Introduction: Speculative Genealogies

Genealogies of Speculation acts as reminder that the various programmes gathered under the headings of poststructuralism themselves advance variants of materialism that proponents of SR broadly deny it. As each of the individual contributions to this volume make clear, materialism is hardly a minor or neglected concern in antifoundationalist thought but is rather one of its primary thematic and methodological interests. The specific and various determinations of materialism presented in the individual chapters are outlined below but, in general terms, the broad issue that emerges from this volume as a whole is not so much whether it is SR or poststructuralism that can claim to be materialist theories as such but rather what materialism is, how it is to be constructed, and the varying ramifications of these diverse theorizations.