Why does Marie leave the story so open ended when she has told us that the love of Tristan and the queen “brought them much suffering and caused them to die the same day” (9-10)? Does this relate to her focus on Tristan’s hazel-wood message?

Taking into account chapter 2 of Vibrant Matter, can you highlight a section in Sir Orfeo where an assemblage comes together to cause movement or change in the plot of the narrative? Consider the scene when the underworld king makes the bargain with Orfeo and must uphold it or when the steward’s loyalty to Sir Orfeo is tested in the end of the narrative. What are the actants coming into play in these instances?

“If we do not know just how it is that human agency operates, how can we be so sure that the processes through which nonhumans make their mark are qualitatively different?” (34)

Do you agree that we do not really understand human agency, does it matter if we do not, and why should this pertain to nonhumans?

“In emphasizing the ensemble nature of action and the interconnections between persons and things, a theory of vibrant matter presents individuals as simply incapable of bearing full responsibility for their effects.” (Bennett 37)

How does Bennett’s statement on the responsibility of actants reflect the previously stated concept of assemblages in the chapter? Why is it that Bennett comes to this statement on responsibility towards the end of the chapter? How does “thing-power” work into these ideas?

In the reading there is an entire section on the “quasi-object” or “hybrid.” Latour, a nonmondernist, stands by the theory that adding “quasi-”  “removes any lingering hint of solid natural objects approached through a colorful diversity of equally valid cultural standpoints.” He offers a few examples of “hybrids” such as “frozen embryos, expert systems, digital machines…” etc. What do you think Bennet’s views on the hybrid or quasi-object are based on what we have read so far in Vibrant Matter? Could Bennet be considered a nonmodernist? Or does her theory reject the classification of object/ non-object/ quasi-object completely?

“For we ourselves, just like Neanderthals, sparrows, mushrooms, and dirt, have never done anything else than act amidst the bustle of other actants, compressing and resisting them, or giving way beneath their blows.”

Throughout this text, the writer seems to bridge the gap between humans and– well, everything else that is literally not the homo-sapien, in terms that humans are, in fact, mere actants.  This begs the question of what is the actor?  If everything is the effect and affected, what is the cause? Does every tangible thing (and maybe intangible thing) act as both the cause and effect, the actor and the actant?

Would you consider the fairy queen’s independence an object?  Would you consider Guinevere’s jealousy an object in the same respect?  Why or why not?

In what ways do you feel that the character of the faery queen in Lanval is or is not treated like an object? How much power does the faery queen’s objectification give to the faery queen? How much power does this obectification give to Lanval?

Of Jeffrey Cohen’s three summarizations, which approach did you identify with most? Why?

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?