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

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Bennett's work considers ontological ideas about the relationship between humans and 'things', what she calls "vital materialism": Bennett, J. (1994a) Unthinking Faith and Enlightenment: Nature and State in a Post- Hegelian Era. (New York University Press: New York).

Lucretius (1995) ‘De Reurm Natura’ in Edited by John Gaskin The Epicurean Philosophers Book 1, no. 1021. (Everyman Libraries: London). Bennett, Jane (2014), "Green Materialism", in Kennedy, T. Frank; Keenan, James (eds.), Nature as a Force: Scientists, Social Scientists, and Ethicists in a Dialogue of Hope, Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press - forthcoming. Because Bennett’s objectives are both philosophical and political, she offers two suggestions for fostering a discernment that will temper ontological anthropocentrism. . . . Bennett, through her actionable approach, successfully strays from critical theory’s popular method of ‘demystification,’ a method that leaves ethics out to dry.” — Wesley Mathis, Communication Design QuarterlyHow’s it in?” Bennett asked. She turned to me. “Try to pull it out!” I leaned down, grabbed an orange handful, and yanked. It wouldn’t budge.

This leads to her ultimate point, which is that environmentalism is too limited, dependent upon the idea that humans are separate from nature, and thus need to protect nature. Rather, she is saying, the human and the natural are so interwoven that it is a fool's errand to try to separate them. Humans are not themselves selves--we are, too, radical assemblages. Bennett, Jane, 1957-". Library of Congress . Retrieved 25 July 2014. Her Unthinking faith and enlightenment, c1987: CIP t.p. (Jane Bennett) data sheet (b. 7/31/57) Bennett, Jane (2014), "Systems and Things: A Reply to Graham Harman and Timothy Morton", in Grusin, Richard (ed.), The Nonhuman Turn, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press - forthcoming. Adorno, T. (1990) Negative Dialectics. Translated by E.B. Ashton. (Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd: London). Similarly, you can say that a bag of potato chips Is acting on your hand and mouth to make you keep eating chips (Ch 3), but again this is a personification and actually DISTRACTS from questions of how the potato chip makers have engineered the texture and flavor to create this effect. In this case the “vibrant matter” approach (locating agency in the chips rather than in the manufacturer or eater) seems complicit in corporate mystification. “These chips make me eat them!” is the basis for an ad campaign, not a description of reality.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. 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. Bennett, Jane (1987). Unthinking Faith and Enlightenment: Nature and the State in a Post-Hegelian Era. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 9780814710951. Vibrant Matter is a sequel of sorts to Jane Bennett's "The Enchantment of Modern Life." While that first book focused on the emotional response of people to the modern world around them--suggesting that there was a sense of awe, and that this affective reaction was a good thing, leading to a (potential) politics of generosity--here Bennett turns her eyes to the things themselves: the metal, machines, and microbes that make up the world around us. She says that these are more than things, that the have some degree of agency in our networked world.

a b Watson, Janell (October 2013). "Eco-sensibilities: interview with Jane Bennett". Minnesota Review. 81 (1): 147–158. doi: 10.1215/00265667-2332147. S2CID 145051920. KKL: Within a short genealogy of materialism – from Epicurus to the most recent accounts by Bruno Latour –“What kind of materialist are you…”Habermas, J. (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and Rationalization of Society. Volume One. (Polity Press: Cambridge). This book is alright. I wasn't totally convinced by some of the arguments (for example, the idea of a 'life of metal' explored in chapter four was pretty shaky and weak), but I agree with the overall thrust of the book: the idea that matter and material are not simply inert but have a kind of relational energetics to them, a capacity to act and be efficacious in social and political life. Some readers might be forgiven for thinking that Vibrant Matter is a pleasing exercise in philosophical utopianism. It can be read as a thought-experiment, an onto-political wish list. More’s the pity. New research that Sarah Whatmore and others are now publishing on local democracy and environmental hazards may take us into the important political territory that Bennett only gestures towards. This work focuses on practices occurring in the interstices between the current conventions and institutions of political practice. As such, it makes Bennett’s case in a less purely philosophical register and its normative aspects are rather more concrete. Bennett, Jane (2001). The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691088136.

Heidegger, M. (1977) The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Translated and with an Introduction by William Lovitt. (Harper Row Publishers Inc: New York).Wearing bright-silver sneakers, she dropped her arms and headed off into the woods. I hastened to keep up with her. Soon, we stumbled upon something we found hard to precisely describe. Bennett, Jane (2012), "Powers of the Hoard: Further Notes on Material Agency", in Cohen, Jeffrey (ed.), Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects, Washington, DC: Oliphaunt Books an imprint of Punctum Books, pp.237–269, ISBN 9780615625355 a b Bennett, Jane (2018). "Curriculum Vitae". Johns Hopkins Department of Political Science. Archived from the original on 18 April 2019 . Retrieved 18 April 2019. This past fall, I met Bennett at a coffee shop near the Johns Hopkins campus. Sixty-five, with coiffed silver hair and cat’s-eye glasses, she sat at a table near the window reading the Zhuangzi, one of the two most important texts of Taoism, the Chinese school of thought that emphasizes living in harmony with the world. “The coffee isn’t very good here, but the people are nice,” she told me, conspiratorially. She took out her phone. “I have to show you a picture.” She turned the screen toward me, revealing a photo of two dead rats lying on the pavement—an image at odds with her kindly-neighbor looks. “I was walking by the university, and this is what I found,” she said. I leaned closer. The rats, who had drowned in a rainstorm, lay in artful counterpoint, as though posing for a still-life.