The Mark of the Individual
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2024-07-08
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en
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The young philosophical current of New Materialism (NM) rejects both the focus on discourse of discursive philosophy of the 20th century, and anthropocentrism of the wider Western canon, deeming them unhelpful in combating the ecological peril our world is now in. NM’s own solution to this global danger is to erect ontologies that concentrate precisely on the non-human, material components of our reality and especially on the interactive relations that exist between these components. In this emphasis on the relations between individual entities, however, NM often dissolves the individuals themselves into relational webs they maintain. This article discusses two theories associated with NM that have attempted to solve this problem of dissolving individuals: Caroline Levine’s theory of forms, and Manuel DeLanda’s theory of assemblages. Both try to protect the individual from dissolving by articulating unambiguous marks of the individual. To succeed at this, Levine uses the concept of ‘affordances,’ while DeLanda theorises the mark as virtual ‘diagrams.’ In this article, however, I argue that both attempts at protection, in the end, fall prey to the same threat of dissolving individuality as did the NM theories before them. I conclude with three recommendations to help NM get over this conundrum.
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Faculteit der Filosofie, Theologie en Religiewetenschappen