In this section of the BJCT we publish selected book reviews. If you have any suggestions, don't hesitate to write us.

Cary Wolfe: Jagged Ontologies (University of Minnesota Press 2026, 203 pages – ISBN 978-1-5179-2106-4)

Cary Wolfe (b. 1959) is professor emeritus of English at Rice University, where he served as founding director of 3CT: Critical and Cultural Theory and as a fellow at the Berggruen Institute. He is the author of several books, including Art and Posthumanism: Essays, Encounters, Conversations and What is Posthumanism?, as well as the editor of Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal. Philosophically, Wolfe is not easy to categorize. He primarily presented himself as a posthumanist and developed a specific understanding of this position through a combination of systems theory (here with strong references to the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann), deconstructionism (also with strong references to Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault), theoretical biology, and biopolitical philosophy (here again drawing on Foucault as well as the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito). He focuses on the ethical, social, and political challenges posed to the biosphere by humanity, which must redefine its role on this planet. By extending his approach across multiple disciplines and fields of practice that are normally rarely connected—from ecological theory and continental philosophy to law, public policy, and contemporary art—Wolfe reveals the contradictions that have so far gone unnoticed even in today’s most progressive approaches to the possible redefinition of human existence on Earth.

Wolfe’s approach is challenging; it is not bound to any particular philosophical or political movement or school, though it is closely aligned with Posthumanism and Critical Theory. Above all, it is holistically oriented. His approach may draw the ire of all anti-“woke” fundamentalists in the U.S., who are certainly not pleased by his frequent references to European—especially French—philosophers. Nevertheless, Wolfe does not directly intervene in the U.S. culture war, insofar as he does not engage in heated debates on topics such as gender relations and discrimination against non-white people.

When it comes to posthumanism, he draws a clear line between it and transhumanism, as popularized primarily by the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom. Transhumanists favor the idea that humans should overcome their biological limitations and, for example, expand as an algorithmic complex in any technical and, above all, digital form  beyond Earth into the entire accessible universe. Wolfe does not subscribe to this view. Rather, he strives for a new collective self-image of the species “human,” in which the boundary between humans and animals is merely one of many—and of equal standing—boundaries within the Earth’s biosphere. He emphasizes that the individual organism and its environment must always be viewed as a structurally integrated whole, that culture is mediated biologically as well as technically and symbolically, and—referring in particular to Luhmann’s systems theory—that all systems generate their own boundaries and, as observers of the world, always remain an operative part of the systems they observe. However, he does not suggest that humans and animals are “the same” or that all differences disappear. On the contrary: Wolfe is particularly interested in the many differences that only come to light when one abandons the supposedly absolute special status of humans.

With that in mind, his latest book, Jagged Ontologies, can now be understood. The book is divided into seven chapters. In the introduction, Wolfe first explains what he means by “jagged.” In general, “the world” as a whole cannot be described—and certainly not from a single perspective. Ultimately, it is exceedingly complex and, on top of that, fundamentally more contradictory than we care to admit in everyday life.

Chapter 1 is an introduction to Wolfe’s ontology of the biosphere. Drawing on numerous other modern authors—from Gregory Bateson to Umberto Maturana, James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, and Stuart Kauffman—he demonstrates that biological evolution unfolds within a fundamentally open space of possibilities for future developments. Living beings differ from prebiotic structures, among other things, in that they operate to a high degree in a self-referential and recursive manner, frequently shift the phase space of their conditions of existence, shape their respective environments according to their needs in the course of their own development, and behave in a goal-directed manner. In this sense, according to Wolfe, there is not “one” nature, but rather many interpenetrating natures with very different patterns of operation.

In Chapter 2, Wolfe focuses primarily on the relatively new term “sympoiesis,” which builds on the older, systems-theoretical concept of autopoiesis. The latter refers to a system’s self-perpetuation, such as in a species’ biological reproductive capacity. The neologism “sympoiesis” was coined in 1998 by the Canadian ecologist M. Beth Dempster in her master’s thesis, but was not popularized until 2016 by the American historian Donna Haraway. Wolfe criticizes the term as ideologically motivated, arguing that it romanticizes the interaction of diverse natural systems into a grand collaboration. In reality, however, nature is characterized not only by symbiotic but also by equally strong aggressive behavioral patterns. It is therefore misleading to deny this. Consequently, it is wrong to replace the concept of autopoiesis with that of sympoiesis, because this suggests that there are “actually” no boundaries at all in the the biosphere. The opposite is true: it is precisely these systemic boundaries that give rise to the multitude of species in the first place—and thus also to their completely different strategies for survival and development. The popularity of the term “sympoiesis” is more a result of the political tensions of our time, which seek in such ideas a relief from an existential lack of meaning.

In Chapter 3, Wolfe continues his critique of the anthropomorphization of nature. This applies in particular to the notion that nature acts in an inherently ethical manner. There is no empirical evidence for this, if only because animals and plants do not act in the same way that humans do. In this chapter, Wolfe also incorporates poetry into his reflection on the concept of nature, such as works by the American poets A.R. Ammons and John Ashbery (among others). Heidegger and Deleuze are also given a voice. Here and in the following chapters, it becomes clear that Wolfe’s integral approach explicitly includes artistic creation and its reflection on nature.

Chapter 4 illustrates the “fragmentation” of biological structures around the world using the example of Big Bend National Park, located in the U.S. state of Texas directly on the border with Mexico. There, within a relatively small area, lies a region that is biologically sharply demarcated from its barren surroundings and home to a rich variety of flora and fauna. In this chapter, Wolfe once again draws a broad intellectual arc by bringing this and similar phenomena into dialogue with the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, the biopolitical approach of Roberto Esposito, and other authors in contemporary political philosophy. According to this approach, democracy is not the model of a grand consensus, but rather the mutual interpenetration of completely different lifeworlds. In this respect, the political program of democracy resembles general ecological complexity.

Chapter 5 is devoted to the German Fluxus artist Joseph Beuys (1921–1986), who, in his partly mystical art, also made a biopolitical claim. Wolfe defends Beuys against accusations of obscurantism and analyzes, with great sensitivity, some of his best-known and, in some cases, spectacular actions.

In Chapter 6, Wolfe links the idea of posthumanism with autopoietic dynamics and Michel Foucault’s biopolitical lectures at the Collège de France in the 1970s. Here, Wolfe once again demonstrates his deep familiarity with contemporary continental (European) philosophy. He defends Foucault from a systems-theoretical perspective, again drawing on Niklas Luhmann and other American (e.g., Wendy Brown) and European philosophers of Critical Theory. Wolfe also reiterates his specific understanding of autopoiesis and posthumanism: For him, the recognition of the hypercomplexity of the biological sphere—extending to all of human sociality, including the political—is at the heart of a badly needed new relationship to the world.

In the chapter 7, Wolfe ultimately demonstrates that the various claims and political ideas loosely associated with the concept of an “environmental movement” are in fact not only fundamentally different but even contradictory. In line with his view of an hypercomplex nature, he is critical of any simplistic concept of environmental protection, because behind it lurks humanity’s presumption to know better and to disrupt evolutionary dynamics. For Wolfe, “nature” is simply not “the environment,” for there are as many “natures” as there are environments.

When taking this fascinating book as a whole, many readers will find it difficult to reconcile the very broad spectrum of metaphysical, systems-theoretical, biological, postmodern, artistic, and even political perspectives. But that is apparently precisely Cary Wolfe’s aim: to highlight the abundance and wholeness of our existence on earth by looking at the very different worlds of which humanity is only a small part. (Wolfgang Sohst, Berlin)

Amy Allen and Eduardo Mendieta (editors): Power, Neoliberalism and the Reinvention of Politics. The Critical Theory of Wendy Brown. (2022) The Pennsylvania State University Press, 196 pages.

Amy Allen and Eduardo Mendieta, two well-known exponents of contemporary Critical Theory, have produced a very concise volume of essays (in addition to two by Wendy Brown herself) from a total of six intimate connoisseurs of Wendy Brown's political philosophy from her first publications in 1988 to the present. These are: Robin Celikates, Loren Goldman, Asad Haider, Robyn Marasco, and Johanna Oksala. The presentation of the book is well done in several respects. First, all the contributors know Wendy Brown personally and also theoretically very well. They, therefore, approach her critically, but nevertheless with a positive attitude toward her principled approach that has nothing to do with the often admiring exegesis of similar volumes. Second, the volume itself is in a sense a conversation, not only because it was produced as the result of a discussion held on April 19 and 20, 2019, but because Wendy Brown once again summarizes the principles of her political philosophy at the beginning of the book (after a joint introduction with Eduardo Mendieta) and responds to the critiques of the other contributors at the end.

An important developmental step in Wendy Brown's philosophy is her departure, already twenty years in the making, from an identitarian feminism to a structurally much more thorough analysis of contemporary social conditions. In place of the social role type "woman", intersectional structures of discrimination have since become more and more central to her thinking. These are gender, race, class, culture, and religion. The focus of Brown's critique, however, is and remains today's neoliberalism, which has its most extreme blossoms in the USA. This in turn thrives on the foundations of a state that, at least in the global West, is ideologically strongly tailored to neoliberalism. This includes, in particular, the strict separation between the public and private spheres. This, in turn, has long been criticized by the now traditional feminism, insofar as only through this separation can the banishment of social reproduction, especially the rearing of children, be relegated to the private sphere. This, in turn, is one of the main reasons why women around the world, once they have children, revert to a politically deaf private world, forcing the public sphere and politics to be left to male design criteria.

However, the authors besides Wendy Brown also pose some critical questions to her. Brown, for example, places great emphasis on the political significance of the contemporary state, which places itself primarily in the service of the economy. The non-economic sectors of the social, especially biological reproduction, are thus not only primarily attributed to women, but fundamentally removed from the political. Behind this are certain hierarchies of values that should be questioned. In this regard, Eduardo Mendieta raises the very general question of how one can appear in political discourse at all without insisting either on the truth of one's positions or on some axiomatic principles. His somewhat provisional answer is that discourse is only open-minded when the participants reflect on the history of the development of their own position, ie. when they argue in a genealogical way. In another contribution, Johanna Oksala analyzes very precisely what space the political can actually occupy in relation to the economy if one opens up the usual restriction of the political to the public-economic sphere. It is questionable that the neoliberal-capitalist structure of society will be rendered invalid if only, for example, women and their reproductive services are brought back into the public sphere and thus also into the political sphere. Asad Haider examines a related question that is only seemingly contrary to Johanna Oksala's perspective. He examines the plausibility of Brown's repeated suggestion that a major goal of neoliberalism is the depoliticization of society. Haider shows with Foucault that things are not so simple. Power and structures of domination are located at a much deeper level than the relatively frequently changing political surface structures historically. Neoliberalism merely uses means typical of it to prevent the politicization of social issues that stand in the way of its program, for example, by means of a technical reduction of social problems, delegation to experts, and so on. In the end, it emerges here that the concept of the political already conceptually logically presupposes a boundary of the political to a sphere of the apolitical surrounding it, because both phenomena can only exist at all in their dialectical relationship. An important point, also raised again later, concerns the nihilistic tendency of neoliberalism.
An important point, also raised again later, concerns the nihilistic tendency of neoliberalism. Depoliticization and nihilism are closely related, insofar as with the loss of the political, the public criteria of social solidarity are also lost, leaving only private consumerism as a social dynamic. In particular, out of this development, the suppression of sexual needs in the period leading up to the end of World War II has been reversed into an excessive celebration and even ubiquitous promotion of the sexual, so that "sexual liberation" has now become part of the dynamic of depoliticization of society.

In her concluding rejoinder, Wendy Brown does not address in great detail the individual questions, some of them critical, raised by the other contributors. Instead, she tries once again to lay out her approach in one broad line. In doing so, she also addresses the sometimes contradictory attitude of the left toward the nation-state. On the one hand, the left criticizes the authoritarian or even oversized nation-state, as expressed, for example, in Russia, China, or the United States. On the other hand, it sympathizes with the demands for its own nation-state of, for example, the Palestinians, the Kurds, or the Puerto Ricans. And it also criticizes an attitude on the part of the left that transforms resistance to existing conditions from a means to achieve something better into an end. As a result, the left loses sight of the need to present a viable proposal of its own for a democratically better society in order to remain credible. And even in an optimal democracy, it will not be possible to completely abolish relations of domination. They would only have to be justified differently. Ultimately, however, this means working on a new concept of the political and also working on a new self-understanding of a polity, if it does not want to rely only on a state and its borders, which have somehow grown historically. The volume reveals that a constructive, new form of political discourse will only be possible if all participants agree to acknowledge their own historically evolved position and thus also expose themselves to change through newly occurring circumstances. Wendy Brown is one of the few critical political philosophers who openly states that the formulation of a new, better form of a modern polity is anything but an easy task and that today's left has much to make up for itself in this regard. (Wolfgang Sohst)