New Materialism as Media Theory: Medianatures and Dirty Matter

"One of the biggest challenges for new materialism is to develop a media theory of
things*and yet not only thing-powers, but process-power. It is very relevant how
Jane Bennett talks about ‘‘thing-power’’ and points towards the various vibrant
energies that push our understandings of objects towards their operationality*that
things do stuff, make a difference, and ‘‘become the decisive force catalyzing an
event.’’20 And yet, I want to emphasize especially the vibrant bit in her characterization
as otherwise we are going to miss a lot of the material ephemerality of technical
media cultures as well as the long, messy networks in which one materiality is
transformed into another one (which perhaps is exactly the point about decisiveness
that Bennett calls for). For example, how a mineral, itself born as part of the activity
of matter some hundreds of millions of years ago, participates in an assemblage of
information technologies, which are themselves embedded in various levels of
catalyzing forces*global trade, human labor, standardization processes, manufacturing*
the multiple circulations of" (S. 98)

"So the matter of technical media is not only in their object-nature*even if that
would help us think beyond representation, signification, or a correlationist
predisposition. Furthermore, despite the obviously positive side of discovering
‘‘matter’’ and hence finding this traditionally neglected, fleshy, and non-human side
of existence, not all matter can be seen as liberating. There is a need for a cultural analysis of dirty matter, too. The materiality of waste is one concrete way to think
about ‘‘new materialism’’ not only as a ‘‘good’’ agency of matter. There is a whole
materialism of dirt and bad matter too, which is not only about ‘‘thing-power’’ but
about things de-powering in a Spinozian way*bad encounters that reduce the
vitalities of material assemblages in such encounters.(98f)