ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I show how the theories that fall under the name “New Materialism” are both diverse, with differing views on the scope and meaning of the concept of materialism and differing views on the outcomes of those meanings, and also united in their shared demotion of centrality of human agency in seeking to understand the world. These views are, in this way, non-anthropocentric. I also show how these diverse theories react to, and reject, the long-running view in the humanities and social sciences that we can only understand objects and the objective world via their entanglement with human thinking and consciousness. Looking at a few of the key theorists in this emerging tradition such as Rosi Braidotti, Jane Bennett, Graham Harman, and others, the chapter describes the ways these thinkers both trace their roots in earlier forms of materialism and also move beyond those to create renewed social and philosophical theories that have implications for a wide array of academic work in the humanities and social sciences and across, ontological, ecological, social, and political questions and themes.
