James Joyce’s Ulysses can be read through the prism of the New Materialist School of contemporary critical thought to shed light on ongoing questions in the humanities about the relationship between language and embodiment. Specifically, Ulysses resonates with three thematic concerns of New Materialisms: the nature of matter, the correspondence between human and animal, and the role of affect. Contra some calls for the humanities to retrench in a conservative posture that reaffirms the special status of human reason and “consciousness” (...) – corresponding to Catholic readings of Ulysses that find in Joyce a metaphysical philosopher of transcendence – New Materialisms take human continuity with animals and matter seriously. Joyce’s Ulysses, by developing robust accounts of the interactions between matter, language, and thinking bodies, offers a template for exploring this convergence, demonstrating that the human “ghost” must be understood as radically inextricable from its material body and the material formations of its world. (shrink)

Teilhard de Chardin developed an evolutionary vision of our planetary future, currently developing from a sphere of life, or biosphere towards a sphere of mind, or noosphere. As a visionary, Teilhard was not only on the brink of formulating the internet, but he also anticipated current academic efforts to understand globalization, as well as human, cultural and technological evolution. However, his ideas are sources of enduring controversies in both scientific and theological circles. Here I uncover some of the core reasons (...) why his ways of thinking and writing are often problematic, and propose a way forward. This note aims to introduce Teilhard’s central article about the noosphere, but can also be read as an independent introduction to Teilhard’s system of thought. A detailed exegesis of Teilhard’s article is available as a supplementary document. (shrink)

Zygon®, Volume 57, Issue 1, Page 181-199, March 2022.