Title: Concepts of “matter” in new materialist feminisms
The “material turn” entails an expansion of the field of feminist theory. This is answering the call to engage more intensively with new and classical insights of sciences and technologies which taxes and re-evaluates the domain of it. Concepts and notions of “matter” are key in new materialist investigations. I would like to examine if this could be a shift of the operational categories of feminist agenda away from theories of hegemony, structures of oppression and its critique and emancipation. I intend a revision of some new materialist key concepts in the works of Braidotti (posthumanism, ethics, anthroposcene), Barad (agential realism, relational ontology, phenomenology) and Bennett (vitality, force, commonplace things) for which it has to be examined what it means to be “materialist”.
Author: Anastassija Kostan