Short answer: no—but it is a very close cousin, and an important counter-position.
Long answer below, with a clean philosophical map.
Does
OOO
belong to
New Materialisms
?
Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO)
👉 does NOT belong to New Materialisms,
but it emerges from the same historical rupture and argues with it constantly.
Think of them as siblings who disagree about intimacy.
Why OOO is
not
New Materialism
1.
Withdrawal vs. Relationality (the decisive break)
New Materialisms:
- Ontology = relations, processes, entanglements
- Being emerges through intra-action (Karen Barad)
- No object fully outside relations
OOO (Harman):
- Ontology = withdrawn objects
- Objects are never fully accessible, even to each other
- Relations are always partial distortions
Where New Materialism says “everything is entangled”,
OOO says “nothing is ever fully touched.”
This is not a small difference—it is ontological.
2.
Agency vs. Autonomy
New Materialisms:
- Agency is distributed
- Matter acts through assemblages
- Emphasis on process and efficacy
OOO:
- Objects have autonomy, not agency
- Action happens through vicarious causation
- No privileging of vitality, liveliness, or force
Harman is deeply skeptical of “vibrant matter” (Jane Bennett), seeing it as:
too relational, too animated, too metaphorical.
3.
Politics & Ethics: central vs. suspended
New Materialisms:
- Explicit political ambition
- Ecological, feminist, posthuman ethics
- Responsibility through entanglement
OOO:
- Suspicious of moralizing ontology
- Politics is not foundational
- Ontology comes before ethics—and may not serve it
Harman insists:
Ontology should not be justified by its political usefulness.
This places OOO outside the New Materialist project.
Where they
do
overlap
Despite the conflict, there is real kinship.
Shared refusals
Both reject:
- Correlationism (world = world-for-humans)
- Linguistic reductionism
- Human exceptionalism
Both say:
The world does not need us in order to exist.
Key contrasts (at a glance)
|
Axis |
New Materialisms |
OOO |
|
Core concern |
Matter-in-relation |
Object-in-withdrawal |
|
Ontology |
Processual, entangled |
Discrete, autonomous |
|
Agency |
Distributed |
Suspended |
|
Ethics |
Central |
Non-foundational |
|
Politics |
Explicit |
Bracketed |
|
Mood |
Ecological, affirmative |
Metaphysical, austere |
How Harman himself positions OOO
Harman explicitly distances OOO from:
- New Materialism
- Vitalism
- Process philosophy
He places OOO instead in dialogue with:
- Martin Heidegger (tool-being)
- Edmund Husserl
- Leibniz
OOO is anti-process in spirit—almost a metaphysics of cosmic reserve.
A formulation in
your
language
If I translate the difference into your idiom:
- New Materialisms:
物的反撲，人的退位
(things push back; humans step aside) - OOO:
物之沉默，萬物皆退位
(objects withdraw; everything steps back)
OOO is not about matter asserting itself,
but about matter refusing intimacy.
Final verdict
OOO is not a branch of New Materialism.
It is a metaphysical dissent within the same anti-anthropocentric turn.
New Materialism asks:
How are we entangled with matter?
OOO asks:
What forever escapes every entanglement?
Both are necessary.
But they do not belong to the same house.
If you want, next we can:
- stage Barad vs Harman as a dialogue
- map OOO vs psychoanalysis (very interesting)
- or ask whether withdrawal is another name for trauma / the Real
