Strange Weather: Indigenous Materialisms, New Materialism, and Colonialism

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Ravenscroft
Keyword(s):  
New Materialism ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Ethical Question ◽  
Australian Context ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Western Concept ◽  
Post Humanism

The essay looks at the challenges Australian Indigenous materialisms make to the Western concept of human and its relation to the inhuman, and it does this through reading the novels of Waanyi writer, critic, and activist Alexis Wright. In the Australian context, a highly productive knot is being tied between post-humanism and postcolonialism, such that the binary of “culture” and “nature” is understood in relation to another binary couple that sits snugly within “culture” and “nature,” and that is “colonizer” and “native.” The place of Indigenous-signed literary texts in critiques of Western materialisms cannot be underestimated. It is through the arts that most encounters between Indigenous and settler Australians take place. How non-Indigenous readers might approach these literary texts is a key ethical question with implications for new materialist and post-humanist projects.

scholarly journals What Can Play: The Potential of Non-Human Players

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kara Stone
Keyword(s):  
Game Design ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Donna Haraway ◽  
Cause And Effect ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post Humanism

What can post-humanism teach us about game design? This paper questions the line drawn between what species and matter can play and what cannot play. Combining works by scholars of feminist post-humanism, new materialism, and game studies, primarily Jane Bennett, Donna Haraway, and T.L. Taylor, it proposes that play is a form of communication not only between animals and humans but also between plants and cyborgs, insects and atoms. Beginning by interrogating the borders of the human that have been built on ableist and racist discourses, this paper moves towards considering the human as interspecies and outlines that we must reassess the ways in which a multiplicity of species experience the intra-action that constitutes “play.” With a brief look into the history of defining play in both game studies and animal studies and their small crossover, play is reconfigured into an outlook or an approach rather than a set of rules. It is a drive that all species and matter experience, including insects, bacteria, and metal. This moves us beyond considering solely the materiality of our bodies at play by reconsidering the objects of play as our co-players, as matter with agential force. I argue that we need to reconsider the videogame player as an interspecies being, an assemblage of human and non-human bodies. The de-anthropocentricization of the popular notions of player agency allows for a multiplicity of reactions not created in the linear cause and effect course, the belief in ultimate player control within procedural systems, which dominates game studies. This paper concludes by submitting possibilities of what considering the non-human through a feminist and anti-ableist lens can offer game designers, players, and critics, such as considering the material platform’s impact on play, reforming the individualistic agency of players, and designing for the Other(s).

Quantum Creativity: Afracting New Materialism in the Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
pp. 107780042110666
Author(s):  
jan jagodzinski
Keyword(s):  
Creative Destruction ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Quantum Level ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Karen Barad

This essay engages the vicissitudes of new materialism at the quantum level, attempting to differentiate what I take to be fundamental differences in the theoretical positions of vitalist theories as developed by Karen Barad and Deleuze and Guattari in relation to the Anthropocene. I treat matter at the quantum level to differentiate conceptions of apparatus and assemblage. It is argued that one should not treat them under the same signifiers. There is the question of creativity that runs through the essay which also raises questions concerning an “affirmative” Deleuze, the dominant position when it comes to the arts, humanities, and pedagogy. Against these particular developments, anorganic life as in|different comes to fore where issues of creative destruction must be faced.

““Di una pretesa scuola napoletana””: Sowing the Seeds of the Ars nova at the Court of Robert of Anjou

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
CARLA VIVARELLI
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Music ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Local History ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Ars Nova ◽  
Important Center ◽  
Second World

The presence of two famous exponents of the French and Italian ars nova in Naples in 1318––respectively Petrus de Sancto Dionysio and Marchetto da Padova––substantiates Nino Pirrotta's hypothesis that the Angevin capital was an important center of musical culture in the early Trecento and a setting for avant-garde debates. It also aids in reconstructing the elusive biography of the Paduan musician and clarifies the much debated dating of his Pomerium. Pirrotta ultimately abandoned his Neapolitan hypothesis for lack of evidence, a difficulty caused and aggravated by the thorough destruction of Angevin chancery documents during the Second World War. Evidence has been found, however, in indirect sources, such as literary texts, works of local history, and documentary transcriptions and summaries that predate the archival losses. In addition to placing the two prominent musicians at the Angevin court in Naples, these sources confirm the presence there of minstrels (evidence for secular music within the court's recreational sphere), vouch for the continuity of the institution of the royal chapel (evidence for sacred music at court, clearly connected to the liturgy), and testify to Robert of Anjou's catalytic patronage of the arts and his passion for music in general. Thus Naples regains its status as a capital on the map of 14th-century music.

scholarly journals NARRATIVE FUTURING

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-55
Author(s):  
Rachel Horst
Keyword(s):  
New Materialism ◽  
Personal Essay ◽  
The Future ◽  
Creative Inquiry ◽  
Post Humanism

In this paper I explore the scholarly potential of a narrative futuring methodology for writing-as-becoming within the context of the future imaginary. Through an experimental bricolage of future fiction, theoretical exploration, and personal essay, I attempt to perform a methodology that troubles temporal boundaries and allows me to write my way into the new. I situate this exploratory work within a rich heteroglossia of creative futures and speculative writing that exists both in and outside the academy and informs my narrative futuring praxis. New materialism and post humanism provide the onto-ethico-epistem-ologies for this creative inquiry in which I attempt to entangle myself with rational possibility, absurd potentiality, and poetic virtuality. The future narrative here is neither predictive nor prophetic, but rather is taken up as a mechanism for doing futures-oriented theory; this is a writing-as-reaching into thick assemblages of the not-yet and storying the productive partiality of narrative (non)representation.

scholarly journals The Arts and New Materialism: A Call to Stewardship through Mercy, Grace, and Hope

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Nicholas Leonard
Keyword(s):  
New Materialism ◽  
Agential Realism ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
Materialist Theory

During highly polarized times, issues are quickly addressed in ways that emphasize divisions. To support the healing of our polarized culture through art, new materialist theory as presented by Karen Barad and Rosi Braidotti will be entangled with art and artmaking according to Dennis Atkinson and Makoto Fujimura to argue for art as an act of environmental and cultural stewardship, creating new possibilities and differences in the virtual that are merciful, graceful, and hopeful. To form this argument, first a summary of new materialism and ethics through Agential Realism and Affirmative Ethics is addressed. Next, a cartography including scientific and theological perspectives is presented for a diffractive reading regarding the concepts of mercy, grace, and hope to develop a new materialist understanding through a philosophy of immanence to counter the circular perpetuation of violence. These concepts are then individually addressed through the proposed new materialist framework to further break from material-discursive dualistic thought. This approach is then explored through various artworks to investigate the co-constructing material-discursive nature of art to create new relations and possibilities in the world. Finally, an in-depth study of the artworks Becoming Us by Megan Constance Altieri and Teeter-Totter Wall by Ronald Rael are addressed to detail how a new materialist approach to art that focuses on the concepts of mercy, grace, and hope can position art as an act of stewardship.

scholarly journals “The Flesh of The Perceptible”: The New Materialism ofLeviathan

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 428-447
Author(s):  
Max Bowens
Keyword(s):  
Object Oriented ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethnographic Film ◽  
Sensory Ethnography ◽  
Object Oriented Ontology ◽  
Post Humanism

This article seeks to entangle two current philosophic praxes: New Materialism, and Sensory Ethnography. Jane Bennett has become one of New Materialism's most prominent proponents since the release of her now-seminal text, Vibrant Matter in 2010. Due to the varied ground upon which New Materialism stands (often conflated with object-oriented ontology, post-humanism, and other general turns within nonhumanism), Bennett's work will be looked at idiosyncratically, then pushed into the realm of the cinematic via an analysis of the documentary, Leviathan. Directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, this film was among the first exemplary works to emerge from the Sensory Ethnography Lab, based at Harvard University. In striving for a revitalization of ethnographic film practices, the Lab aligns itself with similarly non-anthropocentric, and non-discursive, aspects of experience to the New Materialism of Jane Bennett. By placing these two contemporary camps into conversation, this article intends to reposition them both: New Materialism as a vehicle for the Sensory Ethnographic, and the SEL as an exhibition of the kind of world Bennett's philosophy envisages. The article concludes with an assessment of the political and eco-political critiques and ramifications surrounding these works.

scholarly journals Ecocriticism and "Thinking with Writing": An Interview with Tim Ingold

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-215
Author(s):  
Antonia Spencer ◽  
Tim Ingold
Keyword(s):  
Academic Research ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Professor Emeritus ◽  
Anthropological Perspective ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Emerging Issues ◽  
The University

      Over the course of an influential career spanning several decades, Tim Ingold, Professor Emeritus at the University of Aberdeen, has established himself as a preeminent voice in the field of Social Anthropology. Author of studies including The Perception of the Environment (2000), Being Alive (2011) and The Life of Lines (2015), this interview was inspired by the potential of his wide-ranging scholarship to unearth some fascinating avenues for research in literary studies. The breadth of his writing on habitation, perception and skilled practice, suggests myriad applications for his thinking beyond the purely anthropological, and particularly for bridging the concerns of literary and environmental studies. The philosophical depth of his work, apparent in his analyses of processes of growth and formation in both biological and socio-cultural domains (indeed questioning the supposed divisions between these fields), proves that his scholarship provides a refreshing counter-narrative to many prevailing schools of thought in current literary theory, especially to much of the discourse of New Materialism and Speculative Realism. In addition, this interview contains his views regarding certain emerging issues in literary studies, such as the material practices of reading, and the ascendency of the computer screen over the printed book, areas where his anthropological perspective is both stimulating and revealing. As a renowned scholar who has recently surveyed the changes in the academy and in disciplinary relationships throughout his long career, his observations provide valuable insights into the capability of the arts to guide us into a wider, more interconnected world. Crucially, his responses also speak to the world of academia, and how we can foster a practical awareness of ecological issues within the often-rarefied spheres of academic research and practice.

scholarly journals The Presence of María de Velasco in Pinar’s Juego trobado, in the Carajicomedia, and in La novela del licenciado Vidriera by Cervantes

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Roger Boase
Keyword(s):  
Don Quixote ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Card Game ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Novelas Ejemplares ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Chivalric Romance

Research on the court ladies who participated in Pinar’s Juego trobado, a card game in verse completed in 1496, led to the discovery that María de Velasco, wife of Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar, and adoptive-mother of Ignatius Loyola, subsequently appears in several literary texts, the first of which is the Carajicomedia, where she is metamorphosed into an old prostitute skilled in the arts of seduction. Surprisingly, I have detected her presence in La novela del licenciado Vidriera, one of Cervantes’ Novelas ejemplares: each of the names of the main character, given or adopted during the course of his life, is linked in some way with this lady; and, furthermore, there are other correspondences, above all the symbolism of the quince. This begs the question whether the tale was intended to convey a coded message, and if so, one wonders what kind of message.  This discovery also seems to add some credence to the theory that in Don Quixote Cervantes wished to parody the life of Ignatius Loyola as well as the heroes of chivalric romance.

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