Nature appears in this work as neither imbued with divine purpose nor as
disenchanted matter. Instead, all material formations—human and nonhu-
man—are described as processes with the periodic power to surprise, to
metamorphosize at unexpected junctures. Drawing from discussions of na-
ture in Spinoza ( 1632 – 1677 ) and Lucretius (c. 99 – 55 bce), Deleuze and Guat-
tari, for example, speak of nature as a perpetual ‘‘machine’’ for generating
new and dynamic compositions, as ‘‘a pure plane of immanence... upon
which everything is given, upon which unformed elements and materials
dance’’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987 , 255 ).
For this ‘‘postmodern’’ set of critics of modernity, the nonlinearity of nature
and culture retains a logic that can be modeled, despite the fact that the
emergent causality of the system means that trajectories and patterns can
often be discerned only retroactively, only after the fact of their emergence.
Complexity theory, initially developed to describe a subset of chemical sys-
tems (Prigogine 1997 ), oVers these political theorists the beginnings of a
theoretical framework and methodology (see Serres 2001 ; Lyotard 1997 ; Ben-
nett 2004 ; Latour 2004 ; Connolly 2002 ; Massumi 2002 ). Modern science is not
rejected; on the contrary, one version of it is actively aYrmed. And that is the
one that understands nature as a turbulent system where small changes in
background conditions can have big eVects, where micro-shifts can produce
macro-eVects. However, the nature that consists ofXows, becomings, and
irreducible complexity isnota random set ofXuctuations unrecognizableasa
world. It remains, rather, a world ‘‘in which there is room for both the laws of
nature and novelty and creativity’’ (Prigogine 1997 , 16 ).
Within the rich and heterogeneous story of modernity, therefore, it is
possible to identify three nodal points or attractors, each with its own
image of nature and culture. At one point, we Wnd a ‘‘Weberian’’ social
order plagued by meaninglessness (or a ‘‘Marxist’’ world of economic injust-
ice and alienating commodiWcation), and a ‘‘dead, passive nature,... which,
once programmed, continues to follow the rules inscribed in the program’’
(Prigogine and Stengers 1984 , 6 ). At a second point, weWnd a ‘‘Heideggerian’’
modernity of ruthless enframing, accompanied by a nature that gestures
darkly toward a higher purpose. At the third, ‘‘Nietzschean,’’ point lays a
world where creativity and novelty endlessly compete with the forces of
regularization. All three versions, however, are infused with thehopethat
the world is susceptible to the critical reasoning, careful analysis, and practical
interventions typical of modernity, and with thewillto render that world
more intelligible.
222 jane bennett