Influx & efflux : writing up with Walt Whitman
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Influx & efflux : writing up with Walt Whitman
Duke University Press, 2020
- : pbk
Available at / 1 libraries
-
No Libraries matched.
- Remove all filters.
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In influx & efflux Jane Bennett pursues a question that was bracketed in her book Vibrant Matter: how to think about human agency in a world teeming with powerful nonhuman influences? "Influx & efflux"-a phrase borrowed from Whitman's "Song of Myself"-refers to everyday movements whereby outside influences enter bodies, infuse and confuse their organization, and then exit, themselves having been transformed into something new. How to describe the human efforts involved in that process? What kinds of "I" and "we" can live well and act effectively in a world of so many other lively materialities? Drawing upon Whitman, Thoreau, Caillois, Whitehead, and other poetic writers, Bennett links a nonanthropocentric model of self to a radically egalitarian pluralism and also to a syntax and style of writing appropriate to the entangled world in which we live. The book tries to enact the uncanny process by which we "write up" influences that pervade, enable, and disrupt us.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Prologue.Influx and efflux ix
1. Position and Disposition 1
2. Circuits of Sympathy 27
3. Solar Judgment 46
Refrain. The Alchemy of Affects 63
4. Bad Influence 75
5. Thoreau Experiments with Natural Influences 92
Epilogue. A Peculiar Efficacy 113
Notes 119
Bibliography 173
Index 189
by "Nielsen BookData"