[EN] Jane Bennett - Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2020)

 

This text began as a personal inquiry and a process of reading, and was developed through sustained engagement and dialogue with ChatGPT.

“Whatever the case, all things—whether more or less perfect—possess, by virtue of their existence, an equal power to persist in being; in this respect, all things are equal.” Spinoza suggests that “even a falling stone strives to continue its motion within itself.”

Jane Bennett does not regard the world as a mere background to human intention. Nonhuman materials—such as wires, food, waste, metals, animals, electricity, and wind—also possess their own force and agency. For her, matter is not passive substance but an active participant in events, a “vibrant matter” that co-produces reality alongside humans.

“The sentences in this book emerge not only from ‘my’ memory, intention, and judgment, but also from my gut flora, my liver, my blood sugar, as well as from the plastic keyboard, the birdsong entering through an open window, and the air and particulates in the room. The content of these pages is a collective composed of animal, vegetable, mineral, and vocal elements that exercise a certain degree of enduring power. In other words, what unfolds here is what Deleuze and Guattari call an assemblage.”

Extending this insight reveals that the way we experience the world is not the product of a singular subject. Experience is never constituted solely by human intention. Air, material, space, machines, bodies, and environmental conditions interact to produce events.

How, then, do we experience today? I believe that although modern individuals are surrounded by an abundance of stimuli, what we are actually able to perceive is steadily diminishing. Urban environments, automated systems, and algorithms constantly occupy our attention. We believe we are choosing, but in reality, we are often following preconfigured flows. Signals that fail to elicit a response within seconds disappear, and anything lacking immediate stimulation is deemed insignificant. Sensation is reduced from experience to reaction.

In this context, what might be called “micro-sensation” becomes both a practice and a political stance. Contemporary capitalism commodifies attention. Within a system that privileges shorter, faster, and more intense stimuli, micro-sensation lingers with weak signals and resists rapid transitions. It is an attempt to reclaim attention, as well as a subtle resistance to anthropocentric modes of perception.

Moreover, this mode of sensing reveals that we are not singular, autonomous subjects. Platform interfaces, technological devices, environmental conditions, and bodily states all organize experience. Before we are perceiving subjects, we are already entities operating within a network of relations. Micro-sensation brings these nonhuman elements back into awareness.

This should not be mistaken for a matter of refined taste or sensitivity. Rather, it is an attitude that recognizes the materiality of experience. No phenomenon arises from a single cause; it emerges from assemblages of materials, environments, temporalities, and bodies. What we experience is always the result of these complex relations.

This structure extends beyond perception itself. It operates equally in the most basic acts of everyday life—eating and dressing.

For Nietzsche and Thoreau, eating was a site of bidirectional encounter between the human body and the nonhuman world. Tea, coffee, vegetables, beer, berries, fish, marmots, Thoreau’s austere body, Nietzsche’s fragile body—all possess varying degrees of vital force.

To eat is not merely to choose food. It involves soil, climate, seasonality, distribution networks, labor, tools, and the social relations of the table. Choosing local or seasonal ingredients is less an expression of moral superiority than a way of perceiving these material networks more clearly.

Dressing functions similarly. The consumption of clothing is not simply a matter of preference, but is tied to cycles of production and disposal, the materiality of textiles, traces of labor, and structures of circulation. Choosing to reuse what already exists becomes a subtle intervention in these flows.

However, the moment we attempt to define certain practices as more ethical, we fall into the same trap. Within this system, no choice exists entirely outside of it. We remain embedded within the same material conditions.

Thus, what matters is not what we choose, but how we perceive the networks in which we are already entangled. This mode of awareness is not confined to any single domain, but can extend across the entirety of life.

Of course, such awareness does not immediately transform structures. Individual practices are easily absorbed and commodified by the market. Therefore, this is less a form of transformation than a condition that enables us to perceive change.

It is also important to recognize the risk of generalizing this mode of perception as a universal norm. What constitutes stability for one person may provoke anxiety for another. Perception is not singular, but plural—emerging from different bodies and environments.

“Recognize that the environment is actually inside the human body and mind, and that it advances within you—politically, technically, scientifically—in everyday life, demanding careful tolerance. Abandon the futile attempt to separate the human from the nonhuman. Instead, strive to engage more respectfully, strategically, and attentively with the nonhuman elements within the assemblages in which you participate.

The health of the planet increasingly depends on human intervention, and the day may come when large-scale programs are established to regulate the balance of oxygen, ozone, and carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere… To seek a pure nature untouched by humanity is futile, just as it is foolish to define the self as purely human. But how can I begin to feel myself as something other than human? Guattari proposes that one way to cultivate this new self is through the development of a ‘transversal’ mode of thinking.”

Even so, why must we speak of such awareness now? Because the scarcest resources today are not only economic, but attentional and perceptual. We are too easily interrupted, too rapidly shifting, and increasingly conditioned by stronger stimuli. In this context, remaining with subtle differences, sensing variations within repetition, and recognizing events co-produced by material and environment allow us to experience the world with greater density.

In conclusion, this is not a matter of any single sense. It is an attitude that reorients how we perceive our relationship with the world. The world is already a collection of vibrant materials, and we are always moving within it. What matters is not making better choices, but beginning to perceive what has always already been in operation.