Science, Agency and Ontology: A Historical-Materialist Response to New Materialism
| Published date | 01 November 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321717731926 |
| Date | 01 November 2018 |
| Author | Simon Choat |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717731926
Political Studies
2018, Vol. 66(4) 1027 –1042
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321717731926
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Science, Agency and Ontology:
A Historical-Materialist
Response to New Materialism
Simon Choat
Abstract
In recent years, the work of a diverse range of thinkers has been grouped together under the label
‘new materialism’. This article offers a critical introduction to new materialism that challenges
its understanding of historical materialism. It aims to demonstrate not that historical materialism
is superior to new materialism, but rather that the latter would benefit from engaging with
rather than ignoring or dismissing the former. It begins by defining new materialism in relation
to its reappraisal of science, its concept of agency and its underlying ontology. Second, it locates
new materialism by demonstrating how and why many new materialists are hostile to historical
materialism. Finally, it responds to new materialist criticisms of historical materialism, arguing
both that there are potential areas of agreement between the two materialisms and that historical
materialism offers valuable resources for analysing historically specific and asymmetric power
relations.
Keywords
new materialism, historical materialism, science, agency, nature
Accepted: 25 August 2016
In the final two decades of the twentieth century, radical Anglophone social and political
theory frequently took its cue from post-structuralism, with its emphasis on the discursive
and linguistic production of subjectivity. In contrast, numerous commentators have sug-
gested that the first few years of this century have witnessed a materialist turn within the
humanities and social sciences, with a new interest in the relevance of the material world
to social and political concerns (e.g. Braun and Whatmore, 2010; Coole and Frost, 2010;
Dolphijn and van der Tuin, 2012; Joyce and Bennett, 2010). This ‘new materialism’ is a
broad movement. It is transdisciplinary, advanced by geographers, anthropologists, phi-
losophers, sociologists and, increasingly, political theorists. The names associated with it
include Bruno Latour, Manuel DeLanda, Jane Bennett, Rosi Braidotti, Graham Harman
Department of Politics, Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, UK
Corresponding author:
Simon Choat, Department of Politics, Kingston University, Penrhyn Road, Kingston upon Thames KT1 2EE,
UK.
Email: s.choat@kingston.ac.uk
731926PSX0010.1177/0032321717731926Political StudiesChoat
research-article2017
Article
1028 Political Studies 66(4)
and Karen Barad. These thinkers do not always agree with each other and they would not
all necessarily accept the label ‘new materialist’. Their work is conducted under various
names: speculative materialism, vibrant materialism, weird realism, actor–network the-
ory, assemblage theory and so on. But while these names do not refer to identical meth-
odologies or projects, they do reflect a kind of common atmosphere or shared problematic.
The fact that something called ‘new materialism’ exists is confirmed by the increasing
number of books, conferences, roundtables and journal editions that are dedicated to this
phenomenon.
This article offers a critical introduction to ‘new materialism’, and it does so by relating
it to an alternative, older materialist tradition, namely, the historical materialism developed
by Marx and his successors. Beyond its enduring influence throughout the social sciences,
there are two reasons in particular for turning to historical materialism. First, because it is
also a materialist theory, it provides a useful point of comparison from which to evaluate
the novelty and value of new materialism. Second, new materialist thinkers have often
been highly critical of Marxism, and those criticisms deserve a response. In offering such
a response, I will argue not that new materialism has nothing to teach us, nor that Marxism
can teach us everything, but that we should be careful to resist the potential marginalisation
of historical materialism by new materialism. This is, therefore, an invitation to dialogue:
my argument is that new materialists would benefit from engaging productively with
rather than dismissing or ignoring historical materialism.
Because it is such a large and amorphous body of thought, I begin the article by iden-
tifying what I mean by ‘new materialism’, defining it by reference to three criteria: its
re-engagement with science, its reconceptualisation of agency and its reliance on a ‘flat’
ontology. Each of these three criteria is linked by an understanding of matter as active and
creative rather than passive and inert. I then locate new materialism by exploring its rela-
tion to the historical materialism of Marxism, demonstrating that the former has been
consistently hostile towards the latter: new materialists have rejected the Marxist approach
to science, its notion of agency and its underlying ontology. Finally, I offer a response to
new materialism from the perspective of historical materialism, arguing that while new
materialists make some valid and useful claims, they have frequently done so at the
expense of a caricatured version of historical materialism. As such, they have failed to
recognise that historical materialism shares many of their aims and has even anticipated
many of their central insights. At the same time, however, the two approaches are distinct.
Whereas new materialism essentially defines materialism in a relatively conventional
way – as philosophical reflection upon the nature of matter – historical materialism seeks
not to (re)define matter but to interrogate the historically specific material conditions of
human production and reproduction, and hence the material conditions of the develop-
ment and uses of science, the production and role of objects and agents, and our labour
within and upon nature. This, I will argue, means that historical materialism is better
placed to analyse the historically variable power relations that permeate science, agency
and human–non-human relations.
Both historical materialism and new materialism are of course highly diverse bodies of
thought, such that it might even be claimed that it is neither feasible nor desirable to try and
compare them. But rather than trying to provide a definitive account of historical material-
ism, my aim is to draw upon a range of Marxist writers in order to formulate and defend a
notion of historical materialism that is more nuanced and sophisticated than that which is
attacked by new materialism. This will be a selective interpretation of historical material-
ism – but, given the tensions and inconsistencies within Marx’s oeuvre, let alone within the
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