Materialism is paradoxical in two ways. I cite these paradoxes not to criticize materialism, but to attempt to circumscribe the material and how it differs from other orientations of thought. First, it defends the thesis that the being of being is material, the physical, and therefore other than thought, but can only do so through thought. Materialism proceeds through concepts, yet attempts to grasp that which is other than the concept. The material is that which is anterior and posterior to the concept, thought, phenomenality, affect, the lived experience of the body, and signification. It is without meaning, beyond all meaning, and certainly outside of all phenomenological givenness. There is, for example, a radical difference between the lived body (the body of phenomenological experience) and the physiological (material) body. The physiological body can, of course, affect the lived body, yet the lived body is no reliable guide to the material or physiological body.
read on!
A man suffers from severe anxiety. His thought spins, exploring, in a Heideggerian fashion, the meaning of his existence, his relation to death, the being of being. He thinks these are the sources of his anxiety and goes to a psychoanalyst or an existential therapist. Yet perhaps his anxiety is merely a chemical imbalance. From within experience there’s no way to know, for his material being is exterior to all thought and experience. The relation of meaning to anxiety seems absolutely self-evident. He spends years in therapy. Yet the ground of his anxiety was, in this instance, never in the domain of matter. There’s a strange way in which the material body, that which is closest to us, is more exterior than the greatest exteriority– even the exteriority of the so-called Levinasian Other –such that while we are it it is nonetheless completely opaque.
There is perpetually a mismatch between the material and the given. The material is the most absolute of exteriorities, perpetually receding from any givenness. It is in-apparent; which is to say that it does not appear. We can only infer it. It perpetually exercises itself without showing itself. As a consequence, the material is an ever receding horizon that we model in bits in pieces through inference. None of this is to say that the phenomenological, experiential, and signifying do not affect the material; only that the material is not a mirror of us characterized by meaning.
No doubt it is this absolute exteriority of materiality, this absence more radical than any phenomenological nothing or semiological absence, that leads to the perpetual tendency of idealism and social constructivisms in the humanities. Because no signification, phenomenological experience, or concept can gain traction on the material, because none of these things can present the material, we conclude that there is no material, only ideas or signs or affects. All of being becomes a mirror of us. We make arguments to the effect that because there is no word for blowfish among the Inuit, blowfish don’t exist. All materialism must then navigate this exteriority of matter to thought and give some sort of an account of how thought can know something of that which is not thought and which is never thought.
Aside On A Stupid Argument: One sometimes hears idealists and social constructivists critique realism, saying that it either presupposes a view from nowhere or that we never had a view from nowhere. Yet realism is not claiming to have a view from nowhere, nor has it ever suggested total knowledge (something the idealists cannot, incidentally, claim). All realism claims is to grasp a little bit of the real, to capture something other than the signifier within a net of signifiers.
The second paradox arises from the ontological thesis of materialism: being is material. This is a univocal thesis that is perfectly general, applying to all beings. Yet if that’s the case, how are we to account for the thesis that matter is exterior to thought? For thought is a form of being and therefore is also material. Materialism must account for how material can be exterior to itself in the form of thought, concept, signification, phenomenological experience, affect, and so on. It must account for how it can both be itself, matter, and not be itself. It must account for how it produces mirages of what is within material being, obscuring itself as ground while nonetheless being absolute intimate and proximal.
Larval Subjects . 
February 12, 2015 at 1:40 am
Social constructivists are any easy target (would you mind naming names?), but what about the ontological constructivists?
February 12, 2015 at 1:46 am
I’m not sure I fully comprehend. When description and explanation cease, things just are the way they are, no more said. Yet any “thought” denies material it’s materialistic materiality as it “involves” into it, parmenideanly or otherwise. So, ‘to the things themselves’ can never come to fruition, if it itself is not that fruition. Meaning nothing can reach the ursprung or apodictic description of my candle burning other than my candle burning, without my various impressions of it. Which is to say we debate modes of perception and the ‘astuteness’ they bring to description, even of pathology, rationality, but nothing other than the appearance, regardless of the reality/irreality of the object, “subsists?”? So, materialism, always and necessarily, as a concept, falls under idealism, with or without description? Thought is, thus matter?
February 12, 2015 at 1:54 am
Fullmagazine, how are you reaching your final conclusion about idealism. Im arguing against idealism.
February 12, 2015 at 2:06 am
Matthew,
I’m rather surprised by your question, given your experience grappling with realist debates. If you wish for an account of how pervasive these forms of idealism are consult Lee Braver’s A Thing of This World. The poorly named “ontological constructivism” is another beast, as it’s not an anti-realist position, but the claim that all beings must be assembled from other beings. That can involve societies and subjects, but can just as easily involve neither.
February 12, 2015 at 2:10 am
If you are arguing against idealism you must concede that there can be no purpose to any language statement even if it makes meaning as it cannot affect anything; ie a true materialism leaves the world of matter and mindless sophisticated chatter – separate
February 12, 2015 at 2:20 am
I’m still asking the question “wozu eigentlich?” Words like real, actual, material fail to suffice. Only the exchange within duration serves to momentarily form the basis of a commonality within an actor-network system. Currency, perhaps. I see no alternative
February 12, 2015 at 2:47 am
Levi, materialism must be the apodictic anti-idealism that remains idealistic in the sense in which not to decide is itself a decision. Objects are no less there, but to say more is to begin languishing. Realism is the silent observation without judgement that acts only for profit, ie pleasure or legacy. I find myself truly hopeless now. Why am I stuck? Where is the escape route?
February 12, 2015 at 2:56 am
Am I just stupid? Oliverodner@ me.com
February 12, 2015 at 3:52 am
Speaking of the material conditions of thought, I rattled off that comment while crammed into a subway car on my commute home. Not the best place for clear thinking. Apologies for the poorly phrased question. I am quite stimulated by this post and will articulate a more fully formed response later this evening.
February 12, 2015 at 7:30 am
Dude. This is getting weird. How is it you wrote an essay that at least brings up the issue of ‘coming from nowhere’ and i too, but speaking of Zizek, just am publishing a short essay that describes what this ‘coming from nowhere’ means?? This is getting kinda spooky.
February 12, 2015 at 9:26 am
If materialism is true, thoughts are states of matter too. So matter is not, then, ontologically exterior to thought.
February 12, 2015 at 1:53 pm
This book unpicks the history if these issues with much clarity, and suggests an interesting departure:
February 12, 2015 at 1:54 pm
‘of’ these issues not ‘if’ of course-typo
February 12, 2015 at 2:58 pm
David,
Right. Thats the second paradox I mentioned.
February 12, 2015 at 2:59 pm
That’s an odd conclusion, Oliver.
February 12, 2015 at 3:20 pm
Then let’s hide the existence of Parmenides and everything to do with him
February 12, 2015 at 4:10 pm
fullmagazine,
I’m sure how you reach any of these conclusions. In what way does realism entail beings only act for profit, pleasure, or legacy? In any event, even if this were the case your criticism here would be based on a fallacy as whether or not we find something morally offensive has nothing to do with whether or not that thing is true. Such an argument is a variant of wishful thinking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishful_thinking
February 12, 2015 at 4:12 pm
Oliver,
The thesis that language statements can only have meaning and purpose if idealism is true is a non-sequitor. Nothing about material systems entails the impossibility of meaning and semantics at the level of propositions. Moreover, “matter” and “mindless” are not synonyms. There is, of course, mindless matter but clearly there’s also matter that becomes living.
February 12, 2015 at 4:27 pm
Mariposa, Shmetterling, etc I get it
February 12, 2015 at 6:38 pm
The paradox only exists along a particular line of argument.
February 12, 2015 at 6:45 pm
..and I’m not sure there is any difference between phenomenal and material, radical or not, except that the preists are debating issues of dogma. It is presumptuous to implicate, say, my situation within this paradigm it seems you assume unless some sort of discursive power is being implemented to force me (Badiou?) to comply to such polemic. For every term that is offered has no true basis for communal meaning, but that we reference a particular cohort that is using the term, and recall thier ‘screens’ to view a scene.
February 12, 2015 at 7:18 pm
..defined in such a way as you have, material being the ‘most distant’ of possibility, yet ‘made intimate’by knowledge about it, the example of the anxious man shows that his estimations are mis-determined, and his problem persists, not due to any essential material-phenomenal gap, but exactly the meaning that is invested for or of that gap.
February 12, 2015 at 10:10 pm
Levi, thank you for your insight, you are an excellent advocate for a position growing in esteem, that I would like to believe can become an educative Principle akin to the Hippocratic oath for medicine. Yet when it comes to localised/traditional norms/values and the quest for deliverance, we are left with critique, and our convictions. Only in freges world where one can only do what one should do is truth possible. Otherwise it seems the only truths are my stupidity and replacability. In which case one can, yet does not have to, consider the pragmatics of a contradiction or fallacy. Yet all the same my arguments arose from your essay, the honus binding a variety of holzwegen
February 15, 2015 at 5:40 pm
This post and commentary is intriguing and provocative, even as it is something of an extention of the previous post’s discoveries. Here are some further reflections of this and its preceding posts. http://currentcatholics.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-postmodern-critique-phenomenality.html
Cordially,
Joe
May 16, 2015 at 12:30 pm
I know for years I was a defender of physicalist materialism without ever questioning its foundations. Yet, in my confrontation with Zizek and ‘dialectical materialism’ which has nothing to do with the superficial strawman of physicalist or scientific naturalism I began to awaken out of my long sleep of substantive materialism and see something else entirely.
Thanks, Levi, for an insightful article that goes to the heart of the materialist (scientific naturalist) quandaries. I’ve been rereading your works from Deleuze, through Onto-Cartography again in the past few months which have helped feed my own thought of late. Strange how a few months away from blogging can give one fresh eyes.