This essay critiques the return to objects posited by certain new materialisms, most specifically the speculative realism of Harman, Meillassoux and Brassier. It argues that their “non-relational” and “autonomous” ontology represents a neo-positivist conception of reality. In place of such an atomistic ontology, I will suggest that the new materialisms develop a more productive, “non-reductive materialism”—a term drawn from analytic philosophy of mind. I will interpret Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Luc Nancy as crucial examples of such a materialism on the continental side. (...) Rather than being based on the non-relational innerness of an object, this position instead takes into account matter’s fundamentally extended nature. Confirmed by examples such as the growing evidence for neuroplasticity, the externalist, non-reductive view advances the new materialist argument that matter is “agentive” and “active” rather than “mechanic” and “passive,” without slipping into an anti-social-constructionist biologism or behaviorism. (shrink)

Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Raymond Williams, Jason Baskin argues that the perceived divide between “surface” and “depth” models of reading ignores the phenomenological relationship between the surface of objects and their forms. Readers should therefore approach texts with “soft eyes,” a way of reading that approximates the object in relation to the social totality.

This paper examines how the new field of neuroethics is responding to the old problem of difference, particularly to those ideas of biological difference emerging from neuroimaging research that purports to further delineate our understanding of sex and/or gender differences in the brain. As the field develops, it is important to ask what is new about neuroethics compared to bioethics in this regard, and whether the concept of difference is being problematized within broader contexts of power and representation. As a (...) feminist science studies scholar trained in the neurosciences, it seems logical to me that, as a growing field, neuroethics should reach out to the rich bodies of scholarship on the history of medicine, feminist theory and feminist bioethics while attempting to approach discussions of sex, gender and sexuality differences in the brain. What is also clear to me is that feminist scholars need to learn how to engage with neuroimaging studies on sex, gender and sexuality not just to critique, but also to productively contribute to neuroscientific research. The field of neuroethics can potentially provide the appropriate forum for this interdisciplinary engagement and create opportunities for shared perplexity. I suggest three possible points of departure for creating this shared perplexity, namely (i) is difference being measured in the study for the purpose of understanding difference in and of itself, or for the purpose of division?; (ii) is there an appreciation for biological complexity?; and (iii) is it assumed that structural differences can be conveniently translated into functional differences? (shrink)

Paul Stasi reviews Thompson’s edited collection Georg Lukács Reconsidered: Critical Essays in Politics, Philosophy, and Aesthetics.