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Book review forum: Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things

Christian Abrahamsson
Dialogues in Human Geography 2011 1: 399
DOI: 10.1177/204382061100100308

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Book review forum
politics of collectives and gatherings that we need to
work out. In the Macondo case it might even start to
provide the tools to tease apart the Big Oil assem-
blage, to locate the tensions and cracks that exist in
something not quite so coherent as a system or
sphere of activity. To be sure, the point would not
be to find the old divides (between human and
non-human, between active and passive or even
between economic and environmental), but to iden-
tify the spatial arrangements and powers that are
continuously being made as contracts are drawn
up, markets are established, and materials are tested
and retested in laboratories, in models and in the
field. This is not, then, an either/or of discrete agents
versus distributed actions. There is a geography of
thing power and action. To this reader, at least,
Reviewed by: Christian Abrahamsson, Wagenin-
gen University, The Netherlands
There is no doubt that Jane Bennett has written an
interesting book, since what she asks for is, pre-
cisely, the inter-of-esse, the in-between of being;
or, more precisely, how we are connected to the
world and the world connected to us. A betwixt,
in-between, space where neither the I of the subject
nor the it of the object takes precedence. A space
perfectly captured in Michel Serres’ notion of noise:
it [noise] moves through the means and the tools of
observation, whether material or logical, hardware
or software, constructed channels or languages; it is
part of the in-itself, part of the for-itself; it cuts
across the oldest and surest philosophical divisions,
yes, noise is meta-physical. (Serres, 1995: 13)
Bennett’s focus on this in-between makes this a
difficult book to engage with; difficult, in part,
because it moves in several directions, productively
engaging with topics as diverse as blackouts, omega-
3 fatty-acids, metallurgy, Henri Bergson’s élan vital,
Hans Driesch’s entelechy and the ecological thought
of Félix Guattari; but also because its claims are
simultaneously modest and highly ambitious since
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399
Bennett provides a depth to and promotes a broaden-
ing of arguments regarding the powers of things. The
possibility is that, once we have the courage to run
with vibrant matters, this can spark ethnographically
informed interventions in a more-than-relational
onto-politics.
References
Ingold T (2008) Bringing things to life: Creative entan-
glements in a world of materials. Unpublished manu-
script, Department of Anthropology, University of
Aberdeen.
Klein N (2010) A hole in the world. The Guardian, 29
June.
Newell L (2011) Rubbish politics in Buenos Aires.
Unpublished doctoral thesis, Open University.
what it is searching for is nothing less than a passage
through which a vital materialism can enchant the
contemporary forms of the political. In attempting
to accomplish this passage, Vibrant Matter is part
of a body of work that tries to take seriously the chal-
lenges that matter poses to the anthropocentric
sciences in general and to the political in particular.
I am thinking here particularly of Bruno Latour’s
‘parliament of things’, Isabelle Stengers’ ‘cosmopo-
litics’, Henri Atlan’s ‘spermatic knowledge’ and
Michel Serres’ ‘natural contract’.
What makes it a difficult book for me is also the
fact that, in Bennett’s words, the book is a ‘kind of
Nicene Creed for would-be materialists’. A creed
she formulates thus:
I believe in one matter-energy, the maker of things
seen and unseen. I believe that this pluriverse is tra-
versed by heterogeneities that are continually
doing things. I believe it is wrong to deny vitality
to non-human bodies, forces, and forms, and that
a careful course of anthropomorphization can help
reveal that vitality, even though it resists full trans-
lation and exceeds my comprehensive grasp.
I believe that encounters with lively matter can
chasten my fantasies of human mastery, highlight
the common materiality of all that is, expose a
wider distribution of agency, and reshape the self
and its interests. (p. 122)
400
Although the religious connotation may be hard
to digest, I find the connection to the Nicene Creed
interesting as it was precisely the interesting status
of Jesus Christ that the bishops voted on in AD
325. Was he a man or a god? Or, precisely, some-
thing in-between matter and meaning, not an
either/or but a both-and (Olsson, 2007: 332).
Bennett describes her project as primarily phi-
losophical, though with a political corollary. The
fact that the book primarily works on the level of
ontology creates a lacuna. A lacuna that I see as
connected to primarily the question of how his-
torically vitalist thought has interwoven with
political thought. I want to argue that this lacuna
is connected directly to what I see as the partial
genealogy of vitalism Bennett outlines in the
book. This is a crucial point and one that I think
needs to be addressed, even though, as Bennett
claims, this version of vitalism is different from
antecedent forms of vitalism.
In relation to this it is fascinating to notice the
similarities or elective affinities between the
Weltanschauung of the late 19th century and con-
temporary concerns around matter, life, ecology,
immanence, environment and evolution, even
though the ways these obsessions resonate within
political and social discourses are of course dif-
ferent. In the chapter ‘Neither vitalism nor
mechanism’, Bennett gives us a short history of
previous attempts to formulate a lexicon of vital
materialism. Her examples are the biophiloso-
phies, or perhaps more accurately Lebensphiloso-
phie, of Hans Driesch and Henri Bergson.
Bennett concludes that neither Driesch nor Berg-
son give sufficient attention to matter itself. My
argument is not with Bennett’s description of
Driesch or Bergson but rather with what I see
as a missed opportunity to discuss the potentially
problematic ethical and political consequences
that come with translating vitalist thought into
political thought. I am surprised that Bennett
does not with one word mention the multitude
of examples that can be found in the social and
political thought of the late 19th century and
early 20th century where such attempts were
legion – e.g. Gustave Le Bon, Jacob von Uex-
küll, Friedrich Ratzel, Herbert Spencer, Houston
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Dialogues in Human Geography 1(3)
Stewart Chamberlain, Konrad Lorenz and Gabriel
Tarde. This is problematic precisely because of
the explanatory power such translations gained
and the effects they subsequently came to have.
It is also problematic from the point of view that
some of these thinkers are being resuscitated
within contemporary social theory, often being
transposed to contemporary debates without con-
sideration of the particular political and social
contexts in which their thinking was developed
– consider particularly von Uexküll (Harrington,
1996: 48–71).
Here I want to draw specific attention to the geo-
grapher Friedrich Ratzel and his concept of Lebens-
raum. I am not arguing that Bennett should have
engaged specifically with Ratzel. Rather, I see in Rat-
zel an example – or perhaps an object lesson – of how
ecology, biology and politics become intertwined in
ways that do not necessarily foster a progressive pol-
itics. In this sense I also want to draw attention to a dif-
ferent history of vitalist thought than does Bennett
with her more sympathetic examples of Bergson and
Driesch, who both came out on the right side of his-
tory, so to speak. I also think it is important for the
geographers who will come to draw on Bennett’s
work not to forget that geography has a long and often
problematic history of drawing together the ecologi-
cal and the political. Ratzel’s most developed descrip-
tion of the concept of Lebensraum can be found in his
short 1901 text ‘Der Lebensraum: Eine biogeogra-
phische Studie’, though it had been present in his
work throughout the 1890s (Ratzel, 1901, 1898; see
also Rössler, 1990). Lebensraum was for Ratzel, first
and foremost, a concept that gathered together the
biological, geographical and anthropological condi-
tions of a given environment. As a concept it tried
to theorize the biological changes within a delimited
area as well as to describe the relationship between the
living species and the particular environment.
Although Ratzel came to be viewed as an environ-
mental determinist within the Anglo-Saxon literature
it is worth pointing out, as Woodruff Smith has done,
that ‘Ratzel believed that the only ‘‘laws’’ that could
be applied to [Lebensraum] were complex, probabil-
istic and very un-Newtonian statements of general
tendency’ (Smith, 1980: 52; see also Canguilhem,
2008: 98–120). What singles out Ratzel’s concept
Book review forum
is, of course, its subsequent translation into and
deployment in Nazi-geopolitics, a development that
Ratzel could not have foreseen nor influenced since
he died in 1904 (though see Danielsson, 2009). Nev-
ertheless it is important to consider the question of
how a specific scientific geographical imagination
became intertwined with, on one hand, a specific bio-
logical imagination and, on the other, a specific polit-
ical imagination gathered or drawn together under the
holistic concept of Lebensraum.
My question to Bennett here is simple, though I
think central, particularly in the absence of the nor-
mative implications of her political ecology of
things (p. 122). What are the potential consequences
that come with her brand of vital materialism? I
believe that this is a question that needs to be
addressed, in particular when we consider the actual
appropriation of Driesch’s vitalism for purposes that
he actively worked against (p. 69; see further Harring-
ton, 1996: 189–190). This is of course always a risk
that comes with speculative thought, but if the aim
is to reconfigure, invent or create ‘the right mood or
landscape of affect’ (p. xii) then the question inevita-
bly arises: can we simply disregard the moods and
affective landscapes of antecedent forms of vitalism
(see, for example, Dahl, 2006; Theweleit, 1987)? To
be sure, there are risks with a disenchanted world, but
there are also risks with a re-enchanted romantic
Weltanschauung. Here I think it is relevant to consider
that:
There is nothing ‘natural’ about the political
imperatives people at different times hear in nature.
We are both creators and consumers of the stories
we ask the natural world to tell us about how we
should live our lives; and, working within the con-
straints imposed by our partial knowledge of things
both natural and political, we may make honest
choices about what we would like to hear.
(Harrington, 1996: 206)
I want to end this short commentary by highlight-
ing a number of broader concerns and questions that
I see emanating in part from Bennett’s book but also
from contemporary geographical work on biogeo-
graphy and the politics of affect. As I have already
claimed, there are strong affinities between the
world-view of the late 19th century and our
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401
contemporary investment in ecological thought.
Given these affinities there is a need to be very care-
ful when we translate theories and imaginations,
particularly if the aim is to create new dispositions,
affects and moods.
I am largely sympathetic to Bennett’s project.
My criticism is directed against Bennett’s ‘naı̈ve
materialism’. I argue that, even though such a
naı̈veté is commendable, it is highly problematic
given the long and often far from unproblematic
history of intertwining political and vitalist
thought. I am not convinced that Bennett has suf-
ficiently worked through the potential risks that
come with disavowing the I and avowing the it.
Perhaps it is a risk that she does not need to
address. Here I think there is much work to be
done, particularly if we are to navigate the path
between affirmation and resentment. Finally, I
think that a lot of work in this direction has been
undertaken already (Netz, 2004; Petryna, 2002;
Taussig, 2004); work that Bennett’s book would
have benefited from engaging with, though that
would perhaps have undermined the ‘naı̈ve mate-
rialism’ that she tries to conjure.
References
Canguilhem G (2008) Knowledge of Life, translated by
Geroulanos S and Ginsburg D. New York: Fordham
University Press.
Dahl G (2006) Radikalare än Hitler: De Esoteriska och
Gröna Nazisterna: Inspirationska¨llor, Pionjärer, För-
valtare, A¨ttlingar. Stockholm: Atlantis.
Danielsson S (2009) Creating genocidal spaces: Geogra-
phers and the discourse of annihilation, 1880–1833.
Space and Polity 13: 55–68.
Harrington A (1996) Reenchanted Science: Holism in
German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Netz R (2004) Barbed Wire: An Ecology of Modernity.
Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Olsson G (2007) Abysmal: A Critique of Cartographic
Reason. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Petryna A (2002) Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after
Chernobyl. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ratzel F (1898) Über den Lebensraum, eine biogeogra-
pische Skizze. Die Umschau 21: 363–367.
402
Ratzel F (1901) Der Lebensraum: Eine biogeograpische
Studie. Stuttgart.
Rössler M (1990) Wissenschaft und Lebensraum: Geo-
grapische Ostforschung im Nationalsozialismus.
Hamburg: Dietrich Reimer Verlag.
Serres M (1995) Genesis, translated by James G and Niel-
son J. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Reviewed by: Nicky Gregson, University of Shef-
field, UK
In the preface to Vibrant Matter Jane Bennett
describes her project as both philosophical and
political. It is to think slowly of the idea of matter,
not as passive or inert but as lively, animate, vital;
as vitality. It is to think too how political analyses
might change if non-humans, as capacities, forces,
and material configurations, are admitted as active
agents. In that respect, in her regard for dead rats,
plastic bottle caps, landfills, stem cells, electricity
blackouts, omega oils and metals, and the distribu-
tive agency of assemblages, or confederations of the
human and non-human, Bennett’s project joins with
the core concerns of Bruno Latour, Karen Barad,
Donna Haraway, Andrew Pickering, Tim Ingold,
John Law, Annemarie Mol, to name but a few. Yet
these authors are not her key interlocutors. Rather,
her touchstones are: Spinoza, Thoreau, Lucretius,
Nietzsche, Bergson, Driesch, Deleuze. That, I think,
matters to the becoming of her project. How?
First, it positions this volume as primarily a phi-
losophical project. Indeed, much of the book pays
homage to Spinoza, to Thoreau and Lucretius, as
well as offering an exploration of the early 20th-
century vitalisms of Driesch’s entelechy and Berg-
son’s élan vital. In meticulously tracing the arcs and
genealogy of vitalist thought, though, Bennett casts
more-than-human vitality primarily as the idea of a
vital materiality. Matter here is transformed to
thought. Even while it admits the vitality of the
world-that-is-not-human, vitality becomes caught
within the human will to know. Adorno said as
much – a point which exercises Bennett but which
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Dialogues in Human Geography 1(3)
Smith Woodruff D (1980) Friedrich Ratzel and the origins
of Lebensraum. German Studies Review 3: 51–68.
Taussig M (2004) My Cocaine Museum. Chicago, IL: The
University of Chicago Press.
Theweleit K (1987) Male Fantasies Volume 1: Women,
Floods, Bodies, History, translated by Stephen Con-
way. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
she can only sidestep by invoking the ‘more-than-
human’ human, or the human as thing-power. But
more than this: in charting the philosophical course
of vitalist thought and in meditating on that thought,
Bennett historicizes vitality. And so, the opportunity
to think through the rich tapestry of the current vital-
ist conjuncture is lost. I think that matters – not least
because what the history of vitalist thought shows is
not just its marginality to what Bennett describes as
‘theory done in the anthropocentric style’ but its
vulnerability to the power of dominant styles of the-
orizing – or, said another way, that earlier vitalisms
were sidelined from the main action by the main
action. But here, in the current moment, through
an alignment of the array of current work that seeks
to admit the varyingly denoted ‘non-human’, ‘more-
than-human’ world, is surely the opportunity to
assemble that work, to work across its differences
and distinctions, to collaborate, to ensure that, this
time, the friction that is vitalist thinking sticks. That
requires an intellectual politics that moves beyond
the one; an alignment of contemporaries more than
the drawing of a philosophical lineage.
Second, vitality here becomes a philosopher’s
vitalism. In Vibrant Matter, matter’s capacities are
acknowledged but the manner of their acknowled-
ging takes a very particular form. So, animate things
are noticed, and their potential to be articulated as
heterogeneous relations is admitted, but the encoun-
ter with stuff is invariably superficial and largely
visual. Matter or things are glanced at, noticed in the
street, like dead rats, or discarded bottle tops, but the
encounter itself is of the dislocated witness, transi-
ent; their viewing more the trigger for either medita-
tion or conceptual thought than to doing things with
things. What this kind of philosophical vitalism