K Scherff Assignment #4.1
"I have already noted, the items on the ground that say were vibratory - at one moment disclosing themselves as dead stuff and at the next as live presence: junk, then claimant; inert matter then live wire." -Selections from Jane Bennett, "Vibrant Matter" pg 5 This argument is on the fifth page under the heading "Thing-Power 1". In this part of the essay the author discusses the abject as "thing" and recants an encounter with refuse in a storm drain. These collective things were a glove, pollen, rat, cap, and stick. The author had two "moments" of thought with the discarded assemblage, that of disregard and that of the "thing-power". The power of the thing is executed through a causation of one to ponder the object. Therefore the items were vibrant, not dead (like the rat) or inanimate (like the glove) but symbols of materialism, human consumption, and material vitality. Though these items are discarded, the author continues, the things are not dead citing Robert Sullivan's description of the vitality of trash. Even in the American consumerist society of wastefulness, the vitality of material can never actually be thrown away. The author concludes that this is "thing-power".