INTRODUCTIONtheologies. They draw upon two different models—Deleuze’s theory of assemblages and
the surrealist understanding of automaticity—to explicate how the question of religion
can no longer be kept apart from the increasingly complex and multilayered realm of the
technological and of technologies, which had been viewed as its antipodes.
Bennett argues that one of the consequences of globalization has been the expansion
of the categories with whose help we situate (human) agency. References to ‘‘earth,’’
‘‘empire,’’ and ‘‘networks’’ are legion, but Bennett proposes the Deleuzian termassem-
blageas a better way of analyzing the present ‘‘whole and its style of structuration.’’ The
advantage of introducing this ad hoc and living grouping, a decentralized web, of sorts,
is that it allows us to conceptualize the ways in which, at present, there are increasing
interactions between the human and the nonhuman, animal and vegetal life, material
nature and technology. In other words, reference to the assemblage enables one to under-
stand the theoretical and empirical ‘‘inadequacy of human-centered notions of agency’’
(p. 602).
Her key example is the electric power grid and the ways in which, in almost anthro-
pomorphic and sociological terms, analysts described the 2003 U.S. East Coast power
blackout. Hence Bennett’s central question: ‘‘How does the agency of assemblages com-
pare to more familiar notions, such as the willed intentionality of persons, the disciplinary
power of society, or the automatism of natural processes? How does recognition of the
nonhuman and nonindividuated dimensions of agency alter established notions of moral
responsibility and political accountability?... Is not the ability to make a difference, to
produce effects, or even to initiate action, distributed across an ontologically diverse range
of actors?’’ At the basis of these questions lies the hypothesis, Bennett writes, of a ‘‘materi-
alist ontology,’’ more precisely, a ‘‘vitalism’’ or ‘‘enchanted materialism,’’ according to
which ‘‘the world is figured as neither mechanistic nor teleological but rather as alive with
movement and with a certain power of expression’’ (p. 603). With this last, Deleuzian
term (expression), and drawing on her earlier studies of Thoreau’s understanding of ‘‘the
nature of the wild’’ and herThe Enchantment of Modern Life,^179 as well as with reference
to Lucretius and Spinoza, Bennett refers to ‘‘the ability of bodies to become otherwise
than they are, to press out of their current configuration and enter into new compositions
of self, as well as into new alliances and rivalries with others’’ (p. 603).
These characterizations allow for a dual reading or ‘‘dual-aspect-theory’’ (Stuart
Hampshire) not unlike Spinoza’s system itself. Relentlessly immanent in its pursuit of a
multitude of causes and effects/affects, Bennett’s perspective is nonetheless presented as a
‘‘faith,’’ a ‘‘profession of faith,’’ one that, ironically, resembles the structure of the Nicene
Creed: ‘‘I believe in one Nature, vibrant and overflowing, material and energetic, maker
of all that is, seen and unseen.’’ Nature is seen as a ‘‘pluriverse,’’ in particular, as a ‘‘gener-
ative mobility’’ that escapes our full conceptual and experiential grasp, even though with
each subsequent move or reconfiguration it enhances the ‘‘prospects for an intelligent
way of life’’ (p. 604). A common misunderstanding is that only ‘‘human exceptional-
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