#material turn

Desde el 13 de junio el Centro de Estudios Troquel de la Fundación la Fuente estará dictando mi curso “¿Cómo leer un libro? Introducción a la lectura material” en su plataforma on-line. En este curso se estudiará el libro como un objeto material ligado al desarrollo de las tecnologías de reproducción. En ese sentido, será concebido como un constructo cultural, comercial y artístico en el que confluyen diversas disciplinas y oficios (literatura, historia, ciencias, encuadernación, diseño, impresión, edición, etc.) y que, a través de su diversidad de formatos, nos habla de distintos aspectos del conocimiento: ¿cómo son usados los libros para educar, informar y entretener?  ¿por qué varían sus formas? ¿cuáles son sus partes y cómo van modificándose de acuerdo a distintas corrientes estéticas o técnicas? ¡Los invito a inscribirse y mirar el programa aquí! / From June 13th the Center of Studies Troquel of Fundación la Fuente will be imparting my course “How to read a book? Introduction to material reading” in its on-line platform. Here we will study the book as a material object related to the development of certain technologies (bookbinding, printing press, computer, etc.) and disciplines, such as history, bibliology, design, art, edition, and many more. I invite you to check out the program here! 

This quote by Barbara Bolt appears on the third page of her introduction to her anthology of interdisciplinary investigations of “new materialism” by international artists and scholars who work “between a posthumanist neo-materialism and a corporeal materialism” (13). Bolt begins her introduction by differentiating the special place of the Epicurean focus on matter in contrast to the predominant emphases of Western thought that fed humanism. She positions the statement quoted above immediately following a citation of Iris van der Tuin about “dealing with agential matter rather than (gendered) passive matter” (3). In the paragraph that follows, Bolt describes how feminist materialism reacted against social constructivism, before she segues into some historical background of the influence of cultural theory upon the arts in her next paragraph. She uses this information to give context for why artists would identify as part of the material turn and to justify why she discusses these ideas in the introduction to her anthology. Afterwards, Bolt spends the remainder of her introduction breaking down the contents of the book into summaries of the essays, categorized by topic.

What is inherently funny is that Bolt along with the primary function of this statement in her argument uses this to associate “New Materialism” directly with materialist feminist theory. She actually never directly links the two, but simply connatively attaches them by physical proximity in the first sentence of this paragraph. So how does this statement really function? Ha. It makes the reader associate “New Materialism” with materialist feminist theory as though feminists are the author of this approach. Admittedly if one watches the video documentation of Womanhouse 1971, potentially this link could be substantiated. Bolt never substantiates the significant role of feminism, particularly feminism as it played out in the artworld, to the surfacing of “New Materialism.” Perhaps it is an assumed, and I as scholarly outsider riding the fringe of the academic herd as neophyte, just can’t see what should be smacking me in the face as a given.