Longing for agency

New materialisms’ wrestling with despair

Bibliographic Data

ID8107927
AuthorsBrigitte Bargetz (0000-0002-5920-2374, University of Vienna, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume26
Issue2
Pages181-194
Publication date2018-09-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Women s Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1350-5068 • E-ISSN: 1461-7420
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1350506818802474
OpenAlexW2893934010
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited31

In recent years, feelings such as melancholia, paranoia, despair and political depression have been deemed distinctive political moods, also within critical theories. This, the author argues, is the affective landscape for understanding and situating new materialist endeavours. As much as new materialist approaches have been praised and even celebrated lately, they have also provoked highly controversial reactions and evoked questions, such as: Why a new materialism, why at this historical moment? And what is so attractive about this material turn? In this article, the author argues that new materialist approaches seek to oppose the contemporary affective condition of political depression, despair and hopelessness by desiring and mobilizing to achieve a different political future, one that ultimately relates to care and commonality as well as to (new) modes and modalities of political agency. However, while new materialist approaches doubtlessly provide engaged and powerful inventions and interventions within contemporary struggles for agency, the author also demonstrates the risk of depoliticization inherent in this longing for something different, which can ultimately even compromise opening up possibilities for agency. This article, thus, aims to discuss new materialist concerns within the context of contemporary political and theoretical landscapes in order to better decipher the new materialist signals of our times, but also to critically push further the possibilities for political agency within feminist theory, at times even against all odds

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Compromise · Context (archaeology · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Materialism · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Social science · Sociology · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · History · Law · Philosophy · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology

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