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A review by eljel
Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things by Jane Bennett
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