Ethico-Political Agency beyond Dichotomies. Contracts, Interminglings, Intra-Actions. Michel Serres with Feminist New Materialisms

Essay from the year 2021 in the subject Philosophy - Miscellaneous, grade: 75, Staffordshire University, language: English, abstract: The predicament of our moment (Anthropocene, Chthulucene, Capitalocene¿) calls for disruptive ways of thinking and acting. A (re)reading of Michel Serres and feminist new materialist theoreticians can lead us towards creative, realistic, and pluralistic ways of understanding human and nonhuman agency. Both Serres and FNM attempt to subvert the conventionalism of the (so-called) modernist thinking, by effectively problematising the Cartesian subject and its objectification of nature as passive (or ¿gendered¿, as Iris van der Tuin puts it). Such a reading can be a fruitful endeavor to and help to mend the age-old schisms between the castrating dichotomies shaping contemporary thought, as the one between human and nonhuman agency.