The enchantment of modern life : attachments, crossings, and ethics / Jane Bennett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bennett, Jane, 1957-

Series:

Princeton paperbacks

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethics, Modern.

Civilization, Secular.

Physical Description:

viii, 213 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [2001]

Contents:

1. The Wonder of Minor Experiences 3

Queasiness 3

A Brief Phenomenology of Enchantment 5

Reuse and Recycle 6

Enchantment without Design 9

Joyful Attachment 12

How the Story Goes 13

2. Cross-Species Encounters 17

Crossings and Enchantment 17

Andoar's Transcendence 18

Rotpeter's Way Out 19

Alex Changes the Subject 21

Body without Organs 24

My Wager 28

Marvels and Monsters 30

3. The Marvelous Worlds of Paracelsus, Kant, and Deleuze 33

The Satyrion Root 34

Enchantment and Repetition 36

Kantian Wonders 40

Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Thinker 49

4. Disenchantment Tales 56

"It's a Calculable World," / Max Weber 57

"Disenchantment without Regret," / Hans Blumenberg 65

"An Ethics of Finitude" / Simon Critchley 75

Toward an Enchanted Materialism 80

5. Complexity and Enchantment 91

Thoreau's Nature 92

Latour's Network 95

The Return of the Swerve 99

Lawful Nature as a Regulative Ideal 102

The Bifurcation Point as a Swerve 103

Social Complexity and Kafkaesque Enchantment 104

6. Commodity Fetishism and Commodity Enchantment 111

Swinging Khakis 111

The Dangers of Commodity Culture 114

The Commodity as Fetish 116

Marx and the Swerve 119

The Critical Potential of (Commercial) Art 121

Affect and Thought 124

Repetition 126

Yea Saying 127

The Limits of Refusal 128

7. Ethical Energetics 131

The Aesthetic Disposition 131

Moral Sentiments 133

Aesthetic Play and the Barbarism of Reason 137

Schiller to Foucault: Micropractices of Ethics 144

The Dangers of Aestheticization 148

Language and the Code Dimension of Ethics 152

The Ethics of Enchanted Materialism 156

8. Attachments and Refrains 159

Enchantment as a Weak Ontology 160

The Sonorous Cosmos 166

Attachment as a Gift 168

Plants, Ants, Robopets, and Other Enchanting Things 169.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [175]-207) and index.

ISBN:

0691088128

0691088136

OCLC:

45618350