NON-ANTHROPOCENTRIC AND DYNAMIC VISION OF HARMONY
A New Materialist Perspective
Keywords:
Aristotle, Collective of Humans and Non-Humans, Latour, Plato, RanciereAbstract
This article deconstructs the static approach to harmony and elucidates its dynamic dimension. First, I provide critical analysis of Plato’s functionalist notion of harmony in the Republic, where harmony is viewed not as the suspension of the power relationship between the dominant and subjugated, but as the establishment of the relationship of domination that gives rise to the governability of one’s own soul and the city, and, further, contributes to the stability of the self and the system. Second, I emphasize the Aristotelian anthropocentric perspective of harmony in the Politics, where harmony is considered a fraternity of the political animal that shares the logical capacity of speech and excludes the inhuman. Third, through the lens of Latour’s new materialism, I seek to redefine harmony as a dynamic process and as material assemblages between humans and non-humans that foster creative tensions and increase the intensity of agency.
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