Tag Archives: Jane Bennett

Materializing and Queering Sir Launfal

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Jane Bennet redefines materiality in her book, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Vibrant matter, she proposes, “is not the raw material for the creative activity of humans or God;” it has an existence of its own (xiii). Vibrant matter reclaims its materiality, and resists being objectified (defined in relation to a human subject). Shedding its objectivity, the new “thing” regains “a liveliness intrinsic to the materiality” (xvi). Bennett restores a material’s inherent agency – what she calls “thing power” (6). Agency, an ability to affect, is accompanied by “[a] capacity to be affected” (21). The power of materiality is not self contained, it participates in a “coexistence of mutual dependency with friction and violence between parts”: an assemblage (23). Bennett’s exciting concept of vibrant matter will guide my first reading of Sir Launfal. Tryamour, Sir Launfal’s fairy lover, is closely associated with lavish materiality. Whereas such an association seemingly objectifies her, I will use Bennett’s notion of thing-power to argue that materiality empowers her and secures her a position of power in a materialistic assemblage in which she has the most influence and allies.

Queer Theory redefines and reclaims the term “queer” like Vibrant Materialism does matter. David Savran explains that Queer Theory operates on a definition of queer that “signifies less a fixed identity than a principle of polysemy” (57). Queer no longer refers to a specific sect of sexual deviance, that is, but to an entire spectrum of underrepresented cultures, races, genders, and sexual orientations. This is, indeed, quite a claim, and I will test the limits of “queering” (the act of illuminating the fluidity of this spectrum) in Sir Launfal. Gender instability is apparent in the almost authoritative influence that Guenevere and Tryamour have over Arthur and Launfal (suggesting a gender role reversal in each relationship). Class is also represented as a fluctuating station in life, as Launfal’s good service goes unpaid and he descends into poverty (emasculating him in the process), while Guenevere’s ignoble behavior goes completely unpunished. Launfal’s eventual class restoration and Guenevere’s final humiliation suggests, though, that such stations in life are ultimately destined and re-secured by a social code – hardly a queer message. Race and culture is ambiguously represented in both Launfal and Tryamour. As a foreigner in Arthur’s kingdom, Launfal is easily (and, presumably, understandably) ostracized by court decorum and law. Tryamour’s mythical ethnicity (she is a fairy) makes her, oddly enough, both vulnerable and threatening. Though she must conduct her love and gift giving in self-conscious secrecy, once exposed she expresses her entitlement to her love, wealth, and beauty. Though she is marginalized by Arthur’s court, it is because of her superiority to it, not inferiority. Each instance of straying from the norm can be considered an instance of “queering.” So whereas Guenevere does not quite explicitly accuse Launfal of being homosexual as she does in Lanval, she finds other ways of “queering” him that are just as demeaning (considering the medieval, premodern understanding of homosexuality).

If these things could talk…

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This week while reading “Yonec” I was reminded a lot of “Guigemar” because of the same wife locked away in a room scenario.  However, I liked that in “Yonec” the wife has more of a voice.  In “Guigemar” we are given a description of the king that is very much like the description of the king in “Yonec.”  he is “a very aged man who ha[s] a wife” (Guigemar 210).  In “Yonec”, the king is “rich, old and ancient” (Yonec 12).  So in “Guigemar” the king is characterized in terms of having a wife, and in “Yonec” the king is identified by his money.  I don’t really see anything out of the ordinary here, but in “Yonec” we are provided with the wife’s perspective of her husband which I thought was just great.  She calls him a “jealous old man” (71), and says that “when he should have been baptized / he was plunged instead in the river of hell; / his senews are hard, his veins are hard, / filled with living blood” (87-90).  Whoa!  I didn’t realize how much of a woman’s voice was lacking in the lais until this one finally spoke.  I know women do speak occasionally in the lais, but this is the first time I really felt like I heard one with a voice.

Another exclamation of the wife’s that made me think is when she cries that she should have never been born, her fate is terrible, and that she is imprisoned until death (67-70).  Most intriguingly she thinks, “What is this jealous old man afraid of / that he keeps me so imprisoned?” (71-2).  If we place everything on a horizontal plane like Bennett suggests, I wonder how many other “things” like the wife are screaming inside to be allowed to be the director of their own agency instead of being forced to serve the agendas of others (humans).  Going back to the wife’s earlier opinion of her husband:  what if things could talk?  What would they say about their “owners”?

Jeffery and the Wolf

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Jeffery Cohen’s visit to our class gave me a real feel for the extent to which the sort of object oriented criticism we are doing in our class is starting to take hold and that makes me feel like the things we are doing, while experimental, aren’t being done in a vacuum, which is what it feels like sometimes. He was able to ground the criticism in a real, practical context that seems to be filled with possibility for application in many sorts of fields. While I had gotten a bit of an idea for what the implications of a less anthropocentric world could be mean for political policies through Jane Bennett, hearing Mr. Cohen, a flesh and blood scholar who seems to be very interested and passionate about this field of though, talk about the lays we have been talking about was definitely something I needed to really want to try and dig deeper into these texts to try and think about them in new ways. He has a ways of relating medieval texts back to the modern world and giving the works a strong bond to the world we live in today. Looking at the past helps us better understand how we can think about the present.

Specifically the way that he talked us through Bisclavret gave me a really firm handle on how the medievalist thinks about the past in a relation to the present and not just with an eye for trying to read a text in the way a medieval reader might have. Bisclavret seems to have a kind of reverence for nature that is very much in line with the modern ecological movements, but also works as a kind of classic werewolf story that questions the hidden passions inside of a man and the possible value that can come from being true to these values. Just as a knight must adhere to strict codes of fealty, so too does Bisclavret through the story show his loyalty to the king by not only acting as a knight, but also stewarding the violence that comes with being a werewolf into an outlet that is appropriate to it, in this case vengeance, instead of attacking and killing the innocent.

Questions on Edible Matter

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I was recently watching a stand-up comedy special featuring comedian, Louis C.K. He has this bit about getting fat and regarding Bennett’s properties of Edible Matter, he first agrees with her and then later contradicts himself.
He begins with his jealousy over his skinny friends and his inability to eat “just one doughnut”. He claims he cannot do it, as if the doughnuts hold some type of agency over him. This statement, I thought, was the same as Bennett’s theory that food holds its own agency (as we saw in the potato chip example). This thought is not one experienced only by Louis C.K. and Jane Bennett. I can not even count the endless times I’ve heard someone say “I can not have just one” or “If I start I won’t be able to stop”. This thought of the food having a stronger agency than our own is very common.
However, my question arises because later in his skit, C.K. tells a story in which he goes to a child’s birthday party begrudgingly, but once he sees the tray of cookies, decides that will be his activity for the afternoon. He goes on to explain that when people see him scarfing down cookies he makes a remark like “there’s just something about the cookies” when really it’s the fact that he has no will power to control himself around the sweet treats. He recognizes that he willfully makes a decision to eat the cookies, but then remarks that he has no control or will power to stop after just one. Is it he who is the actor, or the cookies? I get a little confused because his actions to eat the cookies are deliberate, however he claims that his lack of action or control is the reason why he finishes the platter, but he does not attribute any agency to the cookies the way he did earlier in the skit regarding doughnuts. So, I guess my question is in terms of edible matter, is it the food’s agency? or our lack of agency? Is it a mixture of both?

I’ll post a link to the video below. There is a lot of profanity, so be prepared, and I apologize if this offends anyone.
(The views expressed in this video do not necessarily reflect the views of the author.)

Yates, Latour, and Bennett

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This week I read the Yates essay before reading the Latour introduction, and I am glad I did because a lot of the difficulty that Latour warns us about is difficulty that I experienced while trying to read the Yates essay.  I could definitely relate to the immediate satisfaction that Latour talks about with how sociologists are able to “jump straight ahead to connect vast arrays of life and history, to mobilize gigantic forces, to detect dramatic patterns emerging out of confusing interactions, to see everywhere in the cases at hand yet more examples of well-known types, to reveal behind the scenes some dark powers pulling the strings” (Latour 22).  That is exactly what I was trying to do with those oranges.  I read the first couple of pages of the Yates essay a few times searching for some clue I missed about these oranges that I did not receive until the end of the essay—what a relief that was.  Yates did a good job of “let[ting] the actors deploy the full range of controversies in which they are immersed” (Latour 23) before saying exactly why the oranges were so important at the end.  It felt like a test of sorts.

I could also relate to the cartographer that Latour writes about (23-4) who struggles in figuring out how she will include all of these different aspects of reports while still making sense.  I feel that way when writing a term paper, and find that if I attempt to stick to the conventional paper writing method—just like the cartographer will struggle with conventional cartography—of outline first, then introduction, body, and conclusion I have a really difficult time.  Why?  Because I am trying to force those abstractions into concepts without letting them fully form yet which happens in the process of actually writing the essay.  How can I introduce what I have not even started writing yet?

One last thing:  Near the end of the introduction Latour writes, “Be prepared to cast off agency, structure, psyche, time, and space along with every other philosophical and anthropological category, no matter how deeply rooted in common sense they may appear to be” (24-5).  That reminded me of when Jane Bennett writes that “[f]or this task, demystification, that most popular of practices in critical theory, should be used with caution and sparingly, because demystification presumes that at the heart of any event or process lies a human agency that has illicitly been projected into things.  This hermeneutics of suspicion calls for theorists to be on high alert for signs of the secret truth (a human will to power) below the false appearance of nonhuman agency” (xiv).

Edible Matter as “Vibrant” Matter

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Thinking of food or “edible matter” in terms of assemblages encourages us to go beyond treating food as something we consume on the basis free will. Without conscious acknowledgement, we all enter into a rather intimate relationship with food every day that isn’t entirely dependent on what we, as consumers, want to eat. The food has just as much of an effect on us as we have on it.

We eat to survive, but our survival isn’t the only part of the equation—we, like edible matter, are only one part of a larger network or assemblage. And while the act of eating is usually conceptualized as a reciprocal relationship, the implications of this reciprocity are rarely contemplated.

The act of eating a potato chip, for instance, can be thought of in terms of an “assemblage.” Bennett is not asserting that our actions are devoid of intention, but that intentionality is beset by other factors that lessen its importance. The hand reaching for the chip is “…only quasi- or semiintentional, for the chips themselves seem to call forth, or provoke and stoke, the manual labor” (Bennett 40). This scenario calls into question how much an action is dependent on the subject and how much is dependent on that which is considered an object. In contrast to how we view ourselves as the sole “actants” in an event, the potato chip is active in its influence over our actions.

As far as the debate over what influences our collective eating habits is concerned, we usually look to the media in ascribing blame. Asserting that the food itself is an active influence is something entirely unique. However, that doesn’t mean we should turn around and blame food for the “obesity crisis” in the absence of another more appropriate entity to blame. Bennett is trying to get away from this human tendency in emphasizing the fact that “matter” (whether intentionally or not) works within networks too complex to attribute individual culpability.

Everything (even food in this case) works together to create a “living” world. Vibrancy cannot be measured in weight, height, or value—all things are equally vibrant for the simple fact that they “persist in existing.” Things have a tendency to fade into the background, but they enrich our lives in numerous (often incomprehensible) ways. Jane Bennett’s notion that objects occupy the roles of “context, tool, and constraint” is an undeniably accurate description of how most of us perceive objects in relation to us. As part of an all-encompassing “background,” objects (including edible matter) blend into the world in a way that deemphasizes their agency.

Agency of Food: Taste, Edibility, Appearance

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I am interested in one part of food that I do not know that Bennett actually spends much (if any) time on:  the taste of food.  She writes a lot about digesting food and the effects that that has on our bodies, but what about the taste of food?  For animals, I know some prey (animals who are preyed on for food) have a defense mechanism of bad taste so that their predators will not want to eat them.  Taste, to the predators, is a warning suggesting that the animal may be poisonous.  For humans, certain tastes have different effects on different people.  Some people can eat extremely spicy food while sugary sweet desserts repel others.  This would lead individuals to either include an abundance of these kinds of items in their diet, or have a lack thereof.  Meaning, for some people, taste determines what food they will eat and thus introduce into their assemblages; nourishment is not the only determining factor.  For others, taste does not even matter.  They would be happy eating cardboard hamburgers as long as their stomach stops screaming at them.   Food has an even bigger agency when bringing taste into the picture.

There is also other potential (or vibrancy?) of food that composes its agency.  Some food is poisonous and can actually kill the eater of it. I am thinking, though, that this would make this thing not “food” because “if the eaten is to become food, it must be digestible to the out-side it enters.  Likewise, if the eater is to be nourished, it must accommodate itself to the internalized out-side” (Bennett 29).  Dying as a result of eating something poisonous is not nourishment, and the food is not digested because the digestive system has stopped operating.

Another agentic (I made this word up for the purpose of this blog.  I declare it the adjective form of “agency.”) quality or potential of food is perhaps appearance.  Bright foods are visually appealing to some and perhaps may be eaten more and may have a wider reaching agency (as a whole).  Adversely, some foods may be difficult to prepare to eat and may not be eaten quite as often—like having to carve a pineapple or pick out pomegranate seeds (of course, we have innovations now that do these things for us).

What I am suggesting, is that food has an agency that exists prior to even being digested that invites or repels some.

Inherent Value In and Of Thing-Power

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Jane Bennett is careful to distinguish her notion of “thing-power” from Hent de Vries’s “the absolute” (3).  She acknowledges their apparent similarity (both concern liberating things from objectivity), but insists that “thing-power” departs from “the absolute” in a fundamental way: it does not privilege “intelligibility” (3). “The absolute” is a rare liberation from objectivity that depends on the limits of intelligence (the thing’s being beyond the confinement of subject’s intelligent grasp). De Vries’s notion of “the absolute” triumphs the occasional thing, but consistently “give[s] priority to humans as knowing bodies” (for their intelligence, or perhaps its limits, decides who escapes objectivity) (3). Bennett’s particular word choice, “priority,” suggests the hierarchal order of human and non-human, intelligent and unintelligent, things.

This hierarchy, or its criterion, was a source of contention just a few weeks ago in Michael Berube’s lecture at the College of Charleston, “Life as Jamie Knows It.”  Berube voiced his discontent with cognitive intelligence as the criterion for value judgments. He cited the tactics of the early animal rights movement, which used such standards (if only for demonstrative purposes) to value gifted animals over mentally disabled humans.  Such a maneuver just tantalizes anthropocentrics (Humans must always reign superior! But what makes them superior, if not their intelligence?). Bennett’s “thing-power” discourages such hierarchies by using a different criterion for value judgments: “conatus” (the indiscriminate empowerment of being). The universality of Bennett’s criterion ensures that “the status of the shared materiality of all things is elevated” (13). Could it be that materialists “distribute value more generously” than humanists (13)?

Some Gloves, a Women, and a Fairy: a Flattening of Perspective

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In Sir Degare, there seems to be a lot of interesting things going on with the interplay between different actants within the same network, but within some sort of power hierarchy. It seems to me that there are three distinct levels of actor: objects or things like the magic gloves and all of the other tokens that Degare has been given to help him in his quest, the humans who he interacts with in the pursuit of his quest and in his life in general, and the highest on the spectrum, the fairies who seem to rise up the ordinary lives and rules of human society and in fact are the ones who ultimately call Degare to adventure in the first place because of his pursuit of his father. The mediations between these three levels interact and intervene in a Degare’s life in many different ways and without this web of actants, he would not only fail in his quest but wouldn’t even exist.

The first set of actants is probably the weakest at least if we judge it in terms of human subjectivity. These objects seemingly have no power when compared to the humans that they act in conjunction with, but the fact remains that without them human (and fairy) would fail in their execution of their will. For example, when Degare’s mother is given a token by the Degare’s father in order that their son may be known by the father when the time comes; without that token the reunion would have been impossible and thus the will being exercised is contingent on Degare being in an action network that includes particular objects.

To me though the most interesting inversion the tradition of the object-subject paradigm that places human design firmly at the center, is the way in which Degare was born. His mother was raped by a male fairy, made into a kind of object, by the more powerful and willful energies of a being that was most definitively not human. The fairy seems to think of this as rather ordinary, a turn of events that might be as every day to him as the mother using a hair brush or a fork, the only difference being that here the happens to be able to talk. This different way of viewing power dynamics gives a bit of a new perspective on where objects and humans might fall into a spectrum of an actant network. The use of a theoretically more powerful being in our consideration of object-subject relations makes us better able to understand the importance of honoring all members of the action network.

Vital Materialism in “Sir Degare”

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For this week’s reading I wanted to make sure that I read Jane Bennett’s “The Force of Things” from Vibrant Matter before reading Sir Degare so that I could try to implement and better understand any of the concepts that I encountered in Bennett’s text while reading Sir Degare.  I would say that this was a successful experiment, though I can’t say for certain whether or not I’m actually understanding the way that Bennett intended for her audience to.

Being interested in philosophy myself I paid close attention to what Bennett writes about ethics with regards to vital materialism.  She writes about this “safety net” that vital materialism would create for humans who essentially do not meet the standards of other’s particular “model of personhood” (13).  It is my understanding that Bennett thinks these people would not be made to suffer so much abuse when human bodies are thought of as things whose “status of the materiality of which we are composed” is considered on a greater scale down to the body’s mineralization and matter (11-3), and not just its entire composition as a whole.  Meaning, each human body has more shared attributes than one would initially grant when evaluating on societal contexts/models of personhood alone i.e. the “Euro-American, bourgeois, theocentric” etc (13).  The result, Bennett writes, is that vital materialism can “inspire a greater sense of the extent to which all bodies are kin in the sense of inextricably enmeshed in a dense network of relations” (13).  Therefore, for an abusive individual to hurt another human body would be inflicting harm on themselves because they share the same network (13).  This is Bennett’s “expanded notion of self-interest” (13), or at least how I have interpreted it.

So, I brought this interpretation with me into Sir Degare.  Of course, while doing that, the scene that struck me the most was the rape scene (105-112).  After reading Bennett I asked myself, “What was the fairy knight’s perception of Degare’s mother’s personhood?  Was she, as a woman, beneath his particular model of respectable personhood?  Could that be why he felt that he had the power and right to force himself upon her?”  If I am at least halfway correct in my interpretation of Bennett I would say yes.  If so, then, I think that Bennett would argue that if the fairy knight considered all that he shares with the woman on a material level he would be less likely to disturb the network that he shares with her.  After all, as a consequence of this act Degare is conceived and brought into the network.  Later on, Degare then tries to destroy the fairy knight in battle before realizing that it is his father (1010-1059).  Had the fairy knight not disrupted (I don’t know if this is the right word to use here) the network that he shares with the woman he raped and in turn impregnated her, there would not have existed a knight as great as Degare who nearly cost the fairy knight his life.  According to Bennett this is because “each human is a heterogeneous compound of wonderfully vibrant, dangerously vibrant, matter” (Bennett 12-3) having the capacity to even destroy:  Degare as a knight figure set out to conquer the fairy knight, and create:the woman as a mother creating life.