Abstract

This thesis attempts to bridge the recent gap between materiality and subjectivity in social theory. The material world is increasingly becoming a central topic in social theory. Emerging from this movement, new materialism turns our attention to a physical, tangible world that exists outside of our interpretations and representations of it. This new focus on materiality is however usually seen as being incompatible with theories that came out of the linguistic turn in philosophy during the second half of the 20th century because these focus on subjective understandings of socially constructed realities. We are now faced with two distinct agendas in social theory with one focusing on materiality and the other on subjectivity. Environmental justice turns our attention towards the materiality of the Earth and social justice claims that we rather need to focus on specific subjectivities for emancipation. To break this stalemate in social theory, and to bridge the distance between environmental justice and social justice this research sets up an encounter between the vital materialism of Jane Bennett and the hermeneutic phenomenology of Paul Ricoeur. A connection is found in both theories’ critique of modernity.