Verbs It could be said that through searching for a sensual-encounter with an ordinary thing, we are looking for a new kind of relationship, even if it is only fleeting. As we have already discussed, the reciprocity of this intention is important. It requires active involvement from both parties. I have written a verb list to help think about the ways we tend to relate to ordinary things. Human-to-thing relations – a verb list: to use to make to own to consume to break
to fix or maintain to alter or transform to give to take to sacralise
to objectively observe to ignore or overlook to eat to explore to fall in love with?
Can you imagine writing such a one-sided and presumptuous list for human-to humanrelations? It is my hope that it would remain impossible and that any attempted list would be far more nuanced, complex, tentative and respectful. In fact, by acknowledging what Jane Bennett calls ‘Thing Power’ and the fundamental importance of the ability of all matter to act, the same point might apply for a verb list of human-to-thing relations. Similarly, Jane Bennett asks, for example ‘What difference would it make to public health if eating was understood as an encounter between various variegated bodies, some of them mine, most of them not, and none of which always gets the upper hand?’98 The sensual-encounter requires you to acknowledge that more-than-human things are not inert and to oppose ‘the reduction of lively, emergent, intra-acting phenomena into passive, distinct resources for human use and control.’99 Have you tried writing a thing-to-thing verb list? Jane Bennett gives us some good examples of vital materialism through her stories of stem cells, fish oils, electricity, metal and trash in her book, Vibrant Matter – a political ecology of things.100 The verb list I have given you is my attempt at a common-sense overview of how I see humans relating to things within contemporary western culture as I know it. If we were to add to sensually-encounter, where would this fit into our verb list? I would suggest that it would fit somewhere between to explore and to fall in love with.
98
Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter, p.viii. Ibid, p.249. 100 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter, a political ecology of things (Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2010). 99
Emma Marks
Sensual-encounters with Ordinary Things: A Speculation
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