Mechanical materialism’s radical heterogeneity needs a unifying totality to stay coherent
Evidence
What ensues from this, as a mechanical-materialist “vision” of the world, is a representation so delirious that — contradiction in terms — it can only reach linguistic figuration by way of revelation, as in d’ Alembert’s famous dream: “Le monde commence et finit sans cesse; il est a chaque instant a son commencement et a sa fin; il n’en a jamais eu d’autre et n’en aura jamais d’autre. Dans cet immense ocean de matiere, pas une molecule qui ressemble a une molecule, pas une molecule qui se ressemble a elle-meme un instant.” But even Diderot cheated, as DeMan points out, for he rescued his vision of absolute heterogeneity by positing the totality of matter as a kind of vast organic being. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 542
Categorization
- DEFINE: Illuminates the paradox at the core of mechanical materialism — radical heterogeneity that requires a totality to figure itself.
- XREF: connects to: Rejecting reason-nature dualism must not banish the mechanical to a new lower class — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 504
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Rejecting reason-nature dualism must not banish the mechanical to a new lower class — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 504
Broader Connections
- Rejecting reason-nature dualism must not banish the mechanical to a new lower class
#complicates(0.71) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 504