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

Human Affect, Enchantment, and Mood

Sensorial and connective moments to our environment are dependent on our mood, which in turn, is often affected by our environment. Certain mood alterations generated by our surroundings might influence us to turn ethical principles into the practice of ethical behaviors. Jane Bennett makes many examples of this. The first is that of trash in a Baltimore sewer. The trash evokes certain emotions and responses within the viewer, ranging from disgust, to curiosity, to interest, which could result in moral choices: does one ignore what is in front of them? Examine it? Clean it up? Or react and deal with the source of it? She treats the trash as the actant upon us and our emotions, rather than seeing it as an object that we react to. In doing this, she gives objects an autonomy and history of their own outside of human interaction. By generalizing this principle, we begin to view nature outside of ourselves differently.

From Gilles Deleuze: "We know nothing about a body until we know what it can do, in other words, what affects are, how they can or cannot enter into composition with other affects, with the affects of another body... to destroy that body or to be destroyed by it...to exchange actions and passions with it or to join with in composing a more powerful body."

Jane Bennett: "If a set of moral principles is actually to be lived out, the right mood or landscape or affect has to be in place: Ethical Political Action on the part of humans seems to require not only a vigilant critique of existing institutions, but a positive, even utopian alternative - demystification works against these positive formations." 1





Citations
1Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2009. Pp 51-61.