“A prophetic or visionary dimension is necessary in order to secure an affirmative hold over the present, as the launching pad for sustainable becoming or qualitative transformations. The future is the virtual unfolding of the affirmative aspect of the present, which honours our obligations to the generations to come.”
– from an Interview with Rosi Braidotti in New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies
Rosi Braidotti is a feminist philosopher whose works span the generation from Althusser to Deleuze and beyond. Her principle works are Patterns of Dissonance, Nomadic Subjects, Metamorphosis, Transpositions. For her “neo-materialism” emerges as a method, a conceptual frame and a political stand, which refuses the linguistic paradigm, stressing instead the concrete yet complex materiality of bodies immersed in social relations of power (NM 21). She relates that from the time of Simone de Beauvoir on feminist thought combined phenomenological theory of embodiment with Marxist—and later on poststructuralist—re-elaborations of the complex intersection between bodies and power (NM 21). And because of this there are two theoretical consequences: first, that feminist philosophy goes even further than mainstream continental philosophy in rejecting dualistic partitions of minds from bodies or nature from culture; and, second, is the emergence of a specific brand of materialism that combines oppositional consciousness of critique with creativity, in a double edged vision that does not stop at critical deconstruction but moves on to the active production of alternatives (NM 21).
She sees a critical need at the moment in our philosophical struggles for a systematic meta-discursive approach to the interdisciplinary methods of feminist philosophy. This is among the top priorities for philosophy today as well as women’s, gender and feminist studies as an established discipline (NM 25). Most of the feminist frameworks are based upon what she terms after Haraway as “situated epistemology”, along with Adrienne Rich’s “philosophy of location”. Out of this rich mix of methodological innovation emerged an embodied and embedded brand of feminist materialist philosophy of the subject introduces a break from both universalism and dualism (NM 22). The key concept in feminist materialism is the sexualized nature and the radical immanence of power relations and their effects upon the world (NM 22). She sees post-feminist thought negotiating a new course between post-humanism on the one hand and post-anthropocentric theories on the other (NM 25).
Along with Deleuze she posits monism as the fundamental ontology. The notion of the univocity of Being or single matter positions difference as a verb or process of becoming at the heart of that matter. A monistic ontology asserts the notion of the univocity of Being or single matter positions difference as a verb or process of becoming at the heart of that matter (NM 28). At the heart of this notion is sexual difference: “Sexual difference in particular poses the question of the conditions of possibility for thought as a self-originating system of representation of itself as the ultimate presence. Thus, sexual difference produces subjectivity in general” (NM 29). She follows Irigaray’s Transcendental thought here, saying, that the “transcendental is sensible and grounded in the very particular fact that all human life is, for the time being, still “of woman born””(NM 29). Following Deleuze she tells us that the distinctive traits of nomadic sexual difference theory is that difference is not taken as a problem to solve, or an obstacle to overcome, but rather as a fact and a factor of our situated, corporeal location. And it is not a prerogative only of humans, either (NM 29).
Out of the post-secular and post-humanist initiatives of late she sees a new process oriented notion of subjectivity arising: subjectivity is rather a process ontology of auto-poiesis or self-styling, which involves complex and continuous negotiations with dominant norms and values and hence also multiple forms of accountability (NM 30). And, the corollary of this “axiom is the belief that women’s emancipation is directly indexed upon sexual freedom, in keeping with the European liberal tradition of individual rights and self-autonomy” (NM 31). Out of these post-emancipatory projects she sees a new sense of the notion of desire:
“Desire sketches the conditions for intersubjective encounters between the no longer and the not yet, through the unavoidable accident of an insight, a flush of sudden acceleration that marks a point of non-return. Accepting the challenge of de-territorialized nomadic sexuality may rescue contemporary sexual politics from the paradoxical mix of commercialized banalities and perennial counter-identity claims on the one hand, and belligerent and racist forms of neo-colonial civilizationism on the other” (NM 32).
The Interlocutor asks her two final questions: “Could we conclude (with Arnold Toynbee) that the nomad is she who “does not move” but is merely interested in the experimenting and experiencing femininity in all its material realizations? Or better, has the concept of the nomad allowed you to set in motion a return to a radical Spinozism that studies not so much the social and cultural aspects of feminism, but simply poses the question what a woman can do?” (NM 32)
She tells us that the starting point for most feminist redefinitions of subjectivity is a new form of materialism that develops the notion of corporeal materiality by emphasizing the embodied and therefore sexually differentiated structure of the speaking subject. Consequently, rethinking the bodily roots of subjectivity is the starting point for the epistemological project of nomadism (NM 33). Her materialist perspective starts from postidentitarian view of what constitutes a subject. Against social constructivists she affirms a nomadic body as a threshold of transformations. It is the complex interplay of the highly constructed social and symbolic forces. The body is a surface of intensities and an affective field in interaction with others (NM 34).
Braidotti explains that as a feminist her theory entails that priority is granted to issues of gender (or rather, of sexual difference) in connection with the recognition of differences among women. This figuration translates therefore her desire to explore and legitimate political agency, while taking as historical evidence the decline of metaphysically fixed, steady identities (NM 34). In a moment of clear and potent analysis she tells us that de-familiarization is a sobering process by which the knowing subject evolves from the normative vision of the self he or she had become accustomed to. The frame of reference becomes the open-ended, interrelational, multi-sexed, and trans-species flows of becoming by interaction with multiple others. A subject thus constituted explodes the boundaries of humanism at skin level (NM 35). But ultimately the conditions for renewed political and ethical agency cannot be drawn from the immediate context or the current state of the terrain. They have to be generated affirmatively and creatively by efforts geared to creating possible futures, by mobilizing resources and visions that have been left untapped and by actualizing them in daily practices of interconnection with others (NM 36). As she affirms in the final paragraph:
“The pursuit of practices of hope, rooted in the ordinary micropractices of everyday life, is a simple strategy to hold, sustain and map out sustainable transformations. The motivation for the social construction of hope is grounded in a profound sense of responsibility and accountability. A fundamental gratuitousness and a profound sense of hope is part of it. Hope is a way of dreaming up possible futures, an anticipatory virtue that permeates our lives and activates them. It is a powerful motivating force grounded not only in projects that aim at reconstructing the social imaginary, but also in the political economy of desires, affects and creativity. Contemporary nomadic practices of subjectivity—both in pedagogy and other areas of thought—work towards a more affirmative approach to critical theory” (NM 36-37).
1. Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin. New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies. (OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS, 2012)
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