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stefhyena's review
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.25
I have to think about this more. In a few places I think Bennett needs to think about it more too.
It's a thought provoking book
It's a thought provoking book
callipurnia's review
1.0
I wish academics would realize that the accessibility and dissemination of ideas is more important than coming off as pretentious and uninteresting. I had a more enjoyable time trying to read George R.R. Martin during middle school then trying to read this during college.
anishadb's review
2.0
2.5 stars. Somewhat interesting, but I'm not convinced. She doesn't engage at all with any indigenous scholarship on similar subjects; the book is very centered in Western thought and ideology with no acknowledgement that these were not the first thinkers to have these thoughts.
eljel's review
informative
medium-paced
3.0
decent introductory reading;
situated against vitalist accounts (driesch, bergson), it proposes distributed agency of agentic assemblages embedded in the mesh of actants (latour, darwin, d&g, spinoza etc) and problematises the “traditional” dichotomies of passive matter and active -human- subjects;
reformulated conception of matter and agency then leads to political questioning of the nature of polity, responsibility and so forth;
it draws exclusively on the western canon, the choice of mentioned authors seemed slightly random to me at times;
writing style felt sometimes slightly too popularising, sometimes too repetitive;
many times i wished the argumentation was much more thorough
situated against vitalist accounts (driesch, bergson), it proposes distributed agency of agentic assemblages embedded in the mesh of actants (latour, darwin, d&g, spinoza etc) and problematises the “traditional” dichotomies of passive matter and active -human- subjects;
reformulated conception of matter and agency then leads to political questioning of the nature of polity, responsibility and so forth;
it draws exclusively on the western canon, the choice of mentioned authors seemed slightly random to me at times;
writing style felt sometimes slightly too popularising, sometimes too repetitive;
many times i wished the argumentation was much more thorough
clementinemorrigan's review
3.0
I really wanted to like this book and although it had a lot of interesting ideas I was disappointed. I really do not appreciate new materialisms which are dismissive of and condescending toward spiritual understandings of materiality. Also, heads up for fatphobia and discussion of 'obesity epidemic'.
nisherwood's review
4.0
all my homies love vital materialism
this book is another step closer to actually understanding the connections I have been seeing in my thoughts/readings/ravings the last couple years...we're getting closer
this book is another step closer to actually understanding the connections I have been seeing in my thoughts/readings/ravings the last couple years...we're getting closer