In Bennett’s first chapter, she spends a great deal of time discussing Adorno’s concept of nonidentity. Nonidentity is more of an absence in terms of human understanding, the “discomfiting sense of the inadequacy of representation…no matter how refined or analytically precise one’s concepts become” (14). Pair this with Cohen’s description of OOO as acknowledging the autonomy of objects, in that “no two objects can really touch each other” wholly. In what ways are these related concepts problematic in terms of an anthropocentric worldview? Does the representation of objects in text help to bridge this gap or does it create yet another degree of removal?
ENGL 365 | Medieval Object Ecologies
Dr. Myra Seaman | Fall 2014
Something is always lost in translation. Often there is something born of the transmission translation, both terms are useful here. To identify something is to appropriate. When we appropriate objects especially the nonhuman objects we are othering that object in the sense that we identify it as something not of 0urselves.