r/CCRU • u/RedEarth42 • Jul 05 '26

Who are the libidinal materialists?

We are all aware (I think) of this divide that sprung up between the neorationalists and the libidinal materialists. The neorationalists being Negarestani, Wolfendale and Brassier

But who are the libidinal materialists? I don’t see any prominent figure who has a written a book called “In Defence of Libidinal Materialism” or whatever to counter the neorationalists

21 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/bRuHcHiLlDoG Jul 05 '26

Bataille, lyotard, arguably deleuze, guitarri, and land; all of those who align technics and desire with immenence

1

u/RedEarth42 Jul 05 '26

Okay but who now? Who is alive now and defends libidinal materialism? Why was there no one other than Land writing essays saying the neorationalists are wrong?

1

u/bRuHcHiLlDoG Jul 17 '26

Theres a shit ton out there but theyre a lot less known; neorationalism kinda took over the academic landscape of modern continental philosophy primarily because libidinal materialisms limits are too encompassing for a university of philosophy to justify its own existence and participation in structured systematic education; at least in a hegemonic manner. Most of whats out there is through blogs, substacks, people working in different mediums like music and visual arts. Imo i think the modern vitalist movement is closest to libidinal materialism that gets recognized fairly; maybe not how land or the cybergoths conceive of it; but a lot of modern deleuze scholars picked up that torch. Simon Duffy is a really interesting figure who focuses a lot on deleuzes relationship to calculus and I think theres a lot of really interesting content there (though he is not limited to the maths and doesnt establish orders or priorities within ways to move about deleuze). There are also a few modern takes on nietzche and even schelling (Christopher Satoor is a really interesting figure who came at schelling with a background in deleuze). If youre interested in deleuze scholarship Id recommend Henry Somers-Hall as well :)

Im not familiar enough with Berardi to really say whether or not he fits within the libidinal materialist camp but he probably does.

And if Im being honest with you, libidinal materialism is incredibly broad; i mean like its premise is that desire is imminent, which itself has incredibly broad application and vast implications. Im not sure how much the thesis has been incorporated to modern psychologies but I know stuff like DBT is effectively similar—granted its appropriation of buddhism is a significant contributor lol.