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The Vibrancy of Pudgala: Thinking about... : 85
of material assemblages seems quite coherent with the very definition of matter in Jain philosophy. Indeed, as the Tattvārthasūtra reminds us,"[p]ud means combine and gala means to separate. The main attribute of matter is its ability to combine and separate (fusion and fission) to form clusters."43 Bennett's vital materialism is a new imagining. Ultimately, it is a break away from traditional vitalism and critical vitalism. Bennett declares, “Mine is not a vitalism in the traditional sense; I equate affect with materiality, rather than posit a separate force that can enter and animate a physical body.”44 The traditional vitalism that Bennett is operating away from conceives of a separate, external substance that animates and/or gives life to matter. This is often associated to religious belief in the substance of souls. The development of critical vitalism was made in response to vitalism, as well as mechanistic materialism. Bennett notes that key figures such as Henri Bergson and Hans Driesch, "distinguished themselves from those 'naive' vitalists who posited a spiritual force or soul that was immune to any scientific or experimental inquiryē [they] also opposed the mechanistic model of nature assumed by the ‘materialists' of their day.'45 These critical vitalists expressed an idea that there was something within matter that was ineffable, that always escaped their grasp, however, they were not willing to suggest that it is a substance that they could not theorize. The distinction between their work and Bennett's is that critical vitalists always posited something 'not-quite-material' rather than equate materialism "to the vitality they discerned in natural processes."46 But what are the implications of such a vital materialism? As mentioned, Bennett's project in Vibrant Matter is both philosophical as well as political and for her, the political is intimately entangled with the ethical. In many ways, her ethio-political project is built on attentiveness. Bennett writes that “[w]hat is also needed is a cultivated, patient, sensory attentiveness to nonhuman forces operating outside and inside the human body."47 In doing so, we are able to raise the status of the materiality of which we are composed.”:48 Raising the status of the material of matter, forces us to be more cognizant of our interactions and our relationships. Br intimates, “The ethical aim becomes to distribute value more generously, to bodies as sucu.. Such a newfound attentiveness to matter and its powers will not solve the problem of human exploitation or oppression but it inspire a greater sense of the extent to which all bodies are kin in the sense of inextricably enmeshed in a dense network of relations. And in a knotted world of vibrant matter, to harm one section of the web may very well be to harm oneself. Such an enlightened or expanded notion of self-interest is good for humans.”49 A renewed perceptivity enables humans and nonhumans alike to enter into new formations, new assemblages that recognize our interdependence with one another. Again, I highlight that Bennett's work is greatly ecological and despite the fact that she does not view that this new attentiveness, this carefulness, would fix all our problems, such carefulness does produce new ways of interacting and being in this world that deal less damage.
Synthesizing two views With Bennett's theory of vital materialism in view, I believe it is time to return to Jain matter, to pudgala and as I hope to explain, to karma theory. I greatly believe that there is a possible
