ABSTRACT
Posthumanist or new materialist dealings with nonhumans reach from issues, thoughts and feelings, to angels and animals through to things and material objects. This diversity of that which is not – is not immediately or exclusively – human or may originate outside the human makes it difficult to put one's hand on this recent surge in posthumanist theories as the 'object of interrogation'. There are two central problems that posthumanist theories are dealing with which are relevant here. One is openly and vigorously addressed, which leads to an almost total eclipsing of the other: one is the problem of representation and the other is the issue of judgment (or decision-making). While the problem of representation can be dealt with philosophically, the second is irreducibly a concern of politics and political theory. In this context, much new materialist talk is about open systems and connectivism, posthuman knots and animic flux.
