Immanent Transcendence: Reconfiguring Materialism in Continental Philosophy (Bloomsbury Studies in Continental Philosophy)

Over the last twenty years materialist thinkers in the continental tradition have increasingly emphasized the category of immanence. Yet the turn to immanence has not meant the wholesale rejection of the concept of transcendence, but rather its reconfiguration in immanent or materialist terms: an immanent transcendence. Through an engagement with the work of Deleuze, Irigaray and Adorno, Patrice Haynes examines how the notion of immanent transcendence can help articulate a non-reductive materialism by which to rethink politics, ethics and theology in exciting new ways. However, she argues that contrary to what some might expect, immanent accounts of matter and transcendence are ultimately unable to do justice to material finitude. Indeed, Haynes concludes by suggesting that a theistic understanding of divine transcendence offers ways to affirm fully material immanence, thus pointing towards the idea of a theological materialism. Title Page 4 Copyright 5 Contents 8 Acknowledgements 9 List of Abbreviations 11 Introduction: Rethinking Materialism and Transcendence 14 Beyond transcendence via Kant and Hegel 16 Towards an immanent transcendence 20 An outline 22 Chapter 1 Deleuze and Spinoza: The Metaphysics of Pure Immanence 26 The critique of transcendence 27 Constructing pure immanence 32 Conclusion 65 Chapter 2 Becoming-Other 68 Life, matter and materialization 69 A politics of life: Re-affirming immanence 80 Life: An unbearable weight 89 Conclusion 97 Chapter 3 Irigaray’s Sensible Transcendental 100 Feminism, transcendence and the transcendental 101 The metaphysics of sexuate nature 110 Nature: The two rhythms of sexual difference 113 Becoming divine: Creating a culture of sexuate difference 127 Sexual difference and transcendence: Some problems 131 Conclusion 136 Chapter 4 Adorno, Negative Dialectics and Materialism 140 The spell of immanence: On the disenchantment of the world 142 On the primacy of the object 145 The object and the question of realism 158 Conclusion 162 Chapter 5 Towards a Theological Materialism 164 The quasi-transcendental logic of immanent materialisms 165 Theological materialism: Some notes 169 Concluding remarks 172 Notes 174 Introduction 174 Chapter 1 176 Chapter 2 182 Chapter 3 187 Chapter 4 195 Chapter 5 200 Bibliography 204 Index 214 Reflects upon the paradoxical notion of immanent transcendence; particularly its implications for materialist projects in politics and theology. This book outlines how the notion of immanent transcendence is variously invoked in continental materialist projects as a means of radicalising the concept of matter.