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Other Things
From the pencil to the puppet to the drone—the humanities and the social sciences continue to ride a wave of interest in material culture and the world of things. How should we understand the force and figure of that wave as it shapes different disciplines? Other Things explores this question by considering a wide assortment of objects—from beach glass to cell phones, sneakers to skyscrapers—that have fascinated a range of writers and artists, including Virginia Woolf, Man Ray, Spike Lee, and Don DeLillo.
The book ranges across the literary, visual, and plastic arts to depict the curious lives of things. Beginning with Achilles’s Shield, then tracking the object/thing distinction as it appears in the work of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Lacan, Bill Brown ultimately focuses on the thingness disclosed by specific literary and artistic works. Combining history and literature, criticism and theory, Other Things provides a new way of understanding the inanimate object world and the place of the human within it, encouraging us to think anew about what we mean by materiality itself.
The book ranges across the literary, visual, and plastic arts to depict the curious lives of things. Beginning with Achilles’s Shield, then tracking the object/thing distinction as it appears in the work of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Lacan, Bill Brown ultimately focuses on the thingness disclosed by specific literary and artistic works. Combining history and literature, criticism and theory, Other Things provides a new way of understanding the inanimate object world and the place of the human within it, encouraging us to think anew about what we mean by materiality itself.
448 pages, Paperback
First published October 22, 2015
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 15, 2025
I am not entirely sure that the Bill Brown who Goodreads claims is the author is actually the author of Other Things. No matter...
I had put off reading this curious, ambitious and electic monograph for several years because I had (wrongly!) assumed it was just a reprint of various articles Brown had written over the decade or two following his formative work on Thing Theory.
However, much of those articles are significantly and productively reworked here! I actually think Brown has grown more nimble and sophisticated as a philosopher and literary critic, especially when it comes to the nuances of navigating the object-subject relationship. He is sympathetic to the projects of Latour and Graham Harman, while clear-sighted in addressing the dangers and limitations of their flattened ontologies.
I still feel as though Film Studies scholars have neglected Brown (and materialist culture studies more broadly) to the discipline's severe detriment.
Arguably in the wake of climate and biodiversity collapse, the genocide in Gaza, the continuing malevolent racism of the West, the deprivations and humiliations of Neoliberalism, and the fact that many Gen Z men and boys seem to regard Patrick Bateman as some kind of role model, Bill Brown's work can seem a little rareified or indulgent... However, I cling to the idea that there is something revolutionary in upending the Enlightenment's most cherished binary between subject and object.
I had put off reading this curious, ambitious and electic monograph for several years because I had (wrongly!) assumed it was just a reprint of various articles Brown had written over the decade or two following his formative work on Thing Theory.
However, much of those articles are significantly and productively reworked here! I actually think Brown has grown more nimble and sophisticated as a philosopher and literary critic, especially when it comes to the nuances of navigating the object-subject relationship. He is sympathetic to the projects of Latour and Graham Harman, while clear-sighted in addressing the dangers and limitations of their flattened ontologies.
I still feel as though Film Studies scholars have neglected Brown (and materialist culture studies more broadly) to the discipline's severe detriment.
Arguably in the wake of climate and biodiversity collapse, the genocide in Gaza, the continuing malevolent racism of the West, the deprivations and humiliations of Neoliberalism, and the fact that many Gen Z men and boys seem to regard Patrick Bateman as some kind of role model, Bill Brown's work can seem a little rareified or indulgent... However, I cling to the idea that there is something revolutionary in upending the Enlightenment's most cherished binary between subject and object.
Displaying 1 of 1 review