Angelaki

Journal of the Theoretical Humanities

ISSN: 0969-725X (Print) 1469-2899 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cang20

VITALITY OR WEAKNESS?
Michael ONeill Burns
To cite this article: Michael ONeill Burns (2016) VITALITY OR WEAKNESS?, Angelaki, 21:4, 11-22,
DOI: 10.1080/0969725X.2016.1229414
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2016.1229414

Published online: 27 Sep 2016.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 45

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cang20
Download by: [Computing & Library Services, University of Huddersfield]

Date: 29 September 2016, At: 03:37

ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 21 number 4 december 2016

We remain convinced that no genuine materialist philosophy legitimately can neglect

the natural sciences generally and that no
authentically materialist theory of subjectivity defensibly can sideline the life sciences
specically.
Johnston and Malabou, Self and
Emotional Life ix
[ ] there is no Nature of nature.
Johnston, The Weakness of Nature 167

ontemporary materialist philosophy, in its

many contradictory guises and diverse
research programs, has included within its
various developments a return to the question
of the philosophical status of nature. This
recent return to nature has led to debates on
the relationship between naturalism and materialism, with some aiming to develop naturalist
materialisms, others arguing for materialist naturalism, while still others attempt to utilize
materialist philosophy to argue against the
very possibility of the classical category of
nature (Badiou).
While there is no shortage of varied perspectives at the intersection of materialist philosophy and the philosophy of nature, the present
essay will be focused on two recent forms of philosophical materialism, both of which attempt
to think the conjunction between matter,
nature, and the political. The rst form,
grouped loosely under the moniker the new
materialism, is a perspective that has overtly
embraced the conceptual apparatus (and the
accompanying problems) of a philosophical
and political project centred largely on the
concept of nature, and one which is indebted
largely to a theory of nature running from
Spinoza to Deleuze. While there are a host of

michael oneill burns

VITALITY OR
WEAKNESS?
on the place of nature in
recent materialist
philosophy
thinkers associated with this tradition, this
essay will take as the paradigmatic examples of
the best this perspective has to offer both the
vital materialism of Jane Bennett as outlined
in her Vibrant Matter, and the immanent naturalism of William E. Connolly.
The second form to be discussed in the
present essay, transcendental materialism
(which is just a name for the most recent
developments in contemporary dialectical
materialism), has offered a more complicated
picture of the relationship between materialist
philosophy and the philosophy of nature, and
this perspective is rmly in line with the
HegelianMarxist tradition of dialectics. This
position will be considered critically via the

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/16/040011-12 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2016.1229414

11

vitality or weakness?
work of two of the most prolic philosophers
working to develop a contemporary dialectical
materialism: Adrian Johnston and Catherine
Malabou.
This essay will attempt to analyse the role of
nature in contemporary materialist philosophy
by rst delineating these two distinct strands
of materialism, via a comparative analysis of differing historical sources, conceptual commitments, and political programmatics. Through
this delineation I will attempt to highlight the
precise stakes of these differing conceptions of
nature in terms of their effects on thinking
materialism, philosophy, and the political. One
of the primary theoretical disjunctions at play
in this consideration will be the one between
monist accounts of nature as vital and immanent
substance and dialectical materialist accounts of
nature as self-sundering and marked by immanent fracture. Put differently, these two perspectives offer a contemporary materialist
repetition of the well-rehearsed theoretical question: Hegel, or Spinoza?
After delineating the stakes of these two contemporary materialisms, the essay will move to
some brief considerations of the contemporary
inuence of F.W.J Schellings nineteenthcentury Naturphilosophie on these contemporary materialist conceptions of nature. In particular, I will show that Schellings own
account is neither a Spinozist monism (as
articulated by many of the new materialists)
nor a classically dialectical account (as offered
by transcendental materialism), and in this
sense Schellings philosophical considerations
on the relationship between mind and matter
complicate both strands of recent materialism
in equal measure, and create the space for
further developments and engagements with
the natural sciences by twenty-rst-century philosophers concerned with the relations between
nature and matter. To this extent I hope to
show that the previously mentioned philosophical question (Hegel, or Spinoza?) would benet
from the addition of a third option, thus
reframing the theoretical options as: Hegel,
or Spinoza, or Schelling? for those aiming to
think nature from a materialist perspective,
and matter from a naturalist perspective.

Finally, I will conclude this essay with some

brief considerations on the politics of nature.
In particular, as both theoretical orientations
outlined in this essay ultimately aim at radical
political projects (eco-politics and Marxism
respectively), I will highlight the political consequences for their respective conceptualizations
of matter and nature. While acknowledging
the political importance of both perspectives, I
will argue ultimately that the macropolitical perspective offered by contemporary dialectical
materialism, and its accompanying reliance on
using contemporary natural science to better
think human subjectivity, is signicantly more
necessary for the contemporary political
moment.

One of the recent tendencies in materialist philosophy (and in the theoretical humanities more
generally) has been the move towards what is
called the new materialism.1 The name of this
theoretical perspective immediately raises the
question as to what precisely is so new about
this strand of materialism. (Or, why the new
materialism rather than simply a new materialism?) Obviously the self-designation of this
newness implies that this materialism is different from some other less desirable, old materialism. As such, it becomes simple to identify that
old materialism that the new materialism
denes itself in opposition to: dialectical materialism operating in delity to the Hegelian
Marxist tradition.
One of the ways in which this materialism
aims to distinguish itself from the older variations of HegelianMarxist dialectical materialisms is through a renewed concern with the
question of nature and the resources offered
by the natural sciences. In particular, there is
a strong emphasis on environmental sciences
and ecology, along with the use of ecological
metaphors to reconsider traditional forms of
subjectivity in a more immanent and non-humanist fashion. As Jane Bennett states, when offering a counter-genealogy of her own materialist
project, I pursue a materialism in the tradition
of DemocritiusEpicuriousSpinozaDiderot
Deleuze more than HegelMarxAdorno

12

burns
(xiii). While there are a number of diverse and
creative thinkers engaged in the various
strands of the new materialism, for the present
essay I will focus in particular on recent texts
by Bennett and William E. Connolly. This is
due to the fact that their dual projects provide
two of the most rigorous and convincing philosophical and political new materialisms, as
well as the most productive contrast with contemporary dialectical materialism.
The various philosophical and political projects associated with the new materialism are
all in various ways interested either in developing new philosophies of nature or reconsidering
the ways in which the natural and biological
sciences can inform the contemporary theoretical humanities. For the new materialism,
nature is usually reminiscent of the monist substance of Spinozist nature, and shares a strong
delity to the conceptions of nature and immanence as developed by Deleuze. This emphasis
on nature leads many working in the new materialism to utilize developments in the natural
and environmental sciences; it also orients the
social and political aims of the new materialism
around explicitly ecological and environmental
questions. We will return to the specic question of the role of nature in the new materialism
throughout the present essay.
While there is an impressive amount of diversity in the perspectives of those working within
the new materialism, one commonality is the
shared theoretical heritage of the Spinozist tradition. To be as concise as possible, many of
the new materialists are: committed to philosophies of immanence, grounded in a monist
account of natural substance; rigorously nondialectical in their accounts of both matter and
thought; non-subjectivist in their conception
of the role of the human in philosophical speculation; and building on all of these, absolutely
non-idealist in their intellectual frameworks.
This follows from a commitment to an intellectual heritage grounded in a certain tradition of
monism and immanence, and one that stands
rmly against any tradition of materialism that
claims theoretical delity to Hegel and Marx.
Building on this commitment to a Spinozist
account of monism and a largely Deleuzian

13

conception of immanence, another crucial

aspect of the new materialism is its commitment
to a non-anthropocentric conception of philosophy and the political. As Bennett argues:
Dogged resistance to anthropocentrism is
perhaps the main difference between the
vital materialism I pursue and this kind of
historical materialism. (xvi)

This has led a number of its partisans and fellow

travellers to describe their work as post-, anti-,
or trans-humanist in theoretical orientation.
This can also be seen as a reaction against the
legacy of humanism and subjectivism seen to
be carried into contemporary thought via
German Idealism and the more humanist
strands of Marxism and existentialism.
Bennett clearly describes this move away from
human-oriented thinking as such:
To attempt, as I do, to present human and
nonhuman actants on a less vertical plane
than is common is to bracket the question
of the human and to elide the rich and
diverse literature on subjectivity and its
genesis, its condition of possibility, and its
boundaries. The philosophical project of
naming where subjectivity begins and ends
is too often bound up with fantasies of a
human uniqueness in the eyes of God, of
escape from materiality, or of mastery of
nature; and even where it is not, it remains
an aporetic or quixotic endeavor. (ix)

While Bennett makes the decision to bracket

the question of the human for the sake of
pushing philosophy towards a more radical conception of immanence and naturalism, William
E. Connolly has a subtler perspective on the
role of the human in the new materialism,
stating that:
the tendency neither to erase the human
subject nor restrict it entirely to human
beings and/or God is accepted [ ]
Indeed, we seek to stretch prevailing modes
of subjectivity in a new direction. (400)

For Connolly the aim is not to make philosophical and political thought less subjective but
rather to make the very category of subjectivity
less bound up with the human. In this way a

vitality or weakness?
whole number of non-human actants and processes could be considered using the theoretical
framework of subjectivity. In a further
comment that provides a clear point of demarcation between Connollys project and many
other thinkers of the new materialism, he
states that:
To me, the most unfortunate titles through
which to represent such a general agenda
today are perhaps those of posthumanism
and antihumanism. (402)

While, as we see in Connolly, there is serious

debate on the status of subjectivity within the
ranks of the new materialists, there is little
debate as to the status and importance of particularly human subjectivity. This shift away from traditional conceptions of subjectivity leads directly
into the particularly non-subjective form of politics advocated by the new materialism.
One of the clearest distinctions to make in
regards to the politics of the new materialism
is that it is largely anti-Marxist in its aims. As
Connolly states, two of the tendencies that the
new materialisms contest are classical
Marxism and the linear sciences (399). Following this disavowal of the scale and aim of classical Marxism, Connolly notes that for the new
materialists, micropolitics plays an important
role in our thinking (401). This micropolitical
analysis and activity stands in opposition to
what could be called the macropolitical aims of
traditional forms of Marxist dialectics utilized
by contemporary dialectical materialism.
Against this tradition of revolutionary social
and economic change, Connolly advocates for
the new materialisms ability to theorize the
importance of radical political action on a
much smaller scale:
When you, say, start a blog with others, or
contribute to one in motion, you again open
up new adventures of collective inspiration
and action. And so it goes. Do not underestimate the subterranean, affective ows that
connect identity, faith, belief, role performance and larger political movements. (411)

At the risk of over-simplication, if the political

project of Marxist materialism largely endorses

a large-scale (or top-down) dialectical political

approach via the transition to socialism on the
way to communism via new forms of party politics, the new materialism aims at a bottom-up
approach by which a diverse range of political
actors can participate in a wide array of localized
activity to push towards a new conception of the
political. This model aims to avoid traditional
conceptions of collective political parties and
individual political subjects, as according to
Connolly:
A philosophy of immanent naturalism thus
resists both methodological individualism
and holism in favour of the thesis of diverse
connections between heterogeneous systems
in a cosmos that is open to some uncertain
degree. (412)

Once again, the language of dialectical opposition and productive tension is abandoned for
the language of immanence, complexity, and
system. This new materialism has little patience
for the negativity that is standard in much dialectical ontology.
While much more could be said, this brief
overview of the new materialism via the work
of Bennett and Connolly should provide a
clear enough account to enable a productive contrast with the philosophical project of transcendental materialism. Once again, both the vital
materialism of Bennett and immanent naturalism of Connolly share many of the key commitments of the new materialism more generally: a
commitment to the life sciences, a non-anthropocentric ontology and political theory, a prioritization of the natural world, a commitment to
the immanence of Spinoza and Deleuze, a micropolitical account of practical philosophy, and a
strong mistrust of materialisms aligned with
the dialectical tradition. I will now move on to
providing an account of transcendental materialism, with a particular focus on how this perspective differs from the new materialism.

If the new materialism operates via a fundamental opposition to the old materialism of Marxist
dialectics, the most recent version of dialectical
materialism, transcendental materialism, could

14

burns
rightly be viewed as the new (old) materialism,
as this perspective utilizes the contemporary
natural sciences not for the sake of moving
forever beyond the trappings of dialectics but
rather to further support the theoretical philosophy of dialectical materialism with recent
advances in the material sciences. In this
sense, transcendental materialism shares a
strong afnity with new materialisms tendency
to mine the resources of contemporary science
and political theory to build a more thoroughly
materialist philosophical project. But, against
the new materialism, transcendental materialism embraces the sciences not to lay the
corpse of dialectics into its cofn of antiquation
once and for all, but precisely for the sake of
revivifying the dialectical project in a twentyrst-century scientic context.
One can see this distinction more precisely
when analysing the types of contemporary
science that these materialisms have tended to
embrace. For the new materialism, it is often
ecology, assemblage theory, and technology
studies that provide the scientic resources for
their theoretical developments. For the transcendental materialists, neuroscience and
biology (along with mathematics and physics
in some cases) have served the role of providing
the scientic conditions of their contemporary
take on materialist philosophy.
While the new materialism concerns itself
with uncovering the theoretical structures of
nature as such (even when nature is considered
in explicitly anthropomorphic terms), transcendental materialism offers an account of nature
that could more rightly be considered the
natural preconditions of human nature (or, the
lack of such a thing as a properly human nature
in a positive sense). In this way, transcendental
materialism is not concerned with locating the
operations of mind in matter but rather with providing an account of matter that explains the
emergence of more-than-material mind from a
set of natural and material conditions. Put differently, this sort of dialectical materialism is interested in theorizing the material genesis of a morethan-material form of human subjectivity. It does
not take much at this point to see once again the
repetition of the Spinoza vs. Hegel debate which

15

so clearly separates these two materialist perspectives. This differing of priority in regards to
nature can also make further sense of their differing embrace of the natural sciences, as the ecological perspective of new materialism offers a
picture of nature as an explicitly non-human
structure full of non-human agents and processes, while transcendental materialisms neurobiological perspective offers a naturalist account
of the emergence of de-naturalized human
subjectivity.
In a move related to their distinct theorizations of nature, we can see a similar pattern
emerge when these materialisms consider the
concept of life. For the vital materialism of
Bennett, the aim is precisely to consider the
vitality of matter itself, so life becomes an
organic process inherent to nature. From the
transcendental materialist perspective, on the
other hand, life has more to do with a certain
voluntarist conception of subjectivity at both
the external and internal level. One way to consider the difference in the conceptions of life
offered by dialectical and new materialism is
via their distinct scientic conditions. For contemporary dialectical materialism (and in particular the materialisms of Johnston and
Malabou), the recent brain sciences provide
the condition to think a materialist conception
of life, while for the new materialism ecological
science and various forms of systems and
network theories provide the conditions for a
thinking of the immanence of life.
As I have repeated throughout this essay, if
the new materialism nds its common intellectual heritage in the tradition inaugurated by
Spinoza, transcendental materialism, and contemporary dialectical materialism more generally, nds its common ancestor in the tradition
inaugurated by the work of Hegel, which
includes the twin legacies of German Idealist
philosophy and Marxist materialism. While it
is beyond the scope of this essay to offer a
detailed analysis of the primary role of Hegel
in contemporary dialectical materialism, one
simply has to glance at the published work of
many of the gures associated with this tendency. Both Catherine Malabou and Slavoj
Z izek have published entire monographs

vitality or weakness?
dedicated to contemporary interpretations of
Hegel, Adrian Johnston has relied on Hegel in
much of his published work, and while in no
way a Hegelian as such, the inuence of Hegelian dialectics is clear throughout the corpus of
Alain Badiou. The one thing held in common
by each of the previously mentioned gures is
the commitment to the idea that the resources
of both Hegelian philosophy and contemporary
natural science allow us to theorize a materialist
dialectic in both the natural world and within a
de-naturalized account of the human subject.
While the new materialism aims to move past
the baggage of philosophies of subjectivity (and,
in particular, those associated with any residual
forms of humanism), contemporary dialectical
materialist approaches share in common a
concern with the role of subjectivity within a
materialist and dialectical ontology. Alain
Badiou and Slavoj Z izek have long advocated
for the return to a philosophy grounded in subjectivity, while Adrian Johnstons work has sought
to further articulate a materialist (and naturalist)
ontology capable of accounting for the grounds of
transcendental subjectivity. The work of Catherine Malabou is also crucial here, even if her
work on epigenetics and the neurosciences has
been more focused on materialist conceptions of
the self than on subjectivity as such. While
these theories differ, the one thing that all of
the contemporary dialectical perspectives share
is an emphasis on the political nature of subjectivity, whether this be in considering the subject
from a psychoanalytic (Z izek), naturalist (Johnston), neurobiological (Malabou) or collective
(Badiou) perspective. This emphasis on the politics of subjectivity leads into the emphasis on
large-scale political critique and programmatics
advocated by transcendental materialism.
In a stark contrast to the previously discussed
micropolitical aims of the new materialism, contemporary materialist dialectics is concerned
overwhelmingly with what could be called
macropolitical aims, largely oriented around
the legacy of Marxist emancipatory political projects. However, rather than falling into the critiques of classical Marxism levelled by the new
materialists, these thinkers embrace of the
natural sciences offers a contemporary

Marxist-inspired political project which aims

to think political emancipation at both the
social and neuronal levels. As Johnston writes
in an essay responding to Bennett and Connolly,
If anything, the Marxist picture of human
nature is precisely what really gets vindicated
after-the-fact by todays life-scientic studies
of human beings (Adventures 321). So while
in many senses we can view this as a politics
of subjectivity, it is not a nave political move
by which political reality is forged by the free
actions of individual human subjects; rather,
this theory of subjectivity is one grounded in
the primary material processes of nature itself
which then provides an account of the human
being that is as materialist in its basis as it is
existentialist in its potential for praxis.
While the position previously discussed
(whether referred to as contemporary dialectical
materialism or as transcendental materialism)
can be ascribed vaguely to a diverse set of thinkers,2 it is most clearly seen in the projects of
Adrian Johnston and Catherine Malabou. In
particular, and for the purposes of the present
essay, Johnstons utilization of the concepts of
meta-dialectics and weak nature is especially
useful in considering the role of nature in contemporary materialist philosophy; further,
these concepts will allow us to consider the
summary offered thus far in relation to the Naturphilosophie of F.W.J. Schelling.
While transcendental materialism is the conceptual apparatus most clearly associated with
Johnstons work, this materialist account of
the ontology of subjectivity can equally be considered a meta-dialectical ontology. In particular, it is helpful to think of this ontology as a
materialist meta-dialectic of nature itself, one
that can provide us with a systematic and scientically informed manner to dialectically consider the relations between matter, nature, and
subjectivity. By meta-dialectical here I mean
to refer to an ontological structure which is
not only dialectical in the traditional sense but
in which there is a meta-level dialectic between
the dialectic and the non-dialectical itself. In
this sense, one can think of the emergence of
mind from matter as a radically non-dialectical
event in which the genesis of subjectivity in no

16

burns
way implies an eventual dialectical reconciliation with its own material basis. This also
means that these forms of contemporary dialectical materialism can gladly embrace naturalist
accounts of emergence that would seem contradictory to a classically dialectical framework.
This meta-dialectical structure receives its naturalist underpinning in much of Johnstons
more recent work, where he has expanded on
the concept of a weak nature, one that he develops via Hegels own philosophy of nature. While
the new materialism seems to aim at a strong
move beyond contemporary philosophies of
subjectivity grounded in dialectical materialism
via a move towards the immanent naturalizing
of humanity and the recognition of forms of subjectivity located in natural processes, this metadialectical perspective offers a way to see human
subjectivity as neither natural nor supernatural,
but instead as de-naturalized, as the self-sundering of nature itself.
Johnstons weak nature is a relatively recent
conceptual development in his constantly developing systematic project (transcendental materialism). While many of his early works placed
particular focus on outlining the conditions for
a materialist account of human subjectivity,
his work has recently utilized the resources of
both the natural sciences and Freudian
Lacanian psychoanalysis to better outline the
natural grounds of this de-naturalized form of
subjectivity. Weak nature is the term Johnston
has used to describe this specic conception of
nature, stating, nature itself is weak, vulnerable to breakdowns and failures in its functions
(Weakness 162). This dialectical account of
nature allows Johnston to argue for both a
non-anthropomorphic conception of nature
and the particular existence of more-thanmaterial forms of human subjectivity. Along
these lines, Johnston argues:
In such a vision of the material universe,
human nature can be imagined only as an
overdetermined subcomponent of a macrocosmic web of entities exhaustively integrated through causal relations. (Ibid.)

For Johnston this utilization of contemporary

natural science does not in any way serve the

17

role of allowing contemporary philosophy to

move forever beyond the philosophies of
nature offered in nineteenth-century German
Idealism; on the contrary, for Johnston these
contemporary developments offer reasons for
an even stronger commitment to the philosophies of nature offered by these thinkers. As
he states:
Moreover, positing the corporeality of this
weak nature, this fragile matter of errorprone contingency and complexity, as the
minimal, ground-zero foundation for a materialist metapsychology, involves a renewed
delity to the ontological implications of
German idealist philosophers of nature (as
elaborated primarily by Schelling and
Hegel). (163)

This German Idealist theoretical framework

allows Johnston to utilize developments in the
contemporary natural sciences to argue for a
properly materialist conception of the sort of
self-sundering natural substance argued for to
various extents in the philosophies of nature of
both Hegel and Schelling. The negativity
internal to this natural substance is what
enables the subsequent genesis of de-naturalized
subjectivities as negations of the consistency of
this natural substance. As Johnston argues:
The biomaterialist substances of evolution
appear to be self-sundering, reexively negating their own causal controls and inuences
by giving rise to beings whose complex plasticity, epitomized by human bodybrain
systems, comes to escape governance by evolutionary-genetic nature alone [ ] (165)

And:
[ ] humanitys exceptional biomaterial
complexity precipitates a plethora of antagonistic inconsistencies interfering with, or
even disrupting, the natural dictates of evolution as conveyed via the genes. (168)

Previously we have seen Bennett argue against

the lingering remnants of humanism and philosophies of subjectivity for the sake of a non-hierarchical conception of human and non-human
actants, and Connolly arguing for new conceptions of subjectivity not tied to the human

vitality or weakness?
being as such; Johnston, on the other hand, uses
this account of a weak nature to argue for a
human conception of subjectivity that bears no
relation to the hierarchical humanisms of traditional
religious
and
Enlightenment
philosophies:
Human beings and the structures of subjectivity to which they accede are byproducts
of a weak nature, rebellious offspring of creators incapable of crushing this rebellion and
reestablishing their undisputed authority.
(169)

So, rather than human subjectivity serving as

either the re-inscription of theological hierarchy
or as a dangerous ideological mistake, Johnston
instead argues that:
Human subjectivities are glitches and loopholes internal to an autodenaturalizing
nature, Frankenstein-like creatures of
material discrepancies and temporal torsions
whose negativities pervade the very stuff of
substance itself. (170)

So, against the mantras of the new materialism,

for Johnston not only are there such things as
unique human subjectivities, but these forms
of subjectivity exist as a de-naturalized rather
than as an immanent aspect of a monistic
substance.
In a manner similar to what we have seen in
the work of Johnston, Catherine Malabou
posits a new rendering of dialectical materialism
which is developed in tandem with recent
natural scientic accounts, in this case the
neurosciences and in particular via neuroplasticity. Malabou outlines the stakes of her own
new materialism as such:
The time has come to elaborate a new materialism, which would determine a new position
of Continental philosophy vis--vis neurobiology, and build or rebuild, at long last, a
bridge connecting the humanities and biological sciences. (Johnston and Malabou 72)

Though, in a more explicit manner than what we

have seen in Johnstons work, Malabou has a
specically political aim with this account.
Using recent developments in the neurosciences

around the notion of neuroplasticity, Malabou

argues that this new picture of the brain is
capable of providing a materialist assault on
dominant ideological structures, supported by
capitalism, which paints a picture of the brain
as fundamentally exible, mouldable, and
adaptable; a picture in line with the precarity
and instability of life and work under contemporary neoliberalism.3
Here, we can see a stark contrast between the
materialisms of Malabou and Bennett. For
Bennett, vital materialism means that there is
a continuous vital energy in the universe that
is the productive power behind all things, and
can be thought via the analogies of desire,
becoming, and assemblages. As she states in
Vibrant Matter, my aim, again, is to theorize
a vitality intrinsic to materiality as such
(xiii). For Malabou, on the other hand, life
does not signify anything continuous and immanent; rather, for Malabou, life is a matter of
resistance, as she argues: What we are lacking
is life, which is to say: resistance. Resistance
is what we want (68). Life, for Malabou, has
nothing to do with a Spinozist- or Deleuzianinspired account of life as immanent process,
but rather, life is the very possibility of a sort
of dialectical resistance. Life is not natural as
such for Malabou; rather, life is one of the movements from nature to thought (or from matter to
mind) that is extremely similar to Johnstons
notion of a weak nature, as both utilize Hegel
when outlining their theory of nature. Here it
is worth quoting Malabou at length:
This biological alter-globalism is clearly dialectical, as I have said. It demands that we
renew the dialogue, in one way or another,
with thinkers like Hegel, who is the rst philosopher to have made the word plasticity
into a concept, and who developed a theory
of the relations between nature and mind
that is conictual and contradictory in its
essence. Rereading his Philosophy of
Nature could teach us much about the transition from the biological to the spiritual,
about the way the mind is really already a
self [Selbst], a spirit-nature at whose
core differences are one and all physical
and psychical. (8081)

18

burns
Life, in this framework, is a matter of resistance
to the ideological structure that attempts to
dene the framework of contemporary capitalist
life as natural, and this resistance is made possible
by the contradictory, and self-sundering, nature
of matter itself. As Malabou goes on to argue:
If there can be a transition from nature to
thought, this is because the nature of
thought contradicts itself. Thus the transition from a purely biological entity to a
mental entity takes place in the struggle of
the one against the other, producing the
truth of their relation. Thought is therefore
nothing but nature, but a negated nature,
marked by its own difference from itself.
The world is not the calm prolonging of the
biological. (81)

Contra the anthropomorphism of the new materialism, Malabou here notes the manner in which
mental activity is not produced via nature as
one of its modes of expression but rather as
negated nature, which is a product of natures
own self-sundered and dialectical material basis.
In this way, Malabou does not use the biological
as a way of understanding a new eco-philosophy
that considers human and non-human activity
as a part of one monistic ecosystem, but
instead, the biological itself gives us the scientic
basis for considering the fundamental negativity
inherent to nature, and the manner in which this
self-sundering potential is what enables morethan-material subjectivity to split off from the
primacy of natural substance. Malabous use of
the sciences thus serves the purpose of even
further supporting a contemporary version of
dialectical materialism. We can see here a clear
alliance between Malabous and Johnstons utilization of the natural sciences for the purposes of a
truly dialectical materialism. We see this most
clearly when Malabou describes the ethos of her
own philosophical materialism as such:
A reasonable materialism, in my view, would
posit that the natural contradicts itself and
that thought is the fruit of this contradiction.
(82)

So, human thought is not a natural biological

process but rather the result of the self-negation
of nature itself. In this way, Malabous

19

scientically informed materialism provides an

account of the emergence of human thought
via the dialectical contradictions inherent in
natural substance itself.

Before concluding, and to keep within the scope

of the present volume, it is worth considering
the present debate (that between the new materialism and contemporary dialectical materialism) via a philosopher with a less obvious
historical inuence on contemporary materialism, F.W.J. Schelling. While Spinoza (and a
host of post-Spinozist philosophers) is universally present in the work of the new materialists,
and while Hegels work (and, in particular, his
Philosophy of Nature) stands as the primary
reference point for contemporary dialectical
materialism, neither school of thought has
seen serious engagement with the work of Schelling.4 This is surprising for a number of reasons:
rst, Schelling was the German Idealist most
explicitly concerned with developing a philosophy of nature, and one that was in many
ways materialist; second, Schellings system
provides a series of articulations of how
human freedom is able to emerge from
primary natural and material conditions; and
nally, because Schelling himself was one of
the rst philosophers to reckon with the
accounts of nature and spirit offered by both
Spinoza and Hegel. While a detailed treatment
of Schellings philosophy is out of the scope of
the present essay, I will briey consider these
reasons in the hope of pointing towards future
lines of research regarding Schellings
potential impact on contemporary materialist
philosophy, of both the vital and dialectical
branches.
Schellings naturalist anthropology can be
seen to operate in similar terms to the de-naturalized model of subjectivity seen in the work of
both Johnston and Malabou, as he states:
Man is in the initial creation, as shown,
an undecided being (which may be portrayed mythically as a condition of innocence
that precedes this life and as an initial
blessedness) only man himself can decide.
(51)

vitality or weakness?
When Schelling states that man is an undecided being, we see that grounded in a
weak, or inconsistent, nature human subjectivity is undecided, and fundamentally open.
This anthropological account for Schelling, as
presented in the Freiheitsschrift, is connected
to the larger project of Schellings Naturphilosophie, as Dale Snow outlines:
The task of a true philosophy of nature, on
the other hand, is to provide an equally adequate explanation of the ideal in terms of
the real; that is, it must explain how consciousness arises from matter. (9495)

While Schelling is a minor gure in the transcendental materialism of Johnston, and is not
a gure of importance at all for Malabou, he
does in fact offer an account of nature as selfsundering, which supports the dialectical
accounts offered by contemporary dialectical
materialism. As Snow states, All knowledge
of nature depends upon a prior acceptance of a
primordial sundering in nature itself (128
29).
While there has been limited engagement
with Schelling by either the new materialist or
contemporary dialectical materialism, Ben
Woodard has recently published an essay highlighting the way in which Schellings thought
can serve as a resource for a contemporary ecological politics informed by new materialism.
Woodards reading uses Schelling to push new
materialism (with particular reference to the
thought of Bennett) further from its commitments to Spinoza and Deleuze, arguing that
Schelling offers a methodological split that
neither Spinoza nor Deleuze offers. Woodards
reading is particularly interesting as it helps
further bridge the divide between new materialists and dialectical materialism via the intervention of a philosophy of nature inspired by
Schelling. While not explicitly associating his
own thought with the new materialism,
Woodard does connect (88) his own thought
with the materialism of Gilles Deleuze. While
Deleuzian in orientation, Woodard offers a
novel picture of a contemporary materialism
which is neither new nor transcendental
but which utilizes Schellings realism to think

the relations between human freedom and ecological politics.

In the piece, Woodard both outlines the problematic lack of engagement with Schelling in
the recent new materialisms, along with pointing to problematic blind spots in the recent philosophical reception of Schelling. In particular,
Woodard argues for the political relevance of
Schellings thought, with specic reference to
contemporary ecological politics. According to
Woodard, Schellings realism (however
strange it appears) makes him more politically
useful than Hegel (96). Throughout the
essay, Woodard both complicates the monism
of the new materialism and the emphasis on dialectical materialism in recent transcendental
materialism by offering a reading of Schelling
that bears strong relations to both perspectives
without aligning him with either.
Contra the non-anthropocentric eco-politics
offered by Bennett and the new materialism,
Woodard shows that, for Schelling, the very
fact that the human being is a product of
nature creates the conditions for an ecologically
informed politics, stating that this account of
human subjectivity:
[ ] does not eradicate the capacity nor the
responsibility of humanism in regards to
nature but makes the fact of being human a
fact produced by nature. (106)

Woodards reading is crucially important for the

present debate as he outlines the manner in
which Schelling at various points utilizes
aspects of both the Spinozist and dialectical traditions when considering the natural emergence
of subjectivity, while never pledging full allegiance to either tradition.
Following Woodard, it seems as if Schelling
offers a potential challenge to both strands of
contemporary materialism. To the Spinozainuenced thought of the new materialism,
Schelling offers a call to rigorously think the
generative capacity of nature, and the natural
grounds of human subjectivity and freedom,
in such a way that a German Idealist-inspired
conception of human subjectivity is still both
possible and defensible. And, following
Woodard, it seems that this more German

20

burns
Idealist rendering of materialism via Schelling
does not subtract from the aims of a contemporary eco-politics but rather offers an account of
natural human subjectivity with an inherent
interest in a politics of nature.
On the other side of this debate, Schelling
offers a challenge to transcendental materialism
to think nature in a way that does not simply
serve the purpose of naturally justifying the
emergence of more-than-material forms of
human subjectivity. While dialectical materialism, and particularly transcendental materialism, aims to think the de-naturalizing capacities
of the human, Schelling provides resources to
consider the capacities of nature beyond our
own emergence and, in particular, to think the
political and ecological implications of this
natural basis of de-naturalized human freedom.

While both perspectives offer an interesting

future for critical philosophical and political
thought, transcendental materialism, with its
embrace of both HegelianMarxist dialectics
and contemporary advances in the natural
sciences, offers a more comprehensive and convincing account of both theoretical philosophy
and practical politics. While it poses many
crucial challenges to traditional forms of dialectical and subjectivist philosophy, the nonanthropocentric and absolutely monist axioms
of the new materialism throw the baby out
with the bathwater, and this naturalization of
human subjectivity undercuts much of the
potential political efcacy and relevance of this
perspective. Against this, gures like Johnston
and Malabou offer a de-naturalized theory of
human subjectivity that avoids the various complications of both non-subjective monism and
transcendental subjectivity.
That said, I do nd it surprising that there
has not been more serious engagement with
Schelling from either side of these contemporary materialist perspectives,5 as 200 years ago
Schelling was already subverting the Hegel or
Spinoza dichotomy with his own materialist
philosophy of nature that provides an account
of the emergence of human subjectivity from a
materialist and naturalist basis in a manner

21

that avoids the trappings either of absolute

idealism or substance monism. If there is to
be any serious engagement between these two
strands of materialism, it seems that Schellings
Naturphilosophie
provides
the precise
resources necessary to any sort of constructive
reconciliation of these positions.6
Any potential reconciliation of these positions might then need to go through the same
moves of Schellings own Naturphilosophie for
the sake of accounting for both natural and denaturalized processes in both matter and
mind. This renewed Schellingian tendency can
guard against a completely non-human eco-politics on the one hand, and a dangerously non-naturalist political subjectivity on the other. While
I am in no way claiming that a renewed interest
in the work of Schelling will provide any sort of
clean reconciliation between new and transcendental materialism (nor do I think that is even
a desirable goal), I do think that a shared
engagement with Schelling could at least
provide the middle ground by which these traditions could briey share a common intellectual ground, and even potentially learn a bit
from each other. At the risk of what would
surely seem ironic for any card-carrying new
materialist, I think that this sort of dialectical
encounter between two seemingly irreconcilable
perspectives could pave the way for a contemporary materialism capable of thinking the
relations between both mind and matter,
natural
and
de-naturalized
events, dialectical and non-dialectical emergence, human and
non-human subjectivities, and
both large- and small-scale
politics.

disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by
the author.

notes
1 For overviews of this perspective see Coole and
Frost as well as Dolphijn and van der Tuin. Both

vitality or weakness?
volumes provide general overviews of the stakes of
this perspective.
2 Recent works by Alain Badiou, Slavoj iek,
Lorenzo Chiesa, Frank Ruda, and Ed Pluth are all
contributing to this perspective in various ways.
3 This political utilization of neuroscience, and in
particularly neuroplasticity, is seen most clearly in
Malabous What Should We Do with Our Brain?
4 The relevant exceptions here are Slavoj iek,
who in much of his early work relied on a dialectical materialist rendering of Schellings thought, particularly in The Indivisible Remainder and The Abyss of
Freedom/Ages of the World. However, in his recent
philosophical work iek has abandoned Schelling
for Hegel. Along with this, Johnston, in his book
ieks Ontology, deals with Schellings role in transcendental materialism via ieks reading of Schelling. Malabou, however, has had no serious
engagement with the works of Schelling.
5 The exceptions to this are Johnston and
Woodard.
6 At the time of this essay, the only real interaction between transcendental and new materialism is in an essay by Johnston entitled Toward a
Grand Neuropolitics: Why I am Not an Immanent
Naturalist or Vital Materialist, the concluding
essay in his collection Adventures in Transcendental
Materialism, in which he responds to Bennett and
Connolly.

Johnston, Adrian. Adventures in Transcendental

Materialism: Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2014. Print.
Johnston, Adrian. The Weakness of Nature:
Hegel, Freud, Lacan, and Negativity Materialized.
Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics, and Dialectic,
ed. Slavoj iek, Clayton Crockett, and Creston
Davis. New York: Columbia UP, 2011. 15980.
Print.
Johnston, Adrian. ieks Ontology: A Trancendental
Materialist Theory of Subjectivity. Evanston, IL:
Northwestern UP, 2008. Print.
Johnston, Adrian, and Catherine Malabou. Self and
Emotional Life: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and
Neuroscience. New York: Columbia UP, 2013.
Print.
Malabou, Catherine. What Should We Do with Our
Brain? Trans. Sebastian Rand. New York:
Fordham UP, 2008. Print.
Schelling, F.W.J. Philosophical Investigations into the
Essence of Human Freedom. Trans. Jeff Love and
Johannes Schmidt. Albany: State U of New York
P, 2007. Print.
Snow, Dale. Schelling and the End of Idealism.
Albany: State U of New York P, 1996. Print.
Woodard, Ben. Schellingian Thought for
Ecological Politics. Anarchist Developments in
Cultural Studies 2 (2013): 86108. Print.
iek, Slavoj. The Abyss of Freedom/Ages of the
World. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1997. Print.

bibliography
Badiou, Alain. Being and Event. Trans. Oliver
Feltham. London and New York: Continuum,
2005. Print.

iek, Slavoj. The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on

Schelling and Related Matters. New York and
London: Verso, 1996. Print.

Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of

Things. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2010. Print.
Connolly, William E. The New Materialism and
the Fragility of Things. Millennium: Journal of
International Studies 41.3 (2013): 399412. Print.
Coole, Diana, and Samantha Frost, eds. New
Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics.
Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2010. Print.
Dolphijn, Rick, and Iris van der Tuin. New
Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies. Ann
Arbor, MI: Open Humanities, 2012. Print.

Michael ONeill Burns

Department of Health and Social Sciences
University of the West of England
Frenchay Campus
Coldharbour Lane
Bristol BS16 1QY
UK
E-mail: michael2.burns@uwe.ac.uk