Overview

For a long time Western reason, of which capitalism embodies the most accomplished and radical form, seemed able of acquiring a growing capacity to control the world. Social turmoil and the ecological crisis appear to question such capacity, while in social theory ‘new materialisms’ are committed to denounce its engine – the separation and hierarchization of subject and object, language and matter, cognition and thing, living and inanimate, technology and nature. But what if, with new biotechnologies, geoengineering, ecosystem services, human enhancement, artificial intelligence, and more, the overcoming of this separation is celebrated, and world domination increasingly hinges on the unpredictable? Nature, Neoliberalism and New Materialisms: Riding the Ungovernable brings this elusive strategy into focus, reconstructing its genealogy and showing its correspondence with neoliberal governmental rationality. If anti-dualism is endorsed by an increasingly pervasive logic that panders to, and incites, planetary turbulence in order to extract value, how to combat it? Sticking with, or returning to, traditional naturalism does not work. One is rather to build on the irreducibility of the real to its description, and of nature to mere environment. A theoretical key lies in Adorno and in the concept of form of life, while prefigurative activism constitutes a promising field of experience.

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9781666967432

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Reviews

Nature, Neoliberalism, and New Materialisms: Riding the Ungovernable critically exposes the limits of the ontological turn in social theory and its entanglement with neoliberal rationalities. Mobilizing a rich theoretical apparatus from Adorno to Foucault, Luigi Pellizzoni explores the ground for a new ontological politics that promises to overcome the world of instrumental reason. --Thomas Lemke, author of The Government of Things. Foucault and the New Materialisms Drawing on a rich source of theoretical literature, and by analyzing a wealth of contemporary examples - such as carbon markets, geoengineering, biotechnology, and human enhancement - this book shows how traditional distinctions have broken down, such as descriptive and normative, real and virtual, predictable and indeterminate, society and nature. But it does not stop at critically examining perspectives and concepts; it also shows new theoretical and practical ways of orienting ourselves and acting in this complex world. --Rolf Lidskog, �rebro University

Author Information

Luigi Pellizzoni is professor of environmental sociology and political ecology at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.

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