Pynchon and the New Materialism

In this chapter, I articulate the relationship between the novels of Thomas Pynchon and the various schools of thought that are clustered under the heading of the "New Materialism". The “New Materialism” is clustered among a set of other emergent closely related philosophical precepts: immanent naturalism, posthumanism, antihumanism, speculative realism, and object-oriented metaphysics. Among the main thinkers of the “movement” are Quentin Meillassoux, Karen Barad, Manuel DeLanda, Jane Bennett, Diana Coole, Samantha Frost, Sara Ahmed, Ekizabeth Grosz, William E. Connolly, and Rosi Braidotti, among many others. I here argue that, to a point, these philosophies give us fresh routes to understanding the curious interrelation between the novels of Thomas Pynchon and an underpinning reality