Matter has force and agency

Tags: new materialism - agency

One can invoke bacteria colonies in human elbows to show how human subjects are themselves nonhuman, alien, outside, vital materiality. One can note that the human immune system depends on parasitic helminth worms for its proper functioning or cite other instances of our cyborgization to show how human agency is always an assemblage of microbes, animals, plants, metals, chemicals, word-sounds, and the like.¹

“Thing-power” is “the curious ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, to produce effects dramatic and subtle”¹. It is not limited to organic matter, but also applies to all inorganic matter. → Oil-spills and microplastics²

This idea challenges the idea of human exceptionalism that only we have agency.²

“Viewing everything as matter, and all matter as powerful, new materialism refuses to treat humans as more than material, separate from and superior to the world around us.”²

Footnotes

1. Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter: a political ecology of things. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822391623 ↩ ↩²

2. Allen, P. (2023). What is New Materialism? Perlego Knowledge Base. ↩ ↩² ↩³