In this fresh, provocative, and profound book, LeCain presents a cogent explication of neo-materialist history, an approach that regards all organic and inorganic things as historical actors. He first offers his own neo-materialist theory and then shows us what it looks like in practice. Arguing against anthropocentric thinking that sets humans apart from or against nature, LeCain asserts that a dynamic, creative, powerful material environment of nonliving elements and other organisms has “helped to create humans and their thoughts, ideas, culture and history” (11).
LeCain opens by considering the Human Microbiome Project’s findings that much of the human body consists of independent bacteria, microbes, and viruses in constant interaction with the surrounding environment, leading some scholars to suggest that humans are not unitary beings but a collection of organisms that resemble a coral reef. He develops these and other findings to contend that humans are “thoroughly and entirely natural” (17),...