“The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism—that of Feuerbach included—is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object of of contemplation, but not as human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in contradistinction to materialism, was developed by idealism—but only abstractly, since of course, idealism does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity as objective activity.” (Marx 1845:143 [Thesis I], italics in the original).

 

So the new materialism is same old, same old whenever it lapses into ontology however flat, whenever it transcends the immanence of sensuous activity, the historical intermediations of socio-ecological reproduction.

Energy, then, as a calculus, promises a strategy of transcendence.  But as soon as we confront the problem of qualitatively different becomings of energy (work), we are thrown back into the immanence of sensuous praxis and its media ecology of machines, sails, tides, ropes and horses, etc.