Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (ed.): Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects (2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · actor-network theory, animal, ecology, ethics, materialism, nature, object, posthumanism, things
Animal, Mineral, Vegetable examines what happens when we cease to assume that only humans exert agency. Through a careful examination of medieval, early modern and contemporary lifeworlds, these essays collectively argue against ecological anthropocentricity. Sheep, wolves, camels, flowers, chairs, magnets, landscapes, refuse and gems are more than mere objects. They act; they withdraw; they make demands; they connect within lively networks that might foster a new humanism, or that might proceed with indifference towards human affairs. Through what ethics do we respond to these activities and forces? To what futures do these creatures and objects invite us, especially when they appear within the texts and cultures of the “distant” past?
Contents: Jeffrey J. Cohen (George Washington University): “Introduction: All Things” – Karl Steel (Brooklyn College): “With the World, or Bound to Face the Sky: The Postures of the Wolf-Child of Hesse” – Sharon Kinoshita (University of California, Santa Cruz): “Animals and the Medieval Culture of Empire” – Peggy McCracken (University of Michigan): “The Floral and the Human” – Kellie Robertson (University of Wisconsin-Madison): “Exemplary Rocks” – Valerie Allen (John Jay College of Criminal Justice): “Mineral Virtue” – Eileen Joy (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville): “You Are Here: A Manifesto” – Julian Yates (University of Delaware): “Sheep Tracks: Multi-Species Impressions” – Julia Reinhard Lupton (University of California, Irvine): “The Renaissance Res Publica of Things” – Jane Bennett (Johns Hopkins University): “Powers of the Hoard: Further Notes on Material Agency”
Response essays: Lowell Duckert, “Speaking Stones, John Muir, and a Slower (Non)humanities” – Nedda Mehdizadeh, “‘Ruinous Monument’: Transporting Objects in Herbert’s Persepolis” – Jonathan Gil Harris, “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Twenty Questions”
Publisher Oliphaunt Books, Washington, DC, an imprint of punctum books, May 2012
ISBN 0615625355, 9780615625355
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
310 pages
PDF (updated on 2013-10-12)
Comments (3)E. F. Schumacher: A Guide for the Perplexed (1978)
Filed under book | Tags: · knowledge, mind, philosophy, science, technology, things
The author of the world wide best-seller, Small Is Beautiful, now tackles the subject of Man, the World, and the Meaning of Living. Schumacher writes about man’s relation to the world. man has obligations — to other men, to the earth, to progress and technology, but most importantly himself. If man can fulfill these obligations, then and only then can he enjoy a real relationship with the world, then and only then can he know the meaning of living.
Schumacher says we need maps: a “map of knowledge” and a “map of living.” The concern of the mapmaker–in this instance, Schumacher–is to find for everything it’s proper place. Things out of place tend to get lost; they become invisible and there proper places end to be filled by other things that ought not be there at all and therefore serve to mislead.
A Guide for the Perplexed teaches us to be our own map makers. This constantly surprising, always stimulating book will be welcomed by a large audience, including the many new fans who believe strongly in what Schumacher has to say.
Publisher Jonathan Cape Ltd, Great Britain, 1977
ABACUS edition published in 1978 by Sphere Books Ltd, London
ISBN 0349131309
165 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-15)
Comment (1)Jane Bennett: Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · assemblage, ecology, environment, nature, philosophy, political ecology, politics, things, vital materialism
“In Vibrant Matter the political theorist Jane Bennett, renowned for her work on nature, ethics, and affect, shifts her focus from the human experience of things to things themselves. Bennett argues that political theory needs to do a better job of recognizing the active participation of nonhuman forces in events. Toward that end, she theorizes a “vital materiality” that runs through and across bodies, both human and nonhuman. Bennett explores how political analyses of public events might change were we to acknowledge that agency always emerges as the effect of ad hoc configurations of human and nonhuman forces. She suggests that recognizing that agency is distributed this way, and is not solely the province of humans, might spur the cultivation of a more responsible, ecologically sound politics: a politics less devoted to blaming and condemning individuals than to discerning the web of forces affecting situations and events.
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.”
Publisher Duke University Press, 2010
John Hope Franklin Center Book series
ISBN 0822346338, 9780822346333
200 pages
interview (Peter Gratton)
the book’s reading group: announcement, wrap-up, final overview
PDF, PDF (thanks to esco_bar; updated on 2012-7-25)
Comment (1)