Teniola Emmanuel

       For my final blog post, I looked at my classmates' blog post on the topic of how New Materialism is viewed, that is blog post 4. In essence the topic delves into the intricacies of New Materialism and how it is related to dystopian environment. New materialism is a theory that was introduced by Jane Bennett. New materialism deals with a lot of topics such as assemblage, agency, thing power and binaries. While some of the posts focused on one single aspect of new materialism, others were more general and focused on each element of new materialism. I will provide a summary on what their thoughts were on the topic. Summaries of the blog posts from my peers         For Maggie, she discussed in-depth on how binaries were shown in the different novels such as the binaries between male and female, between reason and emotion and between man and nature. She gave examples on how the binary between male and female existed in the dystopian world and she talked about how Lauren from

         Having gone through a lot of dystopian novels over the course of the semester, I would say that this is the most exposure I have gotten to the dystopian genre. Dystopias definitely interest me because I have actually had exposure to them in pop culture and other means and I have always found them appealing because of how ominous they are. They carry this sense of doom that people are in denial of. What I like about the dystopian novels      Looking at the first dystopian novel we read in class, The Hunger Games, I would say that it had a very huge impact on pop culture. All of a sudden everyone wanted to have a mockingjay pin or there would be online quizzes testing which district would suit you. Having to read it in class gave a deeper meaning than just seeing it as a form of entertainment. It became a topic with different layers that we could dissect and talk about. If we take a look at the environment of the hunger games, it is terrible and foreboding and it was not

         New materialism deals with the binaries surrounding man and nature. As we see in today's world, there is a divide between nature and man. Hence, we have buildings, technology and the likes. Being able to assimilate oneself completely into nature is seen as unusual and it is not something we do on a normal day. Jane Bennet introduce new materialism in her book Vital Matter.   She says the aim of her project which she is referring to as vital materialism is "to dissipate the onto-theological binaries of life/matter, human/animal, will/determination and organic/inorganic using arguments and other rhetoric means to induce in human bodies an aesthetic-effective openness to material vitality" (Bennet, pg X).  Jane Bennet Vibrant Matter How New Materialism is portrayed in dystopian fiction               Some dystopian worlds have themes of new materialism running through them. We see this in parable of the sower and the road. In the road, humans take on these ca