ABSTRACT
This chapter engages with the idea of material vitality advanced by Jane Bennett. The discussion begins with a consideration of minkondi, wooden human figures that were considered by speakers of the KiKongo dialect to have the ability to move and act of their own accord. Building on the consideration of the minkondi, three different aspects of the autonomy of material are considered: technological progress as a force that escapes human control, objects that I describe as “machines,” and monumentality. The discussion of technological progress draws on the ideas of André Leroi Gourhan, Gilbert Simondon, and Eric Boëda. Machines are considered in terms of objects that are independent of human temporality, and even come to impose their temporality on human experience. The argument is advanced that machines grew out of the development of architecture. The development of architecture is discussed in the context of the Epipaleolithic and Neolithic of the Levant, with examples from the sites of Ohalo, Kharaneh, and Ba’ja. Monumentality is then considered in terms of objects that in a sense “reaches out” to all who view it to form a part of their memory. This definition of monumentality is illustrated by examples of works of contemporary landscape art by Michael Heizer and Christo. The final section of the chapter returns to the minkondi, adding the examples of the golem and the Moche revolt of the objects as cases where artifacts have their own volition. It is argued that such true artifact vitality is linked to an extreme form of the type of projection that underlies the human engagement with artifacts.
