Moomins and Complicity with Matter: Tove Jansson’s Moominpappa at Sea as an Intervention in Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things by Jane Bennett
-
Arwen Dagmar Meereboer
Abstract
As humans we are constantly engaging not only with other humans but with plants, animals, and matter. This article examines the way we view our engagement with the materiality of the world around us, by looking at the work of philosopher Jane Bennet on vibrant materiality and author Tove Jansson. Bennet presents an argument that matter can be analysed as active and vibrant. While Western philosophers are used to viewing matter as passive and dead, seeing it as active makes space for different engagement with matter. One of the ways we can start engaging with matter, once we stop thinking of it as passive and dead, is through the lens of ethics. Jansson in her children’s book Moominpappa at Sea shows a possibility for looking at the material world through this ethical lens. This article will put these works in conversation by reading both as philosophical works that have nuanced engagement with the topic of how we can be in community with the things that surround us. Jansson’s work provides a helpful addition to Vibrant Matter by showing how we are inextricably entangled in harm, and providing a possible way to live with this reality.
References
Antikainen, N. 2017. Genus i Tove Janssons roman Pappan och havet. Helsingfors: Helsingfors Universitet.Search in Google Scholar
Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.10.2307/j.ctv12101zqSearch in Google Scholar
Bennett, J. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.10.1215/9780822391623Search in Google Scholar
Brown, B. 2001. “Thing Theory.” Critical Inquiry 28 (1): 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1086/449030.Search in Google Scholar
Gilligan, C. 1982. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Happonen, S. 2014. “Parties as Heterotopias in Tove Jansson’s Moomin Illustrations and Texts.” The Lion and the Unicorn 38 (2): 182–99, https://doi.org/10.1353/uni.2014.0013.Search in Google Scholar
Heinämaa, S. 2018. “Strange Vegetation: Emotional Undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November.” SATS 19 (1): 41–67.10.1515/sats-2017-3002Search in Google Scholar
Jansson, T. 1984. “Moominpappa at Sea.” In Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, translated by, K. Heart, 2nd ed. Originally Published as Pappan och Havet (Helsingfors: Schildt, 1991).Search in Google Scholar
Kääpä, P. 2015. Ecology and Contemporary Nordic Cinemas: From Nation-Building to Ecocosmopolitanism. London: Bloomsbury.10.5040/9781628929959Search in Google Scholar
Lévinas, E. 1994. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, translated by, A. Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP. Originally published as Totalité et Infini: essai sur l’extériorité (La Haye: The Hague, 1961).Search in Google Scholar
McGregor, H. 2013. Complicit Witnessing: Distant Suffering in Contemporary White Canadian Women’s Writing.Unpublished Doctoral diss.Guelph, ON: University of Guelph.Search in Google Scholar
McGregor, H., and E. Hoven. 2018. Episode 2.26 Getting Deeply into Sourdough with Emily Hoven, Secret Feminist Agenda, Episode 2.26 Transcript, Secretfeministagenda.com. WLU Press.Search in Google Scholar
Meereboer, A. 2020. Moominpappa and the Vibrant Matter: Tove Jansson’s “Moominpappa at Sea” as an Addition to “Vibrant Matter” by Jane Bennet. Masters thesis. Turku: Åbo Akademi, F. f. h. & Exclusion, S.Search in Google Scholar
Moi, T. 2011. “The Adventure of Reading: Literature and Philosophy, Cavell and Beauvoir.” Literature and Theology 25 (2): 125–40, https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frr014.Search in Google Scholar
Nilsson Lindberg, S. S. 2010. Pappan, mamman och fyren: Manligt och kvinnligt i Tove Janssons Pappan och havet och Muminpappans memoarer. Dissertation. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-5641 (accessed September 14, 2020).Search in Google Scholar
Tesar, M., and M. Koro-Ljungberg. 2015. “Cute, Creepy and Sublime Unnamed Childhood Monstrosities.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 37 (5): 694–704, https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2015.1075708.Search in Google Scholar
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Environmental Ethics–Sats Special Issue
- The Appeal of Environmental Master Metrics
- Moomins and Complicity with Matter: Tove Jansson’s Moominpappa at Sea as an Intervention in Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things by Jane Bennett
- Weird Environmental Ethics: The Virtue of Wonder and the Rise of Eco-Anxiety
- Who Should Have Children? (Us?) When Should We Have Children? (Now?)
- Justificatory Moral Pluralism in Climate Change
- Concepts of Biodiversity, Pluralism, and Pragmatism: The Case of Walnut Forest Conservation in Central Asia
- Towards Anthropocentric Deep Ecology: Utilizing Esotericism within Ecophilosophy
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Environmental Ethics–Sats Special Issue
- The Appeal of Environmental Master Metrics
- Moomins and Complicity with Matter: Tove Jansson’s Moominpappa at Sea as an Intervention in Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things by Jane Bennett
- Weird Environmental Ethics: The Virtue of Wonder and the Rise of Eco-Anxiety
- Who Should Have Children? (Us?) When Should We Have Children? (Now?)
- Justificatory Moral Pluralism in Climate Change
- Concepts of Biodiversity, Pluralism, and Pragmatism: The Case of Walnut Forest Conservation in Central Asia
- Towards Anthropocentric Deep Ecology: Utilizing Esotericism within Ecophilosophy
