SOFT TOTALITIES: CONJUNCTURAL ANALYSIS AND/AS ASS EMBLAGE ANALYSIS.

This paper returns to the vexed question of the social totality and the apparent tension regarding this issue, between Cultural Studies (and other 'critical' formations) on the one hand and intellectual formations such as actor network theory on the other. The main concern of the article is to argue for a more nuanced relationship between the concepts of totality, conjuncture and assemblage. It maintains that a cross-fertilisation or 'diffraction' of conjunctural analysis and assemblage theory, of Cultural Studies and currents associated with the 'nonhuman turn', such as actor network theory, new materialism or speculative realism, holds significant analytical potential with regard to the complex messiness of the present, promising to update conjunctural analysis vis-à-vis the analytical demands and challenges of the Capitalocene. What thus emerges are the contours of a posthumanist conjunctural analysis, which, the paper argues, could be an exceedingly useful tool for contemporary Cultural Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]