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

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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. Bennett hopes for a positive outcome. During my time with her, I thought frequently about an old house in Detroit which my spouse and I have been rehabbing for many years now. It was built in 1917. It has its ways. We started our rehab project with many grand ideas about completely transforming the layout of the house. But because we’ve been doing the work ourselves and going slowly, the house has had the opportunity to get its two cents in. It doesn’t speak like a person, of course, but it communicates, day after day, season after season. The house has revealed to us how light travels around its surfaces and interiors in winter, spring, summer, and fall; some of the changes we were planning to make have come to seem wrongheaded with that further information. Other changes we hadn’t even considered suddenly became possible and exciting: its intermittently crumbling ceilings opened the possibility of increasing the height in some rooms. Madness offers painfully strong evidence of the active powers of flesh, and this renders me more alert to, better sensitized toward, the vitality of materiality per se, including both natural and artificial complexes. It uncovers a world in which “things” vie alongside (as well as enter into) the workings of human will, intelligence, reason, desire. In other words, what holds true for the human body applies to the body of nature-culture as well: a geo-cultural landscape is no more passive, no more simply a context for action, than is the bodily terrain of my brother. Bennett, Jane (2010). Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press. pp.viii. ISBN 978-0-8223-4633-3.

Bennett, Jane; Shapiro, Michael J. (2002). The Politics of Moralizing. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415934787. Khan, Gulshan (February 2009). "Agency, nature and emergent properties". Contemporary Political Theory. 8 (1): 90–105. doi: 10.1057/CPT.2008.43. S2CID 144483000.

Project MUSE Mission

Bennett, Jane (December 2017). "Mimesis: Paradox or encounter". MLN. 132 (5): 1186–1200. doi: 10.1353/mln.2017.0091. S2CID 165619743. 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.”

The SINISTER side of this book is that it makes it harder to hold human powers accountable for destructive actions. This is the downside of Bennett’s apparently virtuous and humble goal of de-centering human agency, intentions, and actions while elevating non-human factors. The oil-soaked pelican and the polluted water DO deserve as much respect and value and protection as humans. But I don’t believe we’ll achieve that by declaring them to be equal participants in an “assemblage” with the oil company whose tanker poisoned their environment.In ihrem Buch „Lebhafte Materie“ versucht Jane Bennett anhand verschiedener Gegenstände und Ereignisse die materielle Handlungsmacht oder Wirkmächtigkeit nicht menschlicher oder nicht-ganz-menschlicher Dinge zu beweisen. Bennett versteht Materialität als grundsätzlich lebendig. So kommt es auch, dass ihr erster Bezugspunkt ein scheinbar unbedeutender Haufen Müll ist. Doch durch den Haufen Müll wird Bennett an eine Konsum- und Wegwerfgesellschaft erinnert. Hat der Müll hier eine Ding-Kraft? Ist es nicht der Müll, der hier den Anstoß zum Denken gegeben hat oder ist das Unsinn? Die Leitfrage des Buches ist, wie sich politische Reaktionen auf gesellschaftliche Probleme verändern würden, wenn Vitalität (nicht menschlicher) Körper ernst nehmen würden. 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 (2002), "The Moraline Drift", in Bennett, Jane; Shapiro, Michael J. (eds.), The Politics of Moralizing, New York: Routledge, pp.11–26, ISBN 9780415934787 PS If you are interested in Bennett, you'll enjoy this brief post by Graham Harman, where he writes:

Bennett, Jane; Livingston, Alexander (December 2011). "Philosophy in the wild: listening to things in Baltimore". Scapegoat: Architecture, Landscape, Political Economy: 02 Materialism. Scapegoat (2): 12–13. Available via the co-author Alexander Livingston on Academia.edu. Bennett, Jane (2004), "Approaches to Contemporary Political Theory", in Kukathas, Chandran; Gaus, Gerald F. (eds.), Handbook of Political Theory, London Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE, pp.46–56, ISBN 9780761967873KKL: One path to dissipate ontotheological binaries, such as human/nature, technological/organic, is favouring ecology as the all-inclusive concept. While Slavoj Zizek warns of an unreflected application of this “opium of the masses”, you may argue for another difference (in a purely horizontal juxtaposition of actants) within a cultural ecology – a politics of vital materialism.