New Feminist Materialisms

What seems to be an emerging trend in STS and remotely perhaps in anthropology, is a move towards New Feminist Materialisms. With recent publications from Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: a political ecology of things, an edited collection from Diana Coole and Samantha Frost: New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Karen Barad's 2007, Meeting the Universe Halfway, Whatmore and Braun's, Political Matters: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public Life, and what looks to be an interesting addition by William Connolly entitled, A World of Becoming, and no doubt many other books and articles (I'm thinking of Latour and Haraway specifically), New Materialism is poised to encourage a serious rethinking of the relationship between humans and nonhumans beyond or building out from what we have seen before.

It is without doubt reframing the way I'm writing my dissertation, seeing as I consider very seriously the relationship between people and things (machines) in the concept or ritual/worship practice. So far this rethinking has led me to consider aspects (and possibilities and politics of) material agency but I have been struggling with the inherent dilemma of anthropomorphism even in the attempt to decenter the human in this story. It has been exceedingly rewarding however to read and write through some of these perspectives as they just begin to gain momentum. My hope is that my work will contribute a little something to the process.   

Walter Benjamin on writing

Came across a great blog that included a post on Walter Benjamin's advice on writing. Taking some of it to heart... though perhaps not all. It's seemingly a real slog to get though endless chapters for this dissertation (especially on grey days like today). Not discouraged though, just taking my time.

I. Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with themselves and, having completed a stint, deny themselves nothing that will not prejudice the next.

II. Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this régime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.

III. In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an etude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds.

IV. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indispensable.

V. Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.

VI. Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.

VII. Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honour requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.

VIII. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.

IX. Nulla dies sine linea [“no day without a line” (Apelles ex Pliny)] — but there may well be weeks.

X. Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.

XI. Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.

XII. Stages of composition: idea — style — writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing it you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills inspiration, style fetters the idea, writing pays off style.

XIII. The work is the death mask of its conception.

From “One-Way Street” (1955; slightly ed.), Reflections:Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Demetz, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Schocken, 1978) 80-81.