The New Digital Materialism

Digital enthymeme: morality, emotions, and materialism in new media participation

In this article, I discuss moral and rhetorical challenges in new media discourse concerning celebrities. I focus on the concept of digital enthymeme, that is, an online comment evaluating people negatively or positively without articulated reasoning, but, instead, letting online participants find proofs by themselves in a digital environment surrounded by pictures, texts, links, and videos. Th...

To the Dogs: Companion speciesism and the new feminist materialism

Rethinking Socialization Research through the Lens of New Materialism

In recent decades, socialization research appears to have suffered the loss of its former capacity to explain the processes of becoming a socialized subject in a social environment. In this article, I review socialization theories taking into account assumptions regarding human subjects and their social environments. I confront them with the idea of rethinking dualisms, ontologies, and agencies...

The Materialism of Insanity

The metaphysician, though never so good a theorist, the physician, however sound a practitioner, must both give place to one who, sitting by the well of knowledge, dispenses with grace and justice to his thirsting brethren. He who, by opportunity and industry, can draw the deepest, to him we may look for the best and clearest supply. The pathology of insanity is still in its infancy; nothing is...

Against Materialism

Materialism is the idea that human beings are material objects—brains, perhaps, or some part of the brain—without immaterial selves or souls. I give two arguments against materialism. The first is an argument from possibility: it is possible that I should exist when no part of my body exists, in which case I am not identical with my body or any part of my body. The second is an argument from im...