In "Vibrant Matter" the political theorist Jane Bennett, renowned
for her work on nature, ethics, and affect, shifts her focus from
the human experience of things to things themselves. Bennett argues
that political theory needs to do a better job of recognizing the
active participation of nonhuman forces in events. Toward that end,
she theorizes a "vital materiality" that runs through and across
bodies, both human and nonhuman. Bennett explores how political
analyses of public events might change were we to acknowledge that
agency always emerges as the""effect of ad hoc configurations of
human and nonhuman forces. She suggests that recognizing that
agency is distributed this way, and is not solely the province of
humans, might spur the cultivation of a more responsible,
ecologically sound politics: a politics less devoted to blaming and
condemning individuals than to discerning the web of forces
affecting situations and events.
Bennett examines the political and theoretical implications of
vital materialism through extended discussions of commonplace
things and physical phenomena including stem cells, fish oils,
electricity, metal, and trash. She reflects on the vital power of
material formations such as landfills, which generate lively
streams of chemicals, and omega-3 fatty acids, which can transform
brain chemistry and mood. Along the way, she engages with the
concepts and claims of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Darwin, Adorno,
and Deleuze, disclosing a long history of thinking about vibrant
matter in Western philosophy, including attempts by Kant, Bergson,
and the embryologist Hans Driesch to name the "vital force"
inherent in material forms. Bennett concludes by sketching the
contours of a "green materialist" ecophilosophy.
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