So-called ‘new materialism’ enables feminist theorists to emphasize the agential quality of matter, thereby challenging the notion that matter, particularly the biological body, is passive and inert – a notion that is gendered given the traditional association of passive matter with the feminine. While appreciating the materialist turn increasingly evident in feminist theory, Claire Colebrook warns feminist thinkers against an uncritical appeal to the vitalist tradition, which continues to privilege action, creativity and productivity over that materiality which remains unactualized potential. (...) After outlining the new materialist re-conception of matter, this paper considers the idea of a ‘passive vitalism’, which Colebrook develops in light of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's co-authored works. This paper shares Colebrook's contention that the new materialist emphasis on the agency of matter simply extends the model of the human person to the rest of nature. However, the final part of this paper begins to indicate how a theological materialism is able to affirm both the agency and patiency of matter in ways that challenge the view that the avowal of divine transcendence is inevitably opposed to the integrity of material immanence. (shrink)

Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?—Marilynne RobinsonMarilynne Robinson, Gilead (London: Virago Press, 2004), p. 280.Preamble: Going the Bloody Hard WayThe writings of Pamela Sue Anderson and Gillian Howie have been, and continue to be, important in helping to shape the development of my own philosophical vision. Yet my commitment to (a fairly (...) traditional) theism marks a point of departure between my work and theirs. Given their quite reasonable disinclination to persist with traditional theism, especially its concept of divine transcendence,Not only does an uncritical approach to the theistic conception of divine transcendence serve to sacralise hierarchical relationship between men and women, such that the latter is subordinate to the former, it also, as Anderson reminds us, sustains epistemic and practical norms that quietly yet pot. (shrink)