30INTRODUCTIONHarman’s conception of humans as other objects achieves just that—it
decenters the philosophical subject. Object-oriented ontology thus moves
beyond the conception of representation as a place in which objects ap-
pear subordinate to humans, where they figure as entities revealed only
by man’s manipulation as intrinsically passive in their being. And it is
perhaps not a coincidence that object-oriented ontology takes issue not
only with representation but also with realism and materialism. At this
point some analogies in animal studies, posthumanism, and object-
oriented ontology can be seen to emerge. These disciplines, in different
ways, conceive of nonhumans, whether animals or objects, as actants in
knowledge production. This turn entails surpassing the western tradition
of scientific materialism and its reduction of objects to physical micro-
components. The ultimate aim becomes that of devising and embracing
antireductive strategies that can free us from the primacy of human con-
sciousness in epistemology.
Most importantly, the multiple new directions that have recently sur-
faced at the cultural horizon are all more or less connected by a rejection
of textual critique, and by a fervent desire to speculate about the nature
of reality itself. The fragmentations proposed by speculative realism share
a political concern for the Anthropocene and more specifically with eco-
logical crises. This, more than other aspects, characterizes a departure
from self-indulgent and self-reflexive postmodernist agendas while sub-
stantially supporting experimental, open, new-media-based discussions
shifting intellectual grounds at unprecedented speed.
The questions underlying these new philosophical shifts are therefore
essentially ontological in nature and aim at deterritorializing the central-
ity of man within a network in which human and nonhuman actors
equally influence the world at corporeal and incorporeal levels.^53
The new philosophical wave of new materialism attempts to redeem
the traditionally discounted value of matter as opposed to the idealities
of continental philosophy. New materialism has emerged as the result of
the decline in popularity of Marxist materialist approaches during the
1970s and 1980s and the simultaneous rise of poststructuralism and its
general disinterest in materiality.^54 Ontology, epistemology, politics, and
ethics appear decentralized by the new materialist conception of matter
as recalcitrant, a subversion of the traditional conception of agency, re-
sistance, and power. The significance of corporeality and the place of em-