Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (A John Hope Franklin Center Book)

Product Information

Revised and reprinted as Bennett, Jane (2015), "Of sympathies alchemical and poetic", Rare Earth, Vienna: Tyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, pp.112–118 Bennett, Jane (2002), "The Moraline Drift", in Bennett, Jane; Shapiro, Michael J. (eds.), The Politics of Moralizing, New York: Routledge, pp.11–26, ISBN 9780415934787 In Bennett’s most recent book, “ Influx & Efflux,” she describes an encounter with an Ailanthus altissima, or tree of heaven—a fast-growing tree with oval leaves—on one of her walks around Baltimore. “I saw a tree whose every little branch expanded and swelled with sympathy for the sun,” she writes. “I was made distinctly aware of the presence of something kindred to me.” Ailanthus altissima is often considered an invasive species. Bennett’s musings have an ethical component: if a nuisance tree, or a dead tree, or a dead rat is my kin, then everything is kin—even a piece of trash. And I’m more likely to value things that are kindred to me, seeing them as notable and worthy in themselves. Most environmentally minded people are comfortable with this kind of thinking when it’s applied to the pretty part of nature. It’s strange to apply the concept of kinship to plastic gloves and bottle caps. Bennett aims to treat pretty much everything as potential kin.

Moreover, although I sympathize with her program of extending our inclusion of objects, animals and plants into our political considerations as well as her idea that we should pay attention to things as things more, I totally reject this book as worth anyone's time (except the first 3/4ths of the 7th chapter) because it is full of misinterpretation, spin, and a non consulting of contemporary science. A great example of this is her exclusion of how Nietzsche is all about human agency fir the sake of humans. Additionally her argument is inchorent and contradictory and at times non existent. Radical yes, but radical isnt enough because this book maybe just career filler for another professional thinker.

A Political Ecology of Things

The idea that objects have agency might be familiar from childhood. When we’re small, we feel connected to a blanket that can’t be thrown away, or to a stuffed animal that’s become a friend. As adults, we may own a precious item of threadbare clothing that we refuse to replace—yet we wouldn’t think of that shirt as having agency in the world. It seems pretty obvious to us that objects aren’t actors with their own agendas. When Alvin, another Hoarder, says that “things speak out” to him, we know that he has a problem. In other words, I don’t think the problem with correlationism is simply that it’s human and world, as though bringing non-humans in can fix things. Shifting from (cor)relationism to simple relationism is already a refreshing step, but still leaves the central problem untouched. There are too many pitfalls that arise when you think a thing is only what it is for other things, without reserve.

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus. Translated by Brain Massumi. (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis). Bennett, Jane (2010), "A vitalist stopover on the way to a new materialism", in Coole, Diana; Frost, Samantha (eds.), New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Durham North Carolina London: Duke University Press, pp.47–69, ISBN 9780822347729 Revised and reprinted as Khan, Gulshan (2012), "Vital materiality and non-human agency: an interview with Jane Bennett", in Prokhovnik, Raia; Browning, Gary; Dimova-Cookson, Maria (eds.), Dialogues with contemporary political theorists, Houndsmill, Basingstoke, Hampshire New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.42–58, ISBN 9780230303058

Student & Faculty Resources

Bennett, Jane (2010). Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822346197. Bennett is a philosopher and political theorist. But her intellectual work is not primarily about creating new theories. In her writing, she expertly distills and juxtaposes the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, Immanuel Kant, Martha Nussbaum, and others, but her goal is often to create a mood. She wants readers to adopt and embody an ethos that makes room for the vitality of matter. In her view, it’s a useful attitude. “Without modes of enchantment, we might not have the energy or inspiration to enact ecological projects,” she writes. We might find it hard to “contest ugly and unjust modes of commercialization, or to respond generously to humans and nonhumans that challenge our settled identities.” Coole, D. and Frost, S. (Eds.) (2010) NewMaterialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics. (Duke University Press: Durham). Bennett, Jane; Shapiro, Michael J. (2002), "Introduction", in Bennett, Jane; Shapiro, Michael J. (eds.), The politics of moralizing, New York: Routledge, pp.1–10, ISBN 9780415934787 Largely unoriginal scholarship and ideas, purely an attempt to reconcile/articulate object oriented ontology and animistic metaphysics through an entirely Western philosophical tradition, i.e. dumb and useless as hell? Most of this just cites Deleuze and Guattari while extending the """unbelievable""" notion that living agents, aka not-human matter, are capable of something like intent and affect...

Bennett, Jane (Winter 2001). "Commodity fetishism and commodity enchantment". Theory & Event. 5 (1). doi: 10.1353/tae.2001.0006. S2CID 144361800. Khan, Gulshan (February 2009). "Agency, nature and emergent properties: an interview with Jane Bennett". Contemporary Political Theory. 8 (1): 90–105. doi: 10.1057/cpt.2008.43. S2CID 144483000.Bennett, Jane (Spring 2013). "The elements". Postmedieval. 4 (1): 105–111. doi: 10.1057/pmed.2012.39. S2CID 195217226.