ABSTRACT
The "new materialism" dissociates itself both from Marxism and from the long superseded ontology of solid atoms and void that most ancient and some early modern materialists took to be exhaustive of reality. The new materialism follows the old materialists in insisting on the spontaneity of matter, its capacity for self-organization, and its continuing production of new social and institutional as well as biological forms. This chapter examines several new instances of the old dialectic: the quarrel over the relevance of the neurosciences for understanding the human mind, the perceived threat of "scientism" in the humanities and in the general culture, and the problem of normativity. It also examines the issue of resistance to the materialistic stance and the defense of human exceptionalism published in Ce qui nous fait penser: la Nature et la regle, translated as What Makes Us Think?.
