Abstract

This essay considers the theoretical attention that recent social theories show for wayward object relations and inquires as to how this adjusts to the philosophical occupation with the status of "things". For while we find, at least since the 18th century and most notably with regard to epistemology, the dismissal of "the thing" as an ontological entity, this new attention, with its interest in material matters, seems, at first glance, to contradict that tradition.