Description
In influx & efflux Jane Bennett pursues a question that was bracketed in her book Vibrant Matter: how to think about human agency in a world teeming with powerful nonhuman influences? "Influx & efflux"--a phrase borrowed from Whitman's "Song of Myself"--refers to everyday movements whereby outside influences enter bodies, infuse and confuse their organization, and then exit, themselves having been transformed into something new. How to describe the human efforts involved in that process? What kinds of "I" and "we" can live well and act effectively in a world of so many other lively materialities? Drawing upon Whitman, Thoreau, Caillois, Whitehead, and other poetic writers, Bennett links a nonanthropocentric model of self to a radically egalitarian pluralism and also to a syntax and style of writing appropriate to the entangled world in which we live. The book tries to enact the uncanny process by which we "write up" influences that pervade, enable, and disrupt us.
Author: Jane Bennett
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 05/01/2020
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.67lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.47d
ISBN13: 9781478008309
ISBN10: 147800830X
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | American | General
- Political Science | History & Theory | General
- Philosophy | Political
About the Author
Jane Bennett is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University and author of, most recently, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, also published by Duke University Press.