Jane Bennett (political theorist)

Jane Bennett (born July 31, 1957) is an American professor at the Department of political science, Johns Hopkins University School of Arts and Sciences. She is also the editor of the academic journal Political Theory.

Contents

• Material visual worlds presents prof jane bennett
• Material visual worlds presents prof jane bennett discussion
• Education
• Fellowships
• New materialisms jane bennett elizabeth grosz and henri bergson
• Jane bennett at c21 nonhuman turn conference
• References

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?"

In her book, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Bennett's argument is that, "Edibles, commodities, storms, and metals act as quasi agents, with their own trajectories, potentialities and tendencies."

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. 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.”