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

This is an exceptionally well reasoned religious tract that defines and the argues for the importance and,then, the value of a worldview in which 1) all matter is accorded a kind of equivalent respect, from human beings to animals microbes plants and other living things, as well as inorganic/inanimate matter, include stone, sand , metals, down to their molecular structure and sub-atomic components. In essence she "fuses" the reductionist and its opposite holistic or emergent properties of matter 2) This respect arises from the agency that all matter and assemblages of matter possess 3) this worldview should drive a more comprehensive understanding and humble respect for the complex interrelationships between matter and it temporal/multidimensional property of existence. In the end--the last few lines of the book-- she observes (concedes?) that her ontology consists of a kind of "Nicene Creed for materialists, which is quite elegant, and well worth the effort required to plough through dense arguments laced with generous helping of Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, Foucault, Deleuze, their disciples and numerous proponents of new wave environmentalism.

This text illuminates vital materialism reconfiguring the world as coffee and milk: an interaction bridged together in a delicious mish mash of human and non-human variants so fundamentally intertwined that it is nearly impossible to rethink of the world as a place of only humans as thing of agency. Truly a mind blowing dense work of scholarship

In Jane Bennett’s "Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things", she explores the role of inanimate bodies and how humans interact with them. "Vibrant Matter" serves as Bennett’s manifesto for the benefits of anthropomorphizing. Bennett writes, “I believe it is wrong to deny vitality to nonhuman bodies, forces, and forms, and that a careful course of anthropomorphization can help reveal that vitality, even though it resists full translation and exceeds my comprehensive grasp. I believe that encounters with lively matter can chasten my fantasies of human mastery, highlight the common materiality of all that is, expose a wider distribution of agency, and reshape the self and its interests” (pg. 122). To this end, Bennett uses various case studies to expand her readers’ understanding of what agency is and who or what is capable of possessing and using agency. Some of these agents include worms, the electrical grid, and accumulations of detritus in a storm drain. Bennett writes with the goal of shaping consciousness in order to expand humanity’s understanding of its place in the world. She writes, “My hunch is that the image of dead or thoroughly instrumentalized matter feeds human hubris and our earth-destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption” (pg. ix).Bennett examines the historical debate over a mechanistic or essential arrangement of life. Describing the situating of a basic essence in each subject, Bennett writes, “While I agree that human affect is a key player, in this book the focus is on an affect that is not only not fully susceptible to rational analysis or linguistic representation but that is also not specific to humans, organisms, or even to bodies: the affect of technologies, winds, vegetables, minerals” (pg. 61). She writes of these philosophers’ work, “Something always escaped quantification, prediction, and control. They named that something <i>élan vital</i>” (pg. 63). According to Bennett, Driesch’s goal “was not simply to gain a more subtle understanding of the dynamic chemical and physical properties of the organism but also to better discern what <i>animated</i> the machine” (pg. 71). This recalls the words Master Yoda spoke to Luke Skywalker on Dagobah, “For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes.” In sum, Bennett’s manifesto demonstrates the importance of resituating humanity’s place in the world by placing humanity within the world rather than outside of it.

Incredible..this is the best written book I’ve e Rt read...and I have read quite a few. brilliant

Uses Karen Barad's theory of Agential Realism. Thoughtful research.

I think this book--maybe more than any other--set the bar for the new work on vitalist materialism and object oriented ontology. It is not necessarily the most integrative book you will read on vital matter. It drifts around and some of the author's commitments are only sketched out and then--later--loosely realized, or just generally affirmed. But her overall claims and direct approach kept coming back to me. I've used this book in an advanced seminar and the students took to it more quickly than I did. I think it set the tone for work that was to come. An important read--and fun to think through.

Bennett has a wonderful mind.

Such a wonderful book. Jane Bennett has changed my views on "things" in a most profound way that has affected both my scholarship and my personal attitude toward the world of materials.

Essential reading for anyone working in modern philosophical, archaeological or historical thought who wishes to truely understand the nature of things and the ability apparently inanimate objects have to influence the world around them. This is one of the two texts anyone interested in object agency should read and is the go to book for place, identiry and collective agency at the moment. One of the most influential works of its generation and builds on the work of other great philosophers.Do not be fooled by the word political, this is not a work on politics it is a work on the political nature of things, political theorists will be disapointed and should just move on as it does not deal with winning votes.

This book has transformed my work as an artist. Brilliant and interesting ideas which need to be heard in this age of ecological breakdown and human agency still trying to be located at the top of the pecking order.

A must read! bennet is core study for those interested in our world and how it works!

I could not put this book down. It's cogent, passionate and profoundly engaging. Anyone interested in material culture or affect theory should read this.

not that interesting.