#neo-materialism

[secretuserlife-blog]

A secret user’s life

From a sudden feeling of estrangement, I started this blog. The things that had kept me occupied didn’t seem to captivate me any longer. I had gotten used to the fog of war, and what became visible through it was’t all that pleasurable.

So here I am, with a profession that reveres amateurism and prospers on image alone, lost in a world revolving around the work of keeping itself afloat, whose purpose I cannot grasp.

What is happening? Why do I care? What can I do? How do I matter? And most profoundly: Why the fuck does it all suddenly seem so bleak?

edit: adding tags

[intermulti]

Assignment 4.2, Xiaomiao W.

“Andrew Poe suggests that ‘What should cause theorists’ alarm are how divisions between the human and the world – between subject and object – have had the anathema result of allowing for the destruction of the actual (which is to say ecological) world. The subject, it seems, has come to care too much for itself.”

Barbara Bolt, “Introduction: Toward a ‘New Materialism’ Through the Arts,” P5

This quote is a part of an explanation to the concept of neo-materialism. In this introduction chapter, Bolt first introduced traditional materialism, human centered, and human, nonhuman opposite concept, then it led to how the new materialism merged and differences. Bolt also used augments of objection to new materialism in her discussion. Then she address how new materialism has been applied to various visual art activities, and how it expended ideas and thoughts around these practices to another dimension.

[intermulti]

Assignment #4, Susan S. 2.

“The ‘I’ of new materialism is no longer the sovereign human subject, but is conceived of as a material-semiotic actor, an articulation that, according to Donna Haraway (1991) encompasses the human and the non-human, the social and physical, and the material and immaterial.”

Bolt, “Introduction: Toward a ‘New Materialism through the Arts’” Carnal Knowledge (3)

This quote by Barbara Bolt appears on the third page of her introduction to her anthology of interdisciplinary investigations of “new materialism” by international artists and scholars who work “between a posthumanist neo-materialism and a corporeal materialism” (13). Bolt begins her introduction by differentiating the special place of the Epicurean focus on matter in contrast to the predominant emphases of Western thought that fed humanism. She positions the statement quoted above immediately following a citation of Iris van der Tuin about “dealing with agential matter rather than (gendered) passive matter” (3). In the paragraph that follows, Bolt describes how feminist materialism reacted against social constructivism, before she segues into some historical background of the influence of cultural theory upon the arts in her next paragraph. She uses this information to give context for why artists would identify as part of the material turn and to justify why she discusses these ideas in the introduction to her anthology. Afterwards, Bolt spends the remainder of her introduction breaking down the contents of the book into summaries of the essays, categorized by topic.

[intermulti]

Assignment 4.2, Laurie W

P. 7 Thus it is not a question of negating the insights of the cultural turn. Nor are we seeking a return to modernism with its humanist assumptions about truth, autonomy, genius, originality and self-expression. The task, as Susan Hekman sees it, is to be able to "account for the material reality of our social existence without losing sight of the discursive dimension of that reality." ....How do we bring the material back into the equation "without losing the insights of the linguistic turn that characterized the last decades of the twentieth century?" Bolt, Toward a New Materialism Through the Arts This is the culminating question Bolt poses after a brief history of modernism and the cultural turn. She deftly illustrated the difference between the focus of each of the pictured philosophers in Raphael's "The School of Athens", using Epicurus as the image of the neo-materialist who is focused on the matter of things. After defining new materialism and pointing out the short-comings of modernism's humanistic approach to art, she argues for valuing the material in art without disregard for what we have gained from the modernist movement. In agreement with Bennett, she argues that matter has agency and a new mode of thinking is required in art history that takes into consideration matter in the formation of art works.

[intermulti]

Assignment #4 Jonathan V. 1

"With its acknowledgement of agential matter, neo-materialism questions the anthropocentric narrative that has underpinned our view of humans-in-the-world since the enlightenment, a view that posits humans as makers of the world and the world as a resource for human endeavors."

-Barbara Bolt, “Toward a New Materialism Through the Arts” in Carnal Knowledge, page 2. 

Bolt begins her article by questioning the need for a return to materialism, a movement she says died with the birth of humanistic worldviews associated with the enlightenment. In the above quote, she presents the challenge that neo-materialism poses to the human/non-human binary central to enlightenment thinking. According to Bolt, humanism sees humans as makers of the world and the world as a resource for humans. She cautions that “the idea that the world is a passive resource for use by active humans is no longer sustainable.” Because of this, neo-materialism rejects humanism and instead focuses on the role matter plays within human creations. With this definition of neo-materialism in mind, Bolt applies the notion of agential matter to the arts, with a special emphasis on film and visual arts.  

[jonverbeten]

Assignment #4 Jonathan V. 1

"With its acknowledgement of agential matter, neo-materialism questions the anthropocentric narrative that has underpinned our view of humans-in-the-world since the enlightenment, a view that posits humans as makers of the world and the world as a resource for human endeavors."

-Barbara Bolt, "Toward a New Materialism Through the Arts" in Carnal Knowledge, page 2. 

Bolt begins her article by questioning the need for a return to materialism, a movement she says died with the humanistic worldviews associated with the enlightenment. In the above quote, she presents the challenge that neo-materialism poses to the human/non-human binary central to enlightenment thinking. According to Bolt, humanism sees humans as makers of the world and the world as a resource for humans. She cautions that “the idea that the world is a passive resource for use by active humans is no longer sustainable.” Because of this, neo-materialism rejects humanism and instead focuses on the role matter plays within human creations. With this definition of neo-materialism in mind, Bolt applies the notion of agential matter to the arts, with a special emphasis on film and visual arts.