A Response to “Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto” or Manifesto, Teleology,

Transgressing Social Constructionism, and the Insistence of the Human

Aldo Kempen

Krisis 2023, 43 (1): 124-127.

Abstract

The prior issue of Krisis (42:1) published Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto, with the aim to

instigate a debate of the issues raised in this manifesto – the necessary re-thinking of the role

(and the concept) of nature in critical theory in relation to questions of ecology, health, and

inequality. Since Krisis considers itself a place for philosophical debates that take contempo-

rary struggles as starting point, it issued an open call and solicited responses to the manifesto.

This is one of the sixteen selected responses, which augment, specify, or question the assump-

tions and arguments of the manifesto.

Keywords

Critical naturalism, Critical realism, Pragmatism, Frankfurt school, Critical theory

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21827/krisis.43.1.40712

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC

Krisis 2023, 43 (1)

124

A Response to “Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto” or Manifesto, Teleology,

Transgressing Social Constructionism, and the Insistence of the Human

Aldo Kempen

Rethinking the space of the natural in critical theory also demands a critical relation to the

formal features of philosophical inquiry. While “Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto” seeks to

transcend dualistic forms of thinking (2022, 110), and aims to rethink the status of naturalism

(2022, 108) in a) its teleological restructuring the inadequacies of critical theory, and specifi-

cally post-structuralism, and b) its specific discursive (i.e manifesto) form, it reintroduces the

dualistic humanism it seeks to overcome. In order to live up to the aims that Critical Naturalism

sets for itself it needs to rethink the form through which it expresses itself, and the positionality

and meta-philosophical commitments that this form interpellates.

Critical Naturalism is situated in a surge of philosophical “turns” towards science and ontol-

ogy. As the world changes at an ever-quicker pace, philosophers are “gasping for lexical oxy-

gen” (Zammito 2021, 302) to help us make sense of this bustling conjuncture. From new to

neo to vibrant materialisms (e.g. Braidotti; Bennett; Simon), from agentic to object-oriented

realisms (e.g. Barad; Bryant), from biologisms to naturalisms (e.g. Grosz), a swath of “new”

theories has emerged in the last ten to fifteen years. While different in their aims and (onto-

logical) commitments, almost all share a dissatisfaction with “social constructivism,” a desire

to reorient the (exceptional) status of the human, and a claim to “re-“engage with the material,

real, or biological. Critical Naturalism’s description of the pitfalls of critical theory, its call of

urgency, its critique of the figure of the human, and its description of social constructivism,

shares similarities with these coeval turns. Beyond these more structural similarities, what it

shares with these recent theories (especially through its manifesto form) is an insistence on

and desire for the “new” and a certain rejection of the “old.”

A claim levelled against these turns is that the “new” of these theories is founded upon reading

“a false and reductive history” (Ahmed 2008, 24) of feminist theory. Where these turns signal

a lack, Ahmed notes that there is a rich (feminist) history of engaging with the biological,

bodily, and real (e.g. Briscoe; Birke et al.). This holds true not only for feminist theory but

also for post-structuralist theorizing (e.g. Conley). Adding to this, Jonathan Basile notes how

this reductive reading “is not to offer insight [...] but [...] to create the semblance of progress”

Krisis 2023, 43 (1)

125

(2018a, 25) made necessary by “the academico-capitalist forces driving these ‘innovations’”

(2018b, 1). They flag how these recent authors reinstate certain borders (such as borders of

difference between their theory and previous ones) in order to create the possibility of trans-

gressing them. This leads Basile to claim that “the very concept of novelty at work in the

formation of [these] field[s] [...] fundamentally compromises its anti-humanist project” (2019,

4) as it presupposes a naive concept of difference and a humanist teleological conception of

academic and philosophical progress.

Critical Naturalism, in its current formulation, could be seen as falling prey to some of the

same logics. When surveying the pitfalls of contemporary “social science and philosophy”

(111) and specifically “abstract social constructivism” (111) specific authors are rarely cited,

and the fields are taken as homogenous, monolithic entities. Here, social constructivism is,

mistakenly, reduced to a dualism. Moreover, when an author (or in this case a research collec-

tive) is mentioned that should be representative of social constructivism, a quite radical outlier

is cited (i.e. Laboria Cuboniks). As such, it constructs a straw man in contrast to which it can

leverage its own newness and necessity.

This somewhat reductive reading ties into the general tone of the manifesto which seeks to

build urgency: The manifesto genre introduces its own necessity through the construction of a

lack or crisis that needs to be supplemented or superseded. The manifesto introduces a double

crisis – one in the world and one in theory. While it claims that “a radically new beginning

does not mean suppressing the past” (Critical Naturalism 2022, 119), it suppresses some of the

rich histories of theorizing in order to promote its own newness.

Approaching the manifesto through its tone allows us to glean something about its ontological

commitments. While it aims to strive past “the nature-culture and mind-body dualisms that

have long blocked critical inquiry” (Critical Naturalism 2022, 113), and seeks a situated ap-

proach that researches the differential constitution of these concepts in their continuity, it again

commits to a specific, although revamped, ontology. Now, rather than determining nature in a

static way, nature (and culture) is defined as malleable, mutable, and contingent (Critical Nat-

uralism 2022, 109). Moreover, forms of science are taken as “good science” that underline

malleability, dis/unity, and situatedness (Critical Naturalism 2022, 109). While it highlights

an ontology of process and plurality, this determination of ontology, in its univocal

Krisis 2023, 43 (1)

126

proclamation and stringent tone, itself is neither pluralistic nor a process. It remains a non-

pluralistic determination of the real. In this way it is following the tone of philosophy that

Derrida describes as: “the form of a going-one-better in eschatological eloquence, each new-

comer, more lucid than the other, more vigilant and more prodigal too, coming to add more to

it: I tell you this in truth; this is not only the end of this here but also and first of that there, the

end of history, the end of the class struggle, the end of philosophy, […], the end of the earth,

Apocalypse Now […].” (Derrida 1984, 20).

Put differently, in its teleological form, tone, and the univocal ontological pronouncements

this form interpellates, “Critical Naturalism” remains tethered to the logocentric and dualistic

discourse of Western metaphysics it aims to overcome.

As such, we can see how “Critical

Naturalism” has overlooked the forms of practice (of philosophical inquiry itself) which made

possible their claims about the nature of nature and culture.

Fortunately, there is a rich history of different praxes of philosophy beyond this eschatological

proclaiming. In The Movement of Showing, Johan de Jong describes movement as a key formal

characteristic of the thought of Hegel, Heidegger, and Derrida. He signals: “what exceeds the

oppositions of reflection is their ‘own movement,’ and the task of philosophy becomes tracing

the immanent self-development or the ‘movement of the concept’ [Bewegung des Begriffs]”

(xix). Here, philosophy is more than a (binary or dualistic) set of arguments and counterargu-

ments. The formal features and the experiential qualities (the movements and developments in

and of the text) become part and parcel of the philosophical inquiry. As such, it underlines

how experimenting with the form and praxis of philosophy is paramount for any timely inter-

vention critically dialoguing with the philosophical legacy of humanism and dualisms and,

thus, also for Critical Naturalism.

Notes

1] Which is again underscored by the fact that the manifesto only cites Western sources, overlooking native or

indigenous scholarship that has been highlighting different (non-dualist) cosmologies for centuries (e.g. Tall-

Bear; Rosiek; Snyder; Pratt). Again the manifesto is analogous to the turns in which it is situated as this critique

has also been levelled against the new, neo, and vibrant materialisms.

Krisis 2023, 43 (1)

127

References

Ahmed, Sara. 2008. “Open Forum Imaginary Prohibitions: Some Preliminary Remarks on the Founding Gestures

of the ‘New Materialism’.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 15 (1): 23-39.

Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and

Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.

Barad, Karen. 2008. “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.”

In Material Feminisms, edited by L. Alcoff and M. Leo, 120-154. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Basile, Jonathan. 2018a. “Misreading Generalised Writing: From Foucault to Speculative Realism and New Ma-

terialism.” Oxford Literary Review 40 (1): 20-37.

Basile, Jonathan. 2018b. “The New Novelty: Correlation as Quarantine in Speculative Realism and New Mate-

rialism.” Derrida Today 11 (2): 211-229.

Basile, Jonathan. 2019. “Life/Force: Novelty and New Materialism in Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter.” Substance

48 (2): 3-22.

Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.

Birke, Lynda, Willy J. Faulkner, Sue Best, Donna Janson-Smith, and Katie Overfield. 1980. Alice Through the

Microscope: The Power of Science over Women's Lives. London: Virago.

Braidotti, Rosi. 2017. Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Briscoe, Ann M. 1978. “Hormones and Gender.” In Genes and Gender 1, edited by E. Tobach and B. Rosoff,

31-50. New York: Gordon Press.

Conley, Verena A. 1997. Ecopolitics: The Environment in Poststructuralist Thought. London: Routledge.

Cuboniks, Laboria. 2018. The Xenofeminist Manifesto. A Politics for Alienation. London: Verso. Retrieved from

https://laboriacuboniks.net/manifesto/xenofeminism-a-politics-for-alienation/.

De Jong, Joke. 2020. The Movement of Showing. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Derrida, Jacques. 1984. “Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy.” Oxford Literary Review 6

(2): 3-37.

Grosz, Elizabeth. 2004. Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power. Durham: Duke University Press.

Haraway, Donna. 1997. Modest Witness@Second Millenium. FemaleMan Meets OncoMouseTM: Feminism and

Technoscience. London: Routledge.

Harman, Graham. 2011. The Quadruple Object. Winchester: Zero Books.

Rosiek, Jacek, and Others. 2019. “The New Materialisms and Indigenous Theories of Non-Human Agency: Mak-

ing the Case for Respectful Anti-Colonial Engagement.” Qualitative Inquiry 26 (3-4): 331-346.

Simon, Joshua. 2013. Neomaterialism. Berlin: Sternberg.

TallBear, Kim. 2017. “Beyond the Life/not-Life Binary: A Feminist-Indigenous Reading of Cryopreservation,

Interspecies Thinking, and the New Materialisms.” In Cryopolitics, edited by Joanna Radin and Emma

Kowal, 215-238. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Zammito, John H. 2021. “Concluding (Irenic) Postscript: Naturalism as a Response to the New Materialism.” In

New Politics of Materialism, edited by Elizabeth Ellenzweig and John H. Zammito, 300-321. New York:

State University of New York Press.

Biography

Aldo Kempen is a doctoral student at Open University of the Netherlands. In his PhD research, he critically

assesses the rise of new materialism through the lens of contemporary French philosophy. Previously, Aldo was

a Visiting researcher at the Institut für Kunstwissenschaft und Ästhetik (IKAE) at the University of the Arts

Berlin (UDK). Currently, Aldo is a Fulbright Fellow at the History of Consciousness department of the Univer-

sity of California Santa Cruz. Here, he is researching the meta-philosophical implications of contemporary ma-

terialist ontology under the supervision of Karen Barad.