Abstract
The overarching argument of this chapter is that Jane Bennett’s project of vital materialism can be construed as doing pragmatist work, specifically in her use of John Dewey to frame publics as inclusive of the nonhuman and her valuing of this frame as a way to better the politics of disasters. The parallel argument of this chapter is that Dewey’s attention to the roles of nonhumans in generating and affecting publics has been overlooked and, given recent philosophical trends in new materialism and posthumanism, might be rediscovered and uncovered to further the role or pragmatist theory in contemporary political discussions, particularly in the context of disasters involving human and nonhuman bodies. Thus, the author argues, Bennett as a political theorist is both an overlooked pragmatist while simultaneously helping recover an overlooked part of pragmatism.
“Thus spoke the grid.”
—Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter (2010, 34)
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Beck, Ulrich. 1999. World Risk Society. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.
Bernstein, Richard J. 1983. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
———. 2006. “The Pragmatic Century.” In The Pragmatic Century: Conversations with Richard J. Bernstein, edited by Sheila Greeve Davaney and Warren G. Frisina, 1–14. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Cohen, Morris Raphael. 1940. “Some Difficulties in Dewey’s Anthropocentric Naturalism.” The Philosophical Review 49 (2): 196–228.
Coole, Diana. 2010. “The Inertia of Matter and the Generativity of Flesh.” In New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, edited by Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, 92–115. Durham: Duke University Press.
Coole, Diana, and Samantha Frost. 2010. New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Durham: Duke University Press.
Danisch, Robert. 2010. “Political Rhetoric in a World Risk Society.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 40 (2): 172–192.
De Landa, Manuel. 1997. A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books.
Dewey, John. 1958 [1925]. Experience and Nature. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc.
———. 2005 [1934]. Art as Experience. New York: Perigee.
———. 1954. The Public and Its Problems. Athens, OH: Swallow Press.
Gröndahl, Mika, Haeyoun Park, Graham Roberts, and Archie Tse. 2010. “Investigating the Cause of the Deepwater Horizon Blowout.” New York Times, last modified June 21.
“Gulf Spill Trial: ‘Recklessness’ at BP, U.S. Says.” Associated Press, USA Today, last modified February 25, 2013.
Hickman, Larry A. 1990. John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
———. 2007. Pragmatism as Post-Postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey. New York: Fordham University Press.
Hildebrand, David L. 2003. Beyond Realism and Antirealism: John Dewey and the Neopragmatists. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1992. “Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts.” In Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, edited by Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, 225–258. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 2004. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 70: 225–248.
Lippmann, Walter. 1922. Public Opinion. New York: W. W. Norton.
Merleau Ponty, Maurice. 1981. The Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith. New York: Routledge.
Richards, Daniel P. 2017. “Reconstituting Causality: Accident Reports as Posthuman Documentation.” In Topic-Driven Environmental Rhetoric, edited by Derek G. Ross, 149–167. New York: Routledge.
Schwartzman, Roy, Derek G. Ross, and David M. Berube. 2011. “Rhetoric and Risk.” POROI 7 (1). https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1087.
Spinoza, Baruch. [1677] 1995. Ethics: Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, and Selected Letters. Translated by Samuel Shirley. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Turkle, Sherry. 2007. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wright, Lori. 2012. “Gulf Coast Residents Say BP Oil Spill Changed Their Environmental Views, UNH Research Finds.” UNH Today, last modified April 19.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Richards, D.P. (2019). Emergent Publics, Public Emergencies: The Importance of John Dewey in Jane Bennett’s Nonhuman Politics of Vital Materialism. In: Danisch, R. (eds) Recovering Overlooked Pragmatists in Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14343-5_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14343-5_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-14342-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-14343-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)