Artistry and Agency in a World of Vibrant Matter | The New School

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Jane Bennett - Powers of the Hoard: Artistry and Agency in a World of Vibrant Matter
How can objects sometimes be vibrant things with an effective presence independent of the words, images, and feelings they may provoke in humans? This question is posed by Political theorist Jane Bennett delivers the inaugural lecture as the Vera List Center for Art and Politics embarks on a two-year exploration of "Thingness," the nature of matter. In the face of virtual realities, social media and disembodied existences, the center's programs will focus on the material conditions of our lives.
Jane Bennet is a professor of Political Science at the Johns Hopkins University. In her latest book Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Duke, 2010), she asks how our politics might approach public concerns were we to seriously consider not just our human experience of things but the things themselves. How is it that things can elide their status as possessions, tools, or aesthetic objects and manifest traces of independence and vitality? Following the tangled threads that link vibrant materialities, human selves, and the "agentic assemblages" they form, Bennett examines what hoarders, people who are preternaturally attuned to "things," can teach us about the agency, causality, and artistry in a world overflowing with stuff. Professor Bennet is a founding member of the journal Theory & Event, and is currently working on a project on over-consumption, new ecologies, and Walt Whitman's materialism.
*Location:Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor Tuesday, September 13, 2011 6:30 p.m.

[@micaelitasignorelli]

Is there any way to have closed captions in this video?

[@walterramirezt]

I love this weman!!!

[@jazw4649]

Henri Bergson Ian Hacking - compulsion Felix Guittari 1. Slowness - the speed of the thing 2. Porosity - in the nature of bodies, pieces of self 3. Inorganic Sympathy Walter Benjamin 34min Roland Barts - Advenience Man is the measure of all things Fault in Gramar against Pragmatic

[@g4n4y4]

@NicolaCasetti maybe the work of Karen Barad "Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning" can help you!

[@mrhidiho]

WTF?!? Comic Sans?!?

[@abradidea]

Exposed her own inane banality by using Comic Sans MS🤣

[@garrulus3399]

I was looking for this comment.

[@petatwin]

How does this actually matter?

[@St67678]

Interesting lecture. I also find her books to be quite good. But her brand of "new materialism" always seems a bit sloppy to me. For instance, in this lecture JB insists on moving beyond subject-object and human-thing dichotomies in an effort to explore the vital and interpenetrating relationships (Barad's intra-actions) between people and things. Fine. Then JB states that we need to "return to the things... the power of things... away from human culture... to artificially bracket that off... to see thing power." This seems to be a reiteration of Husserl's project to divest our perception of the world of the "natural attitude." But in framing the project in this way, JB returns to a dichotomy between human and object (here phrased as culture-to-be-bracketed and thing) that she sought out to question. Furthermore, the hoarder project seems focused solely on what the hoarder says about the things in their hoard. Why focus on discourses? Why not observe and do actual fieldwork instead of just watching an edited TV show?

[@Collectorp123]

St67678 What you have pointed out is a naive/ingenuine contradiction. Her form of Vibrant materialism is derived ultimately from Deleuze: the philosopher who tried to fit all classical 'contradictions' into his own concepts (Monism=Pluralism, Rhizome, animal and human). How is this version of materialism any more sloppy than the rediculously meticulous systems that have been constructed alongside it in recent years?

[@St67678]

I wrote a comment about JB. Not about the new materialism from which she draws, which is also sloppy in my opinion. My comment stands: she should've done fieldwork to learn how this process and this human-thing relationship works. I'm not sure how that's a "naïve/ingenuine" comment, but you obviously thought that making such a statement about another's (obviously informed) opinion was somehow worthwhile? KZbin comments are a form of interaction, even if distant, anonymous, and seemingly detached. Please try to respect other points of view -- in this case, interestingly, I don't even disagree with you. I've read Deleuze and find his work to be rather boring, and if prefer if it were grounded in empirical insights. And yes, yes, I'm aware that such a call for empirical insights is not the project of these "new materialists." But what if it were? Would be interesting to me. Cheers!

[@St67678]

And yes, I know Deleuze is not a new materialist... But I don't edit responses to KZbin on my phone, while at the airport, drinking a beer. Please forgive the misstatement. The point being: one cannot understand how things affect human social affairs by applying an approach that brackets "culture" to only understand "things," then relies on people's comments about things to study those things. It's just so absurd!!

[@Collectorp123]

St67678 Sorry if my comment sounded aggressive, I respect your viewpoint. Its just that she's doing theory quite obviously; not science. Theorists have to take many blatant contradictions in their stride, while the scientists who do specialized work follow up with emperical verification (if they choose). It's a reciprocal relationship between theorists and specialists. And I'm glad we still have people like her, who are engaged in the soft sciences of academia, because I'm sure without these 'merely speculative' types, everything would be taken over by the global-communications people in order to pump out more mechanics and publicly useless business management tools in no time.

[@St67678]

I agree that there is this distinction between theory and empirical research in many universities and among many book publishers. Of course, that distinction is relatively recent and not necessary. And there are many discussions that do both -- e.g., anthropology. But that's beside the point: speculation is fine. My critique was more about how she advocates research to take into account the power of things, then focuses on hoarders as a human-thing entanglement, and then uses "things that hoarders say" as her major line of evidence. That is just not logical. Would be more interesting to talk about the things hoarded... Anyway this has been fun.

[@dunsscotus9112]

the question an hour and a minute in is such bs lmaooooo

[@Alyosha84]

Sadly, after BenJamin (that should be pronounced as Benyamin), I needed to abandon this video. I have suffered from BErgson (instead of BergSON) for almost an hour. The arrogance of American academia, no other explanation. That much of "the linguistic" even one fine new materialist could keep in her focus. While I don't hate this lecture, these sticky materialities resonated with me as signals of a tired-imperial babble rather than some real epistemological step forward. Too bad.

[@Oops-All-Ghosts]

What

[@arugula_fan]

Hahahaahahahahahah

[@meee272]

@@arugula_fan Hahahaahahahahahah

[@brett1354]

Does Ms Bennett have a favorite coffee cup? Is there no object in her life which, if that thing was broken, would cause her a great deal of distress? We are here to connect - one human imperative - and who's to say (up to the point where black mold intrudes) any such connection is unhealthy? We don't need Spinoza to understand being human and I've never heard so much seless elaboration and I especially don't like the way she assumes it's OK to elevate bourgeois "virtue" over our inherent humanity. Thumbs down.