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

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.

• Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything
• Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Posthumanities)
• Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning
• The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins
• New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics
• How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human
• Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime
• A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (Forerunners: Ideas First)
• A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
• Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Experimental Futures)