ABSTRACT
This chapter approaches better understand of the material imagination of time in architecture and considers the current resurgence of interest in the notion of a vital materiality. Across the human and social sciences over the past five to ten years there has been a discernible shift away from the previously dominant theoretical models: a backlash against the largely post-structuralist pre-occupation with inter-textual analysis that has tended to dematerialize the world of things into a flux of floating signifiers. Rather than focusing simply on the materiality of the body-as-such this new writing takes up the broader theme of material embodiment in general, but as with the earlier work mentioned above it is driven by an interest in its social and political implications. An important recent collection of this writing is edited by Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, called New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics.
