Lexicon

Abject
Accretion
Actant
Aeration
Aerobic
Algae-boosted
Animal
Anthropomorphism
Anti-Continuous Construction
Apocalypse
Aquaculture
Aquanaut
Ark
Artificial Intelligence
Autopoiesis
Assemblages
Asymmetry
Atrophy
Attraction
Autarchy
Automata
Automation
Autosymbiosis
Bambassador
Bathyscaphe
Bioconurbation
Biomedia
Bionics
Biosphere
Biotechnique
By-product
Capacity
Actant
Coisolation
Composting
Conservative Surgery
Consumer Envelope
Consumption
Continuous Construction
Conurbation
Correalism
Cultural_Memory
Cybernetics
Cybertecture
Cyborg
Dispositif
Diving Saucer
Dross
Earthship
Ecocatastrophe
Effluvium
Egosphere
End-use
Entanglement
Eutopia
Feedback
Foam
Folk
Gadget
Garbage House
Green Cyborg
Heuristic
Hoard
Holism
Homogenization of Desire
Hostile
Human Affect
Hybridized Folk
Hydroponic
Hyper-Materialism
Information Economy
Inner Space
Interama
Intra-Uterine
Maque
Megalopolis
Min-use
Mobility
Monorail
Multi-Hinge
Non-Design
Oceanaut
Oppositional Consciousness
Organic
Ouroboros
Panarchy
Parasite
Perceived Continuation
Permanence
Place
Prototype
Post-Animal
Reclamation
RI: Data Farms
RI: Garbage and Animals
RI:Shipbreaking
RI: Toxic Sublime
Sampling
Scale
Sensing Structure
Simulacrum
Simulation
Soft Energy
Spaceship Earth
Submersible
Superwindow
Symbiosis
Synthetic Environment
Technocratic
Technological Heredity
Technological Sublime
Telechirics
The Sublime
Thermal Panel
Actant
Thing-Power
Thinking Machines
Tool
Toxic Withdrawal
Turbulence
UV-Transparent Film
Vibrant Matter
Waste
Work

Actant

An Actant has AGENCY or EFFICACY, also known as the ability to affect other things or cause events to happen. Efficacy specifically refers to will and the ability to produce a desired result. Any source of action, the actant, can be either human or nonhuman and it has not only the efficacy, but sufficient coherence to make a difference or produce effects. Jane Bennett's idea of "Distributive Agency" means that the property of agency is no longer confined to is traditional carriers, but instead viewed as a property of all things. This is heavily based on Bruno Latour's work and also Baruch Spinoza's. Spinoza's idea of Conative Bodies are entities which strive to enhance their power of activity or ability to be an actant by forming alliances with other bodies. In doing so, these become "affective bodies." These are associative or social bodies, in the sense that each is, by its very nature as a body, continuously affecting and being affected by other bodies. Together, these bodies enhance their power in or as a heterogeneous assemblage. This implies that agency or efficacy, which has traditionally been associated with a human body or a collective human effort, can instead be distributed across a heterogeneous field of entities.

These ideas are condensed into the concept of "Thing-Power," in Jane Bennett's work, or, the ability of items to exceed their status as objects and to manifest traces of independence or aliveness, creating an experience OUTSIDE of humans. There are two liabilities to this concept. First, that it deals only with the vitality of stable or fixed entities (i.e. things), and secondly, that it presents this vitality in terms that are too individualistic to each item (essentially, that what gives each object its autonomy cannot necessarily be generalized to all objects). Thing-power can be compared to the childhood sense that the world is filled with animate, thinking beings, whether they are human or not, organic or not. "Each thing [res] as far as it can by its own power, strives [conatur] to persevere in its own being." This is defined in Conatus as an "active impulsion" or trending tendency to persist. "Any thing whatsoever, whether it be more perfect or less perfect, will always be able to persist in existing with that same force whereby it begins to exist, so that in this respect, all things are equal." Jane Bennett tries to apply this materiality to a force or energy, as opposed to a fixed, stable matter, while simultaneously rising above the anthropocentric view that Spinoza attaches to his theories. 2





Citations
1Beesley, Philip Hylozoic-Ground installation. 2007.
2Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2009. Pp 50-122.