Liberation for Straw Dogs? Old Materialism, New Materialism, and the Challenge of an Emancipatory Posthumanism

Abstract

The term ‘new materialism’ has recently gained saliency as a descriptor for an eclectic range of positions that question the human-centred and human-exclusive focus of scholarship across the humanities and social sciences. In turn these emerging perspectives have been subject to critique by those writing in the established materialist tradition, who argue that new materialism ignores the unique specificity of human agency and the transformatory capabilities of our species. Our previous interventions have endorsed a particular account of posthumanism that draws together complexity influenced systems theory with elements of political ecologism that have incorporated aspects of established materialist and humanist thinking. This article rejects the old materialist critique that denies the emancipatory potential of posthumanist thinking, and explores the potential for an emancipatory posthumanism.