Not So New Materialism: Homeostasis Revisited

The term "homeostasis" is routinely discarded within contemporary eco-discourse. But this paper revisits a largely over-looked moment of homeostatic theorization, a moment that is both consonant with, as well as instructive for, current trends in ecocritical new materialism. Challenging the purported newness of "new materialism," then, this paper goes on to consider the benefits of revisiting Walter B. Cannon's writings on "social homeostasis." Mediated by Georges Canguilhem's criticisms of this work, on the one hand, and by work in feminist science studies on the other, Cannon's thinking promotes a political vision currently attenuated in contemporary new materialist eco-discourse.