Vibrant Matter - The Force of Things

VIBRANT MATTER - THE FORCE OF THINGS BY JANE BENNET
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Material resistance

Cultural forms are themselves powerful, material assemblages with resistant force

-->> [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 a metaphysics of that never objectifiable depth from which objects rise up toward our superficial knowledge

strives impulse to persevere in its own being

active impulsion

every nonhuman body shares with every human body a ‘conative (additional)’ nature

any thing will always be able to persist in existing with that same force whereby it begins to exist, so that in this respect all things are equal

thing-power

the absolute (the concept of an unconditional reality which transcends limited, conditional, everyday existence)

intangible (unable to be touched) and imponderable (impossible to estimate)

that which tends to loosen its ties to existing contexts

the absolute is that which is loosened off and on the loose

detached or radically free from representation, and thus no-thing at all

in the presence of the absolute, we cannot know. It is from human thinking that the absolute has detached: the absolute names the limits of intelligibility (ease of understanding)

The notion of thing-power aims instead to attend to the it as actant (something playing in the narrative).

the moment of independence from subjectivity is impossible to name

Possessed by things, a moment that must be there, since things do in fact affect other bodies, enhancing or weakening their power

Impulsive and unpredictable -> vibrant matter

I caught glimpse of an energetic vitality inside each of these things, things that I generally conceived as ‘inert’ (lacking ability to move). Objects appeared as things, that is, as vivid entities not entirely reducible to the contexts in which (human) subjects set them

Our gaze, prompted by the experience of our own body, will discover in all other objects the miracle of expression

A vital materiality can never really be thrown away, for it continues its activities even as a discarded or unwanted commodity

Thing-power: the curious ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, to produce effects dramatic and subtle

Inorganic (non-living) matter can ‘self-organize’

-->>Wifi is inorganic matter

The different combinations into which entities derived from the previous processes may enter - > infrastructure

This insight into matters inherent creativity needs to be fully incorporated into our new materialist philosophies

‘actant’, recall is Bruno latours term for a source of action; an actant can be human or not, or, most likely, a combination of both

‘actant’ and ‘operator’ are substitute words for what in a more subject centered vocabulary are called agents

Ontological types (nature of being)

Deodand – a gift for God

It is easy to acknowledge that humans are composed of various material parts (the minerality of our bones, or, the metal of our blood, or the electricity of our neurons). 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

The thing eludes capture by the concept, that there is always a ‘nonidentity’ between it and any representation

What we may call the thing itself is not positively and immediately at hand. He who wants to know it must think more, not less

Nonidentity is the name adorno gives to that which is not subject to knowledge but is instead ‘heterogeneous’ to all concepts

"objects do not go into their concepts without leaving a remainder" and thus that life will always exceed our knowledge and control

[A second technique of the pedagogy is to exercise ones utopian imagination. The negative dialectician should imaginateviley re-create what has beem obscured by the distortion of conceptualization: the means employed in negative dialects for the penetration of its hardened objects is possibility – the possibility of which their reality has cheated the objects and which is nonetheless visible in each one]

A third technique is to admit a ‘playful element’ into ones thinking and to be willing to play the fool

Adorno struggles to describe a force that is material in its resistance to human concepts but spiritual in so far as it might be a dark promise of an absolute-to-come

So-called inanimate things have a life, that deep within is an inexplicable vitality or energy, a moment of independency from and resistance to us and other bodies, a kind of thing power