“Vibrant Matter promises to invigorate ethical and political judgment by attuning us to the material world, to ourselves, in new ways. Bennett wisely encourages us to practice such judgments without the banisters of deadening binaries of subject-object and human-nonhuman. In this way, we are left with an exciting, but daunting challenge of living democratically as and amidst vital matter.” — Torrey Shanks, Theory & Event
“Vibrant Matter takes us on a journey through the philosophical tradition of critical vitalism — or, in Bennett's terms, vital materialism — in order to help us recognize the profound yet delightful weirdness of being in a body that only seems to belong to us.”
— Natania Meeke and Antónia Szabari, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Vibrant Matter will reward readers by opening many fields of inquiry that require responses. The reconceptualization of the material world that Vibrant Matter represents is a meaningful step in the direction of reformulating many of the debates within environmental philosophy that continue to retain the vestiges of overt dualism and its less obvious manifestation in the subject-object distinction.” — Bryan E. Bannon, Environmental Philosophy
“[An] eloquent, carefully reasoned book. . . . With Bennett’s keen insights, I believe I can now show students (and others, maybe even some colleagues) that, through the concept, the sensibility, the practice of vibrant materialities, people in all walks of life can see the sense in treating both nature and artifacts ‘more carefully, more strategically, more ecologically’ (p.18).” — Thomas Princen, Perspectives on Politics
“How elating I found reading Vibrant Matter, with its eloquent vision of an ethics of the nonhuman. Bennett argues for a perceptual style open to the appearance of thing-power: we who study the texts and objects of a remote age can get behind that, I think. Indeed, for those of us for whom time doesn't simply pass into lostness we are already behind it, still feeling the power of history's things, which didn't know they were supposed to be still. “ — Jeffrey J. Cohen, In the Middle blog
“Bennett’s is one of those books where, on finishing, you want to begin immediately again to experience the excitement and élan vital of eloquent, simple ideas presented in clear, concise and considered prose, wherein the presence of a generous, kind and unpretentious author speaks straight into your understanding. Vibrant Matter is fresh, alert, quiet and potent, a door opening in a stuffy room to let the outside in, which lets it speak so as to embolden us to breathe differently. It will redraw the boundaries of political thought; it’s already doing so. Read it.” — Mark Jackson, Emotion, Space and Society
“Bennett’s proposals are innovative, and while in the end she may raise more questions than she can offer answers to, Vibrant Matter is a text ripe with possibilities. The strength of the work is its careful treatment of nonhumans as vital forces and the numerous examples employed to develop a political ecology of things.” — Katherine F. Chandler, Qui Parle
“Orienting us to re-encounter both nature and familiar objects as newly strange and pulsing with ‘thing-power,’ Bennett challenges our worn assumptions concerning the hierarchy between humans and things, the workings of causality, and our deep cultural attachment to matter and nature as inanimate. . . . Her book is surprising, refreshing, and troubling.” — Lori J. Marso, Political Theory
“Overall, I am attracted by the ideas Bennett presents. They lead to new ways of thinking about things and artifacts, and for those of us who are used to think about embodied interaction, user experience, etc. many of the ideas are not that far fetched. I am curious to see how this and similar new philosophical attempts will be translated into more concrete activities and approaches relevant for design. This new evolution of ideas concerned with the status of 'things' and of the material world is highly interesting and with Bennett's work we have another example of why we need it and how it could be used.” — Erik Stolterman, Transforming Grounds blog
“What Jane Bennett has delivered is the most precise and compelling account of a more than human politic sand why it matters. Vibrant Matters is the best argument to date of how materiality operates as a vital force, as much more than social construction or brute resistance or recalcitrance. In respecting the stuff of the world, in being attentive to it, Bennett has pushed political philosophy way beyond its comfort zone: something that was long overdue and from which there is no return.” — Gay Hawkins, Cultural Studies Review
“For the sake of assuaging harms already inflicted we have always cobbled together publics that deal with vibrant matters of floods, fires, earthquakes and so on. For the sake of preventing unseen future harms, Bennett’s book argues that we need to take a closer look at how we are embedded in a web of mutual affect that knows no bounds between living and nonliving, human and nonhuman. It is in this refreshingly naïve ‘no-holds-barred’ approach that Bennett’s work has much to offer for a reconsideration of our role as thinking, speaking humans in a cosmos of vibrant matter that we continually depoliticize even in our efforts to ‘protect’ and ‘save’ the earth . . . a highly recommended read.” — Stefan Morales, M/C Reviews
“In Vibrant Matter, Bennett encourages us to think slowly about those ideas that run rampantly through our lives as educators.... I found Bennett’s approach made the conceptual renderings of new feminist materialists such as Barad, Ahmed and Braidotti, to educational settings more accessible.” — Jennifer Clutterbuck, Educational Review
“Because Bennett’s objectives are both philosophical and political, she offers two suggestions for fostering a discernment that will temper ontological anthropocentrism. . . . Bennett, through her actionable approach, successfully strays from critical theory’s popular method of ‘demystification,’ a method that leaves ethics out to dry.” — Wesley Mathis, Communication Design Quarterly
"Bennett is a philosopher and political theorist. But her intellectual work is not primarily about creating new theories. In her writing, she expertly distills and juxtaposes the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, Immanuel Kant, Martha Nussbaum, and others, but her goal is often to create a mood. She wants readers to adopt and embody an ethos that makes room for the vitality of matter." — Morgan Meis, The New Yorker
“Vibrant Matter is a fascinating, lucid, and powerful book of political theory. By focusing on the ‘thing-side of affect,’ Jane Bennett seeks to broaden and transform our sense of care in relation to the world of humans, non-human life, and things. She calls us to consider a ‘parliament of things’ in ways that provoke our democratic imaginations and interrupt our anthropocentric hubris.” — Romand Coles, author of Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy
“Vibrant Matter represents the fruits of sustained scholarship of the highest order. As environmental, technological, and biomedical concerns force themselves onto worldly political agendas, the urgency and potency of this analysis must surely inform any rethinking of what political theory is about in the twenty-first century.” — Sarah Whatmore, coeditor of The Stuff of Politics: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public Life
“This manifesto for a new materialism is an invigorating breath of fresh air. Jane Bennett’s eloquent tribute to the vitality and volatility of things is just what we need to revive the humanities and to redraw the parameters of political thought.” — Rita Felski, author of Uses of Literature