Jane Bennett | |
---|---|
Born | 31 July 1957 |
Nationality | American |
Education | Siena College University of Massachusetts |
Era | Contemporary philosophy |
Region | Western philosophy |
School | Continental philosophy Speculative realism [1] New materialism |
Institutions | Johns Hopkins University School of Arts and Sciences |
Main interests | Political philosophy |
Notable ideas | Vibrant matter, new materialism |
Jane Bennett (born July 31, 1957) [2] is an American political theorist and philosopher. She is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at the Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University School of Arts and Sciences. [3] She was also the editor of the academic journal Political Theory between 2012 and 2017. [4] [5]
Jane Bennett originally trained in environmental studies and political science. She graduated magna cum laude in 1979 from Siena College in Loudonville, New York. Whilst at Siena College Bennett met Kathy Ferguson. Bennett then went on to the University of Massachusetts, where she earned a Ph.D. political science in 1986. [6] [7]
Bennett's work considers ontological ideas about the relationship between humans and 'things', what she calls "vital materialism":
What counts as the material of vital materialism? Is it only human labour and the socio-economic entities made by men using raw materials? Or is materiality more potent than that? How can political theory do a better job of recognizing the active participation of nonhuman forces in every event and every stabilization? Is there a form of theory that can acknowledge a certain ‘thing-power’, that is, the irreducibility of objects to the human meanings or agendas they also embody? [8]
In her most frequently cited book, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, [9] Bennett's argument is that, "Edibles, commodities, storms, and metals act as quasi agents, with their own trajectories, potentialities and tendencies.". [6] Bennett has also published books on American authors Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman.
Public lectures she has given include "Impersonal Sympathy", a talk theorizing 'sympathy' in which she considered the alchemist-physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) and Walt Whitman's collection of poetry, Leaves of Grass . [10] In 2015 Bennett delivered the annual Neal A. Maxwell Lecture in Political Theory and Contemporary Politics at the University of Utah entitled “Walt Whitman and the Soft Voice of Sympathy.”
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has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions of material things. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are caused by physical processes, such as the neurochemistry of the human brain and nervous system, without which they cannot exist. Materialism directly contrasts with monistic idealism, according to which consciousness is the fundamental substance of nature.
In philosophy, physicalism is the view that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical. It is opposed to idealism, according to which the world arises from mind. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a "one substance" view of the nature of reality, unlike "two-substance" or "many-substance" (pluralism) views. Both the definition of "physical" and the meaning of physicalism have been debated.
Donna J. Haraway is an American professor emerita in the history of consciousness and feminist studies departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies. She has also contributed to the intersection of information technology and feminist theory, and is a leading scholar in contemporary ecofeminism. Her work criticizes anthropocentrism, emphasizes the self-organizing powers of nonhuman processes, and explores dissonant relations between those processes and cultural practices, rethinking sources of ethics.
Objective idealism is a philosophical theory that affirms the ideal and spiritual nature of the world and conceives of the idea of which the world is made as the objective and rational form in reality rather than as subjective content of the mind or mental representation. Objective idealism thus differs both from materialism, which holds that the external world is independent of cognizing minds and that mental processes and ideas are by-products of physical events, and from subjective idealism, which conceives of reality as totally dependent on the consciousness of the subject and therefore relative to the subject itself.
Cognitive archaeology is a theoretical perspective in archaeology that focuses on the ancient mind. It is divided into two main groups: evolutionary cognitive archaeology (ECA), which seeks to understand human cognitive evolution from the material record, and ideational cognitive archaeology (ICA), which focuses on the symbolic structures discernable in or inferable from past material culture.
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, and social transformation. Marxism originates with the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, and as a result, there is no single, definitive "Marxist theory". Marxism has had a profound effect in shaping the modern world, with various left-wing and far-left political movements taking inspiration from it in varying local contexts.
Ecocriticism is the study of literature and ecology from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. It was first originated by Joseph Meeker as an idea called "literary ecology" in his The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology (1972).
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In international relations (IR), constructivism is a social theory that asserts that significant aspects of international relations are shaped by ideational factors. The most important ideational factors are those that are collectively held; these collectively held beliefs construct the interests and identities of actors. Constructivist scholarship in IR is rooted in approaches and theories from the field of sociology.
Michael David Warner is an American literary critic, social theorist, and Seymour H. Knox Professor of English Literature and American Studies at Yale University. He also writes for Artforum, The Nation, The Advocate, and The Village Voice. He is the author of Publics and Counterpublics, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life, The English Literatures of America, 1500–1800, Fear of a Queer Planet, and The Letters of the Republic. He edited The Portable Walt Whitman and American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Speculative realism is a movement in contemporary Continental-inspired philosophy that defines itself loosely in its stance of metaphysical realism against its interpretation of the dominant forms of post-Kantian philosophy.
Rosemary Hennessy is an American academic and socialist feminist. She is a professor of English and Director of the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice University. She has been a part of the faculty at Rice since 2006.
Jane Jebb Mansbridge is an American political scientist. She is the Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Dialectical materialism is a materialist theory based upon the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that has found widespread applications in a variety of philosophical disciplines ranging from philosophy of history to philosophy of science. As a materialist philosophy, Marxist dialectics emphasizes the importance of real-world conditions and the presence of functional contradictions within and among social relations, which derive from, but are not limited to, the contradictions that occur in social class, labour economics, and socioeconomic interactions. Within Marxism, a contradiction is a relationship in which two forces oppose each other, leading to mutual development.
The materiality turn in organization studies is the theoretical movement emphasizing objects, instruments and embodiments involved in organizations and organizing and the ontologies underpinnings theories about organizations and organizing, what deeply 'matters' in the study of organizations and organizing.
Catriona Sandilands is a Canadian writer and scholar in the environmental humanities. She is most well known for her conception of queer ecology. She is currently a Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. She was a Canada Research Chair in Sustainability and Culture between 2004 and 2014. She was a Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation in 2016. Sandilands served as president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment in 2015. She is also a past President of the Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada (ALECC) and the American Society for Literature and the Environment (ASLE).
Thomas Nail is a professor of Philosophy at The University of Denver.
Lambros Malafouris is a Greek-British cognitive archaeologist who has pioneered the application of concepts from the philosophy of mind to the material record. He is Professor of Cognitive and Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Oxford. He is known for Material Engagement Theory, the idea that material objects in the archaeological record are part of the ancient human mind.
New materialism is a term which refers to several theoretical perspectives within contemporary philosophy that attempt to rework the conventional ontological understanding of the material world. While many philosophical tendencies are associated with new materialism, in such a way that the movement resists a single definition, its common characteristics include a rejection of essentialism, representationalism, and anthropocentrism as well as the dualistic boundaries between nature/culture; subject/object; and human/non-human. Instead, new materialists emphasize how fixed entities and apparently closed systems are produced through dynamic relations and processes, considering the distribution of agency through the interaction of heterogeneous forces. The movement has influenced a wide variety of new articulations between intellectual currents in science and philosophy, in fields such as science and technology studies, as well as systems science.
Her Unthinking faith and enlightenment, c1987: CIP t.p. (Jane Bennett) data sheet (b. 7/31/57)