ABSTRACT
To rehabilitate matter means to affirm that things escape the control of human subjects. Bill Brown is not seen as a new materialist, but his approach to things is compatible with this trend of thought. For the new materialist, everything is interconnected, without exception. Thus dynamically thought, matter has nothing of a stable, localizable and identifiable substance, with precise borders: Everything changes, everything materializes constantly, and the ceaseless materialization of the world is what new materialisms try to record and to think. For materiality is always something more than “mere” matter: an excess, force, vitality, relationality, or difference that renders matter active, self-creative, productive, unpredictable. Interconnectedness can be dangerous and new materialism, as any environment-oriented perspective, should be aware of this danger. Eventually the explorers arrive at World 4470, a “greenish planet” composed wholly of vegetable life.
