Preface:
How would political responses to public problems change were we to take seriously the vitality of (nonhuman) bodies? By “vitality” I mean the capacity of thingsedibles, commodities, storms, metals-not only to impede or block the will and deSigns of humans but also to act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own.
1 lavish attention on specific “things,” noting the distinctive capacities or e1Ecadous powers of particular material configurations. To attempt, as 1 do, to present human and nonhuman actants on a less vertical plane than is common is to bracket the question of the human and to elide the rich and diverse literature on subjectivity and its genesis, its conditions of possibility. and its bOl/ndaries. The philosophical project of naming wbere subjectivity begins and ends is too o&en bound up with fantasies of a human uniqueness in the eyes of God, of escape from materiality, or of mastery of nature; and even where it is not, it remains an aporetic or quixotic endeavor
1 want to promote greener forms of human culture and more attentive encounters between people-materialities and thing-materialities.
Monism=a oneness to a concept e.g. existence (as opposed to cartesian dualism)
in contrast to some versions of deep ecology, my monism posits neither a smooth harmony of parts nor a diversity unified by a common spirit. The formula here, writes Deleuze, is “ontologically one, formally diverse.”a This is, as Michel Serres says in The Birth of Physics, a turhulent, immanent field in which various and variable materialities collide, congeal, morph, evolve, and disintegrate (good visual words to play with??)
**images of cut out items with e.g. videos of the sea within?? A visual confusion and amalgamation of matter – but vibrant so moving?? As opposed to maybe my drawings which are a bit static?**
This book works within a movement of ‘care of the self’ – ‘Some in political theory, perhaps most notably Nancy Fraser in Justice Interruptus. criticized this tum as a retreat to soft, psycho-cultural issues of identity at the expense of the hard, political issues of economic justice, environmental sustainability. Human rights, or democratic governance. Others (I am in this camp) replied that the bodily disciplines through which ethical sensibilities and social relations are formed and reformed are themselves political and constiM tute a whole (underexplored) field of”m.icropolitics” without which any principle or policy risks being just a bunch of words. There will be no greening of the economy, no redistribution of wealth, no enforcement or extension of rights without human dispositions, moods, and cultural ensembles hospitable to these effects.’ – very similar to Rebecca Solnit’s hope in the dark chapter 5 where she talks about ideas and revolution happening in the minds of the people far beyond it reaching the ‘stage’ of the world e.g. the media and the courts
The ethical turn encouraged political theorists to pay more attention to films, religiOUS practices, news media rituals, neuroscientific experiments, and other noncanonical means of ethical will formation. – just interesting to think about this again in justifying (not sure this is the right word, seems a bit defensive lol) the point of art
‘demystification presumes that at the heart of any event of process lies a human agency that has illicitly been projected into things’ – worth researching demystification more? A similar idea to paul nash not wanting to fully scientifically understand Stonehenge maybe? **
Demystification always uncovers something human – ‘the hidden quest for domination on the part of some humans over others, a human desire to deflect responsibility for harms done, or an unjust distribution of (human) power. Demystification tends to screen from view the vitality of matter and to reduce political agency to human agency. Those are the tendencies I resist.’
For some time political theory has acknowledged that materiality matters. But this materiality most often refers to human social structures or to the human meanings “embodied” in them and other objects. Because politics is itself often construed as an exclusively human domain, what registers on it is a set of material constraints on or a context for human action. Dogged resistance to anthropocentrism is perhaps the main difference between the vital materialism I pursue and this kind of historical materialism.:u I will emphaSize, even overemphasize, the agentic contributions of nonhuman forces (operating in nature, in the human body, and in human artifacts) in an attempt to cqunter the narcissistic reflex of human language and thought. We need to cultivate a bit of anthropomorphism-the idea that human agency has some echoes in nonhuman nature -to counter the narcissism of humans in charge of the world.
The preface contains a good list of chapter descriptions – 1+2 look good, 3 maybe less relevant, 4 middling, 5 interesting, 6 interesting but maybe less relevant, 7 good, 8 probably a good conclusion
Chapter 1
Good quotes: I must let my senses wander as my thought, my eyes see without looking …. Go not to the object; let it come to you. HENRY THOREAU, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau It is never we who affirm or deny something of a thing; it is the thing itself that affirms or denies something of itself in us. BARUCH SPINOZA, Short Treatise I
Links to objet petit a: ‘As W. J. T. Mitcbell notes, “objects are the way things appear to a subject-that is, with a name, an identity, a gestalt or stereotypical template …. Things, on the other hand, … [signal] the moment when the object becomes the Other, when the sardine can looks back, when the mute idol speaks, when the subject experiences the object as uncanny and feels the need for what Foucault calls ‘a metaphysics of the object, or, more exactly, a metaphySics of that never objectifiable depth from which objects rise up toward our superficial knowledge.””’
‘Spinoza ascribes to bodies a peculiar Vitality: “Each thing [res], as far as it can by its own power. strives [conatur] to persevere in its own being.'” Conotus names an “active impulsion” or trending tendency to persist’ – this is something Bennett uses to apply to humans and nonhumans alike – a tendency to continue
(random side thought but the moon as an interesting encapsulation of the human desire to demystify/understand/touch/conquer the nonhuman, no matter how vast or difficult – link to katie Paterson vid where she talks about this)
in this assemblage, objects appeared as things, that is, as vivid entities not entirely reducible to the contexts in which (human) subjects set them, never entirely exhausted by their semiotics
(5) ‘American materialism, which requires hlr(ing ever-increasing numbers of products purchased in ever ‘sboner cycles, is antimateriality.” The sheer volume of commodities, and the hyperconsumptive necessity of junking them to make room for new ones, conceals the Vitality of matter’
(9) Actant, recal], is Bruno Latour’s term for a source of action; an actant can be human or not, or, ,most likely, a combination of both – a good point of note for exploring the role of the human in this
considering human actions too as the result of vital materiality, and not just in the sense that we are made up of materials: ‘But it is more challenging to conceive of these materials as lively and self-organizing. rather than as passive or mechanical means under the direction of something nonmaterial, that is, an active soul or mind.’ (10)
(11) ‘In the long and slow time of evolution, then, mineral material appears as the mover and shaker, the active power, and the human beings, with their much-lauded capacity for self-directed action, appear as its product.’ – ‘we are walking, talking minerals’
Considering humans as a particularly complex mix of minerals/complex animals rather than animals with an added humanness/soul/intelligence – we are not the ‘ontological centre’
Important concern of not treating humans as objects however – page 12 has quite a complex answer lol, but essentially the idea of not treating human goals and aims as ends in themselves but as seeing ourselves as part of a bigger picture – the current systems we have in place are already misusing objects even in terms of long term human interests – also solved by ‘raising the status of the materiality of which we are composed’ – ‘The ethical aim becomes to distribute value more generously’ (13)
(14) ‘”Negative dialectics” is the method Adorno designs to teach us how to accentuate this discomforting experience and how to give it a meaning. When practiced correctly, negative dialectics will render the static buzz of nonidentity into a powerful reminder that “ob� jects do not go into their concepts without leaving a remainder” and thus that life will always exceed our knowledge and control.’
Chapter 2
(20) ‘thing-power may thus be a good starting point for thinking beyond the life-matter binary’ – good introductory quote to go alongside introducing thing-power
(20) ‘my goal is to theorize a materiality that is as much force as entity. as much energy as matter, as much intensity as extension’
In EME there is the material of the moon as compared with the initially ‘human’ material of the piano, but following bennet’s/spinoza’s line of thought we start to consider where the constituent elements of the piano have come from, breaking it down to elements that seem as ‘primal’ as the moon and in doing so erasing this gap between human and nonhuman
(22) ‘For Spino •• , both sirople bodies (which are perhaps better termed pr% badies) and the complex or mosaicized modes they form are con’ tive. In the case of the former, conatus is expressed as a stubbornness or inertial tendency to persist; in the c.se of a complex body or mode, conatus refers to the effort required to maintain the specific relation of umovement and rest” that obtains between its parts, a relation that de� fines the mode as what it is’ – there’s a whole page (or chapter technically lol) relating to this, but a potential theme here of conatus, and also interesting to look at EME as one whole mosaic/assemblage body as spoken about in this quote, or even to look at both sides of it: EME as different materials working together, then different bodies working together, and then as one functional whole?? (have highlighted as EME but not so sure about this point tbf, might be good if introducing and talking about assemblages)
(23) ‘The key idea I want to take from Spinods rich and contestable philosophy, an idea I will put to work for a vital materialism, is this: bodies enhance their power in or as a heterogeneous assemblage.’
(23) ‘The sentences of this book also emerged from the confederate agency of many striving macro- and microactants: from “my” memories, intentions, contentions, intestinal bacteria, eyeglasses, and blood sugar, as well as from the plastic computer keyboard, the bird song from the open window, or the air or particulates in the room, to name only a few of the participants. What is at work here on the page is an animal-vegetablemineral-sonority cluster with a particular degree and duration of power. What is at work here is what Deleuze and Guattari call an assemblage.’ Just iconic
The blackout as an example also links to what the lady said to me on the phone to bt – wifi has a mind of its own, even ‘experts’ don’t know the problem often
(25) ‘To the vital materialist, the electrical grid is better understood as a volatile mix of coal. sweat, electromagnetic fields, computer programs, electron streams, profit motives, beat, lifestyles, nuclear fuel, plastic. fantasies of mastery. static, legislation, water, economic theory. wire, and wood -to name just some of the actants.’ – I really like these lists – try for own collected materials?? As i didn’t vibe with the seaglass poem
Electricity as an example of a ‘vibrant material’ that has a mind of its own (although this phrasing does anthropomorphise) – ‘But anthropomorphizing bas, as I sball argue in chapter 8, its virtues. Here it works to gesture toward the inadequacy of understanding the grid simply as a machine or a tool, as, that is, a series of fixed parts organized from without that serves an external purpose.’ (25)
Undoing the idea that only humans can have agency (page 28-31 for significant details and mentions of many philosophers)
(31) ‘Stiegler contends tbat conscious rellection in (proto)humans first emerged witb tbe use of stone tools because tbe materiality of tbe tool acted as an external marker of a past need, as an “archive” of its function. The stone tool (its texture, color, weight), in calling attention to its projected and recollected use, produced tbe first hollow of reflection.]9 Humanity and nonhumanity have always performed an intricate dance with each other. There was never a time when human agency was anything otber tban an interfolding network of humanity and nonhumanity; today tbis mingling has become harder to ignore.’
(34) ‘No one really knows what human agency is. or what humans are doing when they are said to perform as agents. In the face of every analysis. human agency remains something of a mystery. If we do not know just how it is that human agency operates. how can we bc so sure that thc processes through which nonhumans make their mark are qualitatively different?’
(35) ‘A coffee house or a school house is a mobile configuration of people, insects, odors, ink, electrical flows, air currents, caffeine, tables, chairs, fluids, and sounds’ – another listtt wooo with an interesting bit just after about the materiality of the vibez
Oh another list straight awayyyy (36) ‘My speech, for example, depends on the graphite in my pencil, millions of persons, dead and alive, in my IndoEuropean language group, not to mention the electricity in my brain and my laptop.’
(38) ‘This exertion is perhaps best understood on the model of riding a bicycle on a gravel road. One can throw one’s weight this way or that, inflect the bike in one direction or toward one trajectory of motion. But the rider is but one actant operative in the moving whole.’
Chapter 5
(62) ‘What would happen to our thinking about nature if we experienced materialities as actants, and how would the direction of public policy shift if it attended more carefully to their trajectories and powers? I am looking for a materialism in which matter is figured as a vitality at work both inside and outside of selves, and is a force to be reckoned with without being purposive in any strong sense.’
(65) kant drew a line between life and matter = ‘”We cannot even think of living matter as possible. (The concept of it involves a contradiction, since the essential character of matter is lifelessness, inertia)’
(65) ‘Kant addresses the problem in part by invoking a special “formative drive,” or Bildungsmeb, which attaches itself to and enlivens dead matter’ – but he specifically defines that it isn’t a soul as a soul can exist outside the body whereas his force only exists in connection with matter
(69) another reason for the intrigue in kant’s bildungstrieb: ‘Bildungstrieb has an agentic power irreducible to the purposive energies invested in it by humans.’
Growth as an important/inherent quality to vital materiality – links back to foundation work
For driesche, as for kant, there is a certain quality non-mechanical quality/force that differentiates between matter containing life and not – he defined his as ‘entelechy’ – ‘Neither a substance nor an energy (though active only in relation to them). entelechy is “the non-mechanical agent responsible for the phenomena of life.”’ (71)
(75) ‘What intrigues me perhaps the most about entelechy is, as in the case of Bildungsmeb, the way in which it is a figure of impersonal agency. Like the Homeric Greek notion of psuche,” entelechy does not vary &om person to person; it is not a unique soul, but neither does it vary across organisms. It is, rather, the immanent vitality BOwing across all living bodies. This makes entelechy more resistant than soul to the strongest or most punitive notions of personal moral responsibility. Entelechy coordinates parts on behalf of a whole in response to event and does so without following a rigid plan; it answers events ionov.tively and perspicuously, deciding on the spot and in real time which of the many possible courses of development will in fact happen.’
(75) ‘Driesch’s invention of entelechy as a creative causality is propelled by his assumption that materiality is stuff so passive and dull that it could not poSSibly have done the tricky work of organizing and maintaining morphing wholes. Sometimes this matter is infused with entelechy and becomes life, and sometimes it is not and coagulates into inorganic ma· chines. Driesch thought he had to figure entelechy as nonmaterial because his notion of materiality was yoked to the notion of a mechanistic, deterministic machine’
Bergson’s version of this is elan vital – this whole chapter (5) was quite intense n heavy going – summary: she looked at three versions of previous philosophers trying to define a life-ness, what it is that animates matter and elevates it to life – kant (bildungstrieb), Driesch (entelechy) and Bergson (elan vital) – I think concluding the one after the other they got closer to her theory but none quite aligning?? But if I’m honest this was a tough chapter and not wholllyyy relevant to essay so worth a reread at some point if you do need – or actually goes on to side more with Driesch (see further down)
Chapter 6 – the applicability of materialism to political issues such as abortion
(84) ‘I do not think that there is any direct relationship between, on the one hand, a set of ontological assumptions about life or matter and, on the other hand, a politics; no particular ethics or politics follow inevitably from a metaphysics. But the hier· archical logic of God-Mon·Nature implied in a vitalism of soul easily transitions into a political image of a hierarchy of social classes or even civilizations’
(87) ‘For Delay and other soul vitalists. the vital force is a personal rather tban. as for Deiesch and Bergson, an impersonal agency.’
(87-88) ‘Soul vitalism is, in short, more anthropocentric and hierarchical than critical vitalism. Its cosmos is a morally ranked Creation at the top of which God has placed his most vital creature, Man.’ (rest of para goes on to elaborate in this vein)
(89) ‘Driesch fought to dissociate his theory of organic wholes from those for whom vitality was unevenly distributed across peoples. Driesch ultimately defended not only the entelechial equality of all people hut also the possihility that this vitality is shared by all things. He suggests the latter at the end of his The Hi.story and Theory of Vitalism, where he surprises the reader hy rejecting the very life-matter hinary on which he had founded his argument. The universe. he ultimately concludes, is not dead matter sometimes supplemented with organic life. but one big organism, “a something in evolution. All natural becoming is like one zreat embryology.” Every thing is entelechial, life-ly, vitalistic. Driesch ends his defense of vitalism by “destroying” “the [very] difference between ‘mechanism’ and ‘Vitalism/ … which we have established so carefully.”” It is at this point, I would say, that Driesch begins to transition from vitalism to a vital materialism.’
(90) ‘The various figures of free vitality stand as reminders to secular modernists that while we can sure�y intervene in the material world, we are not in charge of it, for there are “foreign” powers about.’
(92) ‘Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal in 1848: “I have no longer any taste for these refinements you call life, but shall dive again into brute matter.”” The vital materialist, too, goes diving there-and finds matter not so brute at all.’
Start of chapter 7 – considering differences between an ecosystem and a political system – explored through Darwin and latour’s worm studies and how these ‘lowly organisms’ are actually hugely important to a formation of a place/ecosystem etc and have the ability to make decisions/have a ‘presence of mind’
(98) ‘Darwin and Latour help make a case for worms as vibrant material ac· tants whose difference &om us may be smaller than we thought. And without worms or aluminum (or edibles or stem cells) and their conative endeavors, it would be difficult if not impossible for humans to exercise our exquisite wills or intentions. It seems both that wonns are ·like” us and that (to use a Kantian formulation) we must posit a certain nonhuman agency as the condition of pOSSibility of human agency.’
(99) ‘In a vital materialism, an anthropomorphic element in perception can uncover a whole world of resonances and resemblances-sounds and sights that echo and bounce far more than would be possible were the universe to have a hierarchical structure. We at first may see only a world in our own image, but what appears next is a swarm of “talented” and vibrant materialities (including the seeing self)’ (probably don’t include but a nice and relevant similarity to EME)
(99) ‘A touch of anthropomorphism, then, can catalyze a sensibility that finds a world filled not with ontologically distinct categories of beings (subjects and objects) but with variously composed materialities that form confederations. In revealing similarities across categorical divides and lighting up structural parallels between material forms in “nature” and those in “culture,” anthropomorphism can reveal isomorphisms.’ – directly after this there is a section on how to play a lute like various different animals that might tie in interestingly to EME?? In the sense of playing the piano like the moon rather than the lute like a crow
(100) ‘Clusters of neurons in a human brain, groupings of buildings in a city, and colonies of slime molds all have been shown to follow similar organizational rules; each is an instance of what Steven Johnson has called “organized complexity.·’’ – very much links to my growth stuff from foundation
Dewey names a (shared?) problem as the cause of a public forming rather than a shared will – acknowledging that publics do not just apply to human bodies?
(102) ‘”The epidermis is only in the most superficial wayan indication of where an organism ends and its environment begins. There are things inside the body that are foreign to it, and there are things outside of it that belong to it de jure if not de facto; that must be taken possession of if life is to continue. The need that is manifest in the urgent impulSions that demand completion through what the environment-and it alone-can supply, is a dynamic acknowledgment of this dependence of the self for wholeness upon its surroundings’ (Dewey in art as experience)
(104) (in concluding that publics and ecosystems are alike:) ‘For while every public may very well be an ecosystem, not every ecosystem is democratic. And I cannot envision any polity so egalitarian that important human needs, such as health or ,”Urvival, would not take priority. Why not? Since I have challenged the uniqueness of humanity in several ways, why not conclude that we and they are equally entitled? Because I have not eliminated all differences between us but examined instead the affinities across these differences, affinities that enable the very assemblages explored in the present book. To put it bluntly, my conatus will not let me “horizontalize” the world completely. I also identify with members of my species, insofar as they are bodies most similar to mine. I so identify even as ] seek to extend awareness of our interinvolvernents and interdependencies. The political goal of a vital materialism is not the perfect equality of actants, but a polity with more channels of communication between members.’ – eme as a channel of communication
(107) ‘But what if we loosened the tie between participation and human language use. encountering the world as a swarm of vibrant materials entering and leaving agentic assemblages? We might then entertain a set of crazy and not-so-crazy questions: Did the typical American diet play any role in engendering the widespread susceptibility to the propaganda leading up to the invasion of Iraq? Do sand storms make a difference to the spread of so-called sectarian violence? Does mercury help enact autism? In what ways does the effect on sensibility of a video game exceed the intentions of its designers and users? Can a hurricane bring down a president? Can HlV mobilize homophobia or an evangelical revival? Can an avian virus jump from birds to humans and create havoc for systems of health care and international trade and travel?’ oi oi
(108) ‘Theories of democracy that assume a world of active subject’ and passive objects begin to appear as thin descriptions at a time when the interactions between human, viral, animal, and technological bodies are becoming more and more intense. If human culture is inextricably enmeshed with vibrant, nonhuman agencies.” and if human intentionality can be agentic only if accompanied by a vast entourage of nonhumans,” then it seems that the appropriate unit of analysiS for democratic theory is neither the individual human nor an exclusively human collective but the (ontologically heterogeneou;) “public’ coalescing around a problem.’
(112) ‘I am a material configuration, the pigeons in the park are material compositions, the viruses, parasites, and heavy metals in my Besh and in pigeon Besb are materialities, as are neurochemicals, hurricane winds, E. coli, and the dust on the Boor. Materiality is a rubric that tends to horizontalize the relations between humans, biota, and abiota. It draws human attention sideways, away from an ontologically ranked Great Chain of Being and toward a greater appreciation of the complex entanglements of humans and nonhumans. Here, the implicit moral imperative of Western thought- “Thou shall identify and defend what is special about Man” – loses some of its salience’
(112) ‘In a world of lively matter, we see that biochemical and biochemical-social systems can sometimes unexpectedly bifurcate or choose developmental paths that could not have been foreseen, for they are governed by an emergent rather than a linear or deterministic causality. And once we see this, we will need an alternative both to the idea of nature as a purposive, harmonious process and to the idea of nature as a blind mechanism. A vital materialism interrupts both the teleolOgical organicism of some ecologiSts and’ – why acknowledging the unexpected actions of matter is important politically – links well to EME
(112) ‘Vital materiality better captures an “alien” quality of our own flesh, and in so doing reminds humans of the very radical character of the (fractious) kinship between the human and the nonhuman. My “own” body is material, and yet this vital materiality is not fully or exclUSively human. My flesh is populated and constituted by different swarms of foreigners. The crook of my elbow, for example, is “a special ecosystem, a bountiful home to no fewer than six tribes of bacteria …. They are helping to moisturize the skin by processing the raw fats it produces …. The bacteria in the human microbiome collectively possess at least 100 times as many geoes as the mere .:1.0,000 or so in the human genome.”S The its outnumber the meso In a world of vibrant matter, it is thus not enough to say that we are “embodied.” We are, rather, an array of bodi.s,’ – good for linking back to the human
End of page 114-115 talks about a simultaneous distancing of the human from nature alongside a deep chemical intermingling that is growing with capitalism – deffo relevant to EME (?? Not 100% sure the relevance but could use to talk about the apparent distance we feel towards other materials vs how we’re actually surrounded/part of?? Idk)
(116) ‘” He, too, rejects any attempt to unstir the erearc from the colIee -to disentangle the cultural from the natural.’
(116-117) ‘picture an ontolOgical field without any unequivocal demarcations between human, animal, vegetable, or mineral’ – page 117 carries this on nicely but honestly I didn’t want to copy paste an entire page oop
(119) describing the structuralism of vital materiality in terms of an ongoing vortex-like movement: ‘6 It is onevortical process, though it can be parsed theoretically into stages: 6rst a “fall” or conative impulse of matter-energy?’ then an aleatory swerve that produces crash encounters between protean bits, then a stage of confused turbulence, then a congealment or crystallization of matter into bodies, then a decay, decline, and dissemination of the form_ And finally: a new fall, a fresh swerve, a different configuration of turbulent forces, another set of formations, a different rate and sequence of decay and decline’
(119) the lack of language to adequately describe and articulate this vital materiality: ‘In composing and recomposing the sentences of this book-especially in trying to choose the appropriate verbs, 1 have come to see how radical a project it is to think vital materiality. It seems necessary and impOSSible to rewrite the default grammar of agency, a grammar that asSigns activity to people and passivity to things’
Anthropomorphism over anthropocentrism: (119-120) ‘One might be to allow oneself, as did Charles Darwin, to anthropomorphize. to relax into resemblances discerned across ontological divides: you (mis)take the wind outside at night for your father’s wheezy breathing in the next room; you get up too fast and see stars; a plastic topographical map reminds you of the veins on the back of your hand; the rhythm of the cicadis reminds you of the wailing of an infant; the falling stone seems to express a conative desire to perse· vere.
(122) vital materiality ‘highlights the common materiality of all’
Anna Harris 