ABSTRACT
It is has become commonplace to say that language and meaning play a central role in our understanding of human practices. More recently, however, it has been claimed that “foregrounding material factors and reconfiguring our very understanding of matter are prerequisites for any plausible account of coexistence and its conditions in the twenty-first century” (Coole and Frost 2). Such a “turn to matter” is sometimes seen as an urgent response to new developments in natural science thinking, the proliferation of bio-political, bio-ethical and technological conundrums, and the renewed centrality accorded to matters of political economy. But this materialist turn is complicated by the fact that it takes place in the wake of a series of other turns-the linguistic, affective, and discursive turns, for example. In this chapter I seek to articulate the intuitions and motivations of the “new materialists” within a theoretical framework that does not short-circuit the insights associated with preceding turns, in particular the discursive turn, and I frame my discussion of these issues around the question of “the body.”
