From Things to Events

Whitehead and the Materiality of Process

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4476871
AutoresTom Roberts (0009-0007-3478-8261, University of Bristol)
Año2014
Volumen32
Número6
Páginas968-983
Fecha de publicación2014-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1068/d13195p
OpenAlexW2106721561
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas20
Referencias citadas34

The new materialist turn has refocused attention upon the shortcomings, both philosophical and scientific, of styles of thought that figure matter as an inert substance. According to the new materialists, the concept of matter must be rethought in order to account for its own vital capacities. Whilst largely sympathetic to this critique, this paper short-circuits the contemporary focus on matter through a sustained engagement with the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. For Whitehead, the concept of matter represents a failure to think process on its own terms; that is, without invoking an underlying permanence. Whitehead's philosophy is thus of great significance to contemporary debates because it questions what it means to speak of agency, relation, and vitality in a world composed of processual events rather than things. In doing so, it sharpens our sensitivities towards nonhuman processes of existential change. Exploiting this capacity to shift our attention, the paper explores the implications of Whitehead's philosophy by staging an encounter with a peculiar experimental object. By unpacking the key concepts of 'occasion', 'prehension', and 'concrescence', the object in question is gradually transformed from discrete thing to processual event, with a number of consequences for materialist thought

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Event (particle physics · Existentialism · Materialism · Materiality (auditing · Object (grammar · Process philosophy · Relation (database · Sociology · Vitality · Computer Science · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy · Violence, Religion, and Philosophy