Material subjects and vital objects — prefiguring property and rights for an entangled world

Abstract

This article considers the effects of the critique of the subject-object distinction on the concept of property rights. My starting point is that there is nothing ‘given’ or natural about the subject-object distinction: rather, it is an effect produced by a distinctive matrix of ideas, physical-environmental facts, and social behaviours or performances. I explore what it might mean for property if we shift the human being from a position of control over the world to a position of being situated fully in the world. I argue that there are a number of intellectual resources within Western thinking that promote a more object-oriented approach to property, more attentive to the range of relationships between humans and the world.

Keywords:

• subject-object
• new materialism
• property theory
• post-humanism