New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on How Matter Comes to Matter

Scholars presently exploring how matter comes to matter call themselves new or neo-materialists. They do radically interdisciplinary research based on the conviction that the current economic, ecological and political crises as well as technological advances and everyday practices do not allow a conception of matter as (an) object(s) that could be captured along traditional disciplinary lines. Stock market crashes, earthquakes and the increasing complexification of political and social systems (and their breakdowns) demonstrate active interventions of materials previously regarded mute or socially constructed. Meaning-making (to matter) does not occur only in the linguistic frameworks academic research applies to phenomena and crises in a retrograde move. The current European new materialist scene is vibrant but remains largely dispersed compared to the U.S.A., which dominates discussions at the moment. This COST Action wants to network European new materialisms: how do they look, and what can they innovate.