the Texas Board of Education to believe that slavery didn’t happen the mind-independent fact of slavery would still function and produce effects. The very circuits of our society bear its traces. The historical fact of slavery constructs us even as our own values and location within society give us different vantage points from which to try to understand the historical fact of slavery.
July 4, 2011 at 11:31 pm
I even had one respondent claim that discursive practices literally bring entities into existence
I have a version of this disagreement pretty often with some of my colleagues. Not as extreme as the one you’re describing, but a desire to make discursive practices the same in kind as other kinds of practices. This is just another version of the Rorty quip all of us have become so fond of, that beyond realism and idealism rests more idealism.
Anyway, I think a part of this opinion comes from neurosis. Philosophers and theorists have spent so much time with ideas, it’s easy to see practices and materials as too distant for comfort, if you will.
July 5, 2011 at 1:08 am
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July 5, 2011 at 1:35 am
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July 5, 2011 at 1:35 am
Thanks Jussi! I’m very much trying to think along the same lines you are. I’m not ready to abandon the word “construction”, though in light of debates like the one this post alludes to, I’m wondering if it doesn’t have diminishing returns.
July 5, 2011 at 2:51 pm
Yes beneath these discussion of constructionism is a rethinking of labor and how things labor and or work. But there is also the tension right now for many of us between Deleuze’s or Whitehead’s versions of constructionism and OOO’s. In terms of Jussi’s work or Terranova’s there is the question about what the virtual is or does and what the OOO position on potential or indeterminacy or contingency is or does. Still working on this or through this. Patricia Clough
July 5, 2011 at 5:41 pm
When I read “I even had one respondent claim that discursive practices literally bring entities into existence,” my only thought–aside from dismissing the statement as discussed–is that the respondent is taking a phenomenological point of view. From that point of view, the statement has merit, although it lacks many necessary qualifiers.
I am playing devil’s advocate.
July 5, 2011 at 10:33 pm
patricia, i’d suggest checking out claire colebrook’s article “queer vitalism” in new formations 68 to clarify the status of the virtual. i’ve found it to be one of the most convincing cases, particularly because the distinction the underlies the whole article is based on virtual vs actual vitalism.