Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things Paperback – 4 January 2010
by Jane Bennett (Author)
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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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Product details
Publisher : Duke University Press (4 January 2010)
Language : English
Paperback : 200 pages
ISBN-10 : 0822346338
ISBN-13 : 978-0822346333
Dimensions : 15.24 x 1.09 x 22.86 cm
Best Sellers Rank: 73,408 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
176 in Human Geography (Books)
442 in Environmental Geology
506 in Political Philosophy (Books)
Customer Reviews: 4.6 out of 5 stars 83 ratings
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Review
"Bennett's is one of those books where, on finishing, you want to begin immediately again to experience the excitement and élan vital of eloquent, simple ideas presented in clear, concise and considered prose, wherein the presence of a generous, kind and unpretentious author speaks straight into your understanding. Vibrant Matter is fresh, alert, quiet and potent, a door opening in a stuffy room to let the outside in, which lets it speak so as to embolden us to breathe differently. It will redraw the boundaries of political thought; it's already doing so. Read it."--Mark Jackson "Emotion, Space and Society"
"For the sake of assuaging harms already inflicted we have always cobbled together publics that deal with vibrant matters of floods, fires, earthquakes and so on. For the sake of preventing unseen future harms, Bennett's book argues that we need to take a closer look at how we are embedded in a web of mutual affect that knows no bounds between living and nonliving, human and nonhuman. It is in this refreshingly naïve 'no-holds-barred' approach that Bennett's work has much to offer for a reconsideration of our role as thinking, speaking humans in a cosmos of vibrant matter that we continually depoliticize even in our efforts to 'protect' and 'save' the earth . . . a highly recommended read."--Stefan Morales "M/C Reviews"
"Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter is an admirable book for at least three reasons. First, it is wonderfully written in a comfortable personal style, which is rare enough for academic books. Second, Bennett makes an explicit break with the timeworn dogmas of postmodernist academia. . . . The third point
that makes this book admirable is Bennett's professional position: Chair of
Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. That someone in a Political
Science department at an important university could write as candid a work
of metaphysics as Vibrant Matter is an encouraging sign. Perhaps philosophical speculation on fundamental topics is poised for a comeback throughout the humanities. "--Graham Harman "New Formations"
"Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter is an important work, linking critical movements in recent continental philosophy, namely a vitalist tradition that runs from Bergson to Deleuze and even, on Bennett's reading, to Bruno Latour, and (on the other hand) a 'political ecology of things' that should speak to anyone conscious enough to be aware of the devastating changes underway in the world around us. There is good reason Bennett's book has, in short order, gained a wide following in disparate areas of political theory and philosophy."--Peter Gratton "Philosophy in Review"
"Orienting us to re-encounter both nature and familiar objects as newly strange and pulsing with 'thing-power, ' Bennett challenges our worn assumptions concerning the hierarchy between humans and things, the workings of causality, and our deep cultural attachment to matter and nature as inanimate. . . . Her book is surprising, refreshing, and troubling."--Lori J. Marso "Political Theory"
"Vibrant Matter is a fascinating, lucid, and powerful book of political theory. By focusing on the 'thing-side of affect, ' Jane Bennett seeks to broaden and transform our sense of care in relation to the world of humans, non-human life, and things. She calls us to consider a 'parliament of things' in ways that provoke our democratic imaginations and interrupt our anthropocentric hubris."--Romand Coles, author of Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy
"Vibrant Matter represents the fruits of sustained scholarship of the highest order. As environmental, technological, and biomedical concerns force themselves onto worldly political agendas, the urgency and potency of this analysis must surely inform any rethinking of what political theory is about in the twenty-first century."--Sarah Whatmore, coeditor of The Stuff of Politics: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public Life
"This manifesto for a new materialism is an invigorating breath of fresh air. Jane Bennett's eloquent tribute to the vitality and volatility of things is just what we need to revive the humanities and to redraw the parameters of political thought."--Rita Felski, author of Uses of Literature
From the Back Cover
"This manifesto for a new materialism is an invigorating breath of fresh air. Jane Bennett's eloquent tribute to the vitality and volatility of things is just what we need to revive the humanities and to redraw the parameters of political thought."--Rita Felski, author of "Uses of Literature "
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Jamie
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for anyone who wants to truely understand the world we live in.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 November 2015
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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.
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Susie J
5.0 out of 5 stars Vitality of matter
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 December 2019
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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.
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David Rietti
5.0 out of 5 stars Vibrant!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 March 2016
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A must read! bennet is core study for those interested in our world and how it works!
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Katherine S
5.0 out of 5 stars I could not put this book down. It's cogent ...
Reviewed in Canada on 8 October 2015
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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.
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animal lover
2.0 out of 5 stars Two Stars
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David Rietti
5.0 out of 5 stars Vibrant!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 March 2016
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A must read! bennet is core study for those interested in our world and how it works!
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Katherine S
5.0 out of 5 stars I could not put this book down. It's cogent ...
Reviewed in Canada on 8 October 2015
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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.
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animal lover
2.0 out of 5 stars Two Stars
Reviewed in Canada on 30 October 2015
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not that interesting.
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stuffwrangler
4.0 out of 5 stars Why matter matters
Reviewed in the United States on 20 June 2017
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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.
7 people found this helpful
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RDD
4.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating Exploration of Humanity's Relation to Things
Reviewed in the United States on 12 April 2017
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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.
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Josh Nieubuurt
5.0 out of 5 stars Vibrant enlightening work
Reviewed in the United States on 5 November 2020
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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
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vera long
5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant & eloquent
Reviewed in the United States on 21 January 2021
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Incredible..this is the best written book I’ve e Rt read...and I have read quite a few. brilliant
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G.E.
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent. Part of the New Materialism's must haves for serious researchers
Reviewed in the United States on 9 May 2015
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Uses Karen Barad's theory of Agential Realism. Thoughtful research.
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EtienneS
5.0 out of 5 stars An important read--and fun to think through
Reviewed in the United States on 11 July 2015
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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.
5 people found this helpful
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Jeremy Viny
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book!
Reviewed in the United States on 8 September 2018
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Bennett has a wonderful mind.
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mlynnsmiley
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing
Reviewed in the United States on 30 April 2014
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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.
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Michelle Rose
4.0 out of 5 stars A little fuzzy. I think Thomas Rickert laid it ...
Reviewed in the United States on 23 December 2017
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A little fuzzy. I think Thomas Rickert laid it out a bit more eloquently, but she's certainly painstaking in her logic. I don't think she took it far enough, though. Or maybe in the wrong direction. Individual bodies are ecologies, too, and they negotiate with other ecologies all the time. THAT'S the rhetorical battlefield. The trick is to keep it from turning into WWIII.
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Christopher Schaberg
5.0 out of 5 stars a fantastic book to think with
Reviewed in the United States on 12 June 2011
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I recently taught Jane Bennett's book "Vibrant Matter" in a class on Environmental Theory, and I found it intriguing, challenging, and completely rewarding. My students really seemed to enjoy grappling with Bennett's concepts and the way she weaves a variety of texts and examples together throughout the chapters. Even when Bennett's questions are left unanswered, this is a productive tactic: many of my students took up her open-ended questions in their papers, extending her observations and complex formulations and applying them to local matters. Bennett's book worked very well alongside Timothy Morton's book "The Ecological Thought," Jennifer Price's book "Flight Maps," Arun Agrawal's book "Environmentality," Kathleen Stewart's "Ordinary Affects," and Donna Haraway's book "When Species Meet" (among a few other shorter texts that we read in between these). While definitely demanding at times, the narrative of "Vibrant Matter" is so articulated and strong that the book stands out as a philosophical/theoretical *story*, of sorts. (This was another aspect of the book that made it very teachable.) Bennett's book is speculative and picaresque, but absolutely rigorous and totally genuine. "Vibrant Matter" may frustrate readers looking for step-by-step instructions for a 'political ecology' -- but if readers want a fantastic book to think with, a book that piques philosophical imagination and merges it with ecology, then "Vibrant Matter" is it.
52 people found this helpful
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Brian Kumm
5.0 out of 5 stars I like this book
Reviewed in the United States on 24 October 2015
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I like this book. It's not perfect or the most earthshaking book, but it's thoughtful and well composed. Really a lovely work. Recommend!
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Roger Todd Whitson
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best philosophical books I've read in the past ten years.
Reviewed in the United States on 7 May 2012
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I don't agree with everything that Bennett says, but I do believe that Vibrant Matter encapsulates some of the most important (and most practical) applications of the object-oriented movement to date. Her discussion of the politics of the 2003 blackout, for instance, truly shows why thinking about matter as having agency matters. It's all-too-easy to try to locate fault within the consciousness of (usually one) person. Bennett shows us how metal, worms, and other seemingly non-human things effect our everyday lives. This is a vital book for the future of philosophy and political theory.
7 people found this helpful
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Cristobal C.
2.0 out of 5 stars Falls short.
Reviewed in the United States on 26 February 2013
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The book arises from an interesting premise, that of reformulating the claims of vitalism in a new light as a political project. But that's about as far as it gets: The human component is completely absent in the book, and eventually the project consists in learning to address the "demands" of object assemblages by developing "new methods of perception". I am sorry to say that this sounds like using things as mere sensors for the well being of humans. Ultimately I found the book to be full of flaws and unable (except on a nice chapter on metals) to affecting me or the classmates that read it in an emotional or political level.
5 people found this helpful
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Fred Seigneur
3.0 out of 5 stars Not a great read!
Reviewed in the United States on 15 January 2018
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Not a great read! The author babbles along page after page.
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Reviewer
1.0 out of 5 stars A terrible book in my opinion
Reviewed in the United States on 17 January 2016
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I bought this book to held write the theory chapter of my PhD thesis, which looks at material vs ideational factors and their effects on agency. I wish I could get a refund. At times I did not know whether I was reading a novel, or a textbook, whether I was reading a work of fiction or non-fiction. The book refuses to get to the point, and I am still left not knowing exactly what the author is trying to get at. A terrible book in my opinion.
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