Jane Bennett > Quotes

“A life thus names a restless activeness, a destructive-creative force-presence that does not coincide fully with any specific body. A life tear the fabric of the actual without ever coming fully 'out' in a person, place, or thing. A life points to ... 'matter in variation that enters assemblages and leaves them. A life is a vitality proper not to any individual but to 'pure immanence,' or that protean swarm that is not actual though it is real: 'A life contains only virtuals. It is made of virtualities.”
― Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things

“The pure power of a life can manifest as beatitude, or as an unspeakable, sheer violence...”
― Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things

“Seasoning one’s claims with self-irony and modesty, cultivating a tolerance for moral ambiguity, periodically practicing normative reticence, building up a resistance to the pleasure of purity, minding your own business, doing what you can to forget to wreak vengeance, defending negative freedom even if there is no such thing, and playing around are the best you can do. But that’s quite a lot.”
― Jane Bennett, The Politics of Moralizing

“A lot happens to the concept of agency once nonhuman things are figured less as social constructions and more as actors, and once humans themselves are assessed not as autonoms but as vital materialities.”
― Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things

“Each human is a heterogeneous compound of vibrant matter. If matter itself is lively, then not only is the difference between subjects and objects minimized, but the status of the shared materiality of all things is elevated.

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And in a knotted world of vibrant matter, to harm one section of the web may very well be to harm oneself. Such an enlightened or expanded notion of self-interest is good for humans.”
― Jane Bennett, The Force of Things: Steps Toward an Ecology of Matter

“Agentic capacity is now seen as differentially distributed across a wider range of ontological types. This”
― Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things

“a latent belief in the spontaneity of nature.”
― Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things

“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 HIV 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?”
― Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things

“we are much better at admitting that humans infect nature than we are at admitting that nonhumanity infects culture, for the latter entails the blasphemous idea that nonhumans—trash, bacteria, stem cells, food, metal, technologies, weather—are actants more than objects. Latour”
― Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things

“Why should one bother to criticize what is inevitable or challenge what is omnipotent?”
― Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics.

“Ethical politics requires more than rational demystification.”
― Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics.