ABSTRACT
This chapter delves more directly into notions of materialist ethics in order to challenge those simplistic claims of relativism that are often levied at relational philosophical orientations. It discusses particular thread of materialism made possible by an overt ethical stance of material relationality. The chapter seeks to recognize a relational inquiry practice that manifests a type of virtuous citizenship; one that may productively inform both daily acts of citizenry and a materialist form of inquiry. Extending Althusser’s articulation of aleatory materialism, Resnick and Wolff develop an important approach to inquiry that begins with a process-based understanding of difference, thereby avoiding the tendencies towards synthesis that plague traditionally dialectical claims on meaning-making.
